Ups and downs

 All I did during summer was embroider lost and found patterns from the late 70’s. Must remember to take pictures of those later..

Since a week or 2, I finally started quilting again on the Ups and Downs quilt. So named for it has had lots of ups and downs during sewing ánd quilting with a bamboo batting that’s bearding like mad, but I have decided that it is what it is..

Middle part is all done now, so I must decide what to do with the borders next.

Since the weather is very nice for the time of year I also decided to make daily walks. Downloaded an app that keeps track and gives me virtual medals when I reach certain goals like “ you walked 3 times in a row yeey” 😬 At least it makes me go out the door every day; I don’t want an app tell me that I failed LOL

Since I’ve seen my own neighbourhood, I sometimes take the car to go to another city/town to walk there:less boring than same old same old.

And you learn something along the way! This is the only remaining “mount” ( called “redoute”) of 7, with room for a canon and an armed soldier to fight the Belgians if they would come to attack. They never did btw….haha

And a castle in a huge park with not a soul in sight.. 

Now where will I wander tomorrow?

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!!

Summer post..

 Don't know what happened to june ánd july, but I guess i just didn't feel like posting. When summerholiday finally started, I was lazyyyyyyy......!!!
I did, however, quilt and I sewed. Jeej!
For starters, I finished this

 And C got so inspired by Ms Lori Holt, that she drew a tulip herself, waiting for the book "quilty fun"to arrive. Since tulips are my fav flowers (how Dutch..) I made them into another mini.

Then, having loads of time on my hands, I spent quite some time on Pinterest where I found this design here. A radiant broken wheel, right up my alley!!
I had some solids left from Quilting DD's weddingring quilt, so here it is: my own RADIANT broken wheel!

 

I do have a batting for this one, but no backing fabric that suits. But no worries, my suitcase is packed for a trip to Birmingham. Festival of Quilts starts coming thursday and Quilting DD and I booked a flight. DH's are guarding the forts so off we will go!

Art

 C and I sewed a miniquilt the other day and purely by coicendence I managed to press each and every seam in the right direction so I could fan every seam intersection! Now this is what I call pure art...

and no, it is NOT crooked in front, it's just the picture, trust me....

 We both chose a different layout

Mine ofcourse, is the one without the pink :)

Only thing left to do is to figure out how on earth I managed this!

I love holidays!

..because not having to go to work leaves energy for other things:)
Another small quilt/wallhanging quilted and bound: "April flowers bring May flowers" (The idea was a mini mini quilt for spring but..handwork takes forever especially if you enlarge the original pattern so you end up with a substantial piece of cloth LOL)

 I used needleturn applique for the umbrella's the Ami Simms way. You draw the shape on the background fabric (right side) and on the (right side again) desired shape. Pin and use a ladderstitch to sew it on. Just keep track of your lines and it'll turn out great. Also a winner to applique cirkels. I cannot make a full tutorial for Ami wrote a (small) book about it!

 I handquilted "clouds" and lines as rain..

 Glued the umbrella handles. Yes, glued them. It'll fray in time but I'm okay with that.

The pattern for a mini quilt is for free! http://camilleroskelley.typepad.com/MINI%20Raincheck%20PDF.pdf which is a miniquilt without the borders.

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

"Cool"!





It took lots of cutting, trimming and sewing to finish "Hello Handsome".
 
 
 

but today i happily handed it over to it's new owner

DS was pleasantly surprised by the huge skull on the back...

I tried machinequilt the diagonal lines and boy, did I struggle! At one time I even tried to put the quilt and the extensiontable of my machine through the needle!
What I learned is that DH really REALLY needs to make me a proper sewingmachine table. A Husq on the table with an extension will simply not do.
So I have crooked quiltlines, and occasional pleat and some puckers but I also finished bedquilt nr 13.
(perhaps the 13 caused the mishaps..)

BikerSon had no idea I was about to give him a new quilt when I called to ask him to come over.
He thinks "Hello Handsome" is "cool" and will sleep under it tonight and that matters more than wobbly quiltlines.

Note: the pattern idea is from Nancy Downey and I found it in Quilty magazine (without the skulls!)

Quilt S.O.S!

When I visited Biker Son the other day I was shocked to see the state his Skulls and Bones quilt was in. It was not just a case of "bring it over and I'll wash it for you", oh my, no. It was worn and torn. Even the (double) binding was worn in places.
In his defense I must say that he slept under his quilt, and only under his quilt, from the day I finished it, March 2008. Apparantly 6 years of very intense use is enough :)

March 2008



 

I knew he needed a new one and showed him patterns on more than one occasion. He never liked any of them. He's attatched to his Skull quilt and his Skull quilt only.
He won't even let me replace the shredded binding!

Still I decided he needs a new quilt NOW. I picked a pattern, ordered 3 shades of grey and black and got to work.
Measuring, cutting, pressing, trimming, sewing, fanning the seams. Repeat...

I'm halfway there and ran out of fabric. I do hope FabricShack deliveres soon.
Don't worry about the overload of grey. RED will be added. Duh

At last..

It took ages but finally there's something worthy to blog about. I finished a quilt. Whoohoo!!
What took me so long? Well, I've  been reading a TON of books, spent some saturdays at quilting DD''s new house (painting and helping with the big moving in) and i also was heavily involved on the annual ''war on weeds'' in my garden.
Falling down the stairs didn''t help either: I got black and blue and could hardly sit, let alone quilt.
But all that''s past and last saturday i put the last of the quilting stitches in

Yesterday the binding was on....

 I even attached a label, so I can really say that ''Patches 'n Pinwheels' is done!

Too bad it''s cloudy today and you can hardly see any quilting, but I know there''s a lot of stitches there:)

row 2: quarter squares

 

Row 2 of the red and white quilt is all about quarter square triangles aka hourglasses.

This is how I made them:

 

An absolute must-have/best ruler EVER is the Precision Trimmer by Marsha McCloskey. I asked C to bring me one when she went to Florida. Her DH made it his mission to find one at a quiltshow they visited and he brought one home for me as a gift. I love it and it is perfect to trim the oversized blocks for absolute accurate blocks.
The hourglasses came together pretty quick but there is a downside to this way of constructing them. I found that seams of one where not competible with the other. It was a bit of a puzzle to match them in a row with butted seams.
Played around a bit.....

...but decided I liked the 3rth option best. Ofcourse I could have used just squares, but where's the challenge in that? Now I had to conquer bulky seams and fan lots of seam allowances and that was the assigment I gave myself. Besides, the goal is to master triangles.
So, here it is....tadáá row 2

Meanwhile, Husqvarna Sven threw up it's threadcutter (again!) but this time I got it out in time. If the weather isn't too bad (we have snow again..blah)  might take a trip to the sewingmachine dealer tomorrow.  If not, I'll do without and cut the threads myself for a while.

Next row? Browsing through Quilter's Academy volume 3 I think perhaps flying geese:)