wishing you all ...

a peaceful and happy holiday!

The house is decorated for christmas with two beautiful old quilts that are heirlooms from my husbands family. And I am slowly stitching the binding on my swoon habitat quilt below, noticing how close the colors of old matches the modern fabric line from Jay McCarrol. 

friday finish

Finishing the last stitches on the binding as the sun sets and the wind grows more chilly...

My quilt was started last summer, pairing my 30's stash with my Go!Baby fabric cutter. It's 48" by 64" quilted in Hurricane all over pattern on Quilters Dream select.

The colors are a bit brighter than these evening pictures shows. Quite happy with the finish, and somehow craving some licorice...

Wish you all a great weekend!

friday finish

A quick post to show a couple of fun quilts using "the jelly roll race technique".
I had some 2.5" strings that had been stashed for a while.

This first one ended up 31" * 37", using a remnant piece of Quilters Dream Request.

This second one ended up 31" * 41", using leftover Hobbs Thermore batting. It's backed with a flannel piece, soft and cosy. I think you can google "jelly roll race" to find instructions on how to. Quite fun and easy piecing. Great idea for leftover 2.5" strings!

Still is quite cold and wintery for being the south west coast of Norway.
Happy to have turned stash into some quilt for kids. A few more simple checked tops are waiting for suitable pieces of batting. So it's time to tackle some bigger tops...

Wish you a great weekend. Stay warm!

a puzzle

... in 4 pieces

My biggest quilt (so far) from my pre blog days turned out to be too big to be used in my house.

An irish chain design with red Aunt Grace around the word 30's prints.

A square 92" bed size quilt. Pretty, but too big.

So I cut it in 4 "puzzle" pieces, thinking of my brother's 4 daughters. The first one was gifted this weekend for a birthday present. It was received with a smile. I haven't told her it is part of a puzzle, but really look forward to part with no 2 and 3 in may...

Luckily this one wasn't washed before the "surgery". So it was an easy operation. Now it's washed and crinkly. Hopefully ready to spend less time in a closet, and more time being used!

Do you have a lot of quilts just stored away? I might not feel so bad about storing a pile of quilts if only my house was bigger...

stash buster

Just finished putting together a quilt top (47" * 65") from 30's fabric. This is a "classic" tumbler quilt pattern. Trying to get the random look. Limiting my colors to yellows, greens, blue, purple and black. Using charm pack squares and 1/2 yrds from my stash. Adding a few finds from this summer. Churning them all through the BabyGo! cutter. And then some hours of hassle free sewing, piece after piece. By the end I needed the seam ripper to replace a few patches that wouldn't blend well with the next row.

I like how the black patches add a bit of punch to the mix.

There's still a bit of 30's left in the stash. But then, there's a few other bundles I need to take a look at. Maybe reducing my stash will be my focus in 2012? Strangely it keeps growing... even if there's no more room to do so.

Wish you all a lovely weekend!

... so now it's MY time

to host a Go! Baby giveaway!!!

You might remember that I was fortunate to be able to try out this nifty tool, and tell you about it in this post. Now you have a chance to win one of these fabric cutters, 3 dies of your choice and the cutting boards to go with them. Please leave a comment on this post before september 14th and tell me what die and pattern you would like to give a go. It will be shipped to you for free by the lovely team from AqquQuilt, worldwide. So you are ALL invited to play along.

The picture above shows the Go! Baby tumbler die paired up with my 30's stash of mostly green, blue, purple, yellow and blacks.

Last night I washed this summers fabric finds to complement my tumbler wip. After putting these through the Go! Baby they are ready to be mixed in on the design wall. There's also quite a few charm squares already cut and waiting to join the party...

I look forward to mix in more of these blacks and greens...

So, what do you think? Would you like a chance to play? The dies comes in many shapes: including tumblers, half square triangles, hourglass dies, squares and more. Here's a link to free patterns to give you more ideas:

I'll draw a lucky winner on sept 14th! Please make sure I'll be able to e-mail you and get your address and choice of 3 dies. If not, I'll have to make a second drawing.

Best of luck!

july finish

Long time ago, there was a quilt-along hosted by Old Red Barn. Rail block from 2.5" strips.

I put them together into a top. And then put it away. For a long time...

The quilt top was quite busy, and I never got quite comfortable with it. Loving the colors and fabrics, this spring the top was rescued from the cupboard by adding 2" strips of Kona Snow.

Sommer i Bokn finished at 57" * 70", quilted with Quilters Dream Select cotton batting.

front

and back...

This quilt takes me back to summers with my grandmother at her little house on the small island of Bokn. Homebaked bread, selfmade jam, fresh vegetables from the garden along with grandfathers fresh fish. Running around in the garden, swimming in the sea, playing with my brother and cousins. Not a parent to be seen or heard. Closes there is to paradise, in a little girls world...

; )

wip wednesday

Progress on the Tokyo Subway Map. Nice and slow... 5 out of 10 or 5 out of 25?

And dusting off my oldest wip / ufo:

inspired by Aneela's quilt- a-long I pulled these out of their storage. I need 5 more blocks before starting to put them together. This was my first project using 30's fabric. I purchased several charm packs, and had a great selection to play with. Before I ran out of steam and put them aside. (The red squares are just temporary, they will not be used)

Thank you, Aneela, for the inspiration to dig them out!

september finish

My Pippi Langstrømpe finished at 40" by 54". I used Hobbs Heirloom 80 % cotton 20 % polyester batting and some straight line quilting. The label is stitched to the side of the quilt with the binding. That's a first for me, and I'll see how I like it over time.

red flimsy

Chain-piecing a checkerboard layout. Fun. Sewing the rows together horizontally first...

Still winter outside. This one feels like lots of girl power. I think Pippi Langstrømpe (Pippi Longstockings) is a suitable name. It's 40" by 54". Maybe I'll add a border, later. We'll see...

And my design wall is empty, again...

; )

Happy sewing!

more options - sketching with my camera

Thank you for all your feedback on my layout options for the hourglass blocks!

I split my blocks into two quilt tops and made both the frame and the on point version. I used Kona Snow for both quilts.

Looking trough my wip/ufo's I found more 5" charm packs. Some are made into half square triangles (hst). So I put them up on the design wall. The picture above is also from the lines of American Jane. I love this layout and plan to make a top using the blue, green, yellow and orange charms I have left.

Also stashed away I found these hst made from Urban Chicks Swell collection. I might expand a bit on these and have enough blocks for a small quilt.

Deciding to keep the color red out of the quilt in the first picture, I started to make a pile of all the red charms from all my 30's charm packs. Using a checkerboard layout I put them up on the wall, only to find out there's enough for this 9 by 12 layout (40" * 54"). I like the "vintage" look of this one!

I have made several quilts using charm packs. They give you a large selection of fabric without taking up a lot of storage. And a bit of a challenge to find different ways of using 5" squares.

So far I have cut them in two halves vertically , used them in 2" hexagons, made shooting stars and other stars, square in a square, tumblers, hourglasses and hst (half square triangles). I am planning to use them as plain squares for the red checkerboard (picture above). I am also using them in my oldest ufo, the double wedding ring.

And I'm sure there is more options out there... What's your favorite use of those 5" charms?

a quickie

Did some cutting last night, from my whole 30's stash i made some fat 1/8ths: 9" by 21".

They will be part of a swap. So I was left with the remains of those strips, and they must have been in the back of my mind... Today after dinner I decided to try out a new design.

16 remaining strips in 5 rows

sewing the strips

cutting a few strips in 6.5" + 2.5" and a few in 2* 4.5"

rearranging on the batting

and sewing together all the strips

The top was done in less than two hours. And I like it. A utility quilt top, quite girly...

Very poor light - sorry about that.... But you get the idea. The top is about 40" * 55".

I am sure this will work well in different style fabric and colorscheme. Fun and easy. A quickly made christmas gift? (OK - I know I have to quilt it, too..)