friday finish III

KF's blue garden

60" * 72"

longarm quilted on hobbs thermore

This one has a mix of lovely flowers, mostly Kaffe Fassett. Using charm packs and jellyrolls to get lots of different prints.

Gifted to a good friend with a lovely little garden.

This year was my 50th birthday, and this quilt was my quilt no 50 to part with, as one way to celebrate this milestone.

Thank you for all the kind and encouraging visits here in 2016. I hope to keep finishing up some quilts in the new year. Wish you all a happy and creative 2017!

;  )

flower garden

layout of blocks on the design wall

I have a finished top to share: my flower garden is 57" * 72". With the dark and rainy days of christmas this year, if felt good to bring out some colors and put together these easy 12" blocks.  Some Kaffe Fassett charms and jelly roll strips from stash made for easy and rewarding sewing. Playing around with the layout and try to balance the colors is one of my favorite parts of the process.  I ended up replacing a few of the outer strips trying to calm down the effect of lots of prints.

sewing the rows together with kona snow sashing

and a close up of the finished top

So happy to have started using my new camera. The hardest part was waiting for some proper light to take the pictures as the days keep being very grey...

Wish you all a good weekend and hope you'll be able to add some colors to it!

; )

something else on a saturday

Once in a while it's good to do a bit of stash busting. Last summer I made a series of 7 triangle quilts. This summer I got inspiration from a quilter friend, Astrid and her lovely "chenille" pillow and throw. Probably not proper to call this a quilt, it's 8 layers of fabric that's stitched together and then cut through 7 of the eight layers. A true stash buster if you ever saw one! 

So, my drawer of brown Kaffe Fassett, leftover Cherrywood, a few homespuns and more, was turned into this 6 pounds throw. Yes, 6 pounds or 2.7 kg of fabric. That made some space in the fabric storage. 

Next up was the pastel blue with a bit of added orange.  A smaller size, it weights 4.5 pounds or 2.0 kg of fabric. Both using 12.5 " squares, the brown throw measures 60" by 60" and the light blue is 48" by 60". 

I had my first go at machine stitching the binding onto these. So happy to have my heavy duty Pfaff sewing machine for this job. Not all machines will tackle sewing through 16 layers of fabric!

Part of the process is washing and tumble drying the throw. Texture improves with every wash and dry. Softer with use...

Stash busting mission of 2013 completed. A sore thumb from cutting all the slits. And more room for rummaging through the remaining stash. Happy with the result, I might use this technique to make a few hot pads for christmas presents this year....

What's your best stash busting trick?

friday finish

Outside pictures taken earlier this week of my finished quilt sunny, measuring 60" by 75". 

It's machine quilted in the ditch and hand quilted with perle cotton 16. Light and summery with the thin Hobbs Thermore polyester batting. I put the batting in the dryer for 20 minutes before basting the quilt. This made the batting soft and puffy, removing the wrinkles from being folded up and stored in the bag.  Happy with the effect, I will do that again...

The quilt is made from 2.5" strips, playfully arranged on my design wall. I blogged about making the top earlier. Mostly yellow fabric with splashes of contrasting purple makes for an easy recipe! What color is next?

; )

I am working my way through the stack of tops waiting to become quilts. The plan is to keep quilting until I get too distracted and need to start another top.  So, I'm trying to stay in quilting modus...

Happy friday and happy stitching!

summer solstice

it's a quiet and sunny morning of summer solstice

and I'm having a little photoshoot on the terrace

showing my hand-quilting in perle cotton a good 7" apart

enjoying some good company as Mars is waking up to the adventures of the day

(comfortable in having the house to herself? )

so many tempting smells and sounds for a kitty...

there's a lot of good therapy in quilting by hand...

and I have been busy finishing both these two triangle quilts

... just easy and steady stitches

luckily I have three more tops waiting...

summer sorbet finished at 70" by 72"

sunset garden finished at 59" by 72"

both hand-quilted in perle cotton on Hobbs Thermore polyester batting

Happy with both quilts. Hope they will be used ouside on the terrace enjoying the few light summer evenings we get up here...

Wish you all a beautiful summer solstice!

wanna tri? - the puzzle

The next step of this wanna tri? play-along is both the most frustrating and fun part of the process. 

We will put the triangles on the design wall and start the puzzle. 

My design wall is a large piece of Warm and Natural cotton batting partly hung by curtain clips and partly taped to the wall with painters tape. A design wall is a must have for working like this. If you haven't tried it yet I have to tell you it is a wonderful tool...

I choose to make my third equilateral triangle quilt top from the summer garden bundle and started by cutting triangles from half of the fabric, randomly placing them onto the design wall. This way I could see how much of a contrast in value they had, and how well the colors played together. By cutting only half of the fabric first you can better judge if the rest of your preselected bundle will mix well, and then decide which one to add and which one to leave out.

At first it's all quite chaotic, and easy to think there's no way this will work! This is part of the process, don't panic yet...

My summer garden bundle contained a few Martha Negley flowers in different palettes that all seemed to play well together. I decided to let them be the focus fabric, and try to build a palette around them. They would stay, others would have to leave the party if they didn't mix well.

Stepping back and looking at the design wall, I noticed that the dark green Wood Ear print didn't play so well with the rest. They were the first to leave. Stepping back again, I saw the same thing happened with the orange and pink non-floral prints. So they were taken away, too. 

Now the colors mixed well. Still, the overall impression was quite busy...

I noticed that my three colors of Aboriginal dots would be a good backdrop for the busy flower prints. Luckily I has a large piece of the pink Aboriginal dots, and decided to put them in a checkerboard grid as a base...

This grid was a good reference for size. And as help to place the rest of the triangles...

I then started filling out the grid, little by little in a random fashion...

focusing on the distribution of print and value...

filling in all the patches first

then breaking up the regularity of the grid...

The essence of working this way is using your eyes to judge what you see in front of you:

• step back, assess, replace a triangle, then another, step back ...
• swap a few triangles, step back ...
• and then move a few triangles around, working towards "random" ... 

Once you are happy with your layout, I think it's good to leave it for 24 hours before sewing them together. This will give you a chance to see the contrast at different times of the day (morning, mid day and evening) and also notice a few little changes you would like to make. Walking away is important, to get a fresher look when you return. A reduction glass can also be a helpful tool. I have a I cheap door viewer that helps to focus on the overall value distribution in the top.

So, what's next?

Next step is sewing the triangles together. I am going to leave my layout for at least 24 hours before I will start sewing them together. The next post will make a few suggestions and share a few ideas on how to turn the puzzle into a flimsy...

friday flimsy

Early morning sun sieving through the curtains, softly lighting up my summer sorbet quilt top... finished at 72" by 72"

and now I can free up my design-wall to play again...

; )