Finish.

I have a much longed for finish. The Launch Swap quilt is finally done. I posted about the swap in July last year and the top has been ready since September and partially quilted since October when I started doubting my quilting skills. I've decided to throw all self doubt out and just quilt the tops that are waiting. I have four ready and more in the making.


Here is the newest top, the Christmas Star blocks will be Hubby's TV cuddly quilt and I had an inspiration earlier today as to who gets the Poinsettia quilt. I'm not telling now though.

If you click on the photos they will enlarge.

Sunna.

This and that.

This post is posted 4 or 5 days after most of it was made due to power loss.

I've been sewing a lot but have no finishes to show you. Here is my version of Christmas Star which is a part of Bonnie's Carolina Christmas Mystery. I have thirteen of these 16.5" blocks.

Since the loss of electricity I've made these blocks into a top, using twelve of the blocks with sashing and bricks I think they're called rather than corner stones. Will post a photo later, it's been to windy and snowing on and off, not good for photoing.


They are supposed to be partnered with these forty eight Poinsettias (8,5"). And this would make a humongous quilt. I'm not much interested in so big quilts so I'll make something else out of this. At one time I had three, maybe four quilts in mind, but that changes from day to day. We'll see what I come up with. Those were fun to make although I got a bit tired of all the matching seams.

I have also started sewing with these blocks, with sashing and cornerstones into a top.


Now here is the first round of fun blocks (also 8,5") that I'm test sewing with some great women on a Yahoo group called Quiltswappers, (here is where I lost power) there's one more which I've jet to make. The woman we are testing for sends us the fabric cut and ready to sew, how great is that. I chose black kona for my background and felt quite daring, lol, I've been so stuck on light backgrounds since I started quilting that it was long past time for me to try something new. I love it.


I've been doing a mystery called Dinah's Delight from Cynthia at IowaStarQuilts this is what I've done so far and I found out tonight that the last step has been posted so I'm sure I'll soon get itchy to finish it in to a top at least. There is just one of each blocks (9,5") shown here.


Here is a cosmetic bag I made for a young girl who had her confirmation on last Sunday. This is the front, sorry how bad the light is. The bag is made of bits of old jeans from my kids and old lace from my Granny Bubba.


And this is the back. I've made loads of these bags through the years, I use an old fleece throw as batting and the sippers I've ripped out of old gym bags and such. The only new thing is the inside lining (usually some pretty cotton) and the binding which is solid blue cotton.


I'd better post this now, it's snowing heavily at the moment and you never know.... Lol.

Happy Easter.

Sunna.

How to cure an applique disaster.

I have looked everywhere but can't find my camera, aha, DS1 just came home and he'd taken it (not for the first time) without asking. He asked once to borrow the camera years ago when it was new, the yes he got then is apparently valid for life. I do need to correct that assumption.

So, I scanned the appliqued blocks I wanted to show on my blog tonight. I have made 16 of these flower blocks. Two days ago when I started to square them up and sew them together with some other appliqued blocks I found out the flowers and leafs were all misplaced.


They should sit over one inch lower (nearer the bottom edge of the block) on the background so the connecting pink ribbon would go under the flower. I swear I felt all my internal organs sink like rocks way down to my abdomen, not a nice feeling. And I've been thinking and thinking about what to do, finally deciding to rip out all the applique and start over, but aw... 16 blocks.



Then this evening I went to a bee meeting and took the blocks with me to start ripping, but also hoping the good ladies I'd meet would have some miracle solution.

When I spread the blocks out and told them about the problem I saw the solution at the same time they did. Wow, it was so simple and perfect and I'd been totally blind to it, after all, who can think clearly with all their organs misplaced?


I simply moved the ribbon a little higher to fit the flower. These blocks are the last round of a mystery Round Robin project that ran in McCall's Quilting in 2007.

My wonderful ladies also reminded me of the golden sentence I'm so fond of. "Who says it has to be exactly the same as in the magazine" or pattern, or what ever. I'm so relieved and not only are all my organs in the right place again but my spirit is flying somewhere and singing happy songs. Blah, what a gravel. Lol. What can I say, I'm in the best of moods but.... also a bit irritated for allowing this to affect me so strongly. Well it's late, I'd better grab the spirit and go to bed.

Good night

Sunna.

Sewing room "make over"

I've posted this photo before, it does not show the inside of my sewing room well, but I simply forgot to take a good before photo. I've dreamed for so long about decent furniture in this room, something that would not take much space but would at the same time be a good storage .


And I found it, two weeks ago when I went shopping in next town I decided to take a peek in the Good Will and there it was, waiting for me. A cabinet and two shelf units. And, best of all, I got it for a nickel, well almost. The quality is very good, as it should be, after all it's a former accounting office furniture.... Although I only have room for one of the shelf units I really could clean up the room and create some much needed space to move around. I was seriously cramped in there before.


This is an IKEA table that is just the right height for me to cut on and I put an old braided mat on the floor for my tired feet. I made this mat and more like it when my kids were little, the mats were for them to sit on, on the cold floor, while watching TV. I had given up on trying to get them to sit on the couch What is it with kids, floor and TV?

This is my sewing corner.

And here are the old shelf that hubby's Grandfather made. This room used to be a tiny garage for fixing small farming things and parts of machines. I was not hubby's darling when I demanded the cubbyhole as it was called emptied. It was an extra bedroom for years until I took it for my sewing room. When more of my kids leave the nest I will eventually get a bigger room and this will be a guest room. But the shelf will stay, I will put some prettier paint on them and maybe some curtains or something and they will be used instead of a closet. I have jet to rearrange what is kept on the shelf and hopefully I'll be able to get rid of some of my precious junk. Have you heard this sentence before? "But I might have use for it someday....."


This is an IKEA chair I bought last year at Good Will in the city. The reason it had been thrown away almost new is that somebody had spilled something on it. After my cat had used it to dehair him self for months you could not see the spills anymore. You could not sit in it in fancy dark clothes either. And although I have a good vacuum it could not handle cleaning this fabric.

So, I snapped off the back and unscrewed the seat.

And after pulling out the staples holding the old ugly fabric I put on this cheerful new, easy to clean fabric. I didn't notice that the fabric on the seat had moved slightly until after I put it all together and watching the chair and then my blistered fingers (from removing the staples from one and a half chair) I thought: So be it. I have no idea what the shadow is in front of the chair.


When I was at Good Will buying the accounting furniture I noticed this chair, I didn't think much of it but later I got thinking it would be good to let it replace the IKEA chair in the dining room for when I'm using the table there for quilting. So I went back last week and it was still there. One arm was hanging loose so I took it off. When I took the chair apart for covering the seat I found out there was only a screw missing, the arm was not broken like I'd first thought.


The fabric on the back is like new so I only replaced the fabric on the seat. Besides, I could not figure out how to get the back off the back. Lol.


I have bought new screws and replaced the arms and it's a really nice chair. It's German I think and has the name Dauphin on the arms and on other parts of it.

I am very happy with my "new" sewing room.

Sunna.

P.S. The IKEA chair replaced the old chair in the sewing room. I have trouble with motion sickness and the seat was somehow loose and I could not fix it. I really disliked that chair, after having almost puked a few times when it moved while I was deeply consecrating on my sewing.

Tired blogger.

I had named this post "Lazy blogger" but then kicked myself in the butt and from now on I will stop calling myself lazy when I'm tired. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia on October 29. last year and from that day I've been working on my diet and exercise. Although I will never get well as this is a chronic disease I'm going to get as well as I can. I take all the advise and help handed to me but it's my body and my life so it's up to me to get better. That's my take on it anyway.

We went ice skating for a few days in early February but then it snowed for two days, not much but enough to make skating difficult and for almost a week now it's been warm so the ice is all watery and no fun. Here are DD2 Ebba and Hubby.


And that's me, as you can see there is no snow to speak off and much less today after the thaw we've been having. I've said it before and will say it again. It's plain not normal.


Last Saturday was my guilds mystery day. No one figured out what we were doing until we were told in the end. It's a message board with pockets for the three p's, pins, paper and pens.

Mine turned out dull because of the color of the fabric I chose as main fabric. That is one of the risks when you are doing a mystery.

So to fix this I sewed the black frame you can see half finished in this photo.

We used buttons to hold the cork tile secure. Pretty buttons on the front.

And plain buttons in the back.

This is how it looks finished. I like it.

Here is a close up of the owl. It was a fun to make. It was the first step and totally threw us, you should have heard some of the guesses along the day as to what we were working on. An apron, a Phone book cover, a remote control holder and from one of the oldest lady a detailed description on how this was to be used it the bathroom to hold female things for our monthly.... you know, how the slot for the pen would be ideal for the tam.... Wont say more but that got us laughing.


I handed the Log Cabin top (from my last post) over to our Hero Quilt Boss who shoved us this quilt that had recently come back from the woman who has machine quilted all our Hero Quilts. She does this for free and we will be inviting her to come to our retreat in May with our guild paying for her. I hope she will be able to come. She came to our retreat two years ago and is a really nice woman.

This quilt is going to a man that had to have a new heart.

Have a nice day all.
Sunna.

All kinds of sewing,done and dreamed off.

Here I am again, have finished repairing an Icelandic costume for a friend of mine, also made an apron and a shirt to go with the costume. Here it is finished, if you click on the photos they will enlarge and maybe be a little clearer.

This is before repair.

And this is after.

I put the next three photos here so you could see how different the gold work is, you could put fifty women together and none would be wearing the same pattern in their gold work.


Here is mine, the flowers are from my great aunt but the eight parts (don't know the name) with the chain attached are from my grandmother, both from my father's side.


This belongs to DD2 Ebba, I bought her gold work from a woman that sells old gold or silver work on commission. It was all black and broken so it was not expensive but cleaned up very nicely. That did cost some but it was well worth it.


While sewing for my friend in the dining room I totally meshed up my sewing room while looking for items I needed. There was no way I could do anything in there until it was cleaned up.


And I did, although it's not so obvious in this photo, but there are loads of stuff either in a big black garbage bag (clothes needing mending) under the stairs outside the sewing room or in some other hiding places where I hopefully wont find them. Any time soon.


Look at that beautiful thing I got from hubby's parents for Christmas. This great wood thing to hold my rulers. I'd seen one at my MIL that a local carpenter made for her and admired it so much, both with words and touch lol, that she had him make me one. It fits well in there.


And this is what I've been doing for the last two days, well not the whole days, the blocks were made by various members of my guild and I sewed them in this top that will later be made in to a hero quilt, for some local hero.


And then it's my dream, would this not make a great wall hanger. This picture of flowers is painted on the panel in a small church in Northern Iceland. Hubby and I went there last weekend to attend a funeral and it was so beautiful and peaceful sitting in the church waiting for the ceremony to start, looking at the flowers, both on the walls and in the front, all the time feeling the heat of the sun on the side of my face, as it shone through a side window. Today was the first day since sometime in November that the sun shone through the windows in my living room. I was going to make the traditional sunny pancakes but I'd forgotten that the milk car comes on Fridays too (not only Tuesdays and Thursdays as it used to) so there was no milk. Oh, well there's always tomorrow.


This is the altar in the church Skinnastadur, it was built in 1854 (I hope I remember it correctly) and as I said, it's a small church who holds maybe 120 people so there were many that sat in their cars outside and listened to the ceremony on the radio. The woman we were saying good bye to was married to my mother's cousin, she was a wonderful, warm and caring person.


You can see through the windows that there is not much snow outside, it's the same here where I live and it's plain not normal. We've been having unusually warm weather most of January and then we hear on the news about abnormal weather in other parts of the world. In a normal year we would not even have thought about driving 740 kilometers to attend this funeral. I'm glad we could and that we did.

Sunna.

No quilting.

I got my blog fixed, it was so easy it was almost funny, mostly embarrassing though and although I watched it fixed I would not be able to repeat the actions taken. I better not make those glories again.

There is not much happening here that has to do with quilting but I've been sewing a lot, repairing an Icelandic costume for a friend. Also made her a shirt (only have to finish around the neck) and an apron. I've been sewing the gold peaces on the corset today and my fingers plain hurt, the velvet backing for the peaces was in such a bad shape I fitted a bit of card board inside it (between the old paper sheets) and getting the needle through it takes a push plus it's a real challenge hitting the right spots when pushing the needle up through the fastening holes. I'm pleased with how it's turning out, there were dents in the black velvet where the gold peaces had been before but I managed to raise the velvet with steam from my iron. The corset was much to long when it was first made, then my friend had someone to quick fix it which was done by shortening the front of the corset and then removing two of the gold peaces but that really did not make anything better.

I'm going to finish the corset before I go to sleep, then it's the skirt tomorrow and hopefully I'll finish the shirt on Tuesday. After that I'm going to start practicing my quilting, I really, really would like to get some control over my free motion quilting.

Sunna.