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!!!

Delayed birthday gift to myself :)

Happy (delayed) birthday to me!

As a treat to myself I went to Pink Chalk Fabric's homepage and bought 4 Kona Cotton solids in the brown/purple range: 1.5' of the colours Berry, Raisin, Eggplant and 0.5' of Coffee.

I really, really love the richness and depth of these colours!

Besides those lovelies, I decided to spend a Kona Cotton Color Card on me - such great inspiration and... oh-oh, the temptations *giggle*. Not all stores carries this card, but Pink Chalk Fabric has just re-stocked. It is so worth the cost of 16$!


Edit: I have just checked this, and it appears that she is out of stock again - very popular item, I guess!!

At my local fabric store 'Stjerne Stoffer' here in Denmark, I recently purchased two pieces of fabric that will go well with the Konas, not sure which one to choose - guess that depends on the pattern I eventually decide upon :)


Fabrics are reallyexpensive here in Denmark, compared to the prices in the US, which is why I even am willing to pay the 13$ in shipping for the above items (yep, that is right!!).

However, I wonder if any of you out there in blog-land have any experience in internet shops that are willing to make special arrangements for shipping abroad a.k.a. Denmark?

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a very happy and creative New Year!!

Allow me to introduce!

Dear all,

I am immensely proud to introduce to you and the world my firstborn son: Johan!
Born 24 October 2009.
Length: 52 cm / 20.5 inches
Weight: 3590 grammes / 126.6 ounces

Welcome to the world, dear little one!!!

Baby quilt for Victor

Dear all,

Long time no blogging... I know!

There seem to be a 100 things going on at the same time for me right now: Pregnancy soon to end (in approx 6 weeks), my job to finish off in a nice manner before going on maternity leave (in 2 days - that is because I will use two weeks of vacation before the leave starts). My father-in-law turns 70 next week too, so some attention has been turned that way too and then I have my lovely two quilting bees to focus on as well - I do not complain at all, just a little sorry from me :)

But now it is time for showing off the next baby quilt I have finished today - 1 hour before we left for baby Victor's baptism. Pfew, that was a close cut!!

Victor appered to be a greenish little boy to me, so I chose to make this baby quilt in dusty and light greens, spiced a little with brown and creams. I bought a line of fabrics and added some of my older mathcing fabrics too, in order to get enough variation.

The inspiration is the "Happy Hour" pattern, adapted to pre-cut 2,5'' strips, and then just made even more random.

And how lucky am I??? On his baptism costume and as table decorations, his parents had chosen to add the EXACT same green tones as in the quilt. Amazing!!

I used machine stippling to hold the quilt together and, oh boy, did I have a hard time: I had decided to use a fleece blanket as batting, and for some reason this gave me great grief with thread snapping every 2 inches in some places!!! Grrrr!

Well, I made it to the end and I have decided to erase the experience from my memory.
Note to self: DONT use fleece blankets again!


All in all, I am happy with the result: 39'' x 39''.
And the parents were too :)).

Now I will go lay myself down on the couch - I think I have deserved it. Heh!

First top from the "bee inspired" VQB!!

my pinwheel sampler quilt. {bee inspired.}
Originally uploaded by rachelgriffith

This is Rachel's assembled quilt top with all our blocks together!!

She asked us to make some sort of pinwheels.

I really like it: It looks so nice and fresh, almost like lemonade :D

Finally I can show you this baby quilt!

Finally, I can show you this baby quilt for my first nephew, who was baptized today, Sunday.
His name is Emil. It has been ready for months, but as it is a gift I could not reveal it before now :)

And finally a baby quilt for a BOY, so obviously I chose to make it in blues, green and a tad of purple. (it is also from this quilt that I have made my header of this blog)

The applications are the creation of my (normally not very crafty) boyfriend. But he insisted on making all sorts of vehicles for the quilt and the motorbike is a symbol for Emil's parents and their common passion :)
So indeed this has become a present from both of us! I might even ask him to make me more patterns for appliqués in the future :)


The quilting is my very first attempt to stipple, and I am very happy with it too - I know that I have shown you later examples of my stippling, but this was my first try *giggle*

The binding is finished by hand on the back. I am not good with hand stitching, so you will NOT get a closeup...


(back)

Next, I must try to use some of my after-Easter holiday days off to focus on the blocks I have not yet finished for my two quilting bees!! Shame on me...

New baby quilt, this one for Olivia

I have been working on this baby quilt for some time, and now I can finally show it to all of you:

It will be our baptising gift to our future God-daughter tomorrow!
Her name will now officially be Olivia :)

I wanted to make a really gurly baby quilt this time, and I know that these oranges and pinks will be a hit in her home. Weee!

My inspiration came the quilt called 'Native Rainbows' from Laurie J. Shifrin's book 'Batik Beauties'. Many good ideas and patterns, also for quilts without batik fabrics!

As to the quilting I made a lot of advanced machine quilt stitches in/near to the ditches.
I think there are too many seams on the top for first-time freehand quilting...

I made a quilt for her sister about 1½ year ago - see it below for the baby quilt for Astrid.

I also have made most of the top for the next baby quilt, this one will be the first for a BOY! YAY!
For natural reasons I cannot show it to you, yet. But guess what: It will be blue-ish. More to come, promise...