Slow Sunday Stitching & TG #7

It's Sunday, and the perfect day for some light entertainment on the telly, a big mug of tea, and some hand stitching. While clearing out one of my cupboards yesterday I came across a bag of fabrics I had set aside for my Dear Jane, which I gave up on ages ago, and stitched the blocks I had made into another quilt.

In the cupboard were also some bags of templates for some English paper piecing. This is what I have gotten my fingers busy doing - mixing and matching with some pieces that were on my cutting mat: 

Also, Lisa Bongean posted block #7 of Triangle Gatherings yesterday. Having some HSTs ready it was quick and easy to piece together. Having heaps of fun with these little blocks.

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts and her Slow Sunday Stitching. Pop on over to see what the other stitcher's are up to :-)

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

LUS BOW: Beacon Lights

I didn't get around to making last week's LUS BOW, but I probably won't make all 120 blocks this time around, and have plenty of time to decide if I'll play catch-up on that block, or if I'll just skip it. For now I have enjoyed making this week's BOW: A-7 Beacon Lights:

Not really sure what's going on, but I feel these LUS blocks came together so much smoother when I did the brown/pink/gold version. Might be the background fabrics I used - the white-on-white is fairly stiff, so it might have helped stabilize the pieces better than the fabrics I'm using now - which is bits and pieces from a layer cake and scraps of beige left over from my Dear Jane adventure... This is the block I made for my brown/pink/gold LUS:

Happy Sunday!
Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

It is finally finished!

It's kind of hard to believe, but I have FINISHED this quilt that originally was two quilts. It has been a long journey getting it to where it is today.

I started piecing the Dear Jane on Sept. 23rd 2007. My goal was to make the full DJ quilt, and have it all pieced and appliqued by hand. For a while I was very eager stitching the blocks, but soon I found other projects more interesting. I did sew some blocks from time to time, but there really wasn't much progress. Most of the time it was stuck in a project bag. By the time I realized this was going to end up as a UFO I had stitched 63 blocks using 868 pieces.

When the LQS presented "Svennebrevet" as their BOM a couple of years ago I was absolutely certain I was never going to make it. The two main reasons was on the one hand that I wasn't very inspired by the first shop sample, and on the second hand that most of quilting Norway does their BOMs and I like to do my own things. But I had a hard time resisting, and when the patchwork school started in "Familien" and my Mum dumped the patterns for the first blocks in my lap it was a sign to start. I'm not going to go into all the hassle with cutting measurements and block size here (click the label below if interested), but with a few modifications I stitched 21 blocks that more or less resembles the blocks in the original quilt.

I did a lot of playing around with both sets of blocks, but I really loved the layout of the original Svennebrevet, and with a little advice from Rose after sending her pictures of layout suggestions, I ended up sewing alternating wide and narrow rows. During a fun sewing day with Yvonne I got the scrappy border sewn on, utilizing a lot of my leftover fabrics and the few spare blocks. The quilting would probably have been finished sooner if Bernie hadn't gotten ill, but I'm thrilled to have it done now :-D

So my long list of work-in-very-slow-progress has with this been reduced with two projects. And I have a goal of reducing the list even more in the weeks to come - a couple of the smaller projects will be top priority, Lucinda's Gift quilt-along will start on July 1st and end with a finished quilt, and then hopefully I can make some progress on the quilts I have ready basted and/or has started to quilt....

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

Binding the "Svennebrevet/DJ" sampler

Woohoo! I finished quilting it on Sunday! And last night the binding was added. The plan for tonight is pulling out an audio book and get the binding hand stitched down to the back. Then hopefully the quilt will be ready for the washing machine tomorrow for that fresh and crinkly goodness. And another thing: I glue basted this quilt, and even though the glue is supposed to be odorless, I still feel there is a smell - hope it will wash out!

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

Results from sewing day

On Thursday I visited Yvonne for a day of sewing, chatting and lots of yummy food. We set up at either end of the dining table, cutting on the kitchen counter and ironing board at the end of the kitchen

Girls being creative might look a tad chaotic, but we achieved quite a lot during the day. Yvonne stitched and cut and planned more blocks for her version of Svennebrevet - I'll let her post those, so pop over to her blog for a look in a few days time :-) I too worked on my version of that quilt, you can just spot the top folded over the back of the chair in the foreground. Around mid-day we stopped for a yummy lunch - just look at this spread:

It was sooo incredibly tasty, and I kept on stuffing my mouth, and the energy got the creativity flowing.

The binding went onto my Sunkissed table topper, so that yesterday morning it could find it's way onto my kitchen table

Wondering what I did to my Svennebrevet? Scrappy borders - it took a bit of time, but far less than the piano keys I had originally planned, and I really like the look of how it turned out

Doesn't look much like the original quilt, does it? I did some thinking when I started planning the sashings.... I hadn't sewn a stitch on my Dear Jane since last summer, and honestly I have lost the inspiration to work on it. Looking at the 9" blocks got me thinking those blocks really would mix well with my DJ blocks. Just to make sure I wasn't completely off my rocker, I took a snap photo of the blocks laid out on the floor and e-mailed the pic to Rose to see what she had to say. The response I got was:

"U know its a shame to use your DJ blocks but I looooooooooove it!!!! They work perfectly with the 9" blocks and its very very clever (but do u wanna do those DJ blocks again??? lol) Then again, far better to be in a quilt than in a bag in the drawer."

Thanks sweetie for not thinking I'm nuts! *lol* I really wanted to keep the stripy feel of "Svennebrevet" so I decided to do the DJ blocks in rows alternating with the larger blocks. I thought perhaps to make the quilt a square, but that would mean 3" sashing strips, and I felt that was a bit too wide, so it is a few inches narrower than it is long. Now I "just" need to get it basted, quilted and bound!

Happy Easter!

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

Another DJ block

Not much sewing here lately, the CC rows are on my desk waiting to be joined together, but I haven't felt up to those loooooong seams. I have however finished another block on my eternal Jane:



J3 - Rick's Volleyball Net. The tips on the Dear Jane website recomends appliqué, but as you might know I have a bit of an a-phobia, and since I'm doing these blocks by hand, those curves are pieced. The block has 17 pieces. My DJ has now 55 blocks, 753 pieces.

Wishing everyone a good and creative weekend!
Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida and Anton

Progress and a mile stone

Can't believe it's been more than a week since my last post. I don't have too much to show, but I have made a little progress on the flannel star quilt:



The sashing and cornerstones are all sewn, and I have started piecing the border.
*_


Not really sure how this border is going to turn out, but I'm an optimist :o)

***

I have reached the 50 block milestone on my DJ - counting the three blocks of this week, my tally is now 51:


_-
Wohoo!! Have a great weekend!!
Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

DJ Update

My box of DJ blocks is slowly filling. This is one of those quilts that will take me a very long time to complete, especially since I have limited myself to hand work only, so I'm savouring each and every block as a little projects of it's own. But now and again I update my spreadsheet and calculate my pieces, just to see how it's coming along. This is how it looks after the latest update:



Tally at the moment is 48 blocks, 647 pieces. These are the latest ones I finished:



I mucked up the colours on the star (supposed to be a light star on a dark background), but I'm not going to be bothered to change it. Three more blocks are cut and ready to be pieced; and more are traced onto freezer paper to cut whenever I have the time and feel like it.

Wishing everyone a great and creative weekend!
Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

This and that - a long post

Internet has been out/unstable over the last week, and I haven't been able to upload anything to this blog (grrrr!!!), or to reply to any of your comment - please bare with me. Anyway, here you have everything I had planned to share since my last post in a loooong one (I'll try keeping it short).

I promised to share what Lise and I were working on last week and this is it:

If you are a follower of May Britt's blog, you might have seen a picture of it already :o) We had lots of fun playing with blocks from all over blogland (and from some no-bloggers):

We pieced the top, then Merete did some wonderful long-arm quilting, and Lise finished the binding on Friday night.

***

When Butterfly visited a couple of weeks ago we had a little peek into my WISP cupboard:

And inspired by our talk I started piecing some blocks I cut well over a year ago in a frenzy of clearing out some flannels:
'


Back then I got to the cutting stage, but no further. I still have 10 more blocks cut ready to piece. I have a lot of flannel to finish it, but it's only smaller cuts, though, so it will come out scrappy. Hopefully I'll get back to them soon!

***

Remember I had a bit of a cutting session of Dear Jane blocks? I have done some piecing in the evenings, and my tally is now 37 blocks!!!



I have also done a bit more cutting, so I now have something to pick up when I have some time to relax in front of the tv, or take along when poping out to quilt guild meeting, visiting the parents or so on :o)
'
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!
Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

DJ prep'ing

Not much time and energy for quilting these days, but I do have one new DJ block to share:



And I took a bit of time this morning to prep eight more DJ blocks, so I have something ready when I do have a few minutes to sit with a needle:



As you might remember I have a goal of doing the whole DJ by hand - it is a SLOW process! My initial deadline was 2020, not so sure I will be able to meet it ;o) My tally at the moment is 27 blocks, 301 pieces, so there is a long way to go.

Wishing everyone a good and creative weekend!

Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

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PS! Pat over at Silver Thimble Talk is celebrating her 150th post with a fab giveaway!

A bit of a draught...

Not much sewing/quilting going on here. I really haven't been in the mood, even though there's no reason for that. Guess it's just one of those times :o) For the last few weeks all I have to show for is one block - not perfect and it took me three days:



Now what is this? you might wonder. Well... My least favorits block (when it comes to looks) in the DJ quilt is the K7-Rose of Sharing, I just think it looks like a "blob". So I have not been looking forward to making it. Then a while back I saw Hanne had made a version of this block in two colours, and she had cut it wrong - giving it a totally different appearance, and I LOVED it! So I decided, why not make a "wrong" K7 for my DJ?

Hope you all have had an enjoyable weekend!
Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

Vitamin Q

This weekend was quilt class with fabulous and enthusiastic Hanne - and guess what she was teaching...... Dear Jane! Thank you for a fabulous class, Hanne! On the board and table behind her are some of the blocks she has stitched from this book -not to mention the quilts she brought to show - talk about janiac :o)

A group of chatty and eager ladies had brought needles and thread, some sewing machines and we worked in a steady pace yesterday and today. Lots of tecniques were demonstrated and tried out. This is my production over the weekend:



I managed to sew a Papa'a star!!! So proud of myself! *lol* These blocks will be used in a rather special project - more about that later :o)

Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

A little Dear Jane progress

I felt like working on something small tonight; decided to give Bernie a bit of a break and pulled out my Dear Jane project bag. Three blocks were prep'ed and stitched tonight:



My tally is now: 21 blocks, 268 pieces. And this is how it all looks so far.



You might remember that my goal is to do the whole quilt by hand, and my selfmade deadline to finish it is 2020, so I still have some time to get there ;o)

Hugs and stitches from
Anne Ida

Small things

Wish I could have shown some progress on my Ocean Waves quilt, but I'm still waiting for the backing fabric... Anyway, the summer and the heat in the city has sort of scared me away from the sewing machine (and especially the iron!) - not complaining that summer is finally here, but it's just so warm... over the last week I have only managed some small things:

Finishing a stitchery for one of the Butterfly Garden blocks, and a DJ block (not many pieces in this one *lol*). Tally is now DJ - 18 and BG - 17; slow progress is better than no progress, right?

I have also managed to get the binding on a couple of the mini quilts :o) This is how they turned out - pretty cute:

Hope everyone is having a great week!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

PS! Claire over at Quiltygal has a giveaway - Sunday is last chance to enter :o)

I promised a pic...

...of my Dear Jane blocks, so here it is:

C9 – Jane’s Tears, B13 – Four Corner Press; I2 – Kaye’s Courtyard;
A1 – Pinwheel Gone Awry; M10 – Simple Simon; A6 – Uncle Homer;
F4 – Old Windmill; D13 – Field of Dreams; B9 – Tinker Toy

I included the ones I showed previously too, so as to make a complete square :o) Like I said, mostly rather simple blocks to get into the feel and rhythm of hand piecing these tiny pieces. These blocks are far from perfect, but this quit will be an exercise in hand piecing and appliqué, and hopefully making these tiny blocks will improve my skills. I already has attempted something for the first time ever – reverse appliqué; and I’m rather pleased with the result :o)

Hope you have a great Friday evening!
Sincerely, Anne Ida

It's a beginning

It's hard to believe it has been a week since my last post! I've loved the responces I have received on the blue and white swap quilt top! Thank you so much to all of you who made a block for me, and thank you to all who have left me a comment! I really appreciate it! Over this week, I haven't done all that much quilty stuff. I've started on the blocks for the border of my swap quilt - 48 Log Cabin Blocks so far - I still need to make four more.

Yesterday was a grey day here, so apart from a walk with a group of my collegues to Bygdøy, a penninsula in the Oslo fjord, to have a look at the government's gift to the King and Queen for their 70th birthdays, I spent the day on the sofa doing a bit of hand piecing. I bought Brenda Papadakis' book "Dear Jane" in June, and my fingers have been itching to start making blocks ever since. I managed to stitch two yesterday:

Hopefully it will be scrappy with the main colours being blue and beige, I've picked out some lovely Thimbleberries fabrics for that cozy country feel - perhaps with some small specs of other colours blended in. Ive decided to do this wholely as a hand piecing project, so it will take lots and lots of time, and I'm sure you will find an update on the progress here every now and then :o)

Sincerely, Anne Ida