Happy Village, or City rather, quilt

I have now presented my friend with the Happy Village quilt I made for her,  so I can show it here.

Now it is not a village, but a city. I made high rise buildings and billboards instead of quaint houses and cobbled lanes.

I cheated a bit and drew some windows and text with a pen.
The rest is done in the technique taught by Karen Eckmeier. Get her book and enjoy cutting up scraps, building a landscape, covering with tulle and then machine quilting.

WIPW - Conveyor Belt for Wool Embroidery?

I have several things to show for my Work In Progress Wednesday report:

Pile 'em On
More orts have been added to the circular mess. I used my new toy, the Clover Embroidery Threader.

 Then I made another 'flame' of pulled work. The stitch is called Coil Filling Stitch.

(No counting mistakes this time!)

TASTy Beads Galore
TAST #100 Beaded Eastern Stitches were added inside the previously made Beaded Link Chain flower.

New Swedish Wool Embroidery
Last week I told you of the needle keeps I had made based on a pattern in a Swedish craft magazine, Hemslöjd.

It inspired me to make some with Swedish wool embroidery. In fact I am planning to make five of them and marked the outlines in orange thread on a piece of black cashmere. Before cutting up the fabric I will work the embroidery on each needle keep. Is this Conveyor Belt Embroidery?

Front and back of the first one.


New and almost completed Happy Village
I am working on a new Happy Village quilt. The work is fast and fun, and almost completed. As it is a gift I will reveal more once it is no longer in my hands. Anyway, here is a teaser:

The case is, that over a year ago, I was asked to make a quilt for some friends' house warming gift (after they had moved into their new home). What to make for them  has been brewing in my brain ever since, but the actual stitching wasn't started until this week.  I know it has taken a  l-o-n-g  time!
Is this considered a UFO, making a quilt in your head, but actually not starting on the stitching until much later? If yes, I have a lot of UFOs in every nook and cranny of my poor head!

WIPW - Back to work!

Work In Progress Wednesday. I enjoyed the quilt show, but it is nice to have time to work on projects myself again.

Pile 'em On
I began filling in a new 'flame' with Punch Stitch, but have not finished yet. The fabric is slightly uneven in the weave and I made a counting mistake. Just a thread too much here and there and the mistake is glaring you in the face. This has been a lesson in how important it is to have good light and count correctly. Never mind, Pile 'em On is for stress relief and should look 'messy' so it might just fit the bill!

TASTy Beads Galore
It was time for the TAST stitch #103 Beaded Butterfly Chain to be used for a plant.

New and Completed
This is a project I have not reported on before. The reason? It has been deep asleep on the UFO shelf for a long time.
It was started on a 45-minute workshop at Festival Of Quilts in Birmingham in 2013, but there was no time to complete it then, so it went into hibernation.  When I read my friend Tanya's report on how her protégé Yuma-kun had started on just such a quilt I decided it was time to finish mine.

This kind of quilt is called Happy Villages and is an original idea by Karen Eckmeier. It is so easy and great fun to make, I highly recommend getting her book.

This is my happy village:

 It has wetted my appetite for making other, more impressive villages and landscapes, but for now, this UFO is completed!

New and Completed
For my birthday I was given a subscription for this Swedish craft magazine.

It covers a lot of different crafts like woodwork and paper, as well as textile related craft. In this issue there was a pattern for stitched needle cases. I just had to try the pattern right away, and made these two, very simple ones:

I got the taste for making more, and make them more decorative with proper Swedish wool embroidery, maybe a bit of leather or fur, kavelfrans (napped edgings) and braided strings (kumihimo or lucet).

Have you had a good week?