Quilted pillows

A very good friend of mine was celebrating her 30th birthday last night. I made her pillows, based on her favourite colors.

The pillows are 20" square, I bought the actual pillow at Ikea, and made the pillowcases to fit.
This is the first one I finished, and look...I quilted a grid!! First time ever! I am pretty excited about that, I love grid quilting, but I could never do it. I did find out, what a difference a walking foot makes. Lol.

The next top is kaleidoscope blocks. I think these are so fun to sew :) And not at all as difficult as they look...
I had some trouble deciding how to quilt this one, but finally figured I might as well just try out the design I really liked -nomatter how intimidating.

So this is what I quilted, the quilting shows up best on the back. The front of each pillow is made like a mini-quilt before I assembled the pillowcase.
This is how the kaleidoscopes look after quilting
The last pillow-front is a snowball-pattern.
These are 20" sq....each snowball is 5"sq....at some late hour I then figured out that meant I would need 25 snowballs....yep! I messed up the math again ;) I really need to decide on layouts at a decent hour!

Here is a picture of all 3 pillows
My friend loves them, and that makes me so happy!

I am incredibly behind on blog-reading. I have over a hundred unread posts in my reader, and I can't wait to come by and see what you have all been up to!

Happy mailbox!

Diana sent me these beauties! A huge piece of purple princesses for Violas quilt! That print is perfect! She loves it to pieces and has asked me non-stop when I am going to sew her quilt! Lol!

The silver-stars are for Asks quilt. The print is beautiful, and it will add some wonderful sparkle to his Rocket Man quilt.

The bag of safety-pins made me LOL :D
A while ago I was sewing a pair of velour sweatpants for Viola -the only kind of pants she will wear- and when I was going to add the elastic to the waistband I couldn't find my safety-pin. I only had ONE safety-pin at the time, and I was really not happy it was lost. So thank you Diana, for sending me some :D

Katy from I'm a Ginger Monkey asked if I needed more scraps to make the stars for Asks quilt, and I have used up a lot (most) of my scraps sewing for the holidays, so I happily accepted her generous offer. And look what she sent me! Thank you Katy! I am so grateful for these, and I am so motivated to sew more stars now!

These are most of the scraps. They are perfect! Beautiful! Only most of them are here because Viola started picking out her favourites right away :)
This is one of her favourites....the pink matryoshkas. I am going to save that to put in a scrappy pillowcase for her :) She will like that.

And this is what she did with all those scraps she picked out....she laid them out on her I SPY and said "Look mom, I am making a quilt for you!"

Is that sweet or what?!

8two8 and a sneak peek

Sarah and LauraJay invited me to be a part of a wonderful quilting bee, 8two8. We are 8 friends and we will make 2 blocks a month for 8 months :)
The ladies in this gruop are all very very talented, so I am very worried about meeting everyones expectations!!

First up is the lovely Katy. She requested log cabins with I SPY centers. The blocks are 15" square, and that is quite a challenge for me. I am not used to working with blocks that large, but I had a lot of fun making these!

These blocks are for February, so I am a little early -can you believe it?! And March is my month!! So I'll be putting on my thinking cap :)

These next pictures are a little preview of another project I have been working on...

I can't show you the whole thing, since it is a present, but after it has found it's new home, I will show you what it is.

I am very happy with it, that's all I can say for now!!

Sew Connected 2 - January

I am taking part in a virtual quilting bee set up by John. It is called sew connected 2 -yes, there is a sew connected....and if you are interested, there may be a sew connected 3!

We each have an assigned month, and first up is Kimmie. She sent out some beautiful purple batiks. I haven't worked with batiks before, so I didn't quite know what block to choose. I finally decided, that if I had to wait until I felt absolutely sure about what to make, Kimmie would NEVER recieve a block from me ;)
So I went with a kaleidoscope-block.

I almost ran out of fabric, so I ended up using some of the fabric I had intended to use for the corners to finish the wedges. And then I had to piece the corners from all the itty-bitty leftovers. Lol!

I love how it turned out though, and so does Kimmie! Yay!

If you want to see the other January-blocks, visit our flickr-group.
They are very very pretty, I think it is so interesting to see, how different these fabrics look depending on the block -and the quilter.

Gimme 5!

The pictures in this post were taken by Viola. She sees me take pictures of my sewing and she wants to take pictures of the things she loves too :) How sweet is that?! And she is pretty good at it too -I'm not exactly objective, I know. Lol.

Anyway, I read an meme my friend LauraJay had done on her blog, and thought it was a fun idea, so I signed up to join. She gets to ask me 5 questions....and here they are:

1-What other languages than English are you fluent in?
My first language is Danish...that's really the only other language I am fluent in :) I know some German, but I am not fluent!

2-How do you manage to find time for yourself with 2 small children, a husband and going to school?
I have the most supportive sweetheart you could possibly imagine! He will come home from work, take the (more often than not, sick) kids off my hands, and tell me to go sew while he cooks dinner. He knows me so well, he knows that's how I unwind.

3-You are a crafty sort of gal. How did you learn to be so crafty?
My parents are very crafty. My mom sews a lot, she sews clothes, and she is very talented! So ever since I can remember, I have been helping her in her sewing-room. Tracing patterns, zig-zagging raw edges etc. And eventually sewing things myself assisted by her. She is a very patient mom :) My dad taught me practical stuff...everything from re-wiring a lamp, to using a hammer/drills etc. So I can fix a lot around the house. SO can Charles, and in our home he usually is the one who fixes things...

4-What do you want to be when you grow up?
I want to be a patent-information-specialist. I study library- and informationscience, and I am very interested in patents-searching. Fun stuff :) I love it!

5-This is my favorite question of all: What makes you happy?
Charles, our children, the life we share, my family.
I was so happy when I saw the joy on the faces of my parents, my sister and Charles when they saw their Christmas-presents.
Also...I am so so happy whenever fellow crafters offer their help and support. I am enjoying blogging so so much, and I have learned so much from all of you! That makes me happy too. To finally have someone to share my love of quilting with!

Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.


OH...can you believe that last photo?! I turn my back for 2 minutes and the little ones have turned everything upside down....Viola wanted me to leave it until Hello Kitty woke up from her nap. Lol!
Luckily, she doesn't need much sleep ;)

Welcome 2009...and Kitty!

Introducing Hello Kitty. She is wearing a fairydress -with wings I might add- and clear glittery plastic heels. This is a picture Viola took this afternoon. She adores her Kitty-doll. My sister took Viola to Build-a-Bear right after Christmas, and this is who they brought home :) Viola loves her so much!

I have made some more stars for Ask's quilt, I still have 26 to go. But once I am sewing, these go together pretty fast. Most of these blue fabrics was given to me by my friend Lisa. Thank you so much Lisa!!! I love them :)

The star-points all come from my scrap-box :)

I have made some crafting-resolutions for 2009:

1: I need to slow down, I need to not make long lists and big plans, but just sew and see how much I get done.

...that being said....

2: I want to sew a quilt for each of the children to put on their new beds (we are planning to get them bunk-beds this year). The quilt I have started for Ask will be for his bed ;)

3: I want to make a block each month for a quilt for me. I want to make them using the fabric-calendar given to me by my very generous friend Anne. Thank you so much, Anne!

I have soooo much more I want to sew in 2009, but trying to honor my first resolution, I am going to end the list here. If I have time, I hope to make so much more!