Stitching together again!

 For the very first time since the start of the COVID pandemic, C and I got together Friday afternoon to sew, quilt, chat, gossip and láugh again. I, and I presume C as well, had a lovely time. It had been too long.

C was planning and cutting fabric for her Farmer’s Wife quilt, and I stitched up some blocks for the Granny Square 3.

For comparison I pulled my Farmer’s wife from my bed. C is doing hers with mainly Fasset and Tula fabrics. Mine is completely different and we had trouble to identify my blocks compared to hers. 

Since mine was on the floor anyway, I took some pictures

Still love my signature block!

It took us a while to get going again btw. C didn’t sew or quilt for, I might say years and I haven’t sat behind the machine all summer. It was too hot to do anything. We spent a lot of time gathering our supplies back together. But after today, we will plan more and frequent quilt-get-togethers again. We also made plans for days-out-to-go-to-quiltshops. Looking forward to those too.

Granny Square nr 2 is almost done: the border is halfway done and I’m quilting every evening now. I’ve been told that the little recipient has a duvet that is a little thin, so she’s in need of an extra layer aka gran’s quilt. 

I understood the assignment.

Check!

Not much of summer here. Still rainy and an occasional patch of sunshine.
So.....I cleaned up the garden when it was dry, cleaned the kitchen (overdue) and tidied my wardrobe.
Then there was no reason left to procastnate (ah well, 2 computergames..and a book to finish) ,all chores checked of my list...

The Farmer's Wife! Still not quite sure, but I ran out of options. The white with red dots? Not enough fabric:( Red with white dots? Same story....
So....with most votes of family and friends

 CHECKS!!

Note my "A" in the bottom right corner :)

After struggling with massive pieces of fabric and batting ,Thunderbird C came to the rescue and helped layering and pinning.

And now it can be quilted which, probably, will take forever to do...

Tomorrow i'll make a start; gran daycare duties to perform, so after cuddling and playing CutyPie will need to sleep and gran can quilt.

It has been ages since I actually quilted, so it took some time to gather the supplies. Sorted and cleaned the quiltroom while I was searching for threads and thimbles.

But: I'm ready to roll now!!

Where was I..?

Too long since the last blogpost, so time to catch up!
2 Weeks ago, Quilting DD, Sil and I went to the big Jheronimus Bosch exhibition. This medieval painter lived and worked in 's-Hertogenbosch and most of his still existing painting were to be seen at the local museum. Granddaughter was left in the capable hands of her opa....
My absolute fave was "the haystack"

....but all the paintings were absolutely worth while! Colour, lots of details and they all looked as if they were painted yesterday.

One week later I had another opportunity to cuddle CutyPie, when C and I picked Quilting DD up to go to a Quiltmarket/exhibition!

These are the only pics I took (and yep, 2 are sideways...)
We had a nice day; it had been too long since the 3 of us went out together!

And where was I quiltwise?
All one hundred and eleven Farmer'sWife blocks are DONE! Again it turned out a little brighter than I intended, guess i just can't seem to tone things down....( it is brighter in real life!)

 The authore repeated herself 2 times:

 Funny, since she specificly states, that she didn't "want to play favorites" (when she came a block short after putting the blocks on point) "so I added another block"
Nope, you didn't :)

I made only one and instead of the number 2, I made an Ohio Star, since that was the very first block I ever pieced

And the other duplicate I replaced with a signature block....sort of

Blocks with a slight variation that I didn't mind:

 

These 3 are quite the same if you take a closer look:)

 So now the task of (hand)sewing them all together starts and it will take as much time as sewing the blocks, I guess....

Sewing up a storm...

There was smoke coming out of Sven when the sewing bug hit me at high speed last week.
I started with the 365 challenge project and made good progress, although I'm going to re-sew some. The technique  hidden squares and I were not competable. But with 4 blocks and the centerpart behind, I can safely say that I will get there (cough)

 After struggling with pesky little pieces I took some Pinterest time and found big bold letters! Ah, how nice to cut something beyond 1"!!
I first found a "C" and used up the only Fasset fabric I had left. Everytime I made something for C it has been this fabric, so now I need to get me a new Fasset fq:)

Then I got on a hunt for an "A" and made another mini

Backings that match personalities too....

Later on I decided that cuty pie granddaughter was in need of a grabbal. She loves contrasting colours so that's right up my alley

Finishing touch: a handmade label

 I brought it over myself since I had an extra day off aka cuddle time with oma again!

Last but not least: only a few more blocks to do and all of the 111 Farmer's wife blocks are on my wall. I need to draw/design 2 blocks myself since the author repeated herself twice and i want them ALL to be unique

Next on the list is some de-cluttering in my sewingroom......bleeeh....

On track and way behind

Last week I made my granddaughter a quilt. I hadn't done so because DD wanted to use a blanket instead of a quilt. But it felt odd! After all; this gran is about quilts:) Plusses because grandbaby IS a big plus and when you tilt your head a little, they become xxxxx: kisses!!

So big kisses from "oma" as grannny's are called in Dutch.

The back is a lovely fabric from Inkalily, I picked the cycling animals...

 

 

 

 

Since one can only sew one thing at the time, I'm waaaaaaay behind with the 365 challenge project.

Hopefully I find time to catch up soon.

On the bright side: I'm right on track with the Farmer's Wife!

"only" 16 more blocks to go before the painstaking process of putting it all together can begin.

 

I have a new addition in my sewingroom....a sleepover bed for cutypie.

 She came to visit oma with her parents last sunday and will come again next saturday.

The flannel cloth with the blue trim is 70 years old and handmade by my mum, when she was pregnant with her first. Still soft so her great grandchild can safely rest her head:)

Will MY great grandchild sleep under one of my quilts in 70 years time? I'd like to think so!

 

I cleaned my sewingtable to make room for a changingmat. When the little one was freed from her diaper however, she did what she had to do with such enthousiasm, that she almost hit the FW on the designwall ...LOL! But when your bum is as cute as hers, oma doesn't mind at all!!

let's waste some time

Yesterday. winter finally came with temperatures below 0. With no better things to do, I decided to put my Farmer's Wife blocks in the 'correct" order on the wall. That is: like they are placed in the book. I was sure the author must have had a certain brilliant master plan, placing the blocks as she did. Perhaps dividing big and small patterns evenly e.g.??

 First thing I noticed was that I was NOT as far as I thought I was. Putting the blocks close together like in pic 2 gave me the idea I had " much more quilt" ! Look at all those gaps!
Furthermore it turned out that with the "right"placement, I had clusters of houndstooth....

 blobs of blue and green

 and too much of the same background fabric in one place

 After thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that the author had no plan AT ALL. She just pieced blocks and distributed the colours she used, evenly across her designwall (or so...) like I'm going to do now. Spread out the houndstooth. divide all the reds evenly and avoid green blobs.
All in all it took me hours to mark the blocks with their "correct number", placing them where they "should" be and waiting for an epiphany to see the Plan.
Pffff I could have sewn a block or two!

Then i decided to get Sven the Husqvarna started to try some machine quilting. I've signed up for a lesson or 2  in machinequilting and had some homework to do. I picked up the machine manual to read about the settings and to my surprise it said in capitals: WEAR SAFETYGOGGLES (?????)
Can you see it? Sewing in full protective gear? I did!

Safety first *LOL*!

And since it was getting really cold outside, I then dug another pincushion out of the cupboard. Yep: winter! The cup decor is really Dutch and freely translated it's something like "farmer's bright".
Okay, let's do block 65 of the FW quilt!

 

How was your sunday??

2016

Yeey! I made it into 2016:).... I have been a bit under the weather, hence the silent blog. My heart skipped a beat and then raced to make up for that. When you call your doctor and say you have 'pain in the chest area" everyone kind of panicks. Tests were done, pills subscribed and that was that. All done and it seems my heartbeat is a bit faster than what's considered "normal".

Since i had to keep a low profile for a while, I had some time to think. About blogging eg. Stop, keep going, write in Dutch?? Facebook seems to be the new blogging and instagram the new facebook these days. I like neither. So I've decided to keep on blogging every once in a while and perhaps switch to Dutch but for now; same old, same old.

I sewed too. Not much (i slept mostly..) but the Farmer's Wife is growing slowly but surely

 This isn't the final layout. I just smacked all the blocks onto the wall just to see what I got so far.
I also have a new friend: meet Epson, the printer. The old one was way past his time!

It's on my fabric cabinet. Do i want it there? Nope. Does it need to be there? Yep! I'm done with going upstairs to put it on and then again to get the print.
The Epson has 'airprint', to print directly from my Ipad and since I took over Quilting DD s iphone 5, I'm all up to date and into 2016 :)

Speaking of DD: grandchild 1 is expected in a week or so. The Iphone is fully charged and in the vicinity all the time now. You'll never know when that phonecall is coming!!

Old school..

Hmm, 3 sundays in a row with a blogpost; i'm beginning to see a pattern here...Ah well, better than blogsilence!
I got a question by email about how I handsew the Farmer's Wife blocks. I do them old school.
Print the templates, glue them on sandpaper and cut them out. I then draw each and every patch that is required for a particular block and cut them out. Not with a rotarycutter but with scissors.

 Oh, I also punch a hole in the template where lines connect, mark those points and connect the dots to get my excact sewing line.
Minimal waste, very timeconsuming and very relaxing...

The best part? All the corners match,

 each and every

 time, again and again...

This weeks update:

 and the last, the farmer's puzzle block that I tweaked a bit. it looked like a swastika and I didn't want that. It was ugly.

Another conversation I had:
"why do you have so many pincushions?"
-because I love making them, they're cute, quick to make and usefull-
"but you need only one"
-???-
"wait, what?  you change your cushion with seasons???"
-uh, yep-
"you're weird...."

So this week I went from summer

 to fall...

I'm weird..