Gammel, slitt, godt lest og med noen bretter og flekker - men fremdeles spennende og full av lesekos! ❤️ #engangtil #torågebringsværd

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More finished projects - spring and Easter

Some time before Christmas las year, my mom and I were discussing a holiday project for the Christmas days. One of our go-to types of projects are hexagons. They are very versatile, easy to prepare, very easy to bring along - and easy to adapt with regards to colours, fabric lines, backgrounds, et cetera. 

I had previously used 4 or 5 mini charm packs for one of my quilts - which ended up being ripped and redone numerous times, and I had saved all the squares from that thinking it was too bad to throw them out, and saved them for another project. The size of the squares fit perfectly the 3/8 inch hexagon papers - and the finished flowers fit perfectly on a bunch of 5 1/2 inch squeares I had cut from some leftovers a while ago. 

Well, 4-5 mini charm packs mean quite a lot of pieces of fabric - and I decided early on to try and use every single piece. In the end I managed to make 21 whole flowers (consisting of 7 hexagons) and had three hexagons left. These three went to the eternal fabric world (aka the trash). 

And here they are, freshly finished as two pillows. (The final stitches on the bindings were done last night.) 

These are pillow number 2 and 3 so far this year. Will 2023 be the year of the pillows? 

In the after school program (SFO, as we call it here) A has learned how to make chickens using parts of a toilet roll (the cardboard-thingy in the middle) and yarn. She spent some time last week making another one at home, and I have to say that it turned out to be an adorable little thing. 

This weekend she taught hubby to make these too - and there are now two more chickens waiting for Easter to come. Which reminds me that I promised A we'd decorate for Easter next weekend. seeing as we'll be away for most of Easter week - again. 

International Womens Day - As time goes by you’d think that equality and rights and health would be crossed off the lists as being implemented and equal - but let’s face it, they’re not. ✊🏻 The first block for March’s theme Look up is completed: After rain comes rainbows. 🌈

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Week 9 of the #focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 💪🏻 International Womens Day - and as previous years I’ve returned to #grlpwr by @iamrashidacolemanhale ❤️ This is by far one of my favorite fabric lines - and I’m treasuring every piece I have.

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Spring came for a visit - and turned around in the door.

Haha, well, not exactly.. The two previous weeks have been rather nice and warm, and when this week begun with a lower temperature, and it kept on falling, it really seemed like Spring decided to wait a little bit more..

Yesterday morning started with a chilly -11C (12,2F) and the temperatures didn't really rise very much during the day. Last night, the house was freezing.. Wooly socks, blankets and feet off the floor didn't help either.

This morning started a little warmer (haha) with "only" -8C (17,6F) and with a thin sprinkle of cruncy, clean snow. (Only about 1-2 centimeters.) That made the whole "get your butt to the bus"-journey any easier (or faster) with the partially icy road now covered in snow.. 

But it's a pretty sight with the clean, sparkling snow, before the rest of the world wakes up and turns it into a mucky brown goo.

The picture is taken with an Iphone, in black and white. I really like the effect of the streetlights on the snow - it sparkels quite nicely!

Week 7 of the@#focuscuttingsewalong hosted by @naomialicec 💠 I like using lines in epp, enjoying making patterns in the blocks.

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Two no-longer-UFO's - and a crown.

The March quilt guild meeting was this Tuesday, and for once I brought with me some finished projects!

First off was my "The Story of My Day" by Anni Downs of Hatched & Patched. 

This has been a project that has been in and out of time-out for the past year. I made all the stitcheries pretty fast - and spent a lot of time figuring out how to put it all together. I started with a scrappy border using a bunch of mini charm packs I had, but didn't think that worked. Ripped back to start.. So I added a border around each stitchery alternating in blue and grey, and decided to add a square of light and brown fabric here and there (in a pattern) to make the mini charm squares fit better with these new borders. Well, that obviously didn't work... Ripping again.. Tried again.. Left it for a while to see if I felt happy with my choice.. Considered adding the title as a side border, but before I came as far as to try that I ripped it all back to the beginning. Found some yellow bubbly fabric that I felt went well with both the borders in grey and blue and with the colours of the stitcheries (and the background fabrics, of course). Ok, that worked. Now what?

My mom gave me a pretty large piece of blue fabric with small white swirls. I auditioned this together with a couple more alternatives here on the blog, and the swirly blue won! I think it looks pretty good!

Unfortunetly there wasn't enough of the blue fabric for the binding, so after I quilted it (I've just recently started to manage the whole stippling quilting/wandering/wiggly path thingy) I set it aside again for a couple of days while I thought about the binding. I pulled out 2-3 alternatives (yellow, grey, blue) and decided to use the same blue fabric as the inner borders around the stitcheries. It looks pretty good - and another of my started projects have been crossed off the list. *yay* 

 

The second quilt I brought with me for show and tell, was "Cat'o'lantern" from one of Fat Quarter Shop's seasonal specialities boxes - the "spooky box". 

Cutting and sewing the cat was like a dream. The pattern was well-written and the instructions clear. The result? Wonderful!

I debated wether to quilt it using the glow-in-the-dark thread that came with the box, but felt a bit unsure of how the thread would appear in the darker parts of the quilt.. so! As with "The Story of My Day" it was finished by stippling quilting (what is the correct word for this?) using a grey multicoloured thread. The binding is a black IKEA cotton fabric. I do like a dark binding on my quilts. 

So that's another started project crossed off the list! *yay again*

We've had a birthday in the family! A is now 8 years old and I don't understand where the time went.. 

I had to go to the office on the morning of her birthday, so I decided to leave a little surprice for her at home. In kindergarden they make cardboard crowns for the kids for their birthdays. Last year hubby and A made a cardboard crown together, but for some reason a crown was never brought up this year. So I decided to try and see if I could make her one without her noticing.. TwoTinyMakes have a trio of patterns for epp crowns which are just genious. I used the pattern for the big crown, choosing colours and prints I thought A would like (which I also liked, haha) and finished it the night before. I added a glass bead on top of each point - otherwise the pattern is as the pattern is written. 

She loved it! It even went with her to school! (It's a bit big, but there's an elastic in the back which can be modified slightly so that it fits better now - but still able to adapt to size as she grows older.)

Maybe I'll add some more glass beads for next year.. 

🥳 We have an eight year old in the house! 🥳 The crown pattern from @twotinymakes was excellent to make a birthday crown 👑 #thebiggercrown

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