Crazy Rainforest Pillow

So, the result of the work with my batik scraps from the last post was a matching pillow for my Crazy Rainforest Quilt  =)

Front, couldn't really quilt it like the quilt as that was done on my mothers machine, but I tried ^^

Back (didn't bother quilting this side):

 In it's place on the spare bed:

Cleaning out my (fabric) closet ;)

So I've been cleaning for the arrival of my new fabric! I spent some wonderful hours folding, looking, patting and dreaming. In the end my little "stash" (can you call it that when it's this small?) looks so nice, it went from this:

To these neat little piles, sorted according to size. Above it I've hanged bags with the small scraps.

Edward found the process both boring and tiring but supported me the entire time by occupying the ironing board =)

 I was very happy to find some scraps from my Crazy Rainforest quilt, and decided to start on a little project. What it is, I'll tell you later.

The days greatest surprise was that I found this ADORABLE fabric I had no idea I had! My mother bought me some cat fabrics on a quit show and they where so neatly rolled up I'm embarrassed to say I haven't really unrolled them until now. And out came this gem, and as it turns out I have a full 110cm of it! I just have to build a quilt around this fabric!

A little box for my threads

I made this little box a while back from fabrics I got from my mother on my birthday, it's so me, I love sewing and I love cats and the soft colors, it's just perfect!

At this point in time it's holding my few quilting threads which fit in there precisely ^^

While I'm waiting for my new fabric I'm redoing the quilting on a table runner I did a few years back, it's made from adorable fabrics and I spent ages making the points of the squares match up to the best of my ability back then so it's actually quite pretty. I however totally ruined it when it came to doing the batting and backing and the quilting as I had no clue how to do any of that and I just sort of winged it - and ended up with a bubbly mess of a thing. I've therefor not used it but now I really felt I should save the thing and I ripped it up and I'm now "re-quilting" it. And it's already looking so much better, looking forward to showing it to the world once it's done.

Welcome to my new blog!

I've now moved my old blog into this new flashy one that more reflects what my blogging will be about as my interests have switched a bit since I first started. "Not Only Quilts" will mainly revolve around quilting, but there will be room for some of my other interests too such as the Sami Jewelery, my beloved cats, and some other bits and pieces from my life and hobbies.

The header is a photo of my enormous Norwegian Forest Cat boy Edward cuddling up on my Crazy Rainforest quilt in our spare bedroom. He loves quilts and he loves rolling around on my fabric pieces, batting at strips and just generally being "helpful" when I sew.

I thought I'd show you his very own little convergence quilt which I made for him a couple of years ago at my very first quilt retreat. He loves it and it's been washed many, many times =)

So most welcome and I hope you'll enjoy this blog just as much as I do =)

Fresh from the sewing machine!

I've had this pile of flannels that I got a few years back from my mother for a project that never was made reality and now I felt I just had to try and make something out of these poor forgotten pieces.  So I made a baby rag quilt and gosh what a fun project it was! It took only a day and it was so easy to make.  There was an adorable Beatrice Potter fabric in there so those got to be bigger pieces of 20cm. It ended up being 90x90cm and in the photo it's been washed once.

The Baby Rag Quilt:

So easy to make and the result so cuddly that I just had to make my very first order from http://www.fatquartershop.com/ for some Christmas charm packs & some flannel for backing so I could make a cuddly couch quilt big enough for us to use. I'll share more about this once the fabric arrives from the US. I'm so excited about this, charm packs seem soooo convenient and I've never used pre-cut fabric before ^^

Monet's Water Lilies

Monet is one of my favorite painters of all times and as many of you know he made a lot of beautiful  impressionist paintings of the Water Lilies in his garden. These paintings have always given me great peace and the very first "real" (meaning bigger then for the cat's) quilt I made was greatly inspired by these paintings. It's a bargello and I simply call it "Water Lilies", the contrasting fabric is actually water lilies.

I'm sorry for the so and so quality photo, this was taken by a friend at the Quilters Retreat I attended when I made it. I'll take a better photo one of these days and show you. I don't know if you can tell but I spent a small fortune on the border and backside, it's all the same section of a quite expensive fabric that I just had to have and built the quit around sort of. I quilted it in spots only by making little hearts on every other square, I did this since I had no idea how to quilt and didn't want to ruin it, still don't really but I'm getting there. ^^ 

I was so happy and tired in this photo, my first "real" quilt!

A couple of  Monet's many Water Lily paintings, pictures are borrowed from Wikipedia. 

Change in direction

So since I realize my attention span is to short to have my blog revolve around just one of my many interests I've decided to reroute and start blogging about whatever is catching my fancy at the moment in time. Lately it's been quilting and I've been doing a lot of it this summer. It's just so versatile and I love fabrics.

I'll at some point rename and redesign my blog but for now I'll just try and catch whatever lonely, neglected reader I have left up on what I've been doing lately. =)

My quilt in the post below is now finished, I've named it "Crazy Rainforest" and it fits a single bed perfectly. It got it's name as the colors where screaming "Rainforest!" to me and I simply had to applique (my first applique ^^) a Poison Dart Frog on an Azalea leaf in the bottom left corner to really give it a rainforest feel. 

"Crazy Rainforest" Front

 

"Crazy Rainforest" Back

And since I had some spare squares over from making the front, I decided to not let them go to waste and instead make a somewhat less boring the usual backside for it, and it's actually so nice one can almost call it "two quilts in one" =)

I've been quilting and quilting

So as I tend to go from my hobbies back and forth depending on what mood I'm in I through I'd show you one of my other great passions, namely creating quilts.

So lately this quilt top has been keeping me occupied, it's in some crazy fabrics I bought and most people look slightly sick when they look at it but I just love them, they make me smile very time I look at it. Now I'm just waiting for the summer when I can borrow my mothers machine and quilt  and finish it.

 

Delicate Blue

So I wanted a somewhat loosely hanging bracelet to combine with the blue and white one I posted earlier and this is what I came up with, a simple "katarinafläta" with a really nice padded ribbon. As the bracelet is loose and the backside might be visible from time I choose a ribbon that had crazy colors striped on the backside. So should the backside be visible, it doesn't matter as it's fancy there too =)

I'll update the post with pictures of the backside later, forgot to photograph it...

Military Green Elegance

Here I have a just over 1,5cm wide bracelet that together with yesterdays bracelet really shows the versatility of a normal three strand braid. In the middle braid I've folded the edges over instead of just straitening them, which gives this interesting look.

It's set on white lambskin and has a traditional reindeer antler button. Sadly the sun washed out the color of the pewter thread a little, it's a rich military green.