Spring and a secret project

Finally.........the snow is almost gone where I live. We've had warm weather the last week. And I've eaten dinner out on the porch several days. Spring has sprung.

Hvitveisen is blooming and the birds are singing. The snow is melting and we are wondering is the river is going to be flooded this year. There is still a lot of snow in the mountains so we just have to wait and see.
I've been working on a secret project for some days now. I have known about this for over a year, but I started working on it on sunday afternoon. And I have to finish it before friday. I can't show you more of it because the receiver might perhaps look up at my blog. So I have to wait until next weekend to show you. Still some applique to be done and then the binding. So better hurry hurry.............

Have you remembered to visit my friend Nancy's blog and told her about your thimbles?? She is giving away some great prizes to someone who does. Timelimit is April 30th midnight norwegian time. So hurry hurry over to her blog and tell her you blogged your thimbles.

Saying for today:

As sunshine turns a flower's head toward heaven,
so your friendship lifts my spirit.

APRIL QUILTMEETING

I have not been able to blog for a while now. Going back 100% to work do not give that much time left for sewing, blogging and other things. I am so tired when I come home. And then there is houswork, paperworks for our quiltmagazine and trying to get some sleep. Have to start new routines.

But on thursday was the april meeting for our local quiltgroup. A lot of women this time, but not so much at show and tell.

But I got a few photos:

This "quilt" is made of old wool sweaters. She felted them by washing the sweaters on hot water, cut out peaces and put them together.
And out of the leftovers she made some bags.
This is a banner one of my friends is making for her granddaughters kindergarten. It has to be ready for may 17th when it's Norways national day.


And me of course with my new bag. I love this bag, and I guess I'll make one winter bag too, in dark colours.
A present where the lady is going to applique photos of the boy who receives the quilt.
Quilts from a workshop we went to some months ago. The difference in these two quilts are the quilting. One is machinequilted and the other is hand quilted. You can feel the difference when you touch them. Handquilting gives the quilt a soft look, and machinquilting the opposite.

A log cabin quilt.
A table runner

And here is Laila (to the left) helping a lady showing what she made out og BOM Out of the darkness. She did not want to make the whole quilt and decided to make pillows and tablerunners of the BOM's. A clever idea to do when you get bored of the BOM's.
And finally Laila and Lisbeth with their new bags made specially for NQF's annual quiltmeeting. We all need new bags going to big quiltmeetings, don't we LOL. Laila has a better photo of her bag here if you want to have a close look.

I've forgotten to show you one present I received at the annual quiltmeeting.

I've seen Wenche making a lot of these pincushions/threadbins on her blog. And when she pulled me aside at the quiltmeeting some weeks ago and said she had something for me I was surprised. And it was this beautiful one for me. I love it. Use it everyday as it is hanging on the table besides my sewing chair in the livingroom. Thank you Wenche :)
I made this toiletpurse some weeks ago, but have forgotten to show you. It's a pattern from Northern quilts. And I love the size of it. Plenty of room in it to bring all my brushes, creams, perfume aso.
Started to stitch on block two on Leannes Butterfly garden. OMG....there is a lot of stitching on this block.

And I've found the macro on my camera. So now I can do good close up photos :) Perhaps I ought to have read the manual on the camera several years ago LOL

Now I'm off to give a workshop in sewing hexagons on the sewingmachine. Only three ladies, but I guess we'll have a great day at the shop.

Saying for today:

A friend is someone you can trade
secrets with and never worry

Back from the cabin

I guess I'm not the only one packing everything and too much when we are going to a quilt retreat. Like this weekend when I was going to our annual spring trip to the cabin.
The car was loaded both in the back..............

........... and in the backseat. We were only two people in this car. And still we had forgotten something.

It is a small cabin so we had to use every space to work on. Rotarycutting and ironing at the kitchen bench........

and at the table in front of the fireplace.

And sewing at the dining-table. Five sewingmachines, five ladies and one teenager was having fun all weekend. Laughing, stitching, plenty of good food and good friendship.
The sun was shining all weekend. Although it was a cold wind blowing we found a spot in the sun and could relax a little bit from the sewing. You can see the there is still a little bit snow left behind the house.

We had sewing bags as a project this weekend. And here is five of the bags. One bag was already packed down in the car so I did not get a photo of that one. Mine is the one at the back left. It's from a pattern designed by Bente Nysæther Malm. It's a great pattern, so easy to follow, perhaps one of the best pattern I ever have used making a bag. I almost finished the bag before leaving the cabin. So I finished it when I came home, adding the handles, and now it's ready to be used at work tomorrow.

I could not manage to sit by the sewingmachine all weekend so I also did a little bit stitching. You remember one of the projects on my "to do" list. I have now stitched all 12 small stitcheries for the adventcalendar and have started to stitch on the last one.

Saying for today:

Friends are like fabric,

you can never have enough!

My to do list

I have decided to focus on some of my WISPs. Feel like I have to finish up something now. So I have looked through my boxes and found these:

#1 is the spring table cloth I started on at a workshop mai 2007. That's one year ago!!! So I want to finish it so I can use it this summer.

# 2 is continue handquilting on my Leannes House. Thought I should manage to quilt one block a week. But I have to take it slow. Handquilting is not that good to my shoulder. So I quilt a couple of threads each day.
#3 is Butterfly garden. Have prepared block two. It's a lot of stitching on this one. And I guess third block is soon coming.
#4 is the adventcalender I bought right before christmas. I planned to stitch one block each day at christmas, but........................ Have stitched a couple of blocks this week :)
#5 is Gail Pans sewing angels. Just two more blocks to stitch.
#6 is the Noas Arch stitchery BOM. A little cute stitchery that is fast to do. Block two is printed, but not stitched yet.

#7 is to start making something of all the civil war fabrics I have received. Do I start a DJ quilt or do I start the civil war diary quilt. Or do I start making monkey wrench blocks of all the colours?? Have to think a little about this.

But........

I do not know if I manage to stick to this planning.

Tomorrow I'm going to our spring cabin trip. My bags are packed. Sewingmachine ready. And new fabrics bougth for a new bag I'm going to make. Bought a pattern at our annual quilt meeting and I want to make it. I had planned to use only from my stash, but when I visited the quiltshop today they had sooooooooooooo many new lovely fabrics.............so .............you know LOL

Saying for today:

Today's happy together times,
are tomorrow's warm with memory times

More thimbles and civil war repro fabric heaven

In my previous post I showed you the thimbles I bought at the antique and collectors market. And I started to chat with my friend Nancy about it. I know she has a lot of thimbles too and now she shows them at her blog. She also has a challenge with a giveaway. So if you are curious what she shows go to her blog and have a peek.

This is my collection of thimbles. I got totally 67. And I guess I'll continue collecting :)

The thimble to the left is the one I bought saturday, but shows the other side where I guess the mark of the silversmith is. The one in the middle was my grandmothers and the one to the right is my aunts and it has her name engraved.

Kit from http://thimblescope.com/ commented on my blog with no reply. I have tried to email you on another adress I found, but do not know it you got it. So if you read this could you please contact me again.

Just before I went to our annual quiltmeeting I got my Civil War Diary book in the mail.

I have looked through it and there is so much interesting to read. A beautiful book.

But I'm now in civil war repro fabric heaven.

I had agreed with Karren about swapping Crazy Quilt stuff against civil war repro fabrics. And look what she sendt me. I love them all.

But that's not all................

Another sweet lady, Patricia Dignan, emailed me and asked if I wanted some of her leftovers from a DJ project. She is 72 years old and not a blogger, but she had visited my blog and noticed I asked about information of civil war repro fabrics.

And this is what was inside the firs package she sendt me.

And today another package was in my mailbox. And she tells me there is more!!!!!!!!!!! I had no idea that she would send this much fabric. I am so grateful. She is such a generous lady. Another proof that quilters are so kind and generous.

So now I just want more time to sew. I wish I could expand each day with more hours. I need more time to sew. Going back to 100 % work now gives me less time to sew. I am so happy being back at work, and my shoulder behaves very well, but I also want to sew!!!!!!!!!!

I'll get more quality sewingtime this weekend when I'm going to our annual spring cabin trip with the other girls. So now I have to prepare some (read; a lot) projects to bring with me.

Saying for today:

Never let a sewing machine

know you're in a hurry

Thimbles

Today I went to a antique and collectors market. I have for a long time wanted to go there, but always been occupied with other things that day. But finally today.............

A lot of things to look at, but nothing interesting to me.................until.....................

one stall that had a lot of thimbles.

So many lovely thimbles..................I wanted them all..................but they were a bit expensive so I bought only three...............this time. She promised she would be back next time (in the autumn I think). I have collected thimbles a long time. But that has been thimbles from places I've been on holiday or got from friends bringing them home from their holidays.

But now...........some antique ones................I know I want to collect more of these.

Look.........

I looked up pn the internet when I came home to check what the lady told me.

The one to the left is a Royal Crown Derby Thimble Art Deco from 1900. I found photo of it on this link.

The one in the middle is a Royal Doulton Canton thimble. I found photo of it on this link

The thimble to the right I am not sure. The lady who sold me it told me about it, but I did not write it down and now I do not remember. When I got it polished I found a mark L.D.W. I looked the mark up at this link, but could not find L.D.W, but I found E.D.W, is it the same?? If anyone knows anything about this I would love to know more.

I think I have to buy a book about collecting thimbles now, because this was fun. Starting to collect antique thimbles.

A question................is there any other blogger out there collecting antique thimbles?????

Saying for today:

Wrinkles are antique smiles

PS: I'm in civil war fabric heaven now.............
tell you more tomorrow LOL.

SHOPS SHOPS SHOPS

There were 22 different quiltshops attending at our annual quiltmeeting. And everyone had brought a lot of fabrics, patterns, books and lot of inspiring samples. There was too many goodies everywhere to look at. And you found things that you did not know you had to have all the time. The ladies went crazy down in the shop area............never seen so many happy ladies carrying big bags full of goodies. And afterwords seeing them relaxing in the sofa with a cup of coffee having show and tell for some friends with a big smile on their faces. Hearing from the other ones: Where did you find THAT one..............oh I must run down and buy that too............are they sold out...............OH NO................

I was administrating the shop area and had great fun seeing how they arranged their stalls. I asked every shopowner if I could take a photo of their stall and put in on my blog. And everyone said: Of course, it's advertising for our shop. I did not manage to take a photo of all 22 shops, but here are the one I got.

Below is photo of two sweet ladies from QuilTen.

Irene, Bjørg and Britt is visiting AppleQuilt.
Below two photos from Quiltekroken

Below two photos from Quilte.net

Below two photos from Lappemakeriet.

Anne Heidi with her shop Lappemor

Below two photos from Northern Quilts.
And look....Hanne is shopping!!! Btw.....I got mail from Hanne yesterday....
she is safe in Chicago and on her way to the DJ gathering.

Below photo from Merethes Atelier.

Some photos from Jordbærstedet.
Hanne is shopping here too......LOL

And then Katrines Quiltestue.

And then photo from Quiltegården. This shop got the visitors prize for
BEST SHOP AT THE ANNUAL QUILT MEETING
CONGRATULATIONS

Below photo from QuilteLiv.
Below photo from Lille stasjon.

and photo from Nannas Verksted.

This was a little look around trip in the shops. There were some more shops but I did not have time to get photos from every shop.

The big question..............DID I SHOP ANYTHING........LOL

Of course.

I had a budget and I did stick to that................but I guess if I had more time to look in the shops I had bought more...........................much more.

So here is my buyings:

One box, eight patterns, five fabrics to make new tablemats, easy threader, two other fabrics and a big roll with 20 red and white fat quarters.
And on the lottery saturday evening I won this lovely roll with 20 romantic fat quarters. Guess who was smiling from ear to ear.

Two Sayings for today:

A fat quarter has fewer calories than chocolate!

Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football.
Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds,
the danger of being trampled to death,
and the ecstasy of the purchase.
~Erma Bombeck