Pattern tester

Yes, I have become one, for Iowa Star Quilts.

This is a top I made late last spring for Cynthie. It's called Fenced in Bears and was much fun to make. I reversed the pattern for my top so the bear paws are light in my version, I think this would be a beautiful quilt in scrappy one color with light background.

I quilted it before the retreat and bound it by bringing the back over to the front. I've never done that before and am not sure I'll ever do it again.

Shortly before I quilted it my mother gave me this beautiful star fabric she found at Good Will. It had been a table topper in it's former life and fit just perfectly, there were maybe 1/2" scraps left after I was done sewing the binding down.

BUT, because the stars are painted on the fabric pushing the quilt around under the needle while quilting was unbelievable difficult. It was like pushing a baby stroller with the breaks on. I learned my lesson and will never use a painted fabric as backing again.

This quilt used up a lot of my 2 1/2" strips and squares, but somehow the box never empties.

                      Sunna.

Top done - Love it

Finishes and one WIP

Here are a few quilts I've finished in the summer. The first one is my Iceland History quilt. I'm in a charity quilt group on the internet and I did this quilt as a Block of the Months for the ladies there. Every block's name has a reference to the time period and the topic of that month's lesson. I set the blocks in Attic Window frames (of darkness and snow, it was after all December when I was finishing the top) as we were looking through the ages.

The back is an old duvet cover a friend of mine gave me.

Last year I finished up few quilts with blocks from swaps, this year I'm doing the same. Those blocks are since 2011 or 2012.

The back was a table topper I think, got it in Good Will.

Winter Attic Windows swap since 2011 I think. I still have to quilt the Christmas Attic Windows, I can't settle on a pattern. Sigh.

The back is an old table topper from my mother, I quilted swirls on this quilt because they remind me of the cold winter wind. DD2 fell in love with this quilt and claimed it for her son. It will be kept here so we can cuddle under it reading books when he gets older.

And lastly, I'm reading a wonderful, fun blog these days and it says there (in 2010) that progress photos should be included. So this is what I'm working on now between blog reading, blogging and as little household work as I can get away with.

This is a mystery from Seattle and a challenge for me as I've never done a two color quilt before. Sure I've done quilts with only two colors, but there has always been neutral background too. 

This is for my mother, she turned 75 a week ago and she chose the colors. Purple and moss green. I did not take any photos until today, it looked very chaotic at first and I will not tell you about the talks I had with myself and my mother in my mind. But I'm actually loving how it's turning out, really, I'm so glad the feeling I got when my mother named the colors proved true.

                   Sunna.

Autumn

This young fellow has been christened. 

Guðmundur Högni

(Gudmundur Hogni)

After his grandfathers.

Sleep is good.

WHO is this woman? always with a camera in my face.

+

Autumn is coming to an end as we are having the first  winter storm today. Round up is done, slaughtering and the tiring meet work is over, I just love freezers full of meat.

And the autumn retreat. Fun, fun, fun.

Here are a few photos to show you what was going on.

Oddny showed us this finished quilt she was working on at our spring retreat. (Only needs binding in this photo)

This was a short mystery on Friday night.

Sigrun has recently finished this top, a 12 years old UFO.

Johanna finished putting this top together that she started working on at the spring retreat.

Syta is making this one from a pattern from GE Desing.

And finally, swap blocks from 2009 that I wanted out of the box. I have since added one more row to make it longer and borders, when finished I will hopefully have seen the last of the fabrics in the Hour Glass blocks

The blocks in this top came from Arizona. From a member in an internet charity group I'm in. There are more blocks, but I wanted to play with this layout first. I think it would have been prettier with a sharper green in the shasings and borders, but it what it is. 

Lastly, I made progress on this top and got help in figuring out the size of the setting triangles. I also bought the perfect fabric for borders for this quilt. I will try to finish it before the end of the year, I plan to make it a late graduation quilt for a young girl, friend of ours that graduated from collage/high school last spring.

There was loads more going on, I just wasn't active enough with the camera. I thought it just splendid to upload the photos for this post while reading up on other blogs, not so. It took forever to upload and I'm actually very tired and cranky by now. Bed it is then.

                 Sunna.