Friday, May 22, 2020

Swedish Quarter Log Cabin Quilt

One of my favorite collegues is leaving the company nex month, and so I decided to make her a quilt (she's a sewer, so she will appreciate it)
The start of the quilt was basically me going through my scraps and noticing I have a lot of solid blue stripes. I mean, there were really a lot, as I like to use blues for the back of my quilts, and also like to bind quilts with blue.
I've added patterned blue stripes (also had a lot of those) and white(ish) stripes, and, finally, for a splash of oomph, one stripe of bright, sunny yellow to each block. The blocks came to 9 x 9 inches and I made 50 of them, setting them on point with a narrow stripe of white sashing.
 The finally quilt is about 215 x 175 cm (85 x 69 inches)
Quilting was simple wavey diagonal lines left and right to the sashing, and once through the middle of each block. Quick, easy and so much fun.
The yellow and blues reminds me of the Swedish flag, and the white of the snow up north, hence the name: Swedish Quarter Log Cabin Quilt.
This has been a fun quilt to make, and I hope my collegue will like it once I give it to her.
Now I only have to find out when to actually meet her to hand it over, as we are both in home office right now.

Sunday, May 03, 2020

More Paper Making

I mentioned that paper making can be addictive.
Just to show some of the papers off (this time in a good size of 23 by 30 cm - 9 by 12 inches)
I've made a whole stack (around 50 sheets):
Besides pure white (with little black sprinkles from the prints) I made a paper with first only green and then green and blue speckles. Problem here is that the speckles are too thick, and I can't use them for writing or printing. I CAN use them, though, as the covers of thin note books, and I have made two of those already (and already put them to use).
Next thing I tried was adding confetti to the furnish. I really adore the result, and I might use them for birthday cards.
Then I tried some embossing, which worked out okayish. As template I used the the Witcher signs from the game, as they are fairly simple to cut out. I need to think on this technique a little bit more.
Eventually I moved away from white and added green furnish to the tub. Got a nice subtle shading, as I added more and more or the green..
Finally I tried some stamping / embossing using a cork in the fresh paper. The trick here is to use not too thin paper, but it worked out pretty good (if I may say so).
I'm sure this won't be the last time I'm making paper. It's just too much fun and I still have plenty of ideas.