A little more than a year ago, I signed up for DesignMatters Creative Quiltmaking course. About a week ago I finnished, and now I have City & Guilds Level 2 Certificate in Creative Techniques – Textiles. My last quilt was an appliqué I called «Leidangen». It is inspired by our Viking boats Oseberg and Gokstad.

and on the bottom I quilted a «Leidang» which means «fleet of conscripted warships».  These are from a carving found when they excavated the Medieval Bryggen  here in Bergen, after the great fire in 1955.

Well, it has been a very busy year, and just now, I feel a bit empty. Christmas is approaching and now I will concentrate on that. And after Christmas, I have a deadline for the Norsk Quilteforbund’s annual competition, on February 1st.

My brother and his wife are moving, and they gave me this spinning wheel. I have to put it together, but I have all the part so it should not be a problem. It has been my grandmother’s.

Please forgive me, I know it’s been long since last entry. Since then we have had another meeting in my tablet-weaving-group. This time we focused on Egyptian Diagonal, easy and difficult at the same time. You really has to stay focused on the turning of the tablets. And if you change the direction on some of the tablets, the result can be like this:

At last the summer has arrived to Bergen, so yesterday, I had chance to do some Indigo-dying. Here is the vat ready for use:

silk, linen, cotton and some thread ready to be put in:

And here are the result, sprerad all over my garden. I was prepared to have blue grass afterwords, but it is still green. Lucky me…

Well, at last I’m posting something… This spring has been extremely busy for me. At the end of March I got my second grandchild, a lovely girl named Sigrid, and I went to my daughter to help a bit in these first weeks. Also I have the Creative Quilting Course I’m taking, and my job.. So I have not had much time left for this kind of computerwork.
But I have been able to squeeze in a bit of Tablet Weaving. Together with some ladies here in Bergen, we are exploring the world of Tablet Weaving, trying out different patterns and techniques. Last time, I started this ribbon, in wool:

A little bit dark perhaps, it was late night when I took the photograph. And I only have my cell phone, because I’ve left my camera at my daughters house in Tønsberg. I’m really looking forvard to get it back, because although the camera in my cell phone has 5 megapixels, it is not good in close-ups. I really miss the macro-function on my old digital camera.

Earlier this year, I dyed some fabrics and embrodery thread. One of these pieces, I made a little sample of, also using Shiva Paintsticks to stencill on some flowers. Then I quilted the piece, and finished with a lot of french knots. My embrodery-thread was in the same dye-bath as the fabric. I decided to try a softer batting, and that was a disaster. Almost impossible to freehandquilt. But it ended as a nice little quilt though, ever with the uneven quilting. And at last I managed to get a picture of it.

At last, we have summer. May and June have been rather cold. My plants don’t mind, they are used to it, but I would prefer it to be a little warmer. But the last two days, have been wonderful with temperature around 19 degrees. Yesterday we woke up finding a guest in our back yard. A young red dear was grazing and not minding us as long as we stayed indoors: