Neutral, kind of

I was invited to a supper the other day and wanted to bring something handmade, and a friend of mine recommended mugrugs - two of them – in neutrals if I wasn’t familiar with their colour preferences.

 

Finished mugrugs

Right. Neutrals. Not my usual palette is it. However, I had some scraps from the iQuilt, and stitched a few neutral-ish pieces together. They looked rather dull, so I made a cut in each of them and inserted a strip of brown to create a tree trunk.

I quilted horizontal lines, free motion stitched branches and bark, and added a neutral binding. Almost done, it begged for some colour, so I made little dots with Promarkers all over the brances. 

They didn’t really show much, so I drew circles around them to make them pop; first one round, then another. You can see the difference between one and two rounds, one round on the bottom mugrug.

Still rather neutral, I’d say, but a bit more fun.

 

The first time I made mugrugs was back in 2007 when a fellow guild member requested small quilts which she could sell with old mugs at a market. She was raising money for an orphanage, so I was happy to dig into my scrap boxes. I apologise for the quality of the pictures, it was 2007 after all.

There were flowers

and a summer scene

and a winter scene

and a cat

and happy scrappy ones

and of course, a mug.

It was so much fun, I should make more mugrugs more often indeed!

I am curious; what is your go-to-hostess gift?

"iQuilt", A free pattern

Happy 2016!

I thought I would kick off the new year with a free pattern for a super simple, scrap friendly, fun and graphic quilt – the iQuilt.

I am always sketching ideas for quilts, and some of them are destined for special occasions. One of these occasions was my nephew’s confirmation back in September when I wanted something youthful and fun, but still timeless. 

With all the iSomethings I knew he had, the iQuilt was born.

I chose neutral fabrics with a little green and blue for variety, and backed it with dark brown fleece.

My nephew is quite happy with his quilt and I would quite like one for myself as well. If you would like to make your own iQuilt, you can download the free pattern here.

Enjoy!

Seven steps back

Looking for a way to get an overview, I have been taking many, many steps back in more ways than one. The house is slowly progressing, and I mean sloowlyy compared to the frantic work going on everywhere in the pre-moving-in chaos. I haven’t got my in-house creative space sorted out yet and am missing the calmness that comes from taking half an hour off and just do something fun. I have realized that I don’t just quilt because it makes me happy, I actually become unhappy when I don't.

Quite a few of you have asked about my new sewing room, and the answer is – I will not have one here at home. The original plan was to have a downstairs studio, but we made an apartment for our young ones instead. I will however have a desk in one (or maybe two?) of the bedrooms, and husband has (almost) built shelves for me to keep some stash at home. I will still have my fabulous studio where I am happily making a mess without bothering anyone – and I get to have our daughter and grandboys close so it’s a win-win I’d say. Living close but not together is brilliant. We have a door between our hallways so we don't have to put on coats and shoes, but other than that we have our own homes.

One of the worst things about not creating for a while was, as always, the fear of not finding the mojo again. Nothing new there. So, I did what I usually do, grabbed a few scraps and started sewing, and soon thereafter I had two small projects ready for some relaxing hand stitching. 

You don’t need a sewing space for that, do you. Needle, thread, thimble, light, and off you go.

This little quilt was a present for a friend who needs to practise saying no. It says “No thanks, that’s ok” which is my go to phrase.

The other quilt, “New beginnings” was a present for a friend who just changed career. It’s made from 1" leftover strips from daughter’s Christmas present and a piece of a thrifted ikat-woven shirt.

Aaaah, the bliss of stitching one scrap to another.

The theme for 2015 for our guild is scraps and we have put lots of different scrap related fun on the programme so there will be plenty of opportunities for colourful play this year. We have shown & told about our scrap quilts. We have demonstrated paper piecing. We are doing a string block swap beginning this month. We have played with our scraps for a whole Saturday at our scrap quilting workshop. And the first scrap challenge is making mugrugs/place mats for the April meeting. Both these little quilts would be the right size.

I have enjoyed having company in the studio a couple of days. I understand oranges, like this couch, and hot chocolate are good for nasty colds. Company does indeed make tedious work like sorting through and ironing boxes and boxes of scraps more fun.

Right now I have some scrappy tops waiting to be turned into cushions for the old couch upstairs. I pieced them at the workshop and cannot wait to start quilting.

(Yours truly at the workshop, picture by my friend Sissel)

Orange is a perfect neutral, wouldn't you say. The funny thing is that I could have sworn that I had never seen that fabric before I emptied one of the bags in the studio last week.

Just a few boxes to be emptied tomorrow morning and off I go with a somewhat clean conscious. Does one box, one hour in the studio sound fair?? With the overwhelming number of boxes and bags that still needs a place to live, that would be a great incentive indeed.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Colour me pink"

I have blogged about my early days in the studio earlier, happily rediscovering old treasures in the Treasure Box. The 9 blocks from this post were made into a table topper for MIL for her birthday, finished up the day before we started packing up the house back in May.

(Pre quilting)

The flowers were orange so I wanted to add some hot pink to them to tie them to the border fabric. I have, for some reason, been working a lot with pinks lately, and am falling in love with them big time.

(Background squares all from thrifted fabric.)

I had some heavy weight, shiny rayon embroidery thread from last year’s shopping extravaganza, and while it was way too thick to go in the needle, it worked well enough in the bobbin. Hitting the middle of the flower from the back did not work quite so well, so the swirly swirls ended up wherever they wanted. As long as they were on the flower, I did not mind, who said they needed to be in the centre anyway.

(Flowery fabric from the Mrs Bouquet quilt)

I did not have a lot of time to fiddle around with the thread tension either, so I decided to like the hot pink eyelashes keeping the decorative thread in place. You can like almost any quilting mishap if you just put your mind to it, right?

It has a scrappy binding which was hand stitched to the back 2 minutes before we were due at the in-laws' house for the annual Norway Day dinner. The Big Box of binding is a great time saver indeed.

The quilt is very bright and cheery and MIL is rather fond of it although I’m not sure orange was quite her thing before I started quilting.

The overall appearance became a little pinker though.)

Have a wonderful weekend:)

The Purple Pouches

Getting close to the holidays, I still needed a few small Christmas presents, and made 3 small purple pouches from oil cloth.

Just a scrap of striped oil cloth from the remnant table and some zippers, an hour or so of work, and there you go.

Two of them got red appliquéd hears,

the third already had a lovely flower.

More pouches to follow..

The Blue Placemats

I wanted to give my parents something handmade for Christmas, and blue is always a safe bet with my mother. I had some scraps leftover from this table cloth. Well, actually I cut lots of extra 2 ½” strips for that quilt so that I could make a birthday quilt for grandson as well, and grandbaby’s christening quilt were also made from the same strips. So what does that make these little fabric scraps - leftovers from leftovers from leftovers? Leftovers three times removed? Never-ending fabric strips?

Anyway, I brought the scraps to a guild meeting a while ago, and randomly stitched them into a piece of made fabric jellyroll race style. This piece was cut apart and stitched back together with pieces of a recycled curtain fabric. The colour and look is rather denim-ish, but it is very soft and lovely.

While one side was bleached by the sun, the other side looked brand new and it passed the rip-test. If you are unfamiliar with this test, you grab the fabric with both hands, and pull as hard as you can. If it doesn’t rip, it’s fine to use.

I had just enough pieced fabric for 4 place mats, and they look quite different, which I like.

 

My quilting buddies and I had an interesting discussion about how to balance the made fabric and the top and bottom borders while I was making them. It was very interesting to hear the different point of views. No wonder that there are so many different quilts out there.

Simple straight-ish line quilting using the walking foot; goes with anything.

Maybe I should have quilted them with orange thread; the orange binding basting seams looked quite nice with all that blue.

Pictures taken in a hurry in the evening before my parents' arrival; I even forgot to sign them before wrapping them up. And I who sign Everything. Oh well; they know who made them.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Soccer Pillow

Having made the Timmy Time Pillow for grandbaby, I had to make a pillow for our resident soccer king as well. In case you’re wondering, he is indeed a huge soccer fan. You can see the Liverpool gym bag which I made from a blind here.

It has the same green, bubbly grass fabric as the Timmy pillow, and the white fabric is white fleece.

I traced around a plate for the ball shape, and sketched the pentagon/hexagon pattern. Getting the size and angles on the chunky hexagons right wasn’t all that easy, but with a little moving around and oh well attitude, it all worked out just fine in the end.

I never got around to taking proper pictures of the pillow though, as I was in too much hurry to get it wrapped up and tucked away. It has a soccer fabric back, and, yes, you guessed it, a zipper closure.

I have a long day of kit-making ahead of me and daughter is coming over soon to help me. I'd better get my layer-upon-layer fabric stash out.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Timmy Pillow

It has been a weird week so far, and a quite unproductive one too. We have been celebrating two birthdays and eating too much cake, I shipped off 3 competition/challenge pieces before the deadlines, did plenty of comfort shopping, and finished a class sample/exhibition piece with invisible binding. I have taken progress pictures, and will post them soon.

I just realized I never finished my Christmas posts, but cute pillows are cute at any time of the year, right?

Grandbaby’s Timmy Time Pillow was a big hit (WIP post here).

It is soft and cuddly and he sleeps with it every night.

The choice of fleece as background and “wool” was perfect as it makes the pillow ever so soft and cuddly.

I made a little booboo quilting the white in the eyes

but nothing that couldn’t be corrected with a black fabric marker.

Timmy needed something in the background, so we have got the Kindergarten building

and a green, bubbly fabric which I have used for grass on more than one occasion. The bubbles look like flowers to me.

The cover has a zipper closure.

I am immensely proud of that closure ‘cause even the corners turned out right.

Not bad for a recovering zipper-o-phobic. I’d say. More Christmas gifts to follow.

Thanks for stopping by!