in between

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are uneventful here, working a little and getting used to all the christmas lights being gone. I can’t wait for the dark days of the year to be over, but it will be another 2 months until I will get home from work in daylight.

I got a new quilt top done and now have to find the time to make the quilt sandwich so I can start handquilting it.


The snow and ice is thawing very slowly day by day at temperatures around 0°C. They are predicting January to be full of snow as well…I am already tired of it and soo ready for spring. January will be the time for buying seeds for me and I’m planning to start a few plants indoors as early as February. I’ve never done it before and I am still working on the how’s and where’s because with two curious cats it will be quite a challenge to give the baby plants a space with enough light without having them nibbled at or tossed around or eaten before they are ready to go outside in May.

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little folks zig-zag pillows

Inspired by this beautiful little pillow *here* I just had to copy the idea and make these little zig-zag pillows:

I had a lot (as far as patchwork goes) Little Folks fabric left over from making the Little Folks Quilt a while ago and this voile fabric is just so soooft and buttery, I had to use it for something.
This one is a bold color combination for me, but I think it works very well.

This one is closer to my original inspiration:

The backs are with contrasting Little Folks fabrics:

To make the zigzag I used *this tutorial* from ‘a quilt is nice’. Very straighforward and easy to follow!
I think I’ll have these on my balcony, it can use a little patchwork and color 🙂

little folks quilt

So this quilt has been finished a while and took forever to photograph. I tried to take pictures three times and they always sucked.
So these are the best you’ll get, sorry 😉

Made with Anna Maria Horner’s beautifully soft Voile Fabrics from the ‘Little Folks’ collection. I am forever spoilt for quilting cotton now…that voile is just so wonderful and soft, all of my future quilts will have to be made with voile.

The back is a nice blue cotton and the binding is my favourite purple Ikea fabric.

I quilted it roughly with embroidery floss and because I am continually broke I used what I had and the rows are all in different colors.

kids shoot: miri

I did the final one of the kid’s photo sessions on Wednesday with a very cute 11-year-old at the barn and wow, she totally blew me away! In less than an hours we got so many great pictures that I seriously cannot narrow them down to the 5 or 6 I usually show in blog posts. Be prepared for a long post and many many pictures!
Look at those gorgeous blue eyes!

Don’t you just love taking photos when you can give lousy instructions like ‘ok, now smile’ (instructions are my weakest point out of many) and you get rewarded with this?

That’s what it must be like working with models (by the way, this is also a sneak peek of my new quilt with Anna Maria Horner’s wonderful Voile fabrics…more on that one when it stops raining and I can take pictures of it!):

The joy in photographing extremely photogenic people is that you can take 100 pictures and they look different in all of them. She hardly looks eleven here, does she?

We’d picked a great day for photos: slightly overcast with sunny breaks, nice afternoon light and a pretty strong wind replacing the professional fan I always carry around for people with long hair (not).

This may well be my favourite photo from the whole shoot:

Or wait, maybe it’s this one:


In case anyone was wondering, this is the ‘Vintage’ action from the free (!) Pioneer Woman Action Set.

All of my photos are edited using a mix of different free actions I picked up somewhere online, though I do have my very own super secret black-and-white action 😉

After we were done out on the meadow we went down to the barn to get some horse shots. This is the pony she’s leasing to ride twice a week starting in June and she’s already soo excited about it:

Seriously, how cute are they together?

I think I’m totally spoiled now for anyone else wishing to have their pictures taken.

scandinavia quilt

My dad’s birthday was on Sunday, so I can finally blog the quilt I made him. Last year I wasn’t home for his birthday and then my sewing machine got broken and he only got something small for christmas, so really this quilt covers two birthdays and one christmas 😉
While I love bright, sunshiny colors and the look of patchwork I know my dad definitely likes a more subdued look and scandinavian colours. So when I found this red pinstriped linen blend I knew it was perfect. The backing is a plain dark blue and the plaid binding connects the two colours and livens it all up a bit (I think).

I had originally planned to machine quilt it but it just didn’t work at all with my treadle…no chance without a walking foot. So I sat down to cried a bit and then I picked myself back up and started handquilting. Inspired by Anna Maria Horners new post I did big stitches with embroidery floss (3 strands if anyone wants to know the particulars).
And then I looked at it and the bold, rough quilting looked just perfect for the overall look I wanted to achieve. I think I will do handquilting with embroidery floss from now on on all of my quilts…I love the look of it and it is nice and quick work.

Not that quick though…so when I found out I only had two and a half days to complete it (due to my dad being away on business the whole week until his birthday) I went into panic mode and spend those days quilting and sewing. I never would have believed it but in those two days I got it basted, quilted, bound, washed and dried (though I had to drive over to my mom’s to use her dryer).

Except for sewing the binding on on one side the whole quilt is entirely handsewn and I am pretty darn proud of it. Thankfully my dad loves it so it was definitely worth it.

Want to know one of my guilty sewing-secrets? I never use a hoop for embroidery or quilting…when I learned it I didn’t have one and when I finally bought one it drove me crazy and didn’t work for me at all. So I just stretch the fabric tight with my hands while quilting.
This picture actually has the truest colours for the lovely red fabric (and it was at the beginning of the handquilting…a few hours on my fingers looked considerably more covered in band aid).