Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Placemats

 My best friend needed some new placemats. She is one of those people I love making things for because she really appreciates it and the set I made her a few years back are frayed at the edges from having been used so much - I love that!
Coming up with ideas for placemats is always a bit difficult for me, for some reason. Making a bed sized quilt: no problem. Making a table setting sized one: a challenge! And then you have to make at least three more...
Pinterest to the rescue, and I found some quarter log cabin ones I had pinned earlier for inspiration. The dark blue fabric with houses would do nicely as a backing fabric and I used that as a starting point for my fabric selection.
I chose some houses and trees and supporting fabrics from Sweetwater's line Road 15, added some map and landscape motifs from other series and used some blue/grey to tie it all together. Straight(ish) quilting lines and blue binding and some late night sewing and I was finished just in time. The only thing I didn't get to do was to take some daylight photos. But it is January, the days are short and I was pressed for time, so this will have to do. She loved them, though and that's the most important thing!

Sunday, January 10, 2016

New year, new... calendars

Let's skip the cliches, shall we? I have been a bad blogger lately, but I'm not alone in that respect. Instagram has taken over, but sometimes a longer, reflectiv blog post is in order. And summing up the year we just stepped out of before embarking on a new one, might just be such an occasion.

2015 has not been my most productive year since I started blogging, but looking back, I did make a few things, after all. Three large quilts, two quilt tops, some bags, boxes and pouches a bit of knitting and embroidery and a giraffe. That's about it, I think. But still, this collage represents a lot of hours of work, doesn't it?
The truth is, I have felt a bit uninspired for a while, but the new year has started with an urge to create, so I might do better in 2016. Or maybe not. This isn't a competition anyway, but I'm going to roll with this new urge. First of all I have started a set of new tablemats for a friend of mine. She mentioned just before Christmas that they use the ones I made for her a few years back every day, and they have been washed so often that they are becoming frayed and faded. Such appreciation for my work must be rewarded with a new set, right?
Some recent fabric purchases have inspired me to start something new as well, so I have two new projects lined up in addition to the triangles quilt I'm working on, and which I just realized that I have forgotten to include in the collage above:
It feels good to have that urge to create again!