Brit Swap - first steps

I have joined in the Brit Swap organized by Lynn and a few other "Mamas". This came about through the newly set-up Brit Quilt flickr group that you can find by clicking on the button to the right of my blog or simply by clicking here.

For this swap we are making a mini quilt for a secret partner somewhere in the range of 12 x 12 to 24 x 24 inches. What is great and thanks goes to the organizers is that everybody had to fill in a questionnaire with likes and dislikes and in addition each participant had to make a flickr mosaic showcasing their favourite and inspirational crafty things. Of course all in aid for the secret partner to get it right because there is nothing worse than receiving a gift that one really doesn't like. Everybody is putting in a lot of work and I think if you do that then you want to try and get it as right as possible and all the preparation of making mosaics and questionnaires really helps. Still a lot of pressure.......

After having brewed on my secret partners likes and dislikes for the best part of two weeks I came up with this design. This is inspired by the "Charlotte Sometimes" quilt from Sarah Fielke which is a quilt I will do one day as it has just the right amount of appliqué for my liking and it is pretty contemporary.  The "Charlotte Sometimes" quilt itself is inspired by a Burgoyne Surrounded quilt which is quite an old traditional quilt pattern but used in a modern way here.

This here is the fabric I am using. Yes you see right there is some batic in it but I think used sparingly it can be rather nice. I am planning to use it for the greenish/blueish circle in the drawing.
The other patterned fabric are all Kaffe Fassett and the base will be this gorgeous, gorgeous piece of rough old linen.

And this here is already the centre piece.

What do you think ?

'Hey Ho Sailor' ready to sail

I love long bank holiday weekends. The weather wasn't great though. The sun came out a bit yesterday afternoon and is actually trying again this morning but on the plus side I was able to guilt free sew and sew and sew. If the sun is out then I need to be out, if the sun is "in" then I like to be in too.

I used the unsteady meteorological situation to finish my 'Hey Ho Sailor' quilt that I started a couple of weeks ago with the Westfalenfabric. It has turned out beautifully and I love everything about it but I think most of all the fantastic back.
The front is made of squares with a border of half square triangles to continue with the nautical theme.

For the back I chose a rather indulgent story line print by 'Fred and Poppy'. This is a 100 % cotton fabric that does look and feel like a soft linen and tells a wonderful seaside story on the selvedge and has lots of shells, kits, fish all manner of seaside "things" printed on the pastel blue . This fabric is printed in England and available at my local quilt shop Tikki. I chose pastel blue and cream to stay within my colour palette. The print is extra wide and happened to actually fit perfectly in the width. I just had to add a little bit of a cream border to fit the length but that is almost invisible as the cream matches perfectly. I am so glad I found the fabric.

I chose a binding from Moda's 'Rural Jardin' range that matches the seaside theme and colours and  has lovely stripes that frame the quilt. I wanted something with red in the binding so it would "pop" a bit. ( I do love binding that pops !).

I quilted just outside the stitch lines following the squares to keep it simple. The quilt isn't heavily quilted but I still used four and a bit bobbin wheels of Gueterman Sulky No 1071 thread.

And here the rundown on size and pattern:

• Quilt size 62.5 inches square (159 cm square)

• Squares for the inside are 5 inches (finished size 4.5). You need 122 squares
• Sashing around the squares is 2.5 inches (finished size 2 inches)
• 72 squares of 4.0 inches (finished size 3.0 inches)  for the HST (half square triangles); 36 each of patterned and solid fabric
• Outer sashing around the HST border is 1.5 inches (finished size 1 inch)

This is a fairly easy pattern but really effective through the HST border.

I am selling this quilt in my ETSY shop.  Sold

Links to previous posts regarding the quilt and fabric can be found here, here and here.

Stash Note 16

My colleagues tend to tease me that I should outsource my quilting. It sort of is a running joke in Finance as these days everything that goes beyond making a cup of tea is outsourced. They of course say this because of the amount of quilts I produce. I do wonder what they are going to say next week when they have seen this image here........

It sort of does scream industrial production but I was rather tired of running out of wadding all the time and although buying a 30 yard roll is expensive in one go, it is a lot more cost effective on the whole.
Still I kind of think I reached another level here..............oh dear. If anyone is as mad (or desperate) as I am you can buy rolls of wadding at Creative grid. This here is Hobbs Heirloom 96 inches, 30 yards, 100 % cotton with scrim. It feels great. I was a little apprehensive at first as I normally use Quilters' Dream but the Hobbs feels just as good.

Now to the normal part of the weekly Stash Note. This here is of course 'Hope Valley' from Denyse Schmidt. I bought it online at Fabricworm a couple of weeks ago. This is such a fantastic collection and I think is my favourite for a grown-up quilt. This will become a quilt one day for me. I just haven't found the perfect pattern yet.

We have a long weekend here in the UK and mine actually started already yesterday as I took the day off.
Happy sewing everybody. Will be back tomorrow with a finished quilt.

Little things from Dr. Seuss

I have been busy creating lots of little and not quite so little things from my Dr. Seuss fabric.
As I already mentioned in my pervious post I find myself unable to keep up making quilts for all the babies being born around me and what's more those who were born last year are now coming up to their first birthday !!! (who would have thought).

So I spend last week making presents and actually giving some of the finished items already as presents to my friends only to ask them back right after they were unwrapped with the excuse that I still needed to take a photos for the blog and flickr.......some eyes were rolled indeed.

So let me show you what I have been up to. Starting with the sligher larger items and working my way town to the tiny bits.

Exhibit No 1 to 4: Dr Seuss placemat

I cut strips of varying sizes from all the individual prints and pieced the fronts together in a more or less random fashion. I made sure that I had some larger pieces with figures on as eye catchers. Two of the mats have a print on the back with my favourite being the yellow one and for the third back I used two of the larger project sheet items that came with the fat quarter bundle. One of the mats is for Lucas and I wrote on the back in ink the date of his first birthday and one of the other will go to my nephew Hauke who will turn 3 next week. The third one will go in my newly created baby/toddler present stash.

Exhibit No. 5 and 6: Baby feeding bibs:

I think bibs are a great present and are so easily done once one gets over the unbelievable mess the terry cloth (or towling as we call it here) makes.

I searched for a template for the bibs but couldn't find the right size anywhere. So I made my own and tested it on my neighbours baby. You can download my own template here if you wish. Just cut both shapes out, join them together with tape and your template is ready. Put the template on your fabric and trace the outline, cut it out with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, then place the cut-out fabric template onto the terry cloth and cut along the outline which leaves you with two bib templates, one fabric and one terry cloth. Place terry cloth and patterned fabric right sides together, sew all around except for a small opening that you use the turn the piece inside out. Then close it by sewing along the edge once. Add some Velcro buttons to the endings. Done !



This one here is the slightly larger size hence why I call it the 'feeding' bib.

 

Exhibit No 7: The baby dribbling bib

I made these first with a template I downloaded from Purl Soho but found that they are a little on the small side for feeding purposes. But they are dead useful for dribbling, teething babies.

  

Exhibit No 8: Baby burp/wash cloth

These I almost like the most as they are so handy.  Same technique as the bibs except that I cut out square shapes randomly. They can be used as wash and/or burp cloth.

Exhibit No 9-10 : Baby mini-or-one-burp-cloth

I know this is a bit silly but when I cut out the baby bibs I was left with the inside of the neck opening from the patterned fabric and terry cloth and thought it a waste to throw it away. So I came up with these mini-one-burp-cloth sillies...... probably not useful at all but cute. Sometimes I just loves silly.

 

Exhibit No 11 : Gift cards

 

Well and when one makes presents one also writes a card. So I used some of the leftovers and glued them onto little coloured cards I can add to the presents. Aren't these cute.

 

And after all that I thought most of my fabric would be gone but look how much is still left of the fat quarter set! I guess a few more placemats then but not for the moment ! I need something grown-up and am already quilting my 'Hey Ho Sailor' quilt.

 Phew......thanks for bearing with me and no I am not apologizing for the amount of images as I am so happy with my little things. You can find even more on my flickr page.

Stash Note 15

This here is Dr. Seuss and I had this fabric a while but didn't really have any bright ideas as to what to do with it.But thankfully I had several brain waives last week. I have a sheer endless number of babies being born around me by family members, friends and colleagues plus babies with 1st birthdays and so on. I sort of think, no actually thought, I could make quilts for each of them but I must admit I have fallen behind. But I still want to gift something handmade so I am producing all sorts of little things for babies and toddlers at the moment and for that nothing is better than Dr. Seuss !

I bought this fabric as a set of fat quarters via this Etsy shop.

Stay tuned.

Advent calendar

Yes you read correctly. I know, I know we are only halfway through Spring and I am talking about x-mas. And the funny thing is I am not even a big Christmas person. I bit more these days though because I have a little 3 year old nephew but generally we keep it low key in the family.

But here is the thing. Last year when I visited my sisters Anja in December for a few trips to a proper Christmas Market (in Bremen) she had put up an Advent calendar for Hauke (her son, my nephew) which was some improvised thing where she put little presents in patterned tissue paper on a string.

It was a poor attempt, no point in talking it sweet. And of course I wasted no time in telling her to which she responded something along the lines that it was me who was the creative in the family who could do something about it. So I offered to sew something much nicer for this year Christmas.

So, my plan is to sew a couple of those little stockings every months so I won't have to do something in a mad rush 3 days before Advent starts. Besides I am channeling here my inner and outer German organisation skills.

I bought some discounted x-mas fabric from last year at my local quilt shop but I have also ordered some new patterns from Michael Miller that will hopefully arrive in the next couple of weeks.

I have made a separate Advent calendar page on the blog where I add images of each new little stocking I make so you can follow my progress. Last night I made two and it really was great fun. I might even make enough for two calendars. I couldn't put both of them together on the rope as I only have one wooden cloth peg at the moment and that is even borrowed from my lovely neighbours. I want to secure the stockings with wooden cloth pegs because then my sister can put the calender high enough so Hauke can't raid it early but she can also take the stockings off easily to give every day one to him so he can find his little present in there. I won't put any numbers on the stocking as I think they are to small and it would clutter the design unnecessarily but might do something with numbers on the pegs. Let's see.
Anyone fancy a tutorial on how to make this Advent calendar ?

Nautical pin cushions

Wordless today....

And the winner is ..........

Drumroll............

more drumroll...

followed by....

No 261 !

who is Paula. I believe Paula is from Lisbon in Portugal and will holiday at home this year owing to the fact that they bought a new house. 

Paula, I will sent you a mail now to confirm. Please respond with your postal address.

I want to thank everybody who joined in. I am so grateful for your support and tried to sent a little note to everybody who commented but inevitable I forgot the odd one as I was a little overwhelmed (in the best possible way)  by the response.

It was really interesting to read all the holiday plans. They varied from staycations to trips to Asia, pre-wedding honeymoons (great idea I think), visiting family, travelling around the US and dreams of travelling with the Orient express (I have that dream too and it will remain one unless I win the lottery) to short trips. The most envious I am of are those of you who are lucky enough to be the  Quilt Market in Salt Lake City. That is the perfect holiday !

Hey Ho Sailor !

Well, that is how I am going to call this new quilt. The Westfalen fabric I used for this quilt (and posted about here) reminds me of clothes that is or was worn by sailors and fisherman. I in fact in North Germany is where you see a lot of it worn by fishermen.

So I keeping singing to myself 'Hey Ho drunken sailor...' all the time but really don't think I can call the quilt something with 'drunken' in it. Mind you, Denyse Schmidt does it with one her patterns.... I'll have a think about it.

Anyway here are the pictures of the finished top. When I started laying it out on my floor this week I wasn't convinced at first as I thought it was to dark somehow but over the last days everyday time I walked past it, it grew on me. So much so that I was amazed when I took the picture earlier at how beautiful it is. Sometimes one needs a bit of disctance to appreciate ones handywork and that is best achieved with a  photo.

Quilting will commence imminently !

Been knitting...

Just a little note to start the weekend. I bought some gorgeous wool in New York at Purl Soho. This shop did take me a little by surprise. I love their Purl Bee blog because it is so inspirational and the shop in Soho is fantastic for wool. I really saw wool there I have never seen elsewhere and that does mean something as I have been knitting since I was little. Not quite as manically as some years ago but I still have something to knit or crochet on all the time.

They also stock fabric but their selection didn't blow me away I must admit. But for wool - they are fantastic.

So bought Tosh Merino from Madeline Tosh to knit a baby blanket for my best friend Leigh's first baby that will arrive in July. The wool is hand dyed and comes in the most sumptuous colours. Here I went for four different greens and turquoise that blend together well. I am simply knitting it purl and blend in slowly each new colour. 

Happy crafty weekend.
PS. I don't forget one more day to enter my spectacular giveaway !!!

Judith

Stash Note No 14

Yes I know that this is the second Stash Note in a week but I am so so excited about this fabric that I cannot wait to show you any longer. Besides I have already cut into it so really need to show you before the quilt top is finished!


This fat quarter here of the most gorgeous blue and white fabric is from Westfalenstoffe.
Westfalenstoffe come from Germany actually but are sold all over. I bought this adorable bundle at the British Distributer of Westfalenstoffe and you can find the online shop here. 

Look at the detail of the pattern. My favourite are the chicken.

I am using this fabric in a new quilt together with other Westfalenfabric that I bought last year at my local shop Tikki Ltd. I already introduced this small fat quater bundle months ago but want to show it again as I  finally found a purpose for it. These  fabrics are actually woven fabrics and look just stunning.

If you are interested in Westfalenstoffe then you can check out there German web page here. Don't worry there is a language button at the top left corner so you can switch to English. I think the UK distributers can order the fabric for you but you can also check out Tikki Ltd.

Springtime

....is finished.

Ha, but  only the quilt and not the season !

Spring is so wonderful this year in the UK. We have the best weather ever and after a little bit of rain on the weekend everything seems to be even more green and sparkly.

This quilt puts a smile on my face every time I look at it. It is so fresh and light (I know I said it before). So here are the pics and a few more details on the pattern etc.

You may remember from previous posts (here, here , here and here)  that I bought a fat quarter set of the entire Tanya Whelan 'Delilah' collection (and I have lots left actually). This is a fabulous and coherent collection in pattern and colour. I tried to ensure that I used the petite flowers on the smaller quilt pieces, i.e. the pinwheels and the 9-patch. I used the larger flowers for the outer brick pattern with the aim to use the versatile fabric pattern to its best potential.

The back is pieced as you can see and I made good use of leftovers and the solids I used on the front. I put a strip of the white on red dots onto the back too as I used this as the binding and wanted to make sure that the binding was offset on the both front and the back.

The finished quilt is 57 x 67 inches (that is 1.45 x 1.70 m) .

Here is a close-up of the binding. I love this choice as it adds a slightly different note to the quilt and in addition frames is perfectly. It just gives it that little something. I really think a quilt is made through its binding. What do you think ?

And of course one has to have a couple of sausage roll pictures in the set.

I used my favourite wadding which is Quilters Dream Select weight (100 % cotton). The quilt was machine quilted in straight lines that emphasis the front pattern. I used Guerterman Sulky 30 in col. 1071.

I am thinking of making a free downloadable pattern from the quilt and I wonder if anyone would be interested ?

This quilt can be found in my Etsy shop.
And lastly a few close-ups of some detail.