January 07, 2007

Why I am so silent

Today´s Swedish words: sy. Means sew. Tyg. Means fabric. Lapptäcke. Means quilt.

I feel a little silent on this blog at the moment and here you see why. I have been off work for almost three weeks which in turn has given me lots of time for hobbies. And this year it was not my hobby cooking that "won", instead I have spent quite a few days in a sewing frenzy... So today is "Crafty Clivia" and not Cooking Clivia" writing...

I have wanted to try and sew a quilt for years but as a person I am a little impatient so the ordinary patterns didn´t suit me. An attempt to make a quilt out of 2 gazillions tiny fabric squares ended up in an ugly pillow in 2005 and there I was when I learned that my sister-in-law expected a baby. "Sorry little one, I thought. No quilt for you, I will never succeed".

But then I stumbled upon a technique called "stack and slash" and suddenly I saw the light. No counting, no fiddling, quick and easy. You just take six different fabrics, cut them in 30x30 cm squares, pile them on top of each other, cut them off in exactly the same line on all six, mix them and sew back together. Then you pile, cut in another angle, mix and sew again and again until you are satisfied. I made all the squares almost ready in one evening and then all I had to do was finding a good fabric to "bind" it all together, quilt it and here it is! I think it is beautiful, even though the quilt is a little bubbly in the middle. Well, they can cover it up with the baby boy. The photo is a little blurry but I chose fabric in bright, happy colours with frogs and cherries and teddy bears and bubbles on, and the "base" fabric is dark grey with a curly pattern in lighter grey.

So now you know what I have been doing instead of cooking. I am making bags now, but hopefully I will get back to more cooking soon! Combined with a lot of sewing, because it is so much fun and because I really have a lot of fabric to use!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tubli! It looks great, Kristina. I've made some quilted vests but not a quilt. If I do make one, all the squares would have to be different.

Anonymous said...

Clivia you've picked very happy baby colors and what a wonderful pattern! I like it very much. My aunt made quilts for all the grandkids when I was growing up and I really treasure it.
Good job.
Ummm you must be eating something, he, he.

Steve said...

Nice work, but "tjatig" means "tedious". Too much patience required.

Clivia said...

Thank you all, you are too sweet. And I can assure you that this technique is not tedious and it doesn´t require too much patience either...