and another wip

I have started putting together the top for my Scrappy Swap Christmas Hedgerow blocks. 6 of them are swapped from Nicole, Melissa D and Leisel and 6 of them are made by me.

Putting them up on the "design wall" and playing around a bit, I decided to make scrappy strippy borders out of the rest of my strings that were cut for the blocks. Starting out, I just alternated light and dark strips.

Then I sped up the progress by using longer strips, sewing 10 into one strata that got sliced into three 5" pieces. These three pieces was placed next to each other on the design wall with one open stripe between them. Quite happy with the repetition this provided, I continued doing so. One strata for each of the 4 sides. Spreading these out around the center, I then added the green strips to bind it all together. This "design as you go" worked out like a charm this time.

I guess this "controlled randomness" is a compromise between very scrappy, and very organized, and suits me very well.

The sashing is next. Think I'll go for solid white Kona cotton. If you feel up for some more pictures to get you in a mood for Christmas, there is more pictures of these swap blocks in the flickr group over here.

This is the first quilt I'll make with blocks from a swap. It was great fun and I am very happy to look at these pretty blocks - thank you ladies!!!

Anybody else started thinking about Christmas, yet?

another wip

Taking advantage of my new "design wall", the big piece of batting taped to my dining room wall, I have put together the stars that I made this january. The solid fabric was a very lucky find at Kaktus Quilts for a great bargain price. I only bought 1 meter (about 40"), and that was enough for 16 out of the 17 solid patches I needed. Looking in my stash, there was a pretty Jo Morton fat quarter that made a nice complement to the rest.

Next I started auditioning the framing. I had enough of this brown rose fabric for a wider outer border in my stash, and wanted to find a narrow inner border to tie it together.

I tried out a lot of different ones, before finding not one, but two, that I really liked. So now I am quite stuck here, should I pick the blue, or the light one with tiny red roses?

Have changed my mind a few times already, seem to like them both....

Any input is very welcome on this "difficult" matter.

A bit stuck for now, hope you all are enjoying your weekends...

wip

Slowly piecing all the patches... I have made a few alternations to the quilt to make it come more together:

* adding more large scale flowers to the layout, red Russian Rose

* fussy cutting the individual blooms from two color ways of Big Bloom for "portraits" in the 3" squares

* rearranging / balancing the light and dark in a circular movement

I will name this "Dans på roser", and I can't think of a good translation for this phrase in english. Maybe something like "Roses are red ... "

I am taking my time piecing it together, trying to be very accurate on seam allowance. I want it to stay flat!

excited !!!

Last friday I was lucky enough to attend (the) Kaffe Fassett's show and tell "Concentrate on Color". What a treat! I consider myself a big fan, and an owner of many (most) of his books about quilts....

In many ways he was my biggest inspiration to start quilting. I am fascinated by his use of color, even if I can admit, it sometimes can be a bit overwhelming. The use of colors is still one of the biggest attractions in quilting, for me.

I loved this quilt on the top picture, simple squares in a simple diagonal setting.

This second quilt is beautifully sunny in yellow and oranges. It is a class sample for a workshop called Potpourri that was taught the following day.

Kaffe showed a lot of pictures, talked about where he found his inspiration, and showed us a couple of beautiful, colorful quilts. The room was full, and people enjoyed themselves, soaking up inspiration. Very nice talk, followed by a book signing.

I brought one of my favorites,"Passionate Patchwork". Pretty big smile there!

It even gets better! Early next morning 30 women got together for his workshop, and I was one of the lucky ones!!! We all had precut a lot of fabric in large and medium scale flowers of similar contrast into three sizes of squares. Everybody also brought a flannel sheet or piece of batting that got taped to the wall.

Then we arranged the squares according to the pattern, stepped back and started re-arranging, a lot....

It was a lot of fun, and quite intense, too. First step was to eliminate the "jarring breaks" in value. Any squares that is too dark or light has to be removed. A reduction glass is a good tool. Some friendly swapping between fellow quilters is also a good thing, at this stage.

And then I got a friendly comment from (the) Brandon Mably that my quilt looked a bit like a can of chopped tomatoes!!

So, what do you do with a can of chopped tomatoes?

Here comes the brilliant part: the very talented, earlier mentioned, Brandon, makes suggestions for how to broaden your palette. And the wonderful Liz of Kaktus Quilts, who very cleverly arranged this lovely workshop, has a whole stash of fabric waiting to be added to the quilts.

Brandon suggested adding his new fabric "Dapple", in blue and pink, and voila - good things start to happen. If you look closely, you can tell the difference in these to pictures. What do you think?

Working side by side, different palette, same pattern. It was great seeing all the different versions of the same quilt at the end of the day. And see how they all came together, with some expertise advice from Kaffe and Brandon. What a day, what a treat!!

Again, big smile! I loved having the privilege of asking advise from this clever artist. Look at the pretty border treatment he suggested I use: pink Guinea Flowers and deep red Russian Rose, both by KF. Love it!

I also got pretty candid answers and advise from Brandon. Which I actually followed! So, by now I think you all get it, IMHO this guy is a star!!!

And here at last Kaffe is doing the final talk through the 30 quilts to be. We all listened carefully as he commented on each and every quilt. He was quite positive and encouraging in his final review.

I was told I had managed to pull off a rather difficult composition of a narrow color-range without it looking like one, solid piece of fabric (in other words, not a can of chopped tomatoes anymore!)

8 intense hours of concentrating on colors, 2 inspiring and great teachers, 30 hardworking women, a very nice lunch, and some new acquaintances later, we pinned down all the squares, rolled up the flannels and left for home....

Exiting and exhausting. Big smile. If you ever have a chance to do a workshop with these colorful artists, you are in for a treat!!

The big smile is still on my face, I have taped the batting on the wall of the dining room, rearranged the patches some more, and even started sewing ....

To be continued...

show and tell

Early layout and some help rearranging the patches for Kattelatte aka Cats in my garden.

This quilt was started back in 2008 and blogged about here. It has been a slow process, on and off, and was finished this spring / summer.

Cats in my garden uses a mix of thrifted clothes: linen trousers, cotton shirts and silk kimonos, with some homespun from my stash as well. It uses 6" squares from my batting scraps, and is handpieced together like english paper piecing. The batting is not removed, but stays. I used a double cotton sheet for backing, and folded it to the front as a binding / finish. The quilt is handquilted. Some of the blocks are sewn by machine.

The colors of the quilt is inspired by the colors of our two cats: Mars and Venus, as is the title.

Butterflies made of vintage kimono silk and silk brocade as in a norwegian national costume...

Bumble bees from shirttails...

Cats faces made of thrifted linen trousers and gifted mother of pearl buttons...

The quilt measures about 70" * 82". It is used as a wall quilt for our dining room or living room, and hung by curtain gliders. I am quite happy with the final result, warm and cosy colors adds a nice atmosphere to the room.

I had fun finding fabric for this quilt. And I want to play some more. If you want to be inspired too, take a look at this great reclaimed clothing quilt-a-long for inspiration. I think I will be on the hunt for cotton shirts now!

wip

The jolly snowmen blocks are finished and put together in a top 27" * 72". I had some fun organizing them into "families", playing around with the layout. The reds look a bit dark in the picture, more vibrant in real life. I haven't decided on the quilting yet, snowflakes would be cute, or just diagonal quilting lines, as in "let it snow". That's a good name for the quilt, anyway....

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend, being creative or just thinking about it ....