bargello blues

I have one more friday finish I want to share with you:

my bargello blues measures 60" * 72", is quilted on a long arm with my favorite hobbs thermore polyester batting.

Like the popular scrappy trips around the world this bargello pattern is also a classic design that is freely shared by Bonnie Hunter on her Quiltville webpage. I have made a few of these by now. I like how this pattern is easy to sew but still fun as you get to play with color combinations and contrast.

This one has a special recipient in mind. Sometime later this year.

Wish you all a lovely friday!

; )

a second chance...

Sometimes we all need a second chance. Don't you think?

This is one of my favorite quilts, the blue bargello I made back in 2009. It's quilted with all over meandering free motion pattern on warm and natural batting. Measuring 60" by 72", that's a bit of work.

The thing is, I was never happy with the quilting of this one. The quilting was all wrong. A lot of work, and my best effort, but still - all wrong. I tried washing it. Didn't help...

So, three years later I decided it was time to give the quilt a second chance. Armed with the hera marker   I am making straight lines this time. Quilting on top of the meandering.

So far I'm done with all the diagonal lines in one direction. Liking what I see, I have decided to continue adding all the crossing diagonal lines. The meandering works as an excellent basting   ; )

When I am done with all the straight line quilting, I am planning to pull out the seam ripper and remove the meander quilting from 3 years ago. In fact, I couldn't wait, so I started undoing the original quilting in this corner. It's a change for the better! Now I am finally looking forward to enjoy using this "old" favorite. There's always hope... 

This is my first second time undoing the quilting on a whole quilt. (Last time it was a baby sized quilt with wool batting. The straight line grid looked so much better in hand-quilting then on machine.)

Have you ever redone the quilting of a whole quilt? Or am I the only one?

wednesday wip - a finished top

Like many others, I fell in love with Jolene's Granny Squares, that she so kindly shared with us in her tutorial.

I like the colorful and playful squares. And I was lucky to have precut some 2.5" squares for my Tokyo Map quilt. So I just had fun playing with these blocks:

My hip to be square top finished up at 46" by 57". I used Kona Snow for the background.

And talking of squares. There's something about those simple shapes. I have started a new quilt, for someone special. Inspired by several beautiful quilts on flikr. The tutorial is generously shared by Bonnie.

Wish you all some happy piecing this week...

on a rainy day II

Thank you all for kind words! I want you to know it is much appreciated. I know I am still very quiet, and may be so for a while...

Even so, I want to share with you a small quilt i finished yesterday: my "on a rainy day II" is 36" * 52" quilted with organic vertical lines on hobbs 100% cotton batting. Here it is photographed outside in the morning light. We are having beautiful spring weather, sunny and warm. Everything is turning greener by the day. Somehow this feels both sad and wonderful...

Even on a rainy day there is beauty to be seen ... thinking in metaphors a lot, lately.

Hope you have all enjoyed some relaxing days...

a little sunshine - 2 of 5

Photos are taken outside in the sun with a little help of hubby. I have blogged about this a few times earlier. Now it is all finished, quilted with simple stippling. For some reason that didn't go so smooth :(.

Still I love it, the colors and the bits of favorite Kaffe Fassett and Heather Ross fabrics.

I think this one will stay with me!

design floor ...

Have been working on the next step of my blue bargello quilt this week. As you can see the lack of an appropriate design wall is solved by using the floor of the living room. The quilt measures 48" by 60" before adding a border. The weather has changed, overcast and rain, poor light for taking pictures.

My idea is to make a darker but not monocrome frame. Not sure about the corners. All ideas are welcome...

I will put it away for a little longer and see. Using the floor I have to work quickly. The cats love to play around with all the small pieces of cloth on this wooden floor.

Also in slow progress on my cat quilt, undoing and redoing the arrangement of patches again and again... Not happy with the lower green "garden" section. Think I will leave that out and settle for brown and blue colors, more harmonious and less demanding. Another project on my "design floor". Oh, I would love a bigger house...

My third ongoing project is my strawberry fields. I put on the binding, but am still quilting the strawberries and flowers by hand. Nice to see the change that happens when the binding is in place.

Then there is the little swap quilt for the 4SQS....

And a little spin off from the cat quilt, 6" by 12"

My first try at needleturn applique. Fun!!! Encouraging to work on a smaller size quilt. Those yo-yo's were also fun. The vase is a beatiful scrap from my aunt. I just love that fabric.

This week I got my copy of the beautiful book by Material Obsession. Lots of great quilt and fresh ideas. Big smile! And I also recieved some new and colorful fabrics by Kaffe Fassett:

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing .... I need to try to focus on one wip at a time.

On the other hand, some of these quilts are made in steps. One step at a time and then I put it away for some time before making desitions about the next design step. Working this way, I guess it's quite normal to find yourself involved in to many quilts at the same time...

Bargello top with 4 panels

Sunny Sunday. Stitched up, cut up and stiched back together the 4.th panel of the bargello quilt.

I do love the colors. Ended up with half and half blue and orange on the last panel. I think I will leave it for some days before i put on a frame/ border. This was such a fun top to put together.

I think this is such a versitile design that can be used in so many ways. Showing of bold prints is only one of them. It is an exellent design to work on contrast in colors. It was even easy to sew.

Bargello update

Today I put together the 3.rd panel. I have to say I love the process of making a bargello and am already thinking / planning other colorcombinations and fabricgroups. There is this urge to see what happens when you slice and spread the panel out. Maybe I am a bit crazy - bitten by the bargello bug?

Next panel is the last one. I am considering waiting and bying more blue fabric. Or should I go bold and orange?

Easter is around the corner. An important Easter tradition in Norway is to go skiing and then sit down outside in the snow and eat your orange that you brought along. So maybe the need for orange is connected to a lot of memories of childhood Easter holidays? The blue colors certainly speak to me of a winter landscape with rays of sunlight.

I also want to say thank you for taking the time to leave comments on my blog. I really appreciate the feedback. Sometimes I am a bit confused about how to respond though. Maybe I am still a bit new to this, but I would really like some feedback if you have found a good solution on how to respond properly to shorter and longer comments. I did read a comment by Lil about this issue here, and it really hit me that I am not alone in finding this a bit puzzeling.

Blue Bargello step 2

The deciotion is made. I started cutting the panels 30 strips long. (In my previous post I was not sure about size.) It was too tempting to move on with this quilt.

Today the two first panels are cut and sewn back together. I am really happy with the yellow and orange accent - that brings a lot of life to the quilt. Overlooking my blue reserves of fabric, I'm planning to go orange and yellow on my fourth panel. Basically I have not enough dark blue fabric left!

Well, in making this quilt I design as I go. It feels a bit exiting, not knowing the final result. Next step will be rearranging the 3rd panel and see if I can dig out enough orange and yellow to make up the 4th.

Blue Bargello

Have started working on my first bargello quilt. Holly's beautiful bargello in plaids was the first part of my inspiration. The other part came from Crazy Mom Quilts who is making monochrome quilts. I combined these two and decided to try to make a monocrome bargello.

My first thought was to use a lot of brown fabric. When I looked in my stash I found some intensly colored Kaffe Fassett printed fabrics in blue, and chose them as a starting point. Then I picked out fabric I think will complement the KF and started cutting it in 2.5" strips 17" long.

After cutting a lot of strips and joining them in rows of six, I had an audition. The overall impression was of blue and hints of purple. They were begging for something to liven them up. I tried adding a few yellow and orange strips for a contrast, and liked the effect of that.

So far I have 3 panels 30 strips long and 2" wide. I need at least 4 panels. This will make a laptop size if I add a border. Maybe I need to make the panels 36 strips long and add the 5th panel?
Can't wait to start cutting the panels into strips! The problem is, have to make decitions about size before I start doing that.

I am almost out of dark blue fabric by now and am considering to make the last one or two panels in yellow and orange with a few blue strips. So, this is a stashbuster! My "stash" was probably pittiful to begin with - the word is more of a consept than a real size I guess.

So, its decition time. Is it big enough yet to start cutting?