march finish

I keep up my quest of turning quilt tops into quilts, this year. This one is quilted by the lovely Merete. My "Peonies" finished at 45" * 60". The batting is a favorite: Quilters Dream Select.

This one looks quite simple and innocent, don't you think?

The truth be told, it wasn't a straight forward process, at all. The romantic, big prints from Amy Butler tempted me into making big simple blocks, some 3 years ago? And I put them all together, side by side. (No picture) A bit busy, and overwhelming, the top was put aside for more than 2 years. Next attempt was to make those blocks into rows with some Kona Snow to let them breath. It worked a lot better, but the shape was clumsy (4 bars made an almost square size). The break-through in the design came when I moved one of the bars onto the back...

a pink cotton/ linen blend. I'm glad I didn't give up on this one.

Thank you all for leaving me your lovely and friendly comments. Please know that I appreciate this. For the time being I am a bit more quiet than usual, and this will probably last for a while longer. My family needs more attention than normal, and I need to spend more time with them. And I need to keep sewing, too. Because it is very calming...

So take care, and hopefully you have some sewing to keep you busy, too...

friday finish

Here's my ffff: friday finished flimsy fanfare...

Indoor pictures above versus outdoor pictures below.

So happy to have some sun today.

Wish you a sunny weekend!

wip wednesday

This newest quilt I am working on is the 3rd in my series of string quilts for nieces and nephews. I blogged about the first two earlier. They were both sewn on thin muslin foundation. This time I am sewing on paper from an old telephone book.

It all started out with a big mess, just emptying all the blue, green and yellow strings from my scrap bin onto the sewing table. I am heading for a 60" by 75" lap quilt witch means 20 * 15" finished blocks, and 80 * 7.5" (finished size) x-string blocks on paper.

During the process, I have been adding some blue strings. And then I had to cut some contrasting green and yellows. This resulted in a bin only slightly emptier than what I started with. Not sure if this is a good thing?

The real fun starts after all the trimmings are done, and the corner solids are added. My blue came from stash. The only big enough piece. Think it is Ocean by Robert Kaufman.

The solids made everything else "come alive"....

All 80 squares done! Last night I was able to rip and remove the paper on half of them. A bit tedious work. And it helps using a tweezer. I have read it is useful to lower your stitch length. This time I didn't, and it worked quite well. So, I'll save the rest of the telephone book, for a red version of this pattern... (That will be no 4 out of 9.)

Hope I have tempted some of you to try this fun pattern. I have seen many pretty versions of it. The wonderful Bonnie K Hunter has a free tutorial.

Wish you all a pieceful wednesday.

blue - wordless wip wednesday

waiting for spring

Wishing for spring to arrive, I have finished two quilts to decorate the house. Both are made using quilt-as-you-go technique.

The blue linen tabletop is 20" * 21", using Quilters Dream Select (cotton) batting. It is quilted on one piece of batting, starting with the 4 center pieces at the same time, and building the courthouse step blocks in parallel. The last three logs are folded over to finish it up (white cross in the picture above).

The spring forward into spring wall quilt / lap quilt is 57" * 82" and quilted on Quilters Dream Poly (polyester) batting.
They really bring some expectations of greener days into the living room!

I am happy with both of them. The bigger one is a bit of challenge to keep squared up as you work on it. It is not completely flat, but has a relaxed, worn look already...

Wishing all of you ladies a great day on the 8th of march!

narrow it down...

Thank you for your input on the layout dilemma! So many options, so many paths to follow...

Here's a little update on the progress. First I started testing out and rejecting several solids. Deciding they were a bit dull for the scale of this courthouse steps block.

Then I decided to go for a light, "blonde" palette, using the white design elements to bind it all together. After more digging through stash, I settled for these two stripes. With the limitation of my usual 1/2 yrd cuts, I needed something more and another vintage linen piece was added.

(For some reason, it hurts to use my 1/2 yrd cuts of the stripes all in one go. How silly is that? I guess it means a good stripe is hard to find? I must start buying them in whole yrds?)

So this is how my design wall looks today. I think I'll leave it for now and see if I am still happy about this layout tomorrow.

I find that time can be an important ingredient in the process. One that often is scarce... Do you have the patience to leave your wip for some time, to see if you still like it? Or do you just make a quick decision and move on?