How to make a quilt; the black and white experience part 1

When you really need to make a black and white 'pied de coq" quilt, this is how to do it. At least...it's how I did it. Feel free to comment how to improve my "technique" :)
First step is ORDER FABRIC if the fav quiltshop has no solids..

 Then wait.....and wait some more

meanwhile..you cán do something usefull

One day,you're package will arrive!

Celebrate! and be carefull not to burn holes in the fabric while doing so

I ordered black, red and charcoal. The last one appears to be blue, but it's really not :)
White was already present in my stash and when I ordered I wasn't sure what colours I wanted to use. Obviously I picked B&W..

Prewash! I don't want another laundry disaster thankyouverymuch.
Hang out to dry

 Again, use your time wisely

 Iron when still damp....

And finally you are ready to CUT the fabric. Yeey!

I started with 2" wide strips along the width of the fabric. I wanted to patch-as-you-go so I cut 6 white and 6 black strips for starters.
I pressed the still folded fabric strips carefully, before I ironed them open.
Take 15 minutes to look for the companion angle you know you have somewhere. C brought it with me from her Florida holiday last year. Bonnie Hunter recommended the triangle in her tutorials and I must say it works great. Thanks for the tip Bonnie!

So...cut triangles!

and sew them together, white against black. I snuggled the middle seamd thightly together. Don't know why, it seemed appropriate.

Press the seam ,press it open en this is what you get.

Cut/square it with a PRECISION TRIMMER. This is going to be my fav tool for sure. Recommended by the Hargrave ladies and this time C's DH (!) bought it for me on this year's Florida trip. As a gift! That's 2 times a "yeey" :)

If you don't have one: get one now! I think it's essential for accurate piecing. I was painstakingly precise and still had crooked blocks. With this tool, my blocks were cut exactly square.
If you determined how big your striped blocks turned out, cut black and white squares that same size. My striped ones were 4.5" so i cut a few 4.5"strips and cut those up in 4.5" squares! Patchwork for dummies..
Go to your designwall and stick those blocks on in this order

 ..and watch it grow!

 Before you leave the sewingarea, make sure you clean yourself with a sticky roll. Clean the ironingboard`, the cuttingmat ánd your sewingmachine. Lint and tiny threads were everywhere overhere :(

More progress next time!

Market day!

Yesterday Baking DD and I took our stall on the neighbourhood market:) Weather was GREAT and market got pretty busy in the early afternoon. This was our spot!

 DD sold LOTS of her cupcakes..

 ..and captivated her audience (the seriouslooking girl with the rose in her hair couldn't keep her eyes off DD :)

I too did good and sold some teacozies, an apron, cosmeticbags, grabbags, needlecases etc. Whenever i had a moment I sat down and quilted. Thát triggered a lot of attention. I worked on the Happy Joy quilt and got a lot of compliments. An elderly man in his 80s kept saying how he lóved the colours in my quilts. He said that his younger sister quilted too, but :"she uses such bóring colours" *lol*
 Lots of ladies told me that they made a quilt once or wanted to make one "later"

I also found that some self-proclaimed quilters were NOT the nicest people. I got cross-examined: who teached you, what group do you belong to, what, where how, with whom??????? They don't know me, I don't have a Dear jane, Farmers Wife, SBS and all those other quilts that everyone sews (no offence to those who love these quilts!)and they can't "label" me. Guess they felt "threatened" (????)
One lady was absolutely sure that my quilts were not handpieced and certainly not handquilted. Impossible, she said, "and I know for I am a quilter"

Luckily there were LOTS of very nice people too. Highlight of the day was the 5year old son of the fav quiltshop's owner. Such a cheerfull, happy little guy that came with his mum to buy cupcakes for his birthday. He gave us smiles that lasted the rest of the day! (and i'm not writing this to please his mum!)

..been there, done that..

What's in a name?

My butt was kicked last sunday (thanks Pam) and I tried a tutorial  for a cosmetic bag.
I found this tut a while back but hadn't sewn one yet

 Ofcourse I couldn't stop at one. With the upcoming market in mind I made 3

They are supereasy, quick to make and are fq friendly.
While making these I realized that i have a lot of houndstooth patterns: fabric, a dress, a bag, a watch..! So why not a quilt? I checked some pics online and scribbled on my new drafting block. (hey, I had LIGHT to see tiny lines!!) I think, no I KNOW how to draft the pattern. All I have to do is order some black fabric..
Funny detail is that what's known as "houndstooth"or "dogstooth" is called Pied-de Coq (French for rooster feet) for a bigger pattern and Pied-de-poule (hen's feet) for the smaller. I think I'll go for turkey-feet *lol*

..and then there was LIGHT!

DH's bike is broken and he's struggling to fix it. Bad for him, but very good for me :)
No extra's rides means time for chores.
Today he put my new lightrail up. I had a cheapass rail with bad contacts. Every time I wanted to press or iron something, the lights went out or never went on at all. The drill was: calling DH, he went up a chair, did something with a screwdriver and I had light again....for a few minutes. I once got so frustrated that I took a swing with a ruler at it and smashed a lightbulb.
Yesterday I had enough and went to Ikea

Fillerstrips still have to be placed between the lightspots. DH will do that after I decided if the spots are in the right places. I still need to paint the board to cover the rail of my slidingdoor, but I am not into doing chores (I'm the painter in the house..).

Now I have so much light that I added a new notion to my ironing area

Now all i need is someone to kick my butt to get into my sewingroom and actually SEW instead of being a couchpotatoe

Leiden again

i still promised to post some pics of the Guild's quiltshow. Unfortunately I had my smaller camera with me and obvious need to learn how it works. Lots of pics are a bit blurry, but I'll still post them if I think the quilt is worthwhile. Just squint a little and you'll get the idea :)

..and some more of the church and the town

Can't put anymore pics in one post. Enough is enough!

Fabric Shack

When i came home from Leiden last saturday, there was a package waiting for me. Fabrics I ordered from the Fabric Shack a while back. Designs I thought were nice to sew another apron or some other kitchenstuff.

When I buy online, I have some fav's and Fabric Shack is absolutely one of them. They have a huge selection of fabrics, prices are mostly a bit lower than in other online shops, they deliver within approx. 10 days overseas, shipping rates to my place are $8 for one envelope and they always aswer emails promptly.

What I love about this store is, that they always add something to your order. I got e.g. a pen at christmas, flowerseeds, an inches to cm chart, a strip of velcro etc.

This time I got a tapemeasure and a very handy chart: quiltsizes and how many-what size blocks you need for a twin/crib/queen ...

 It is for Fabric Shack perhaps a tiny (cheap) thing to add these gifts, but I sure appreciate their efforts a lot!
What did i sew? Well...a teacozy!

If you look closely at my pics you can see that it says 2010. *sigh* Another thing that needs to be adjusted. Perhaps i can figure out how while having a cuppa :)

Leiden

 Today quilting DD and i went to the Dutch Guild's quiltshow in Leiden, near the Hague. We didn't have high expectations, since we were spoiled in Birmingham with stunning quilts and LOTS of quiltshops. We looked at every quilt, had coffee, strolled along the shops and..were done in about 2.5 hours. I'll post some pics of the quilts when the show is closed; that'll be later this week.
The show was in an old church...

Great tombstones!

Luckily Leiden is a very nice town ánd it was market day.

So we hit town, got goodies at the market

and had a great day!

Can't show you more pics; blogger won't play along. So let's save that for a next post..