I think I love fall, and I know I love my mom!

Cut to Pieces was having a giveaway and she only asked us to tell her what we like about fall. And as I was preparing to write that I hate fall (I used to have what I can only call fall time depressions when I lived in Sweden), I realised that nowadays, here in Malta I think LOVE the fall!

A bit of rain falls from time to time giving me reason to stay inside and sew a bit more while the island is slowly turning from burnt out brown to a healthy green. I love that I can walk outside without getting drenched in sweat and I love that I don't have to shower after a walk to the store =) I love that I get to wear a bit more clothes, while "as little as humanely possible and still somewhat decent" is fun for a few months it get's boring after a while.  I love that the quilts on the couch soon no longer will be purely for decoration purposes but soon will be used to snuggle up under. I love lighting candles, making stews and actually feeling like cooking. Don't get me wrong, I still love summer more then anything but I think I've found there's enough  room in my heart to love fall too =)

The image has nothing to do with anything other then that I came to think about this photo session a number of years back with our much loved goddaughter Alma so I thought the image would be appropriate =)

But what I do know I do love is my mother! And no, not because she sends me lovely things, that just makes her even more awesome. A while back this little packet came with the most adorable fabric and a bunch of equally cute buttons and notions! <3 And Anki who is just as sweet as my mother had ordered an awl for me. I've been looking for the really thin clover awls which I haven't been able to find anywhere so she ordered it for me! Thanks mom and Anki, you are the best!

Periodic Table Quilt

I couldn't be happier to introduce you all to my latest secret project (the "rainbow" I was quilting in the post below) that I have been working on in different ways all spring! My gift to my fantastic sister when she took her Masters Degree at Uppsala Universitet after having finished up by doing 6 months research at Harvard University in Boston this spring - Anna's Periodic Table Quilt! I couldn't be prouder of my amazing sister who's been working so incredibly hard these last 5 years and I knew I had to give her something that reflected just how proud I was, and the idea for her own, 100% custom quilt from fabric to finish, was born.

She was heading the pharmaceutical students student union for one year and was incredibly invested in them her entire time at the university so I wanted the backing to reflect that. Her wonderful boyfriend helped me in secret to get a hold of an illustrator file of the logotype for the backing so she always would remember her time at university.

This quilt brought on many new first for me, my first custom designed fabric from Spoonflower was ordered for both the front and the backing and let me tell you, to get the front right in dimensions and color and everything was by far the hardest part in the making of this! I'm very much an illustrator beginner (darn what a tricky program to learn!) so it took a lot of time to get it the way I wanted.  I referenced a pre-made black and white periodic table file I'd bought for this specifically and used it for element names and atomic weights and so on. Just to realize when I got the fabric in my hands after weeks of anticipation, that the guy I had referenced had got like 1/3 of it wrong!! Saw it when I stitched up the first row of elements (luckily, I'd not finished the quilt) which was the Lanthanides, I saw that Lutetium had Hydrogen's atomic weight and then suddenly a ton of errors appeared before my eyes! I felt like an idiot for not checking it's accuracy before I ordered but when you buy a periodic table, you kind of assume it will be correct... So a second order was made to correct the 25 or so faulty elements I had. Which resulted in them arriving 3 weeks before the set delivery date, so you can imagine my panic at the end. I'll stop babbling now and show you some more pics =)

Did my first micro stippling (at least I think it s micro ^^) in the small squares.

Closeup of some Transition metals and the quilting. Did normal meander for the elements with a small frame around each separate element to make them stand out individually a bit more. And I did a boxy loop-de-loop on the white for contrast. This was also my very first time using a different colored bottom thread (off-white all over) and with the thin cotton batting I used, it was a true hassle to get the tension right all over the quilt!

I did the binding with a decorative stitch to make the transition from white to black a bit smoother and I have to say I'm very happy with that decision, it looks very nice I think even if it did for some seriously long time dedicated to binding.

And the tag, since I was ordering custom fabric anyway I snuck in a tag at the bottom of the second top order, which sadly shows a little as the letters where cut off at the bottom a bit...

It says: "Made with love by Maria Wallin 2012. I'm so proud of you my beloved sister"

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And some "the making of" photos, all laid out a first time for sorting.

This was how far I'd gotten when I realized I had errors... Here I've piled them up and checking them towards a number of periodic tables online for accuracy.

Finally! Top finished and I'm preparing or borders.

Quilting with the speed of light to have it finished in time! Not a single fold, plucker or bubble! I'm so proud of the quilting for this quilt! I know it's all simple patterns but to get the meander decently even all over, get the tension right with the white bottom thread and no pluckers and therefore no need for any stitch unpicking. All over an amazing feat for me =)

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Anna: I hope you know how much I love you and that no one could be prouder of you then I am, every day. You, my little sister who "didn't like to read" and thought I was so boring with my nose stuck in a book all the time growing up. Now you have had your nose in a book for so many years and it has made you even more clever than you where (I'll never win an argument again ^^), and given you so much experience in so many areas, not just studies and lab work and I'm sure that whatever you decide to do in life after this, you'll keep making me and those who love you just as proud.

You're nothing short of amazing little sister and I love you. 

I'm apparently 27 years old now...

Luckily I have some pretty amazing friends and family who did their very best to help me forget the fact =)

My mother sent me the most adorable birthday present, an absolutely gorgeous pincushion! It's sewn with such amazing care and attention to detail. In the link to ehr blog above she links to the tutorial and pattern she used. I think she partly made it for me since she knows how much I envy respect her endless patience and amazingly small stitches when sewing by hand. It's just so perfect! Thank you mom! <3

It has the place of honor next to my sewing machine with only my favorite, really thin needles in it.

I also got another present from her and it was very exciting, a brand new seam ripper with some super cool features. My seam ripper is my best friend and I think that I and this seam ripper will be even closer. If you take a look at it you will see a little "eraser" looking thing at the top and if you look at the photo of the backside of the packaging here it explains how to use it, if it works as well as I think it will, it will revolutionize my ripping =D I'll let you know how good it works once I've tried it =)

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Some of our closest friends flew in from Sweden to celebrate with me and they really made sure I felt pampered like a princess with everything from lunch at my favorite restaurant, 1½ massage and spa, lot's of good wine and bubbles (both pool and wine) =)

We also got a PonyIsland cake from our friends at our party! Isn't it adorable!?

Joining the Pinterest Craze

I admit it, my name is Maria and I've gone Pinterest crazy.
When you can't create yourself, you can always collect inspiration from others. One of my most recent pins is this awesome makeup pouch which I just have to make my own version of when I get the chance =)

I'm pinning like crazy from all over the net (all the stuff that used to clog up my bookmarks and get lost in every reformatting, now on Pinterest, neatly sorted and easily over-viewed) and this site is just the best!

 

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Now I want you all to help me by wishing really hard that I'm able to unpack my sewing room in time for this months February FMQ Challenge

It looks like so much fun as I've always wanted to learn how to quilt feathers so I really hope I'll have some time to spend on learning how to do this:

Picture borrowed from SewCalGal's blog

Move complete!

We've moved into our new apartment which we just love, it's just the perfect little size for us and Diana loves it just as much as we do, the windows go to the floor in the living room so she can watch people and cars below. Her old climbing tree was very used up after 5 years and either way much to big for this apartment so we got her a new little one that we could place in front of the window next to our  "desk" (kitchen table with computers) so she could lie next to us and still enjoy the view. However, our Norwegian Forest Cat is not much of a climber so we had to add a little stepping stool for her so she could get up ^^
I also just love the bowls I found for her when I bought the tree, they look like hollowed out rocks but are very durable plastic and can be seen at the bottom right of the pic, below the refrigerator and freezer.

She's also very much enjoying the armrest on the couch and went monorail cat on us =D

I have however not had time for anything craftier then wrapping this Christening gift, however, I did enjoy that, I got to play with some buttons and ribbon for a while, yep that's how bad my crafting withdrawals are.

Other then that the craftiest thing I've done is trying to unpack our place from the bags and boxes. Not much fun to see there... Work is still just killing us so not much hope for the near future either. :(

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Luckily there are other people out there being crafty and I get to live through them a little right now, I have received an email from Mary Deckert who made her own, gorgeous version of Summer Squares, she made hers Twin size too by adding more squares, isn't it just lovely?

She added two rows to the bottom and to the side to get it this size. Thank you so very much Mary for sharing your beautiful creation with me! <3

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 I also noticed that in my absence, I've gotten over 100 followers! That's just amazing and will be celebrated with a giveaway as soon as I have unpacked my sewing room! =D

Most welcome all new followers! You have no idea how happy I am to have you <3
I hope you will enjoy my rambling and crafting. I'm really longing to be able to get back in the saddle and sew soon, my creative side threatens to claw it's way out if kept boxed up for much longer. ^^

Panic does not make for productive

I realize some of you will think me totally insane after reading the below but I'm trying to share all my quilting/crafting stuff combined with some personal tidbits here on the blog and right now, it's a major lack of spare time and stress over an unfinished project.

So, I hit what I felt as something of a low water mark the other day as a quilter. I had to let the lovely people at Moda know that my life right now doesn't permit as much quilting time as I would want (basically I would be happy for any, as I have none) and that I wouldn't be able to finish my latest project - which is a massive one - in any sort of reasonable time frame. I've been feeling so bad about this project and being unable to finish it in a timely manner that I've been unable to go to sleep from time to time lately. I hate letting people down more then anything else (apart from maybe flying). As I'd sent off the email I felt a giant weight off my shoulders and for the first time in quite some time I was able to go to sleep without panicking over a quilt. Which I realize sounds ridiculous as I technically have much bigger things to occupy my mind constantly that are work related - but this is my hobby and it means so much to me and I've felt so bad about committing to do something and then not being able to do it as I've said. I've been trying to slowly nibble away at it while waiting for stuff to upload and things like that but the stress I've been feeling has had me so on edge that every other block ended up all wonky and had to be re-sewn. And let's face it, a 10 minutes of sewing here and there won't get you very far when working on an advanced king size quilt pattern! Not enjoyable sewing in other words...

My life right now is upside down. We're in the middle of a move ourselves while we at the same time are moving both of our web games, PonyIsland and OviPets onto brand new servers and server setups (read work around the clock to get everything to run smoothly and make the transitions as seamless as possible). Which is such exciting work but there's so much stress involved. Our own move is also a happy one - we've found an absolutely adorable  little apartment that we just LOVE! It's perfect for us, it has a lovely view over a park and it has a high glass railing for the balcony so Diana will be able to join us for a glass of wine out there in the summer. =)

Our new apartment has a small room apart from our bedroom which will be used for storage and as a sewing room! I will get to have an actual room for sewing which will be great! While I loved having a sewing area in the living room for social reasons, you can't exactly leave the mess you want to be able to leave mid project when you can't close a door around it =)
Can't wait to have time to start setting it up! And I really can't wait for some spare time to actually start using it!

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I also got an email today which made me really happy, it was from Jan who had made her granddaughter a beautiful Sunkissed Summer Squares quilt:

The label was just to lovely to leave out (last names I however blurred out for privacy), I got all teary eyed when I read it, so much love in this quilt!

Thank you for sharing your quilt with me Jan! <3

Quilting for sanity

I'm still without a working computer (don't get me started on OCZ's customer treatment, service level or quality of hardware for that matter or I'll go on for three pages) I'm quilting for my sanity from time to time when the work I need to do can't be done without say PS or access to a hard drive.

So I had time to whip up some quick Christmas gifts for my amazing landlady whom I haven't seen since before the holidays so it's ok (will try to sneak some time to share those photos in a day or so as I can't exactly use my precious "real computer time" for anything but work right now as Andreas too is super busy). But I can however share  a photo I took this fall of some fabric which still hasn't been turned into the super yummy baked goods it was supposed to be due to my insanely busy work schedule. I'm super embarrassed by this situation but luckily the lovely Moda peeps are so understanding <3

I have however started it now and I'm hoping to have it turned into something amazing in a month and a half or so =)

It's Twirl by My & My Sister Designs, such happy and completely insane colors, you can't help but smile when working with them =)

Harddrive crash and Ruby

So yesterday was very much a good day turned into a very bad day kind of deal...

My pretty much brand new SSD disk died yesterday. And since Andreas identical disk died a week ago and he just shipped his off for replacement two days ago - we're now officially out of disks to run Windows from as Andreas took my extra disk when his crashed... And mine died hard, I mean completely died, not even recognized by BIOS, darn crappy SSD's from OCZ! They where not even 4 months old!

So I'm currently running Ubuntu from a CD, not ideal at all when you work from your computer, quite a lot of panic in our house today... But at least I can take care of most things until I get a replacement sent (if they ever bother to reply to our request about a new RMA).

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But before that and on a happier  note, I found out that River Fabrics carries Ruby and even have FQ bundles! I was so happy as it's a pain to order from the US here in Malta (you can read about my struggles with customs here). And the owner Janette being the great person she is, gave me a fantastic deal on shipping <3

Soon I'll be touching her, Ruby - the woman of my dreams ;)

Like some of you know I've been dreaming of Ruby since she  was announced and the very day I manage to get my hands on some, Camille announces their next, if possible even more fabulous line - Vintage Modern!

Images borrowed from Simplify - Camilles Blog.

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If you're looking for the My Memories Suite give away, it can be found here, still 2 more days left to enter! =)

Flurry on the way!

I've finished all the blocks for my Flurry with Flurry quilt and here's what I've got.

I've such a major crush on this quilt before it's even done and an even bigger one on this fabric line!

I also had to share with you my silly Diana who had "taken down" my Summer Squares quilt from the edge of the couch cuddled up so cutely for a grooming and napping session which I interrupted with my picture taking, hence the accusatory stare =)

Miss Model of the World (Malta)

Ok, so I'll be honest, the contest I was telling you about in the last post that's been taking up all my time was Miss Model of the World (Malta). I model a little to and from for fun and when I was invited to take part in this once in a lifetime opportunity I of course couldn't say no! =) I was contemplating for a long time weather or not to blog about this but in the end I decided to do it, I just hope no one will think less of me for it.

It is hosted by Vouge Model Management Malta and it's a major event. We spent weeks preparing for this one night and it's been taking up all of my quilting time. However, luckily it was worth the time invested, with 18 other gorgeous finalist girls competing with me, I didn't think I had a chance to end up even in the top 7, but imagine my surprise when it turns out I came second place and on top of that was awarded the award "Most Promising Female Model"!

Here's some photos from the event, it will be aired on TV in a few weeks.

The three winners, me on the left in lilac ^^

Opening number

The amazing dancers

Bikini event

Don't remember anything of this walk, I was so nervous I just blanked...

Evening gown event

Hairshow

Waiting for the results

The winning males

Other then that I've also been travelling lately, both to Amsterdam to meet up with some friends and we also attended two of our moderators wedding in Colchester, England, it was great - but we where sick the entire trip, so not fun!

I hope that now things will go back to normal (know I've said that before so please keep your fingers crossed for me - I so badly want to sew!), I've got a big box of secrets here at home from Moda that needs me to cut into it's loveliness and have me start baking.  =)