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??

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..

Small stuff....

 After months of quilting non stop on the weddingquilt, I was done fiddling with fabric and thread. But now I needed to sew something again. Nothing big, no thank you very much, but some small things like a sewingmachine mat e.g.!

 One with a long pincushion, attatched with velcro. When you sort out your mess, you find things you forgot about, like stamps...

 

I put some no-slip stuff underneath in "yuk" green. I found my supply of red when all was done :(

I made it for the Husq....(and sewed a mouse pincushion too, while i was at it. Pattern is from www.figtreequilts.com)

 but the Featherweight fits too

More stamping.....and one has never enough pincushions

 The birdie can be found at rileyblake.com. I think I feel the need to make more of these. Fun to sew, easy and very cute!

 

 

Last but not least: it's Biker Son's birthday today!!!Looking sharp at his big sis' wedding

 

My tiny world

Last week I had, what we call, "autumn break", meaning I had the week off. I had planned a lot of sewing time, but all i did was sleep and take naps inbetween. Guess I was tired :)
Wednesday i told myself to snap out of that routine, wake up and actually DO something.
While searching through Pinterest pages I found the  little world teacup pincushions from Mimi Kirchner and it triggered my pc obsession :)
Here's what i came up with

 With steppingstones..flowers in the garden..

 and for cold nights you need to have some logs for your fireplace..

 Now I have to clean up the mess on my table

..and get ready to start quilting again!                                                                                                       

 I'll probably make more. After the first 2 you'll only get more and more ideas about the next one. How about an island? Or something with blue felt? A pond? C's fav pink and purple? Big flowers instead of trees? Impossible to make just one, or 2, or......

For those who share my current obsession: Mimi Kirchner uses wool balls and covers those with wool fabric or felt. I took small leftover battingstrips (the ones you cut of a quilt before putting the binding on) and rolled them up to a ball, and plain felt I had lying around. Fabric glue to hold tiny pieces in place, came in handy. More info on how to make these "tiny worlds" is to be found at Mimi's website.