Ocean Waves

I have completed the top for my Ocean Waves quilt! This is how it turned out:

This has been a wonderful way of using some of the blue/blue-green/blue-purple scraps that has accumulated over the years, and some fat quarters that for some reason never has been used. They play nicely together, I think, and so does all the different whites and light creams. And best of all they are all from my stash! I have an idea of how I want to quilt this, but I couldn't find any fabric in my stash I want as backing, so I ordered some yesterday, but not feeling too bad about that, fabric diet and everything, and am awaiting it's arrival :o)

The pattern I used for this quilt is from Jennifer Chiaverini's second pattern book Return to Elm Creek:

The quilt in the book is named "Eleanor's Ocean Waves" and is featured in her fifth novel The Quilter's Legacy. Jennifer's patterns are easy to follow, and even though this quilt has 604 HST units, it was fun to piece :o)

Happy reading and happy quilting everyone!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

An ocean of blue

Valerie said some time ago that blue is my signature colour - and she was sooo right! I love blue!!! A very large percentage of my clothes are blue, my couch, rugs, curtains, and you find blue in almost all my quilts :o) And lately I have been doing some more work on those blue and white half square triangle units from my last post. If you read the comments on that post, you see that Suzie guessed they were for an Ocean Waves quilt - and she was correct! (If you haven't already, go have a look at her beautiful Ocean Waves quilt and the other gorgeous quilts in her Flickr album!)

After staying up half the night stitching *lol*, this is how far I have gotten:

Hope to find time this weekend to work some more on this!

Wishing everyone a great weekend!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Award and more mail

The very talented Suzie over at Littlebusybee have awarded me with this award for creative bloggers. I feel so honored and so special that she thought of me for this! Thank you so much, Suzie! There are so many wonderful bloggers out there I would love to pass the honor forward to, but this time it will go to a handful of some of the ladies whom I am fortunate to know/have met also outside of Blogland:

• My dear friend Rose at Threadbare. She is such a talented and creative designer and I have been so fortunate to follow her adventure of Threadbare Creations.
• The always enthusiastic, smiling and encouraging Hanne over at Hanne's Quilt Corner - she is so great at keeping us up to date on her projects, and she is so willing to share her projects; and not to forget she is still trying to tempt me to get in on her "block mania" -*lol*.
• May Britt at Abyquilt - she always a new project on the go, how she manage I don't know! - and she is so sharing in her creativity always willing to offer advice and she is so quick to respond.
• Nadine from Friendship Threads - this lady makes beautiful quilts, and she is so generous to leave encouraging comments.
• May Kristin at Krisp-Quilt is another very talented lady. Her colour choices are sometimes a little bit out of my comfort zone, but her results are always beautiful! And seeing what she creates urges me to be a bit more daring.

Thank you all for being a creative influence in my life!

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Carey over at Blueberry Lane Designs and I have had a bit of a swap. I sent her a copy of the frog block Leanne Beasley designed for my Butterfly Garden, and yesterday I found this in the mail from Carey:

The fabric is absolutely wonderful, and the little rusty bells will be fun to use for (perhaps) something Christmasy! And the beautiful card is one of Chookyblue's. Thank you so much Carey!!!

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Elin asked me what I have been working on lately... Well, it's not much unfortunately! I have had visitors over from London for a long weekend, and things have been a bit busy as it usually is in May. So all I can share on the quilty front for now, is this:

Hope you all have a great and creative week!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Look what showed up at my door today

It is my Four Seasons Quilt Swap spring quilt! This beauty was made by Atet over at Quilting in Cornfields. It's such a wonderful little piece! It is a traditional Trip around the world, handquilted - she has done a beautiful job! And the embelishments are wonderful! She has knitted the lace and the little flowers, and in the corners she has embroidered some wonderful delicate flowers. Thank you so much!! It is a treasure! She had also included these goodies to the package - a beautiful pattern pack, some fabrics that gives the feeling of outdoors living, gardening - spring and summer! And a tiny shovel! Wonderful!

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But I have even more goodies to share! Celebrating her one year blogiversary, and opening of her own online shop, Butterfly had a gviveaway a little while back - and I was one of the lucky winners!!! And tonight she delivered my winning in person on my door (and she stayed for a cup of tea *lol*). This is what she brought me:

One of her wonderful tea towels (you can find some of these in her shop!), a harmony stone and some long burning candles! I feel so lucky!!! Thank you!!!

Happy girl tonight!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Playing with scraps

I have been having some fun with some pieces from my scrap bag - i needed to work on something small after finishing the SBS. This is what I have been up to lately:

The largest one of them is 8"x11" :o) I think they are really cute - and I hope I can get them quilted fairly soon.

I wanted to say THANK YOU! to everyone who has left me a comment on the SBS! I truly appreciate it, and I'm so happy that so many people like it! I have tried to respond to everyone, but unfortunately some of you still come up with "noreply-comment@blogger.com". Please check your settings!?

And while I'm on comments: I have recently experienced that my messages have bounced when I have tried to leave comments on Darlene's blog - I get a message sent to my e-mail saying that the message can't be delivered - is anyone else experiencing this? I'd appreciate any input on this!

Wishing everyone a great quilty weekend!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Big finish

Yesterday afternoon I put the final stitches into my Sylvia's Bridal Sampler! This is how it turned out (the picture is clickable):

This quilt was begun on the 4th of November 2006, the first two blocks was the Shoo Fly and the Lemoyne Star. Nine months later - on the 4th of August 2007 I made my last two blocks, the Mariner's Compass and the Oklahoma Dogwood. It took me another nine months to actually finish the quilt.

Working on this quilt has been a fantastic learning experience! I can see how my skill have improved while stitching the blocks, the latter ones are lots more accurate than the first ones. I have had the opportunity to try different ways of appliqué, paper foundation piecing, english paper piecing, hand piecing and machine piecing, Y-seam construction, curved seams and other challenging ways of setting pieces together.

I have added three blocks to the back of the quilt - the extra Chinese Coin block (some might remember I made it when I thought I had lost my original one), a cream and green Friendship star on which I have written the dates for when I worked on the different stages of the quilt; and a Square in a square block with the text: "'Sylvia's Bridal Sampler', Pattern by Jennifer Chiaverini, Pieced and quilted by Anne Ida Røkeness, 2006-2008".

Happy quilting, everyone!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

Spring quilt

I promised to show what I made for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap spring edition once it got to it's new home. And yesterday it arrived in the home of Catherine over at Quilt Obsession. Many of you guessed it was an iris, and you were correct! This is what it looked like when I gave it a bit of a test hang on the wall before I sent it:

As you can see, this little quilt consists of a one block iris, surrounded by lots of little 1" squares in spring coloured fabric. The quilting is quite simple - the contours of the flower about 1/8" from the edge - a couple of "frames" and some small meandering in the border. I think it is quite effective :o)

The iris is paper pieced on water soluble paper foundation. This was my first attempt at using it - and apart from it getting some small tears when I had to unpick some seams, it worked very well. And I love the fact that I could get rid of the foundation by just rinsing it under the tap in stead of picking out the paper. I'm no fan of pp, but if I ever need to do it - this is what I'll be using in the future.

SBS update: I've started stitching down the binding :o)

Wishing all my blog friends a very good weekend! And happy quilting!
Sincerely, Anne Ida