I have just recived a bundle of new thread colours, and there is more on the way!

The renovation of my studio has started.

My neighbour, Anders sent over two chaps, 2 diggers, and a huge trailer.

The got to work and before I knew it they had finished!

What a really fantastic job they did, all ready for the builders to start.

En million tak, Anders, det er perfekt!

I made a scrappy toddlers quilt and found s super backing print with toadstools on it, only one snag it was in stretch cotton, I bought a couple of yards to experiment.

I wanted flowers and bees in the quilting I decided to use a couple of pantograps, (self print from http://www.urbanelementz.com) and some freemotion quilting.

I dis 2 rows of flowers, one row of bees and one row of loops to mimic the bees flight then back to 2 rows of flowers and so on.

It quilted up OK with the strech fabric but I did have some issues with the bottom and the edges they did strech a bit and I dont think it would be wise to use stretch cotton for a bigger quilt on the frame, maybe on a sit down machine.

Such cute toadstools, I had to try.

Birthe,s truly stunning elephant was a joy to quilt.

I studied photos of elephants in the wild before I started and found they had lots of detail suitable for quilting.

First I ordered lots of orange, gold, red and grey thread, I used Isacord thread on the elephant as it has a lovely sheen and Superiour Thread on the background.

I wanted a soft organic feel to the quilting to reflect the wrinkles and spots I saw in the photos but also wanted to reflect the magnificence of the wonderful animal.

I added wrinkles around the eyes and ragged bits to the ears.

For fun I quilted stripsof designs on the front legs but kept the back legs and toes nice and wrinkled like the real thing.

Some hearts, drops and lots more wrinkles to the trunk.

A crown design to the forehead and lots of curly swirls to the ears.

I wanted the background to look as thought the elephant was walking throught the trees and grass towards you, I added lots of featheres for added detail.

What a wonderful quilt to have the privilege of quilting, it was so much fun, thank you Birthe!

 

I started this quilt a few years ago, it started out with 18 x 9″ star blocks, much later I then added pieced borders to them, then much later I set them on point and added the brown pieced border and much, much later the pink border! Here it is ready to be quilted.

I meandered the pieced middle as its so busy I did not want to detrect from it.

Feather border.

Feather’s on the setting blocks.

In this shot I am reattaching the quilt so do the side borders, for me its easier to take the quilt off and reattach it than trying to quilt down the sides, I use a ruler to measure it to get it very straight, I know it takes a lot more time but its worth it.

Finished quilt with binding attached but not hand stitched down.

My friend Maria’s chap Jakob wanted a warm quilt to take with him when he went camping.

He had some heavy weight camouflage fabric and some ideas.

He came along with Maria one Saturday and we spent the day cutting and sewing, Jacob liked the idea of the rag quilts so luckily, I have an 8” rag square die for my Go cutter which cut the cutting time by 90%. Jakob also had found some lovely batik fabric to compliment the camouflage, he arranged the squares into a super design.

We had the quilt top finished in a day.

Jakob and Maria found some camouflage fleece for the back and while I had never quilted a rag quilt on my longarm before I thought I would give it a go. It took some time to quilt as I had to hold back the fringes with one hand to get as close as possible to the edge but I think it was worth it, Jakob really wanted some leaves on the quilt so I quilted different leaves in each block and meandered the rest.

I think with the heavy fabric, layer of batting and the fleece backing that Jakob will be warm enough even on a chilly night in the woods!

Maria a non quilter had an idea for a quilt she would like to make for her new home. We spent last winter working on it together. I taught Maria peicing and the maths of a quilt but really she took to it so easliy I did nothave to show her twice.

 

Maria cross stitched the little animal blocks and we both work on the big Totoro centre block using cut and paste applique with satinstitch finish.

We made the cross stitch panels into blocks with stars and other traditional block designs.

Bou.

Neco Bus, Cat Bus.

No Face or Kaonashi.

Dust Mite.

Calcifer.

Jiji, the cat of Kiki.

Totoro.

Totoro.

 we fitted the block together with sashing and lots of flying geese, half square triangles and squares.

Simply quilted it to hold the layers together.