How to grab my button...

I have been requested how to grab my swap-button and put it on your own blog.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/geeseswap" title="Geese in a Ring Swap" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6151/6173381182_c30d222a9e_m.jpg" alt="Geese in a Ring Swap" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Easy: to grab the button, copy the code in the textbox below the button, go to your blog, go into "Design" , click on "Add a Gadget", select the gadget entitled "HTML/Javascript", paste the text you've copied into the content box of the gadget, click "save" and hey presto, the button will appear on your sidebar.

If you just want to put it in a blog post, you then paste that entire code either into your blog post (with the edit HTML tab selected.

Hope this helps you out?

My first bag ever!

I have finished my first bag ever!

Yeah, yeah.. I know - I must be the last person in the universe to jump on that wagon, it just took me some (ok, a considereable amount of) time before I dared dive into it. And yes, I have made one tote before.

What made me take the jump was a pattern from Jenna Lou Designs, that I by chance came by when reading sewsweetness' blog. One of her patterns - the Ella Handbag - reminds me so much about a tote that I actually dared trying it out.
THANK YOU, JENNA LOU!

 So....
Taaaaaddaaaaaahh!
Here is the finished bag - sorry about the quality of these photos, but it was evening by the time I had finished it ;)

I know - you can see it is home made, but I really do not care! Because I (me, me, little me!) made a handbag!
This is to be considered a test bag, but it is going with me to work tomorrow to be shown off :))

I could not help myself, I had to alter the pattern from the very first try:
The added linen to the bottom is my idea, an extra interior pocket (fits an iPhone perfectly) and an added key strap, as well as much longer handles were added as Il ike to carry my handbag fairly low.

All in all a very easy pattern to follow, and so many options for variations!
Go check her stuff out! (and no, I have not been  asked to tell the world about her, I am just all giddy).


By the way: the 'Geese in a Ring Swap' is moving along brilliantly: the first two Rounds have had kick-off and in 2 days I have to decide whether to stat the third round or postpone it to 1st January 2012.
Take a look at the flickt group page and if you are interested, consider filling in the application form!

Take care!
Ann

My swap is now open for applicants!

Geese in a Ring Swap

Please consider joining me!

Edit 26 August: Round 1 is closed for applicationsThat was really fast!
Edit 10 February 2012: We have achieved to fill 7 rounds! WOOOOT! 
No more rounds will be started.
Thank you so much for participating in my first try to host a bee/swap - it will not be the last!

Peek at the Freedom Swap quilt

I have assembled the quilt sandwich of my Freedom Block Swap quilt.

But alas! I did not manage to go to my local quilt shop and buy the intended variegated quilting thread, so I can only show you some sneak peeks of the quilt :)
Hopefully, I can show you the finished quilt soon, as I have made the binding already.

Bee inspired quilt finished

My 'bee inspired' quilt is finally finished!

The 'bee inspired' bee was started by Rachel of p.s. i quilt in 2009.
We were 18 participants from all over the world. This was my first virtual quilting bee ever and I was happily challenged on both methods and colours as the year passed by. I found out that making blocks to other people with their choice of fabric and block pattern could really make me break a sweat, as I was quite nevous to make their blocks as good as I should/could/would. A very healthy exercise!

For my month, I sent out all of my red and white/cream scraps and requested minimum one wonky star from my fellow 17 participants, size max 12 ½''. They could add scraps of their own if they followed my colourway.

So from out of these piles
came THIS:
I am totally in love! I love the scrappy, yet controlled look, the random placement of the stars, the different sizes of all these stars - have you noticed the teeny tiny ones??

A close-up of one of the stars and the quilting in it:
For the quilting, this was an (almost) first dance with my brand new Bernina 820 (Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaww). I will not gloat any more about it in this post, promise! I am just very happy with it, let me put it so.

I have freehand quilted around each star and a spiral in the middle of almoset every one of them. the rest has been filled with doodling, which I found to be fast and quite funny to quilt. Here is a close-up of the back for you to see what I meen:
It was just plain fun to freehand quilt this quilt, as I found that the wonly theme allowed for wonkiness in the quilting itself, which freed me from much of my self-imposed pressure to do thing nice and neat.
I have used 100% bamboo batting, and it is oh so soft and it creates a very nice texture. Not my last time to use this, that is for certain!

Around the borders I chose to freehand quilt information about the bee in handwriting:
(intended for much use and cuddling).
It also contains my name and year of finish, block name, made from scraps and so on. this way I avoided making a label, which I must admit I never get to make :)

Thank you to all you folks out there who made this quilt possible! And I know you had to wait 2 years to see it, but hey - I finally made it. I cannot wait for December when it is envisioned on the couch with me of my bf or our son cuddling underneath it!!!

Be one of my three!

Back in the cold, dreary end of February I was one of three lucky winners of Maria's (allmomasquilt) giveaway-with-a-twist:

"Receive a handmade gift and pass on 3 of your own within a year of receipt"

What a lovely idea. I posted a comment and was lucky enough to WIN. Yeah! I never ever win anything... And lookie what was in my mailbox today already!!!

A very lovely pouch with a plastic window!! I have admired several of them on Maria's blog over time, and now I have one of my own. How Maria knew I love red and the Make Life fabric is a mystery to me. Seriously! I encourage you to check out her blog - she creates so much beauty (and yes, most of it is in Danish, but Google translate is a wonderful invention ;D)

I feel very lucky indeed. Thank you Maria!!

So... Now it is my turn to be creative and come up with a little handmade gift for three of you.
All you have to do is leave a comment saying you would like (dare) to be one of my three and within a year a little something will pop into your mailbox too, if mr. Random picks your comment.

I cannot promise to be as fast as Maria. But if you leave a little note about your favourite colour in your comment, I may try to take that into consideration.

And for my Danish readers: I have updated my webshop "Kvinta Quilts" with 6 more Accuquilt dies today. Or perhaps my Kona Cottons may tempt you?? *wink*

Enjoy what is left of the weekend.
Ann

Updated on 31 July 2011:
Oh well... I hereby close the giveaway and comments and declare that Kritta22 is the happy winner of all three things, and that I will think of something horrible to send her ;) lol!

I think it is OK to send her all three things, s she is already paying it forward, and just because I know she is a fantastic person :)
*hugs*

Revelation in colour!

Did you know..?

...what a HUGE difference it can make, if you get your screen calibrated to show the true colours in webpages/pictures etc.?!?

I have often been somewhat annoyed, when a long awaited fabric-yummy-pack arrived at my doorstep and I may or may not tear it open like a little kid at Christmas only to find out, that what I thougt was a specific coulour fabric, bought to match other fabrics in a project, does not match the colour I saw on my laptop when ordering it.... DANG!

Do you know that feeling?? huh?!? I know you do - just admit it!

As a recent example, I want to share with you what I saw on my screen and what I really received:
It is the Anna Maria Horner line called Little Folks, the Pastry line in marine.

So... what I thought I ordered was blue with just a hint of green, and what I in fact received was what I would call 'sea green'. I love the colour in itself, no doubt! Just not for the project waiting to be finished....


Well, I realized, that either
1. the e-shop made a crappy job in displaying the fabrics and their true colours
or
2. the fabrics did not show up right on my screen.

ad 1: why would the e-shop do that, based on the fact that it depends on its sales of fabric, and most often the pictures can/are provided by the manufacturer. It is imperative that the colours show up right on their webshop!

ad 2: I have heard about it before: screens need to be calibrated if you work with photos and graphics. But hey! I am just a happy-go-lucky quilter... Why should it apply to me too??

This is why!












But what to do, you may ask?
Luckily for me, my bf plays around with photos and had just purchased this calibration thingy.
A cheaper version can be found here.

Yiakes, that is expensive, you mumble. That is several months of my fabric budget...

Well yes and no... because if you are a "specific projects" buyer, that you can actually save yourself a lot of time and trouble by calibrating your screen.
Or if you, as I, live in Europe and have to have the new fabrics shipped from the US, then the shipping costs easily adds 30 to 50% onto the fabric prices!

It is just an advise, as I am by no means an expert, I just had an AHA-moment when seing the huge difference it made on my screen! Consider it, folks :)

This and that.

Where does time fly??

I suspect being a mother of a 16-months kiddo, having a full-time job, and the obligatory seasonal illnesses pesting our life answer my own question. I just feel that everybody else manage to fit in social events, culture, sewing, sport, you name it!

I don't and I hate to admit it, but now I have said it. There. That felt nice...
On to another happier subject: I have a new job starting on April 1st, which brings me an aweful lot closer to this beauty! Oh yeah :D You will know when I manage to get my little sweaty hands on it. For sure!

I have also participated in a regular fabric swap, the 'Color Wheel Charm Pack Swap', and now I have received back the 200 charms, all in different fabrics. Wanna see them? OK, I can manage that!


Yummy! This pile will fit nicely into my existing pile of 4x4'' charms, cut from most of the quilting fabric I have ever bought. I foresee several monochrome quilts in my future :))

New projects. Yes, yeeeeees, I know - perhaps I should finish those in the waiting line first.
But... These oh-so-soft voiles from Anna Maria Horner, one of her previous lines called 'Little Folks', will eventually become something nice and useable. But for now you will only get this sneak peak ;)
Thank you for still reading my blog, despite the long intervals of posting!

/Ann

Quilt for Anke

Anke is a very caring and thoughtful woman, who is one of the moms in my Mother Group - do you have that where you live? A group of women, with the only thing in common that they have become mothers around the same time as you, brought together by the specialist trained nurse who come and check upon us during the first months after the birth of the little precious one, giving advise and answers all sorts of questions :)

Anyway, Anke has been very good at inviting us into her home, at initiating all kinds of stuff, so I wanted to thank her in my own special way: with a quilt!

I decided to use a very simple pattern, that would also help me reduce my stash.
I chose blues, greens and grey (Kona Cotton Ash) for sashing, and then added a border in Kona Asparagus, which really helps brightening up the whole thing.

Here you have it, all whashed up and tumble dried. The light was plain awfull, so I have to ask you to mentally add a splosh of bright green to the border and some of the other greens in this quilt!
Hmmm... strange how it looks all warped and crooked... it is not, I promise!!

For the binding I found a striped fabric with all the exact right colours at the local quilt shop

Ever since I discovered Red Pepper Quilts' tutorial on entirely machine stitching on binding, I have been hooked! I know some of you enjoy sewing the binding down by hand and the mediative process... Well... I don't! So this method actually makes me finish my quilts, aha :))

For the quilting I decided to try yet another fancy stitch on my machine. I like how this stitch softens up the very squared and somewhat rigid pattern.
...and here it is after the tumbler drying, all puffed up. Yumminess!!
Anke has by now received her quilt and she loves it. Thank God!

If you have made it to here, thank YOU. I am currently in a finishing mood, so I hope to be able to share more quilts with you soon again!

New swap - join me!

I have chosen 'plum' as my preferred colour.
I wonder if I can find 10 different fabrics that can be put in that colour category?!
We'll see!

Drooooool!!

Oh dear..!
I have touched THIS beauty today:
Yep! The Bernina 820.

She is a beauty to look at and so smooth to touch *sigh*.

I think I may just have fallen in love!

But... dang! It is so expensive...

Then again... If I really, really like this machine, which I suspect I might, then it is probably a keeper for many, many years.

Can you hear the inner voices here, huh??

Does any of you have any experience regarding the Bernina 820 - or any other Bernina for that matter - then I would love to hear from you!!

Thanks :)

A quilt for sweet Line

For the last 5 month, our little son Johan has been looked after during the day by LINE, the sweetest woman you could wish for, while mom and dad has been at work. He has been together with only one other child at the same age during these months.

Now it is time to say thanks and a sad goodbye to Line, as we have finally obtained a place for him in a good nursery. It has been a gentle way to get him used to us not always being around. And he adores her!

So, I have decided to make Line a quilt as a thank-you-so-very-much-gift!
And I have found out, in the most sneaky way, that Line loves purple, so later that night I made a raid in my purple stash and this is how it started:

Underway:

Halfway there, the sandwich ready to be safety-pinned:

The finished, quilted but NOT washed and tumble-dried result, as I ran out of time at the end measures 140 x 210 cm/55 x 83'':

Front:

Back:
Detail of the quilting:

The quilting is a special stitch in my sewing machine. Normally it is for straight line quilting, which i have used at the edges, but I also bended it a bit and made it into a circle in the centres. I used variegated thred for the quilting.

I LOVE IT! As simple as that...
Line received it today, and she loved it just as much as me - it will have a nice home to go to and to be cuddled under.

Thank you Line, for giving us and our little guy a safe start during my first months back at work. I hope I convey my heartfelt gratitude for the stability and love you gave to our most precious little one!!

Sunday stash

I was tempted by this delicious selection of fabrics at Hawthorne Threads.

I really love their webshop: So many yummy fabrics (!) and some really brilliant features, such as suggestions to coordinating fabrics and the possibility of finding coordinating fabrics by colourway based on the current fabric (look at the bottom of the page). I think this is FANTASTIC.

My Sunday stash is a combination of Modern Meadow in the berry colourway (by Joel Dewberry), several fabrics from Pat Bravo in berry and plum and a few others.

I see a berry/plum quilt in my very near future, to soften up all of the blues and greens that currently surround me. It is self-inflicted, I admit, as I have made it with my bf and son in loving mind :)

I love berry and plum - both as colours as well as the fruits. Yum!

What are your favourite colours right now??

Still here..!

I am still around and now I have my Pfaff back. Yaaayy!

This means that I have started on 2 projects: Yeeeeeessss my friends, one was not enough for me, teheee (I refuse to count the numerous UFO's that float around).
This is one of them: I am trying out curves for the very first time, and I have news for (some of) you: It is not hard at all!! Super easy in fact, and NO pinning is needed. Yep!

I am making a Drunkard's Path circle quilt, and I just use the method so nicely described by Jaybird Quilts in her video to be found here.

She also uses the GO! cutter that I sell on my brand new web-shop Kvinta Quilts - wooooohoooo (beware it is in Danish only). I finally got my act together and finalized some stuff and received most of the Kona Cotton. Oh yes, Kona is a rare thing here in Denmark too!

However, I have not used the special curves sewing foot, but just a normal one with a fabric guide on the right (for more precise seam allowances), and it was just perfect too *grins*. I really cannot believe how easy this method is - try it out!!

The recipient (that does not know she will get a quilt) loves purple so I hit my stash and found all kinds of purple for it - soooooo good for using up stash!! Yes! I think I love it already, and I have not even begun assembling the quilt yet, just been petting the fabrics ever so gently, re-arranging and pressing all the purple yumminess.
Can you tell I am exited?

I have not taken any pics of the other project, sorry.. You will get that in another post ;)

I miss her...

It is my bestest sewing and quilting machine I miss...

She was handed over to the machine repair man on September 17, and she has not come back yet...
It was just supposed to be a 10 days seperation for us, for ordinary maintenance, but Pfaff apparently has not yet been able to deliver a spare part that she needs... And it may take them up to another 2 weeks!

*SIGH*

Hope she is well... At least she is among other sewing machines...

Followers: Who are you??

Hi my dear Followers
(and others who accidently drops by)!

I am amazed that I even have Followers, considering the long interval between my blogging *blush*

Being curious by nature, I have tried to look up YOUR blogs and read a little, to see what kind of peeps that might be interested in ME. However, it was fairly difficult (due to the setup of blogger), so I thought "why not ask them directly?".

So now I thake the leap!
Would you dare to tell me (and all the others) a little about yourself? Perhaps even include a link to your own blog?
I know I would love to learn more!!

As for an update from me:

1. Just started back in a full-time job after 9 months of matermity leave *ouch*
   
2. Not much quilting getting done *yiakes*
3. My son is ABSOLUTELY wonderful and gives me so many laughs and so much joy that it is totally worth me missing out on many other things in life *I love that little guy*
   Here he is:
   
   
4. I am about to start my first EVER shop - a webshop selling just Kona Cotton Solids and the marvellous GO! fabric cutter (I bet you have heard about it).
   I will probably not be able to compete with any American shops price-wise, but there is just 2 other places here in Denmark to get a few of the Kona's and I will be the first GO! retailer here *weeeeee*
   
   Better get that darn webshop up and running, as I will receive my very first cutters in the coming week!!!
   I am in NO WAY planning to make a living out of it, it just annoyed me that I could not get those products here, so I thought "why not?". If only I get back what I put in, it will be ok for me :)
   
5. Hmmmm... anything else.... errrrr...... not really... Boooooooring, booooohhh.
   Well, that is it, I guess.

YOUR TURN ;)

Inspiration :)

Hi all!

It has been some time since blogging last, so here is a few links that I have found inspirational while surfing the great net:

http://comfortstitching.typepad.co.uk/ - Wonderful quilts and tutorials

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com - You probably know CrazyMomQuilts, but she is soooo worth a revisit! I have linked to her latest quilt along, wich is only in it's 2nd week (and first little bit sewn)

http://bighugelabs.com/ - You can, with FREE downloadable programs make the coolest and funniest stuff with your photos (benath, see the thingy I did in 2 minutes) or find the colourway in a picture thatinspires you, just look for the color pallette generator!It also works with Flickr (look for Scout) to find out if any of your uploads have been featured on the Flickr Explore pages. Mine have!!

This cake!! I need to make me one of these someday - just too yummy!
Or.... this cake! I cannot tak it anymore - such yummyness *drooooool*

Well... I'd better go clean the appartment. Have to do it, but I just want to eat cake now.. HAH!
Have a lovely day, all of you :)

Join me in this wonderful sew along!

Please consider joining me in (a part) of this sew along!
It is particulaly brilliant, as Kelly will not only guide us through the making of one item, but several.

She also has a fine understanding of the fact that sometimes life gets in the way of sewing (yiakes!), so if you have to/want to drop out at some point or want to jump into the sew along at a later stage, it is just fine!

Oh, and on a side note, I have joined another swap: the Freedom Block Swap (or Bee), initiated by Krista and Erin.

Will I ever learn that my time is limited with all these tempting swaps and bees out there???

HST cuddle quilt -done!

Done!
Allow me to introduce my newest cuddle quilt!!

It is quite large as my tall boyfriend should be able to cuddle under it as well :).
Finished size: 75'' x 58''

Taking a decent photo of this quilt, that allows me to show you the true dusty greens, blues and yellows, has proven to be quite a task.
I have decided that this is close enough - just imagine a bit more sea green and blue!


The backing is a very soft and fairly boring piece of dusty green fabric...

As to the quilting, I did a (somewhat) straight line machine quilting in the coloured HTS.
The border is Kona's 'Asparagus' and one of the fabrics from front, just to visually break the solid border a bit.

The batting is a high loft polyester batting. Yum!!

And now on to test it on the sofa *giggle*