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!

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!