Organizing !

OK. Scraps have now been dealt with. And the box of ironed and cut scraps is overflowing.

They used to fit into the box in the back of the picture (to your left) , but ... not any more.
The front bit is a box with 2" squares. Next row is a bag with 4" squares, destined to become a Tumbler-quilt (in the fullness of time) and 1 ½" squares, ready to be made into tiny scrappy 4-patches. In the back, the 2½, 3, 4 and 5" squares.

And I will *not*, NOT get a bigger box !!!

After cutting and sorting and generally dealing with (most of) my scraps, I decided it was time that my sewing-boxes (yes, plural) got a work-out.
First empty 3 boxes (on the right) :



Then empty the "Present handwork on the couch"basket and the "loose change" carry-along bags as well.
And we have a fine old mess on what was, 2 minutes previously, a nice, fairly empty table.


BUT less than 10 minutes of focused attention brought the mess down to this (on the right) ! There really was a table and a cutting mat beneath all the ... stuff :-)
And even that got cleared away, as I gathered everything necessary into the 3 nice boxes I have
To the left is the one for hand-quilting (I bought the candy for the box).

To the right / below, is the box for applique. Yes. I've taken off the lids, so you can see them. That's what makes these boxes seriously nice :-)

And finally, below left, my present work on the couch basket with the hand-sewing tools necessary to piece or - as is the case right now - to handsew a binding down.







All in all, not a bad result of today's organizational zeal ... even if I do say it myself

Scraps !

I'm in scrap-mood.
Forced on me by the need to find / make a binding for Allsorts. I only have two repeats left to quilt of the border-design, after which it will desperately need a binding.
I ordered some fabrics to test, but none of them really worked with the quilt. SO, last ditch effort is making a striped binding, comprising of all the batiks that make up the applique's.
Which necessitates my cutting the strips first.
As luck would have it, the bag of miscellaneous batik-cuts, used for the applique, had not yet been sorted or cut into squares and strips, so ... that's happening now.
And as I work, I realise some things.
First : It is a joy to go through fabrics you have used, that you know and that you love. There is no sadness in cutting up the last itty bit of a scrap of fabric that has been used for several different projects. Only joy.
And remembrance.
And the knowledge, that when next I fondle this little bit, it will be because it goes into yet another quilt, and yet again tells me stories of the diverse usages that one piece of fabric can have.
ANYway. This is what my table looks like right now.
Slightly messy, but still workable.
To the right, the strips that will be turned into a binding. At least I hope the monster-stripe that will result will work as a binding. If not, I'm up the creek with that.
Top right : the cut-offs. The bits that cannot be used for anything even remotely sensible.
Centre left : a strip of the first batik I ever bought, and two tiny squares of a yellow that has had a long and productive existence in my stash, being used for Jane-style hexagons, a RowJane, a Baltimore medallion and Allsorts. Now being put into the scrap-box, where the ironed and cut scrap-squares go to live, until something is made of them.

Right now I'm cutting strips from the red-pink colour-family, and many of the pieces tell stories about quilts and freindships made.

I think there might be a lesson to me somewhere. Something about not being afraid to use my fabric to the last thread ... something about not hoarding ...

Last day of March

Another long silence from me in blog-land. Well. Can't be helped. Occasionally real life takes priority.
BUT, just to let you know that I'm still alive and kicking, I thought I had better post something, so here's a picture of my "folly", with the working-title "Raspberry Truffle".

It's a small top, made from two sets of charms. Judie Rothermel's Charleston IV, with a few snippets of some chocolate fabric from my shelves.
Not great art, but fast and fun :-)
Oh, and two sets of charms with 28 pieces of 5" squares equals about a yard of fabric, so ... that's one yard less on the shelves and out in circulation ... and there will be a backing too :-) So ... all in all, 1½ yards will go into the making of this one.
Amazing, isn't it ?

Have to sign off now. But I promise, I will attempt to not let another month pass before I let hear from me again.

Critter approved

I folded the two quilts shown in the post below, and put them on the doll-bed that resides in my sewing-room. Mostly to have them out of the way of rabbit, and to have them looking as neat as is possible in a messy room.


That, however, does not deter other critters from examining the pile, and - as you can see - the pink thing (SE-2) is definitely critter-approved. Pushkin, our tailless sort-of gentleman, has been sleeping on it since I put it there ... maybe he thinks its his quilt ?
ANYways. The handsewing of the binding on The Sampler has started, so his Prince on the Pea pile has been reduced slightly since this picture was taken.

I have quilts !!!

My two most recent DearJane-style quilts are now home from the quilter.
SE-2 and The Sampler.
You will just have to live with the shoddy photograhpy and the less than happy selections of bits of quilts that are shown, but I really needed to share these with you.
The quilting is wonderful ! Done by the same quilter that quilted the original "Sara Eleonora" which is in the Dear Hannah-book. AND as is the case in the book, she has used a wonderful variegated thread for quilting. Unfortunately, it does not photograph easily. But here it is, all the same :-)

Above : One of the "blank" setting blocks
Below : One of the corner-blocks with part of the border

Above : One side of the quilt, draped in the very cramped conditions of my sewing-room
Below : One of the blocks. Isn't the quilting in the white setting-tris wonderful ?

And that was that. Hope you enjoy. In the fullness of time, there will be pictures of both quilts, taken under decent conditions, and with binding on. For now, just be happy with me :-)

Homemade bread

There are few edible things in the world as delightful as freshly baked bread. However, most people don't do it. They think it is horribly difficult or a lot of bother.

If you belong to either category, please enjoy the below. And please do not think that you need to have freshly starched linens or newly picked flowers for it to be delightful. It tastes great on any old plate you have in the house. The rest is just glamour.

If you have trouble with my metric measurements, here's an easy-to-use converter.

You will need :
A baking-form. Mine is 10 x 10 x 30 centimeters.
A bowl for preparing the dough
A ladle or spoon of sorts, likewise for the preparation of the dough.
A dough-scraper to get dough out of bowl.
Some sort of grease (oil, margerine, butter) to grease your baking-form ... unless you have professional bakingforms with a silicone layer inside. Even a teflon- or "slip-easy" forms really should be greased for this recipe. Or use baking-paper :-)
Do not ask me how I know !

When baking bread it is not necessary to take measurements as absolutes ! Baking bread is not a question of getting every measurement down pat to the last milligram. It is an acquired skill which grows with every bread you bake. As you get to know your oven, your tools and your tastes, you can tweak this recipe endlessly, using different grains or seeds, adding spices, or making it as a completely plain white bread.


The bread.
*4 deciliters of milk, fresh from the fridge. Use low-fat if you're afraid of the calories.
*2 deciliters of boiling water.

The general idea here is, to make the fluid approximately body-temperature. Use your pinky-finger to test. If it feels hot, add a bit more milk, if it feels cold, add a bit more boiling water. If you get waaaay more than 6 deciliters, pour out the surplus.

*Add yeast.

Oh, dear. In this country we use live yeast, so I would say "half a packet", which is approximately 25 grams. My guess is, you would need 2-3 teaspoons of dry yeast. HOWever, if you "under yeast" a dough, it is just a question of letting it raise a little longer. "Over yeasting" however, can make a bread taste ... yeasty.

*1 teaspoon salt
*1 teaspoon sugar
*A dollop of neutral-tasting oil (or butter, or margerine).

Yes. Very precise again. Anywhere from 2-5 tablespoons. You need something, or your bread will grow dry too soon.

*Half a kilo (approximately a pound) of wholemealwheat-flour. Any sort is good. The one i usually pick up is ground and not wholegrain, but wholegrain works too.
*Add ordinary wheat-flour until the concoction has approximately the texture of thick (to very thick) porridge. It's ok if it's one sticky lump, but it should not be fluid or in danger of dripping.

*Put the dough in the form.
*Put the form in the cold (!) oven
*Turn the heat to 50-75 centigrades (very low)
*Let stand for anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on how much yeast you put in the dough. It should raise to just below the edge of the baking-form or roughly into double size.
*Turn up the heat to 175-200 centigrades
*Bake for 45 minutes

*Turn off oven.
*Take bread out of oven.
*Take bread out of form.
*Put bread back into the oven, preferably on a rack, while it cools ! to get a wee bit of crust on the sides that were hidden in the form while baking.

*Serve while still slightly warm, just with butter. Or, if you really must, with some sort of GOOD jam or your favourite cheese.
Tastes wonderful with soup too :-)

The real worktime on this one is less than 10 minutes, and once you have baked it a couple of times, the real worktime is closer to 3-5 minutes. Much faster than going to the supermarket or mall. And much tastier too :-)

Oh, and if you do not finish it immediately, wrap in a clean dish-cloth or something like that. Do NOT put it in the fridge. Putting wheat-bread in the fridge makes it hard. Much harder, and much less edible compared to out of the fridge. When the bread has cooled completely, you can put it in a plastic-bag for storing it ... but really ... eat it while its fresh and good :-)

Two Inches Wide

In a letter to her nephew Edward, who apparently sent his aunt some of his writings, Jane Austen wrote : "What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour ?"
Now, readers of this blog might remember that I love Jane Austen. Readers of this blog might also remember, that I'm not alone in that passion. Quiltbook author Linda Franz has made two books of diamond patterns, all named with quotes from Jane Austen.
And I have made one fullsize quilt with those diamonds.

I didn't use all of the diamonds I made, and this past week, I was given a book. Richard Jenkyns : "A fine brush on Ivory" (reviews here and here) and was reminded of the quote ... the full quote, that is.

And now, dear reader, you are asking yourself : what does that have to do with anything ? Well ... back when I was first making Quilted Diamonds, I not only made "big ones", (i.e. diamonds with a finished side of 4"), I also made some in half-size. These half-size Quilted Diamonds are "(two inches wide)". SO, with that book prodding me, I dug out the leftover blocks from my big diamond quilt, and the tiny ones. A selection of the "biggies" and all of the tiny ones are now up on my designwall :

... and they will, I'm sure, in the fullness of time, become a small quilt. At least the mock-up looks good, and I have plenty of fabrics left from the big one, to make it.

SO, will I throw aside everything and start making this top ?
I don't think so. Right now, I procrastinate on cutting the strips that will log-cabin the 2" diamonds, and while I procrastinate, I quilt on Allsorts :-)

Never Underestimate the Border

First off : Prizes from the Fat Tuesday giveaway has now been sent to the 3 winners. The rest is in the laps of the postal deities.

And then the header.
I didn't come up with that beauty. A correspondent on a list did it, but it is brilliantly put, and oh so right. 'cause we do. Underestimate the border, that is :-)
I'm still quilting the Allsorts, and I'm almost there with the blocks. 5 more to go, and then all the blocks will be quilted !
Then "only" the border remains.
But ... the border is as wide as the blocks, so the quilting of the border equals another round of blocks. And this means, that when I've finished quilting the blocks, I'm not "almost there". Far from it, in fact. I'll still have about 1/3 of the quilting to do !
Good think I have taken it into consideration already, 'cause if I hadn't, this would definitely be a stalling-point.
So : NEVER underestimate the border of your quilt. Unless you're doing it in plain strips of fabric, sewing the border-blocks, or ... applique'ing the border will, in all probability, take you as long as it took you to do the blocks. And the same holds true for your (hand-)quilting of the borders.
With a 25-block quilt, adding a border same width as the blocks, will almost double the area !

... oh, and to not make this yet another non-pictorial post, here's a picture of Allsorts as it looks right now :


AND a picture of a small ... bag ? purse ? I made to hold my iPod :
It still needs some sort of button and some sort of handle. However, the hexagons are sewn, its all together and quilted, and it does hold my iPod ... and seeing that that is the case, I had better get going on the button and the handle, or else it'll never happen !

The winner is !

And the winner of the Inklingo give-away is : Debbie ! from Pieces of Treasure
The winner of the fabrics are Jane from Sew Create It and Joanne, who seems to have no blog, just a profile. Jane and Joanne, I need to know which of the two fabrics are your preference.
I numbered all comments and then asked DH to call one of them. As fair as I could do it.

All three winners : You can contact me by leaving a comment on the blog. As most of you have found out, I moderate all comments on this blog, so ... putting your address in a comment does NOT send it out on the www, only into my postbox

Further, this has been so much fun for me, that I do believe there will be (at least) one more Inklingo giveaway in the future. Possibly with shapes that works well with machine-piecing :-)

Watch this space !

Inklingo Fat Tuesday giveaway

It is now Fat Tuesday all over the world, and a winner has been drawn. Please check the above post.

Fat Tuesday is just around the corner and right after that, it's Lent.
Now, in days of yore, Fat Tuesday was the last day before lean lent set in, and therefore, it was the day where you used the last of the fat, the pork, the eggs, the cream. Whatever contained lots of cholesterol and fat and had potential BCBs (burnt, crunchy bits) And you ate it !
And what you couldn't eat yourself, you distributed to the poor :-)
Now, giving away food to the poor is not really something you do easily in the western world of today, so, rather than giving away lard and eggs and the like, I'm giving away some things from my shelves.

I am giving away 3 "things" this Fat Tuesday. All good stuff. All something I know I will never use.
Two are in the post below, third for giving away, is a kit of Inklingo-shapes.


Let me tell you about Inklingo.
To my mind, it is brilliant. Literally the best, most exiting thing that has happened in quilting since the rotary-cutter. No, I don't own any shares in it, but I have been a beta-tester on some of it, and I was exited from the word "go".

What you do is, you print your templates on fabric. Cut them out and sew. You can see a demo-video at Linda Franz's homepage.
Brilliant.
And it's very easy for beginners to work with too. Not only are there cutting-lines, there are stitching-lines with markings to keep your bits properly aligned. A freind of mine is making her first king-size quilt, hand-piecing, Grandmother's flower-garden shapes ... and this is her second attempt. She would never in a zillion years have done a quilt like that with English Paper Piecing (just like I would never do it), but she is having a field day with her Inklingo-printed shapes :-)

And no, you don't have to be a handpiecer to enjoy Inklingo. When doing the Half-square triangles or the squares or the Quarter-square triangles, machine-piecing is my favourite. But I'm not good enough freinds with my machine to piece inset seams galore on it, and you do get that with hexagons.

Inklingo is extremely easy to use, and oh so useful :-)
Here's a run-down for those of you who don't know, or can't watch the video :

Iron freezer-paper to the front (!) of your fabric.

Put the Inklingo-CD in your computer.

Choose the shape, the colour of print, the size of paper you're using.

Put the freezer-paper-fronted fabric (well, not backed, is it) in your inkjet printer (and yes, any old inkjet printer will work wonderfully here !)

Print

Cut apart, with scissors or with a rotary-cutter

And ... you're ready to start stitching !

Linda explains it much better, so, if you haven't heard about Inklingo before, go to her home-page and watch the video (I cannot see it on Mozilla, need to open my IE to watch it, but then its good)

What I'm giving away is a set of 1/3 hexagons (as shown on the prints above), printed on 5" samples of Judie Rothermel's Civil War classics. I've printed on two sets, and then printed "light" hexagons on civil war reproduction fabrics from my stash.

In the set is also a vial of Roxanne's sharp # 12. I'm adding them because they are wonderful for hand-piecing. Unfortunately, they are horrible to thread. I can only thread them when I use my DH's magnifyer lamp, and there are threads I cannot get through the eye at all ! so I use either YLI Select or YLI Heirloom, thread 10 at a time, and keep them in my Clover Needle-dome :-)
That seems to work.

To complete the kit, I've sewn just one, of the hexagons that the prints will make, so you can see what I would do with them ... if I ever got around to them. The side of my sewn hexagon is 1.75", so the finished size of the block is approximately 3½ x 3 ". There's enough in there to make 50+ of these blocks.

All fabrics good quality, washed and ironed, and I doubt that this kit will ever happen in this house ! ... which is why I'm giving it away. Spreading my abundance.

If you want to be in the drawing for the Inklingo-shapes, leave a comment to this post, and I'll draw a winner on Fat Tuesday, February 5th.

Fat Tuesday giveaway

Fat Tuesday is just around the corner and right after that, it's Lent.
Now, in days of yore, Fat Tuesday was the last day before lean lent set in, and therefore, it was the day where you used the last of the fat, the pork, the eggs, the cream. Whatever contained lots of cholesterol and fat and had potential BCBs (burnt, crunchy bits)
You cooked it and you ate it !
And what you couldn't eat yourself, you distributed to the poor :-)

Now, giving away food to the poor is not really something you do easily in the western world of today, so, rather than giving away lard and eggs and the like, I'm giving away things from my shelves.

I am giving away 3 "things" this Fat Tuesday. All good stuff. All something I know I will never use. Two are in this post, one is in the next (which is really the one above this one). All fabrics are washed with non-perfumed soap. There might be some residual smoke in some of it, seeing that until 8 months ago, heavy smoking took place inside this house. BUT it has been 8 months, so to my nostrils it isn't bad. (And no, I haven't completely quit the habit, but I am no longer smoking inside the house, which is good for all of my family, and does reduce my smoking greatly)


First for giving away is 3 yards of an old Debbie Mumm fabric, with wide borders. I bought it to make a pinafore for my little girl. She is now 13, goth-light, and would not be caught dead in anything remotely resembling this.

Next for giving away is 2 little-guy fabrics. The little guy is now 15 and would not relish these fabrics any more.
There is about a yard of the blue-and-green and about 1½ yards of the fabric with black background and UFOs.

Third for giving away, see the next post.

If you would like to be in the draw for either of the above, please leave a comment on this blog, telling me which one you would prefer and I'll draw a winner on Fat Tuesday ... February 5th.

Applique answers and awards

Well, I've been out of commision for a while. Paid work and a cold that will not go away, so I've been wating for today to have time and energy to try and
First off : Thank you Wenche for giving me an award :-)

I'm happy to have made your day.
As for passing it on ? I'm not very good at this, so : if you read this, consider yourself awarded. Its always nice to be read, and to know that you read my blog, is making my day :-)

And then, in my previous post Druscilla asked for pointers on applique.

Yes, the Allsorts Applique Album that I'm quilting presently (80/140 quilted, thank you for asking), is all hand applique ... and in case you've forgotten what it looks like here's a picture : Most of them are done with back-basting. Sentimental Stitches has a thorough tutorial with pictures.

My advice on applique are the following :

Use good thread.
And try to match it with the fabric that is on top. I have every colour in the rainbow of cotton-thread, but I have found that I can get by very well with just one, light-grey thread for most applique. You may want to add a dark blue and a soft rose (not pink) to your array of colours. These will, if you take care with your stitches, cover practically all your needs ! I prefer cotton-thread, and usually "make do" with YLI's Select. Others prefer silk-thread, which is very nice too only, I don't have the temper for its slipperiness. If you want cotton with some of the same qualities as silk, YLI's Heirloom thread might be for you.

Use good needles that work for you.
My all-time favourite is Jeanna Kimball's Straw # 11. When I started using them, my applique went from so-so to good ! BUT, you may not work the way I do, and others prefer other types of needles. Try different sorts and sizes, and see what works for you.

Use good fabric !
If you are a beginner at applique, of any kind ! be good to you and start yourself with some batik-fabric. It holds a crease beautifully and has - compared to most other fabrics - hardly any fraying at all. I enjoy shopping with Batiks-plus (no affiliation) but then few shops in this country has a decent selection of batik-fabrics. The down-side of batiks is if you're hand-quilting. They are tightwoven and thus not as easy to quilt through as some fabrics

Try different techniques.
I have fallen in love with back-basting, because it gives me precision of placement, and once the pattern is drafted on the back of the background fabric, it is eminently portable. You might feel differently :-) so don't take my word for it. Try as many techniques as you can find, on the web and in classes, and then, from each of the many techniques, take the elements that work for you. We are not all the same.

Know that applique, like all other handwork, is slow work. You cannot crank out an heirloom block in the Baltimore-style in an afternoon. It takes time to do it and do it well, but ... it just might be worth it in the end.
... and if your patience isn't good for hand-applique, consider doing machine-applique the Beth Ferrier way.

Happy New Year

Yeee-ees, I do realize that I'm a couple of weeks behind on that wish, but I have reason ! The entire family has been sick, in shifts, more or less constantly since just after Christmas, and DH (poor dear), only got out of his bed yesterday.

All the same : Here's wishing you a happy and blessed New Year. May all your points meet, your straight seams be straigt, and may your seam-ripper gather dust.

On top of everyone being down with some sort of flu (or tummy-bug ... or both ... yuk) winterexams have started, so I spent the better part of what is called "day-time" at this point of they year last week, examining poor undergraduates, and will spend the coming week and a half the same way.
SO, not much has been done. Of any kind. Except survival.

BUT, I am keeping up with the quilting. One thread a day, most days more (apart from the 4 days where I had cut my right hand thumb and couldn't). And even if you cannot see the progress on this picture, compared to former posts, you can at least see, that the quilt is already critter-tested and approved.That's our shy, black lady "Sorte", taking her midday nap today. I got up to fix myself some lunch, and when I got back ... well ... no quilting. At least not know. I'll get it back when, later in the evening, I open a tin of cat-food.

And yesterday I sat down and played a bit, and two new Jane-blocks were created. G-1, Hattie's Hen-House and G-2, Mohawk Trail ... question is, should I continue this and make G-3, Four Leaf Clover ? That one is all applique, so it might be a nice distraction from the handquilting.

The blocks here are 6".
I printed out the 4½" size and blanched. And I've even made the whole Jane-quilt in that size ! Don't know why it suddenly seems extremely small ... but it does. So, 6" blocks it is.
Will it be a "complete" Jane-quilt ?
Probably not. I'm doing another long-term swap with Martha, and seeing that neither of us have very firm ideas about how much, for how long, or any of the other wh's, lets see how far it goes :-)
The theme for us this time around is "bright" ... which isn't as easy to achieve as one might think ! at least not if you want any sort of pattern to be clearly defined.

On the top one, G-1, Hattie's Hen House,, I had plans (hopes ? dreams ?) to use my Curve-Master foot, but ... that didn't work. And yes, it was an operator-error rather than a hardware error. I'll learn. Eventually :-) SO, the two parts that could be joined by straight seams, outside and centre, were pieced on the machine, and then the top was applied to the bottom.

The bottom-block was made with the aid of Inklingo (shape-collection # 2) and seeing that it is a 6" block, I just printed HST (Half-Square-Triangles) on the light fabric.
I printed one piece, 5.25 x 10.25". That gave me 16 triangles with a finished size of 1½" Add the coloured fabric, and you have the 32 triangles that makes this block.
Very simple. Very precise.

And that was the update from me today. Don't hold your breath for the next one. Even with (most of) family (mostly) healthy again, odds are that I'll not be blogging again until exams are well and truly over. And that's not for another 10 days.

End of the year status

To me, keeping tally of what I have and what I have not, is ... necessary. I love to get new things and I love to start new projects. However, I have a tendency to put away projects for no good reason at all ... which is how I got to a point of having "more than 50" UFO (UnFinishedObjects for ye who do not know the quilty vocabulary).
About 5 years ago, I started chipping away on the multitude, and to finish things. My goal then was to reach "10 or less" active projects. And when I got there, I realized that 10 projects were too many as well. I cannot keep them all in my head and I cannot work consistently on more than 1 or 2 projects.
... and yes. I need to work consistently on a project to see progress and to stay ... if not exited, then at least interested :-)

SO, I've been chipping away and this year, I end the year with only 5 projects on my list ... 3 of which are in the "being quilted" stage ... which is an extremely nice place to be.

My present list of projects is as follows :
SE-2. A Dear Hannah triangle-quilt. Presently with LAQuilter
Sampler. Mostly Dear Jane-quilt. Presently with LAQuilter
Applique Allsorts. Being hand-quilted.
Lollipop Trees. Applique-quilt in preparation
Boxed Blocks. Jinny Beyer pattern from her "Quiltmaking by Hand" with Inklingo templates. An "on the run" project. (mock-up of the so-far work below)
My goals for the coming year ? Well, basically to keep on keeping on. To not acquire any new UFOs. To this end, I have made myself some basic rules, and for the year 2008 they are :

1. To finish (at least) one project before starting a new one.
2. To use (at least) one PIG* before acquiring a new one.
3. To use (at least) as much fabric as I acquire.

And more specifically :
To not start a new quilt until the 3 "being quilted" projects are actually quilted and bound. I don't know if I can keep that one, but I will try.

*PIG : Project In Grocerybag. Doesn't have to physically be in a grocery-bag. It means, that everything for a project is there : pattern and fabric. Ready to roll. Just ... not rolling ... yet.

Happy Holidays !

Another long time no write. Well. I love blogging, but sometimes, family, freinds and festivities comes first. Christmas is one of those times.
Still, belated, but no less heart-felt : Happy Christmas to any and all who celebrate, and here is wishing you a New year filled with blessings.
May your seams always be straight, your points be sharp and may your seam-ripper gather dust.

I got DSis-in-law's quilt home from the LAQ just before "the day", so I've been spending time binding it. Slow work, but I always try to get the binding on asap when a quilt is quilted. If I don't, this final step in quiltmaking has a tendency to grow into an ogre.
On the Jewel-box-quilt (for DSiL) the quilter made some - to my mind - very good choices. Very simple straight lines, and then, a wee feather in the "big" red squares on point. As can be seen.

Further, I've finished another pair of socks, so ... right now, I'm down to a surprising 5 not-yet-finished projects ... two of which are sent out for quilting and one of which is being hand-quilted.
Very good :-)

Naturally, there is BOB too, but it doesn't frazzle me. I have been very good about not swapping during the past couple of years, so I don't have oodles of sets of blocks that needs to be turned into quilts. Most of BOB are experiments and left-overs, and as such, BOB is mostly a source of fast-finish projects and small stuff.

Holidays are here

And they have arrived with a teeny, tiny bit of decorating.

The "nisser" are up,

and so are the snow-globes.

And thise is just some of it. The more fragile of both types are put in places that are - relatively speaking - cat-safe. We do have 3 cats, and at least 2 of them likes to jump onto high places. Preferably high, crowded places. After all, there might be a quilt up there, and quilts are favourite sleeping-places.
The really unusual thing about this is, that for the first time in years, I'm not acquiring any new nisser. Not for me, and not for kiddies. We have enough. And it will be quite a few years before they will have any interest, what-so-ever, in decorating their own homes. Until then, I'm sort-of "stuck" with their decorations, so ... nothing new this year ! When they - eventually - move out and take their Christmas-things, I'll evaluate whether I "need" more ... or less.
Oh well.

Things still to do :
Get tree.
Decorate tree.
Get presents.
Wrap presents.
Buy food.
Bake cookies.
Cook.

Blog-readability ???

Found this test over at Jane's blog, and ran it on my own.
And frankly, I feel quite good about the rating. After all, I am a non-native speaker (and writer), so its good to know that at least one 'puter programme considers my English to be at high-school level :-)

Lollipop-preparations

Sometimes, even my best efforts seem to be of no avail.
I've started preparing the blocks for Kim McLean's "Lollipop Trees", using Kaffe Fasset's fabrics, and ... I'm running into ... trouble.

Nooooo, the block doesn't look horrible (as you can see), however, it doesn't look like I wanted it to, and that feels something like failure.

I wanted it to glow with colour ('cause thats the way I like it), instead, it seems rather ... bland. A bit flat, in fact, in spite of the wild and wonderful colours of the fabrics and the decided bubbly happiness of the pattern.

Further, I have trouble adjusting to the fabrics. Love them. Love the wild and wonderful colours and patterns, but ...
This particular pattern is completely left-right symmetrical, so to get it "right" you need to let the fabrics reflect that ... only ... mr Fasset's fabrics are - in general - not mirror-image fabrics, giving me some problems in achieving the desired symmetry.
BUT, I guess this is a learning experience, and hope that the flavour of "failure" is mostly due to the time of year. I really, seriously, don't like this time of the year. It is already far too dark for my taste, and it will take another month before it will be this light again !

Guess I'll pack up this block and call it "prepared" (when I've basted and ironed the brown tree-bits too, which will happen soon), and then I'll proceed to the next block, hoping to get it ... more to my taste.
I'll keep you posted (but it'll probably take another week or two before I have anything to show for my efforts. Preparing these blocks is time-consuming, and time is not what I have the most of right now)

Quilting in Progress

There really isn't a whole lot to show when the main focus of one's quilting-life is ... quilting. Progress is slow, and the visual change from finished top isn't huge. The change is in texture and feel.
HOWever, I have attempted to show how Allsorts is being quilted in the first picture. You just might (might !) be able to discern the straight-line frame-quilting I'm putting into and around each block.

To get the picture, I laid it out on the floor, as straight as I could (living in small rooms with much furniture), and sat down, trying to get the light in at an angle where quilting-line-texture might show. And, mirabili dictu, I succeeded in taking a few pictures before "that" happened.
And what "that" is ?
Well, in this household we have critters. 3 cats and a rabbit. Put anything remotely quilty within easy reach of either of these, and they will not only investigate, but will lay down. As can be seen on pictures.
Rabbit came first and was told "Nibble and die", which - naturally - sent her away. Quilts are no fun unless you can taste them. And when she left, the tailless gentleman, Pushkin, felt that my sitting on the floor, with a quilt spread out, was an invitation to himself to play and cuddle.

So, yes. Even if it is "only" about 1/3rd quilted, critters have, well and truly, taken to it and have started to "house-break" it :-)
... there is a reason all my quilts need to be washable.

Stash-management

There are quite a few people out there in blog-land who are doing their best to bust that stash ! And there are oodles of wonderful blogs with easy-to-do scrap-quilts for people who want to make something from their stash and start using it.

Now, my stash is ... a nice size.
On the right hand shelves, two top shelves are batiks, two bottom ones are multi-colours and kiddie-freindly ones.
On the shelves that holds books and sundry stuff, bottom-shelf is clothes-fabrics, second-from-bottom shelf is quilts, and then comes a shelf of "other" fabrics , which mostly means silks and velvets in small quantities, and then comes a shelf of orientals ... which in this case includes japanese indigoes and daiwabos.

Now, it looks messy, but it actually isn't as bad as it looks. The "sundry fabrics" are organized according to colour. One shelf with neutrals, one with pinks and black-greys, one with reds-to-yellows, one with greens and browns, and a full shelf of blues ! I don't use much blue, so whenever I acquire some, it seems to stay on that shelf forever.

Not tooooo big, but big enough to enable me to pull just about anything from it and make something. The problems with my stash are not in its size. At least, I'm not at the point where it feels too overwhelmingly big.
Still, it needs management. And by this I do not mean simply folding and putting in neat stacks (that will be nice too, but not strictly necessary). No, I mean to buy most of that which I use most, and buy least of that which I use rarely.

... and then I need to start using some of the multi-colours. I don't. Which is also why there is so much of it. The problem is, that while kiddies were small, I bought the novelty and "pictorial" fabrics. And with each buy, there was a dream to make something for my babies. Most of these dreams never came through ... which means that compared to any other "style" of fabric (except batik, but I use that a lot !), the kiddie-freindly type is abundant. Further, when I look at what fabrics I have in big pieces (to me, that is more than 1 yard), there is practically nothing but kiddie-fabrics (lovely shirt / dress / shorts -dreams)

Unlike many others, I don't feel a driving need to do stash-busting. I like the variety and richness of my stash. And yes, I do realize, that compared to some my stash is a puny little thing. It is, however, big to me :-) big enough.
SO, stash-management in the coming year will include a pledge, given here, in full public ! to not buy more than I use. From now on, and until I say stop :-)
Can't be fairer than that, can I ?

Oh, and to counteract all this super-woman planning and plotting and managing, and to counteract the impression of messiness given by the picture of my the stash (which doesn't seem as messy in real life as it does on pictures ... guess I've gotten used to it), I'll end with a picture of my work-station in the sewing-room. On the chair to the left (barely visible), Pushkin, the tail-less gentleman, in the quilting-frame, Allsorts, on the design-wall, nothing at all, and on the table, Josephine, my velcro-cat, draped over : notes to the book of Isaiah in Hebrew , dictionaries, grammars and the Hebrew Old Testament.

Which Moomin Valley Character

Don't usually post these things, but I just happen to love the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, and I just happen to loooove the character I turned out to be :-) I believe he's called Snufkin in English. Sorry, but the text presumes that you read Norwegian. If you do : enjoy !

	Hvem er du i Mummidalen?
	Mitt resultat: Snusmumriken Du er Snusmumriken! Du er modig og rolig. Du er også selvstendig og kan ta vare på deg selv, men du er likevel venn med alle.
	Ta denne quizen på Start.no

Moving ahead

Well, the quilting of Allsorts is going well, thank you for asking :-) but it is slow work, and really, there is nothing much to show. All the blocks are quilted just the same. Around the applique, and then in square "frames", so you have seen it all in the post of Nov. 5th. The only difference between then and now is, that more blocks have been quilted, but the basic look is the same.

Usually, I would be starting a new quilt now (or 2 or 5 ... well, yes, it has been known to happen), and I will soon start preparing a new applique-quilt, but I'm not starting just yet. I'm knitting instead.
I've been knitting "seriously" since I was 13 (and that is now so many moons ago that I don't care to think about it), Kaffe Fasset style from his first publication in "Creative Knitting" (a book released by Penguin back in the 1980es, not the now magazine), Scandinavian style two- (or more) colour knitting, just about any wild thing you can think of.
Unfortunately, my wrists don't hold up well to lots of knitting or really big projects. It has helped enormously that I changed my needles from steel to hard-wood, but still, I can't overdo it, so a balance between sewing/quilting and knitting is nice :-)
And for knitting in front of the TV, I need something mindless. This is where the Opal-yarns come in. No-brainers with lots of patterning and stripes. Not always beautiful, but always interesting. Besides, who's ever going to see them, apart from yours truly ? so if they turn out hideous, it doesn't matter.

And then, yesterday, I went shopping
Small basement-shop going out of business. I only found out she exists 2 weeks ago, so yesterday was probably a 3-in-1 shopping : first, last and only. Too bad. She had some nice yarns
One of the nicest was the St. Magnus angora. Six skeins went home with me, and the first skein is almost knit up :-) Scarf on your right. It will get another skein, and then - hopefully - be large enough to look good as well as be warm and nice.
I might be looking at getting more ... wouldn't it be gorgeous with a triangluar shawl, knit up in the softest of angora-yarns and lace-knitting ?
But not now.
Particularly not seeing that I got something like 20 skeins of the Opal-yarns. Kiddies will get socks as well as myself, but even if DMiLaw gets some of it (and she will, if she wants to), there will be plenty of yarn to keep me in knitting for the rest of this winter ... and probably some :-)

November

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -
November!
Thomas Hood


That about sums it up.
November is hitting hard this year.

Slow-quilting-math

Well. Hand-quilting is slow work. And I will no doubt bore you to tears with my moanings about it in the months to come.
And when I work on something this slow, I like to have an idea about when my tribulations will be over, so I've been doing some math on the Allsorts Applique-album, trying to gauge how long I'll be quilting this one. Here it is :

There are 96 blocks and a border.
Now, if the border - quilting-wise - equals another round of blocks, the total would equal 10 x 14 blocks, and that gives me the equivalent of 140 blocks, each of them 6" square (and that is including the sashing) to quilt.
So far, the average number of threads involved in quilting one block is 3, so a fair estimate of the total is 420 threads.

If I do an average of one thread a day, it will therefore take me 420 days from start to finish, and that will mean something like 14 months from quilting was started, until its finished, putting the finish right around Christmas of 2008.
IF, however, I do an average of a block pr. day, the finish-line will be around the end of March 2007.
Now, I could choose to become depressed over this, but I've tried that and it really isn't very conducive to progress. I did it with QD, and the enormity of the task (trimming the blocks, joining the sashing and getting it all together) made me stop completely in my tracks for close to a year ! If I had just trimmed one block every day, and/or joined one sashing-star every day, it would have been finished long before it was :-)
And with that lesson still alive in my mind, I will not despair, but persevere.
I will quilt (at least) one thread a day, and keeping that up, it will be finished. Yes, it will take time, but it will happen.
I will, however, aim for quilting an average of 1 block a day, and if I can keep that up, it will be a finished quilt (quilted, bound and signed) by Easter 2008. A noble goal, surely :-) Not realistic if life starts happening too much around my ears, but ... every day where I quilt a full block, and not "just" one thread, is 2 days less quilting in the end.
So : finish-line on the Allsorts is anywhere between Easter and Christmas, 2008.

I'll keep you posted :-)

Another bag is finished

This really seems to be the year of making bags for me.
ANYways, on your left is the knitted and felted bag, with silk-lining and a wonderful, real mother-of-pearl button to keep the ends together and form the "handle"

I love the textured play of colours in mother of pearl, and this particular button has been with me for quite a few years now. Waiting for "that perfect project". That has now been found.


Unfortunately I'm not very good at photographing things like that, and to get the full enjoyment of it, I would need (at least) 10 pictures from different angles and with different lights. HOWever, I hope the picture will give you a small idea about what it "does". Oh, and it's 2" diameter. Quite massive.



Next picture is the Allsorts. Quilting is in progress, and things are moving according to the ambitious (and probably impossible in the long run) dream-plan of quilting a block a day. I know there will be days when this is not possible. On those days, getting one thread done will be good.