Scrappy mats

I tend to work on several projects simultaneously and of course my sewing table tends to end up in a riot of colour with half finished lengths and left over scraps everywhere. When I had finished a quilt top I have yet to share here I started sorting through the scraps and found that I had cut too many squares for the flying geese. I had 35 squares left and laid them out in rows, 5x7 and realized that this would be just the right size for a placemat. Before I had finished the thought I was sewing and in no time at all the placemat was there.

While I was at it I also stitched the remaining narrow strips from that project together, adding a few extras and ended up with four mug rugs. Now that's the kind of tidying up I like!

Grey and yellow tablecloth

As I was sorting and folding fabric one day I noticed that I had quite a few pretty yellow ones that went well together and I started pulling them out and looking for other colours that could go with them. I decided on that true and trusted combo of grey and yellow. I ended up with a pretty stack that lay on my table for weeks while I waited for inspiration.

I picked a length of Kona Snow to go with them and eventually cut squares from all the vellows and grays, adding a wedge of white to each square, stitched on at varying angles. I tend to find improv quite challenging, but this was not too bad and I quite liked the finished result.

I thought this would make a nice tablecloth, so I quilted it in big loose curls, using a thin batting to give it a nice drape. I had a piece of grey with a pattern of yellow dots that worked well for the back, and just needed a bit of the unexpected to finish it. After searching through my stash for ages and not finding anything, my gaze fell upon a strip of leftover pink Bali from another quilt I'm working on and that proved to be just right as a finishing touch.

Dotty purse

I found this Jelly Clip Purse frame from Lecien at a show a while back, and one day I just decided that the right time for using it was now. It came with a pattern and in no time at all I had cut the pieces, stitched the darts and stitched the pieces together. It took a bit of poking to glue the purse into the frame, but it wasn't too difficult. The most complicated parts were in fact choosing the fabric and deciding to start, which just proves that one should just do it!

And that goes for quilting too - I have been quiet here for a while, but there might be more sharing now, just wait for it...

Open out

I had to try my hand at the Open-out Box Pouch by Aneela Hooey a while ago, just forgot to share the evidence. I must admit I struggled a bit with the zipper, ripping and restitching a few times, but after basting it in place before stitching I finally succeeded.

I really like the design, though, as it works as a tray with easy access to your sewing gear while working and closes to a flat pouch, so I might make more of these now that I know how.

The naming of a quilt

I always try to give each of my quilts a name of their own. Sometimes the name is clear to me before I even start cutting the fabric, at other times, I really have to work on finding that name. The names can be quite straightforward, for example when I fell in love with Amy Butler’s collection Ginger Bliss and made a quilt using that line, it became the Amy Quilt. OK, but then I made another quilt using Amy Butler fabric I couldn’t use that name again now, could I? Most of the fabrics in that quilt were from her line Daisy Chain, so that one came to be known as The Daisy Quilt.
At other times I use fabric from a lot of different sources, and the name needs to be something that sums it all up. The quilt I made with fabric that reminded me of holidays in Italy became Italian Dreams. My previous quilt contains star blocks and one of the fabrics reminds me of space stations or satellites, so the name came to me as I was sewing: Stars and Satellites.

My current quilt has been a challenge to name, though. I tried stating the obvious: “The Triangle Quilt”. Meh, didn’t like it. I looked at the colours, blue and green, a cool, yet refreshing, group that made me think of water. I looked for other words associated with water, aqua, hydra, pond, pool, refreshing, fresh, cool, but nothing stuck. I looked at the shapes again, thinking that triangles could be trines, trigons or pyramids. The darker blue ones stand out from the rest and I nearly went with “Blue Pyramid” until I googled it and discovered that it is a variety of marihuana plant (all the things you can learn from google…), so that didn’t seem appropriate.

The idea of water stuck with me though, especially after I started quilting it, using big spirals reminiscent of rings or ripples in water.  I started looking into symbolism, how water is interpreted in folklore, dreams and so on. After a while I came across an old acquaintance: “The Lady of the Lake” from the Arthurian legends. I remember devouring stories connected with this era some years ago, and in particular Marion Bradley’s Avalon trilogy. There are different versions of the legends and the Lady of the Lake has several names, Vivien being one of them. This is a name associated with wisdom, and according to the urban dictionary it also means: “The girl you meet in your dreams and can't help but to fall in love with. The love of your life. A strong, independent, beautiful woman at heart, as well as to everyone she meets. One you never want to lose. She looks to be realistic, true, and cares so much about what she wants in life. To have her is a gifted responsibility; a true priority number one. She may turn away from you at times, but if you say what you mean, you will always be there for her. She lives to care and love. You don't mess with her feelings, you play no games with her. She'll leave you right quick. And it'll be the biggest mistake of your life.”

A bit too much, perhaps? And giving the quilt a woman’s name like that would mean having a lot of explain to do. No, not quite there yet. But as I was preparing the binding it suddenly hit me: Avalon! Avalon is the name of the mysterious world of Vivien, only reached through the mists of the lake and with associations of water, mystery, healing, refreshing etc. Perfect! And thus a new quilt was named.

Stats: Inspired by this quilt by Patchwork n Play. I had no pattern, but picked fabrics from my memory of what that quilt looked like (without consulting the photo) and what I had in my stash, except for the solid Kona Limelight which I bought especially and also used for backing. I cut strips and used the 60 degree line on my standard ruler to cut triangles and made a preliminary sketch in EQ, trying to place colours randomly. I sorted my triangles according to colour, but mixed them up within each colour and picked randomly from the piles as I was stitching the rows together. I quilted using free motion spirals, making them as big as I could without losing my grip, before I moved on with smaller swirls to a new area and starting a new large spiral. No planning, I just let the quilting happen along the way, but I think it kind of works, and as I said earlier, it all reminds me of ripples in water when I look at it from a distance. The binding is that dark blue/turquoise that nearly ended up giving a name to the quilt, and is a favourite Tilda fabric I bought several yards of some years back. I still have a little left.

So there you have it. Avalon. My favourite quilt at the moment. It’s a keeper.

Stars and satellites

I have had this bunch of fat quarters lying around for a while and decided it was time to use them all in a quilt. The line had a lot of prints on white, making for a pleasantly patterned background. I decided on a block with a small star nestled into a bigger star and stitched the star points randomly. I guess some of them are a lot smaller than I'd imagined, and you have to use a bit of imagination to see them all as stars. The fabric line is "Comma" from Zen chic and there are some quite large patterns in some of the background fabrics, which blend the stars into the background a bit as well.

For the background I used large pieces of some of the fabrics I used for the star points, allowing them to shine a bit more on their own. Increasingly I find that if I'm making a quilt using an entire fabric line, it's nice to use that fabric on the back as well, using up more of the fabric and giving it all a sense of coherency.

I did a light swirly quilting in orange rayon on the background fabrics, letting the star points stand out a bit more, and finished it all off with some black and white binding. The large molecular shapes in one of the prints reminds me of space stations or satellites - not that I know a lot about space tech... but I ended up calling it Stars and Satellites.

Batgirl gets her wings

Meet Batgirl! I don't really know where the inspiration foe this little doll came from, but gradually the idea of making a doll with bat-wings has been emerging from the depths of my imagination. Partly from the works of Tilda, whose dolls tend to have angel wings, I think. And partly from all the magical Halloweeny creatures created by Calamity Kim, (check out her new blog) although this little critter is a much simpler, less elaborate creation. Somehow things have melded together and she just had to be made.

I combined patterns for a cat doll and a mouse doll in one of the Tilda books and changed the profile of the head slightly to make it look more bat-like (I couldn't say batty, now, could I...). Bats have more of a snout than a car's triangular nose, so I just added french knots for the nostrils. That, and the little fangs - not quite grown out, she's just a little girl, you know - and she looks like a bat to me. The wings complete the picture, of course. I drafted them from a picture of a bat found online, added batting and pipe-cleaners inside to give a bit of structure, and there she is! I stitched together a little party dress for her, moths seemed appropriate - I bet little batgirls just love moths... (or 'moffs', as she would say...). The dress is short sleeved, but that's OK:

If she feels cold, she can use her wings as a cloak. Sweet little thing, isn't she?

Spring runner

I bought some Jane Sassaman fabric a while before Easter. I have always loved her style - gorgeous quilts, and when she started designing fabric I was first in line and I have used them in several projects over the years. Some of them can be a challenge to use, though because the motifs are so large. I hadn't decided on a particular project when I got these home, but I went for a quick fix, using a large floral as the center of a table runner. I fussy cut the mid panel to show off those big flowers, added a narrow border in matching yellow/green Fossil Fern before adding a wider border in the blue triangle print. I used a thin batting and quilted it using some loosely meandering lines criss-crossing along the length of the runner. A quick and easy fix that got my quilting mojo back and ended with a bright and colourful Spring runner just in time for Easter.

Owl be ready

 This is the place to go for bad puns, it seems...
Meet Poe made from Heather Bailey's pattern "Edgar Owl and Poe" (much better pun). He was made for my youngest sister, who, as I might have mentioned earlier, has a thing for owls. The minute I saw this pattern I knew I had to get it and make one for her. Once it arrived I looked at it for a while and put it away, meaning to get back to it, as one does. Somehow I never did, until the day before her birthday...

What better time to get started than the day before your deadline! Choosing the right fabrics was what had stumped me earlier, but I had the scraps from the star quilt I'm working on lying on my work surface, and once I realized I could use those, the rest was easy. I found some pieces of wool felt in my stash in colours that worked well with the rest, and got going.

It wasn't all that difficult once I had cut out all the small pieces. Some of the felt pieces were supposed to be cut using pinking shears, but I searched high and low for mine and couldn't locate them. No doubt they'll suddenly appear now that I'm finished...

Anyway, the pattern was well written and it all came together quite well, I think, although my late start meant working into the early hours!

The best part was that my sister was overjoyed and found a prominent place for him to settle and survey his surroundings right away. He is supposed to be a pincushion, but I'm sure that with the look he gives you no one will dare stick a pin in him ever!

Perler mania

Sometimes you just get an idea and it wont lose its grip until you do something about it. I saw a placemat someone had made on IG and just had to give it a go. I am a bit to old to have been bitten by the perler bug as a child, and I had previously only seen small items made from perler or Hama beads. The concept of ironing to make them stick together was also new to me. The serendipity of coming across Hama beads at 40 % off in a local shop the day after made it clear to me that I had to give it a go. It turns out that there are mats that link together so you can get as large a surface as you want, and that you can by bags of perler all in one colour as well. A quick visit to this shop and I trotted home happily with six mats and bags full of read,white and blue beads.

Working with the beads turned out to be just as much of a mindfullness experience as those adult colouring books, and over the next few days I spent some calm hours beading along in between other tasks, making a mat for my kitchen counter in blue and white to go with my striped Cathrineholm bowl with a bow to those pretty lotus leaf bowls I have been searching for. I put a piece of parchment paper on top and used my iron to melt the beads together, and it worked just fine.
On the red and white one I was a bit too heavy handed, so there is an area that melted all the way through, but never mind, I'll just place a bowl or vase on that area when I use it.

Once these two mats were made I was done with the whole perler craze. For now anyway, so beads and mats are put away until the urge strikes again. Back to quilting.

A bit of knitting

I couldn't resist trying my hand at this rowan mitten pattern I found on Ravelry. I especially liked a version using a variegated yarn and bought a Scoppel-Wolle Zauberball in Little Fox colourway.

I had to cut the yarn and wind off a bit now and again to get the colour where I wanted it, but I ended up with two very different mittens, and a lot of left over small ballsof yarn, but I'm quite happy with the result anyway.

While we're on the subject of knitting, I also knitted some gloves as Christmas presents. I call these "Selfie gloves", because they are made with conductive thread in the fingertips (thumb and index finer) so that you can use a smart phone without removing the gloves, while taking selfies on the mountain tops you are bound to climb if you are active on social media and want to show the world how sporty and fit you are...

One pair is made with Noro Silk Garden and the other with Noro Kureyon and the pattern is Ken by Berocco Design Team. Details on Ravelry.

Pouches and purses

In the spirit of documenting all the things I make, I need to mention the things I made for Christmas - three 3-zipper pouches in masculine colourways for my cousin and his two sons and

these snap frame purses for his wife and their two daughters. I've made the same models several times earlier, so I kind of forgot about them, but I found the photos in my files, so here they are.

Advent calendar

In 2016 I decided to indulge my inner child and treat myself to an advent calendar. But not just any calendar, I went for a quilter's calendar with lots of surprises in it.
I received 24 numbered golden paper bags with fabric, thread, batting and instructions . all I needed to finish four different projects. Those who have followed me on Instagram know all about the excitement every day of discovering what that day's surprise was.

The first week I got a set of fabrics, template, zipper and batting to make a pillow:

Next out was all I needed to make a shopping bag that can be folded and tucked behind the pocket, making it a useful bag to keep in your purse until it is needed:

The third project was a set of christmassy pot holders complete with heat resistant batting:

The final project was a narrow table runner for New Year's Eve - perfect because that gave me a week to finish the last project:

All in all this was a great calendar, reviving those childish expectations running up to Christmas, and just enough work to do each day to be able to keep up with it all (although I must confess I did most of the sewing during the weekends...) - I had such fun with this that I'm really glad I went for it, and the best thing of all is that it seems to have given me back my sewing mojo, so much that I actually started the new year with cutting fabric for a new quilt!

Summing up

Another year is here and it is time to take stock. 2016 didn't seem to be such a productive year for me. Somehow I have become very good at relaxing without a piece of needlework in my hands. After indulging myself with a quilty advent calendar this December, however, I find the urge to create is returning. More about the advent calandar later, but here's what I have made in 2016:

Three finished quilts, various pouches and purses, some place mats and wall hangings, that sums it all up. But wait, there is more:

There are thre finished quilt tops, a lot of embroidery and a bit of knitting as well. And a bit of decoupage on those Driving home for Christmas cars. Maybe not to bad, just less quilting and more of the other stuff, that's all. But I predict more quilting in 2017. Have fabric, will quilt!
Happy new year!