Modern Trees basted after a long wait



 

While waiting for the next clue to come out on Celtic Solstice, I have been preparing a UFO for quilting, Modern Trees as you can read more about here .

 

The quilt sandwich is now basted and pinned properly, and ready for quilting. I will try to follow Christa's Quilt Along step by step, and let's see how it turns out!

 

 

 



 

Celtic Solstice Part 5

All the 100 units for Part 5 are now completed, and I have several days to work on other projects. I had great fun working with this clue, and I don't think I have one unit the same as any other.

Here are a few selected units. I am especially pleased wth the blue lady cat from London in the upper left corner, my yellow shirt fabric with white elephants, the different orange Halloween fabric, and last but not least, my corn fabric. I have such a variety of different fabrics in these blocks, and I think they are lovely!

 

All my 100 units nicely stacked up to show the variety of fabrics. I am looking forward to the next step, and hoping that I will be able to finish most of the steps before I have to take the fabric with me and head for home after the vacation is over.

I have wondered how the layout will be in the end, we definitely need more neutrals before it's done. I have played a little around with the blocks from the 5 different steps, and I know that the end result will not be like this, but aren't these good looking assemblies?

The progress of the other participants can be seen on Bonnie's site.

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EDIT: A little quilt math, numbers are for the small quilt of 75"x75":

Pieces in the quilt blocks this far: 2264
Number of 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" blocks left to make: 112

Let's see how Bonnie is going to solve this!

 

The beauty (and horror) of an Ice Storm

To be in the middle of an ice storm is no fun, as described here. But, nature's magnificent artwork as the result of freezing rain is just fantastic, as DS1's pictures will show, under.

The horror picture comes last, just see how the car looked when we parked it in the garage, completely glazed!

The freezing weather lasted 4 days, and in the afternoon of Christmas Eve the ice was all melted.

 

Celtic Solstice Part 4 and Merry Christmas!

Late last night I finished Step 4 in the Celtic Solstice Mystery, and now I'm caught up with this project and have a few days to relax and enjoy Christmas before the next step is published on Friday.



All the 120 four-patches came together fast and easy with Bonnie's instructions, and they were all spinning the same way.

I really enjoy that I am able to use only fabric from my stash, and finally use the rest of my orange Halloween fabric! As for the previous step, there were 8 different fabrics in each pinwheel.

 

Here are a fourth of the four-patches laid out on display. Bad indoor lighting does not give full credit to the colors, but as you can see I have chosen a warm palette.

In this picture you can clearly see my Halloween fabrics, there is even corn and witches in my quilt!

On Bonnie's  site you can see the progress of the other participants.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

 

Celtic Solstice Part 3, and Ice Storms

Saturday night I finished Part 3 with the 25 pinwheels and the 100 single units. The pinwheels are shown under.

It was kind of late when I finished, and I didn't take a picture of the single units. This step was a fun one to do, because I love making pinwheels!

What about Ice Storms? Yes, my family and I are having Christmas vacation in the Southwestern US, and here ice storms occur from time to time during the winter. Friday afternoon we had a place to go, and when we were returning home and had 100 miles to drive, it started raining, with freezing temperatures. This is a weather phenomenon I have never experienced before.

We were driving home, with DH as the safe driver. The conditions were kind of treacherous with the frozen rain glazing the car, and not to mention the windshield wipers! The fortunate thing, though, was that the rain didn't freeze on the ground. The reason for that was probably that we had had very high temperatures for the season the day before, and the ground wasn't cold enough to freeze, yet. Anyway, DH drove slowly, as most of the other cars did.

We managed to get home safely without any accidents, and in the garage afterwards we could see the amount of ice that had accumulated on the car. DS1 took a lot of pictures, both of the car and the surrounding trees the day after. I will show some of them in a later post.

Here is the tree outside our door, completely glazed! It is still like this, today, since the temperature has not increased. Last night DH and I took a walk in the neighborhood and heard a lot of cracking noises and saw limbs breaking and falling off the trees. We kept our distance and didn't walk under any of them, just to be safe.

Let's hope there will not be any wind before the temperatures start rising and the ice melts off, because we don't want more damage to be done to the trees than what has already happened. Anyway, the icicles and glaze have created fantastic Christmas decorations to the surrounding area!

Link to Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link Up #4 is HERE .

 

Celtic Solstice Part 2

 

All my 100  Chevron units for the mystery are finally done. Looking good.

 

Have started cutting half square triangles for part 3 and hope to get a good way into sewing pinwheels later today.

 

The progress of the other participants can be found HERE .

 

Celtic Solstice gone traveling

Here are Step #1, and #2 (almost completed), all packed up in ziploc bags and ready to go on Christmas vacation with me. Of course, additional fabrics will also come along. I long to continue working on finishing the second clue and start the pinwheels on clue #3; my other sewing machine is waiting for me when we arrive.

All the fabric I am using for Celtic Solstice is from my stash, and it is amazing to see how big my stash has grown since I started quilting 2 years ago! There are probably enough fabric for 10+ quilts there...

 

Celtic Solstice Part #1

Yesterday I finally managed to start this mystery. I am working on step 1, making blocks with the Tri Recs Ruler. As you may see, a lot of the orange is remnants from Halloween...

Since I made Easy Street in king size last year, I have decided to stick with the 'small' version this year, approx 75" x 75".

This is going to be fun!

See the progress of the other participants here.

 

2013 Aurifil December Block

Here it is, the twelfth and last of the 2013 Aurifil Designer of the Month blocks. Pat Sloan is the designer of this one.

My task for 2014 is to assemble all the blocks into a quilt. Now I'm off to start on Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice Mystery.

Cute Christmas Tree

This is my first finish for December, a seasonal wall hanging. The Christmas tree will give an extra holiday spirit to my house.

All the fabrics are from my stash, and the buttons are recycled from old shirts. Simple straight line quilting on the tree and background made this a quick project.

Here is the tree in the 'plain' version, without quilting and decorations.

I had the perfect fabric for the back; tiny multi-colored Christmas trees spread all over. The binding also compliments the quilt.

Linked up to LAFF #96 at Richard and Tanya's blog

Vintagey Farm Girl Tractor Wall Hanging

I managed to finish my wall hanging by the end of November, and here it is!

Consisting of two of Lori Holt's vintage tractor blocks it will fit in well with my barns.

This is my favorite tractor, the green fabric look vintage and a little 'rusty', and the yellow trimming just fits perfectly. I did a combination of FMQ and straight line quilting over the whole quilt.

The steering wheels were embroidered with DMC thread in the end.

On the solid green tractor I did some FMQ to give it a bit of texture. It worked out well!

Now my wall is going to look great with three barns and two tractors!

Linked up to LAFF #95 at Richard and Tanya's blog

2013 Aurifil November Block

Here is my November block; it was a quick make. I changed my colors a bit, and fussy cut a sun and stars for the center.

Table runner in red, white & blue

Here is my new table runner in flag colors, but it also has a Christmas touch to it.

The blue fabric is from IKEA, the red and white fabrics are scraps I had lying around. (I actually don't use red fabrics that much, why?).

The runner looks good together with the (fairly) new couch.

The backing fabric is from IKEA.

Here is details of the fabrics, quilting and the blue binding with cute swirls. It is looking good!

...and then there were TWO...

...Tractors, of course!

My first tractor

This is what I accomplished while watching National Knitting Night until past midnight. The tractor is designed by Lori Holt. I plan to make another one and put them together in a wall hanging.

Have a quilty kind of day!

National Knitting Night

The Norwegian broadcaster, NRK, is kicking off National Knitting Night tonight, Friday. You can read more about it HERE. Several hours of knitting, and all there is connected to it. I will be watching/listening to the TV all night, while quilting (!)

I used to knit a lot, before, but now quilting has taken over my spare time. I had to do a little knitting now for the special event, because my local TV station is collecting knitted patches of 15 x 15 cm (approx. 6" square) to make into a giant blanket. The blanket will later be sold on an auction to benefit charity.

I only made one patch, but it is double sided. Here it is:

 The first side.

The second.

And here you can see that it is indeed double-sided. The patch will be put in an envelope tomorrow on its way to an exciting patchwork-blanket. The TV station will publish pictures of the patches and the finished blanket on the web. I will post a link later.

Happy knitting to all of you!