"The blue hour"

Every year, the European Quilt Association, the association of European national quilt guilds, issues a challenge. A number of quilts from each country will be on show at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham and then tour different countries for 3 years.

The theme this year was “Greetings from...”, a quilt looking like a postcard, measuring 25*35cm (10”*14”), including a post stamp and no visible binding. For a while I wasn’t sure I could finish a quilt in time, but I had to try.

“The blue hour” is inspired by the fjords up north at winter time when the light is blue. I love this part of Norway. The title is a nod to a painting we have at home.

I started with a pieced background 

which I covered with layers of sheers to suggest water and sky. 

The mountains were sketched roughly and transferred to a translucent paper. 

I did not take any pictures during the next steps, but the mountains and their shadow were made from layers of sheer fabrics and appliquéd onto the background.

The snow/ice gave me some problems. It was too white, so I tried a few overlays of blue.

The orange represents the light and warmth from the houses, and is made from gorgeous sari silk scraps. I arranged and rearranged those little pieces more times than I care to remember, but I love the texture of the fraying silk.

My post stamp is the silvery moon. The text is written with a permanent marker and says “Up north, Norway, January 2016”.

I was planning to free motion quilt the piece, 

but in the end I had to add lots of horizontal lines. It did not look right without.

I love how all those quilting lines look and how they blend the different colours and textures together.

Usually I would do the invisible binding from my tutorial here, but with time being an issue, I tried something new. It worked well enough, but I learned a few lessons for next time.

I cut a piece of fabric with the same measurements as the quilt, marked lines on all 4 sides, 

and cut out the centre.

Pinning it to the quilt, right sides together,and stitching all the way around.

Clipping the corners, and folding it over to the back. Folding in the raw edges and stay stitching around the edges with machine.

The edges were then stitched down by hand as for a regular binding.

The quilts were shown at the annual meeting of the Norwegian quilt guild last weekend, and the 16 quilts with the most votes will go to Birmingham.

I’m looking forward for my little tribute to a part of Norway which I love to return home – whenever that might be.

You can see some of my previous EQA challenge quilts here, here and here.

How does your garden grow

I understand that many quilters also are avid gardeners, which actually happens to be true for many of my quilting friends. Here, however, there is not much happening in the void which once was our garden. Not that we ever had a beautiful one, but there was a big patio and a lawn and a trampoline and a slide and soccer goals; you get the picture. We need some new concrete walls, a little more dirt, some grass seeds, a dumpster for all the building debris, a week or so for husband to build the new patio, preferably on this side of summer, and some new furniture for all of us, and we’ll be set for the summer. It will be great. It will be our kind of garden.

In my studio however, things are blooming.

These flowers will never need watering or weeding, and no lawn mower will ever need to be worked around them. That’s my kind of flowers.

"T(h)read lightly"

Made for the Unfini-SHED fund raiser last summer, this quilt was an experiment creating a shape using layers of materials.

The background is a thrifted linen table runner and the binding a thrifted duvet cover. The only plain white surface in our temporary housing was the refrigerator, hence the magnets and somewhat bent corners.

Lots of stitching 

and a little hand embellishing to make the shape pop.

Often you don't need many stitches to do so. When I go too far and need to pick up a few stitches, I know that it's finished.

I am quite pleased with the sheer heart and light threads that seem to float over the surface.

The heart is fragile – t(h)read lightly.

The struggling quilter

Quilting should not be all easy, should it. I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t get that struggling feeling too often when it comes to quilting. I think it may be because I really enjoy working things out and get them right, and don’t mind spending time getting there. There are some things that make me grind my teeth though, and sewing machine issues are on the top of that list.

I started on a new quilt two weeks ago, I should probably call it The procrastinator. All the bits and pieces have been ready in my mind for a while, and they came together really fast as soon as I stopped procrastinating. I have been digging into my extensive thrifty stash for the background. A blue 60-ies polka dot skirt from MIL’s friend and a green tablecloth from the thrift store. Add the magic of sheer bits and bobs and some strings of yarn, and there you go. After laying it all out on the work table, I cut it into three panels to be quilted separately as I want them to be different and yet the same. Does that even make sense? I’ll be quilting them the same way, but with different threads, and I want the lines between them to be visible. How I’ll stitch them back together has yet to be decided, but first I need to quilt them.

(Two panels in progress)

I started with the yarn covered part as I love working the twists and turns. My initial thought was to outline each thread like this

but the painterly effect got totally lost, so I tried to quilt the negative space only which worked quite well. The middle panel has variegated green stitching and the side panels red/brown. 

When I got bored of quilting negative space, I moved on to the blue on blue on blue.

It started so well, curving this way and that around the polka dots, and I didn’t really notice how often the thread broke until it happened like every 6” or so and I had replaced the needle four times. I figured it had to be the thread that was causing the problems, and moved on to the second panel and a different thread. Same thing, over and over and over again. I should have checked the quality of the stitches too, but I was almost half way before I realized that the quilting lines looked awful on the front as the thread got thinner and thinner before it broke. Bummer.

I did a quick search on the Internet and found that the problem might be a nick or a burr in the thread plate. Sure, there were even two nicks (or burrs, I don't know), how did that happen!

(Same nicks (or burrs), different angle)

By this time I was ready to scrap both the quilt and the sewing machine, and went to the store to buy a new thread plate or a new machine. They did neither have the plate nor the machine I wanted, so I returned rather disappointed back to the studio with a nail file and some very fine sandpaper as recommended by the staff to try to fix it myself.

I cannot feel the nick anymore, but the thread is still breaking while free motion quilting. My sister suggested that I put nail polish on the edge to smooth out any tiny leftover burrs, so I’ll do that. After a few days away from the quilt, I have now installed my on-the-go machine in the studio. Did you know that 10 minutes of free motion quilting takes like an hour to remove?? 

It took a while to remove the offending stitches on that second panel, but now all is well in procrastinator quilt land.

How the store staff did not smell my frustration and offered me deal on a different machine I don’t know, but the nail file and sandpaper sure were much cheaper...

Upcoming classes and a Movement class at Randaberg Husflidslag

I’ll be teaching two classes this upcoming weekend, and am getting my stuff ready to go. The class samples have been located and set aside and, with any luck, the printouts will come out of the printer first thing tomorrow morning. I was planning to teach locally only this spring, but when I was invited to visit a small guild up north, I couldn’t resist.

The classes I will be teaching are Christmas on Earth and Funky Fowl; two very different but equally fun classes with lots of room for creativity.


I have also set up a few classes to be taught in my studio over the next few months. The classes are Skyggesiden (The dark side, 3D effect),

Fargerike (colour theory with a twist) 

and Movement (painting with fiber). 

You will find all the dates on the “Kurs” page.


The last class I taught last year was a Movement class at Randaberg Husflidslag back in November.

I have said it before, but I'll say it again - the process from bits and pieces to finished projects is magic,

and the results are gorgeous.

I am very much enjoying visiting different Husflidslag which are local chapters of Norges Husflidslag, the national arts and crafts association. Their classrooms are often decorated with a variety of fabulously colourful pieces. Here are some pictures from a previous class at Sola Husflidslag posted back here.

If you would like to sign up for one of the upcoming studio classes, let me know and I will send you more information.

Thanks for stopping by:)

Green & Glittery class at Rogaland Quiltelag

Another week has passed, and we are one week closer to finishing the house. Just a few more crazy weeks to go where everything hopefully will come together. Maybe the house will even have the proper coloured cladding; we’ll see.

The grandboys have been spending the weekend with us, giving us a much needed break from everything. We spent a few hours Christmas gift shopping on Saturday which was brilliant. After one ice cream break and lunch at McD, we could cross quite a few gifts off the list. And, during a few hours here and there, I have finished a calendar for the grandboys and have only a few touches left on the only two gifts I’m making. As far as holiday preparations goes, I’m way ahead I’d say, particularly as this is all I’m planning to do this year.

And speaking of Christmas, here are a few shots from the Green & Glittery class back in October.

(did you notice the name tags?)

Simple shapes being transformed into trees.

No Christmas threes without lights

The mandatory shot of the works in progress at the end of the day (one of the students had to leave early). There is a lot of work going into each of these fabulous projects.

I have seen a couple of the finished projects, and they were awesome! Well done, ladies, and thank you for taking my class!

Thanks for stopping by. If you don’t hear from me in a while, you'll find me looking at samples...