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....

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!!

Gifts!

I was a lucky person last week :) C returned from her looooooong holiday in the US and she brought gifts

I do know these a meant for Halloween, but in MHY (my humble opinion) every day is a good day to wear witchy socks.

I also got some rulers I've been wanting to try for HST's (and they're not to be found here!), fun fabrics (love a good polkadot) and a new JoAnns bag. Not that I will ditch the old one; the handles are not totally gone yet.....they are going to last a bit longer..
Thanks C!!

Remember the old iron with the missing plug? A friend came by and gave me one! He restores old motorcycles (among other things..) and likes my love for Featherweights and old irons. He found a vintage plug somewhere among his stuff and thought of me :)
Porcelain and bakelite, just what I wanted.

 I've been dying to see if the iron stills works and...tadaa..it does!

It takes a while to get hot, but it also cools slow. Added the fact that it is extremely heavy: perfect for Farmer's wife blocks with gazillion seams that will not go flat. I'm going to buy vintage-looking electrical cord coming week.

Next, my other neighbour came by and asked me if I was interested in this:

It's an old dustbin, the kind I remembered so well from my childhood. Ofcourse I wanted it!
I also made me think about how little waste my Mum had with a family of 5. Once a week the bin got emptied. A big car came by for the job and the noise was deafening with all those bins lifted up and down.
Now we have huge plastic ones that are emptied every other week and that sometimes wasn't enough with my own family of 5...

Last but not least my Farmer's Wife update:

Again 7 blocks added to the pile!
C wants to sew along too. She'd better get started :)!

Smoke coming out of the machines!



This weekend I had a sewing spree and I made Sven ánd both of the Featherweights work for their money. Baking DD had some requests for starters.

She makes her tea with fresh leaves instead of teabags and uses a French press.

 

 

She needed a cosy. I immedeately showed her pictures of fancy cozy wraps but no...she had her heart set on a simple one.

So....after some measuring and a sample of ugly fabric...

Now, I can do a better pic that that. It looks like a silly hat this way! A bit more effort here please!

 

Ahhhh, much better!

 

Another request was a new shoppingbag. Her fav one was really worn out.

I duplicated that one but..more fancy if I say so myself

 Ikea plastic "fabric" on the outside, gingham inside and shoulder-as well as hand handles, just as Baking DD wanted.

 Next up some bags the Feathers needed to make for themselves. I do NOT trust the case's handles nor latches. After some research online I came across a picture of a bag looking like this:

( I do want to give credit, but cannot find the picture again..)

The bag stays on, latches are free so there's no need to take it of since the case can be opened easily. Extra benefit is that the case itself is protected too, from bumping (me with the hoover e.g. LOL)

The bags are lined with leftover batting and more not that pretty fabric.

I can carry the Feather on my shoulder, ánd in my hand; handles are long ánd short enough. Room for book too :)
Each Feather sewed it's own bag ofcourse...
Sewed some mini quilts/blocks too, but I'll save that for another time!
Time to give the machines some rest (I think I heard Sven panting) and to watch the Moto GP (Go Valentino Rossi!!)

Edit: found the "founder of the bag". You can find her blogpost here .

How jalapeños can dust off a blog.....

The too spicey jalapeños from Dianne triggered a up and down email contact between the two of us and it made me realise that I missed blogging. I blog to make notes to myself about how, why and when I make things, but the interaction with other's IS the icing on the cake!

(It has been so long ago that I logged in to my blog that I actually had to look up my password and struggled a bit before I "got" Blogger again omg...Could be the fact that I'm months older since the last post too. Well over 50 means that every week counts when it concerns sanity and memory)

Ah well, what HAVE I been doing all this time. Nothing much, but I did finish a wallhanging a couple of days ago!
This is the original I found on Pinterest, made by a French Team "L'art Quilt de Seignosse"

 This is mine...shamelessy copied without the appliqued birds.

 I like mine better hahaha..

I also decided to tackle my smudgy,worn, once cream coloured seats in the sitting area of my room. They have washable covers, but after 14 years there were holes and stains that were there to stay.
Again I put my trust in Pinterest for a how to. But making slipcovers is NOT as easy as people tell you. ( "my curvy seat from granddad all new in just an afternoon.." Hell no!) It took me some time and effort to sew new covers and to get rid of all the tiny threads that went everywhere but..tadáááá

Light grey, clean and no holes!

Last project is dressmaking :(. Quilting DD talks me into sewing clothing every once in a while. Now she wants to make a maxidress she saw in a magazine with a twisted detail up front. I understood not a thing reading the how to, the online extra's didn't do it either. So i decided to just DO it and I cut up an old sheet.

Now DD and I can pick a date, buy fabric and get sewing. The sheet dress will go to Baking DD ("for the carnaval mum, when I dress up as a greek goddess" LOL) I will reinforce the seams first since I sewed it with very big stitches. I don't want it to tear completely apart when she wears it going out. That would make a goddes of the wrong sort :)

And last but not least for Dianne: these will give a better bathroom experience than jalapeños

Getting to know the Monster

Here I am, typing away (more like slamming) on the Monster's keyboard (aka the family pc)
Quilting DD called and asked if she should drag sent me to an old people's home, since in my last post I said that I didn't know where to plug my USB stick. She suspected Alzheimer, but I can now tell her that I found it! *lol*
In my defense the following pics!

The Monster is to big to stand anywhere else than on the floor (OMG check how DIRTY the central heating thing is!)                                                                                                                                                     

All the way down is the USB slot. So I have to go down on my knees, butt high up in the air, to plug the USB in. (and again...I really should do some neccesary dusting here..) So it's not so bad I overlooked now is it??

Oké, now that's clear..what did i do lately. Not much I'm afraid! It has been hot and now, even tough temps have dropped for the time being, it's still warm, humid and I feel sticky. Not ideal sewing weather!
I did sew a passportsleeve

Ofcourse Blogger flipped the pic but let's ignore that. I miscalculated a little: the rounded corners take up a bit of space and it would have been better to add 1/2 an inch to the width, but nevertheless: I'm very happy with the outcome :)

Except for some very slow progress on handquilting my Holland Quilt, that's about all I did. Sorry, not enough energy..                                                                                                                                 

In the pursuit of a better bodyshape, C and I try to walk once a week for an hour or so and we often say to eachother that we ought to take pics of our neighbourhood. Well, last week i did, so now you can all see what's there to see practicly in front of our home.

Right in front we have this fishingpond, and when we walk around it and go right there's this

Not hard to imagine that, although my home is (too) small, I love where I live!

Last but not least: How to get my girlfriend to the Prom by Biking DS (and how to keep one's skirt down on the back of a bike by the Girlfriend)