Barking..

When the quiltbug bites me, it bites hard. As I was happily quilting my evenings away, I suddenly realized that the Happy Joy quilt I was working on, could be finished in a few weeks. OMG! There would be nothing left to quilt then! I usually sew during the day when I have the time and don't like spending my evenings in my quiltroom too. I already imagined me, drumming my fingers in front of the tv, snapping at everyone.

I rushed to my PHD's (projects half done) to see on which one I made the most progress.

Ah, this one!
Middle part done, small innerborder half done.
Next step; add a dogtooth border.

I spent the entire afternoon struggling with dogteeth. According to the pattern you needed to eyeball a 1/4" seamallowance to stick out on either side of the cut triangle: the blue point in the pic and the red should both be 1/4"

Well, I eyeballed these so called dogears. I measured, fingerpressed a seam and pinned and had a 20% succesrate. So my seams were uneven and when I added the border to the quilt, I missed EVERY SINGLE point. GRRRRR!!!.

Then I made myself a latte, smoked 2 cigarettes (I know...) and saw the light!
What I did was adding a triangle, clip the dogears and added the next triangle. Wrong!
I just had to leave the dogears and use those as a measurement......

...making sure they were both the same height!

Then sew the 2 together.....

and flip the seam in the direction I wanted at the end

Tadaa

Perfection!!!!
Even seam allowances, no stress, no seamripping and a perfect dogstooth border!

For the experienced machine quilter this might be nothing special, for me it was a hallelujah moment :) Dog parts in quilts? Yes I can!

Given up on me :) ?

....Well I almost did! Gave up the blog, that is. Not posting was easy, starting over is another matter. What to say after all those months of silence and no sewing/quilting
No use to update, wouldn't know where to begin. I do want to share one picture of what happened in my quiltroom..

Yes, a bomb exploded there. I tossed everything out, got rid of ancient ufo's, replaced worn out cabinets, repainted and started over. And most important:hiding underneath a pile of  rubbish, dustbunnies and fabricscraps i found my quiltbug! So happy to recover that one!!
So what better way to make a fresh start than to show a finished quilt! The black and white experience aka Houndstooth XXL is finally done.

 In a vain effort to make a sassy pic I tossed it over my bike. Not the best idea. A motorbike always has some oily dirt on it and that doesn't go well with a black and WHITE quilt..

I'm also turning back to the routine of quilting in the evenings, while listening to the  television, so who knows...the HappyJoy quilt might get finished too this summer..

( C just stept in for a cup of coffee saying: "WHAT are you doing??? POSTING??" lol)

A blog post!

The longer you stay away from you blog, the easier it gets. Weeks went by without even opening 'carpe quiltem". I made lots of posts in my head but somehow they never made it to my blog. But now I'm happy to tell the world that i survived the holiday season (hope you are all well too) and that I wás very busy from time to time.

- cleaned out my wardrobe and donated 4 garbage bags full to Goodwill.

-  I knitted 2 cowls and one cabled scarf

-  crocheted 3 pairs of fingerless gloves

-  crocheted 4 amigurumi monsters, 2 ducks, 1 Perry from the Phineas and Ferb cartoons,   1 poo (yes, poop, just because I came across the pattern),1 cupcake and 1 ball. All those for my own amusement. (google for "free amigurumi patterns if you're interested)

- teached C how to crochet her own keychain duck.

- re-painted Biker-Son 's room after he moved out (still busy with that project)

- finished 3 adventure pc games
- getting ready to help moving Baking DD coming weekend to the far south of the country. She's going to study there at the Higher Hotel School.
- sewed zip and handquilted no more than 10". Dustbunnies live in my sewingmachine and quilting supplies

All that's left is dealing with an empty nest syndrome, now all of the offspring is scattered around the country.

Leaves me with one big mystery.......
Why on earth is THIS in my bathroom and more important:
WHOSE are these with only DH and me in the house????

Guess I'm back in blogland. Don't know if it's for long, we'll see how life goes....

November.....

..it's that time of year again!

Please check....

....your settings on Blogger! LOTS of people are set on "no-reply" I cannot answer or react to a comment or email this way. If you don't want to hear from me after commenting or mailing: that's fine by me. If you think: she never answers me back: check if you're on no-reply!!!

The black and white experience part 2

So, where was I?

Join the upper left block to its neighbour, then one block down and joining that to it's neighbour too etc, Then  add blocks from top to bottom, making the horizontal rows.In the end you have the entire quilt chain pieced!

In fact this is taking the art of chainpiecing to the next level. Yeey me!

Breath deep and take the whole bunch to the machine.

Join the rows (muhaha)

 (When that step was taken, days had passed.)
After joining and stitching and struggling the top is done!
Do a happy dance. (no pic, I don't take pics of myself while dancing)
Welcome you neighbour who comes by to say hello and before you know it, she's crawling around your quilttop with bastingthread and needle.
(again, no pic. A pic of 2 women on hands and knees on the livingroomfloor is NOT a pretty sight. Believe me)
Then...tadáááá
(Hmm, apparantly i was so overjoyed that it was done that the pic is upside down)

 Take the layered quilt to the recipient and try it on

If the recipient falls asleep immediately: you did good!

Clean yourself again, clean the machine and vacuum. I never had fabric with so much lint; it drove me nuts.

Take the quilt to the quilter (that'll be me in this case) but that's a story for another post!

Circles and packages

It's not that nothing happened here, it's not having the energy or the time (or whatever) to post. Sometimes you just want to quilt/hang in front of the tv/just surfing the net/read/sleep instead of sharing with the world what you're up to.

This concludes the lame excuses, on to happier things!

I finished my 2day workshopquilt!

 It has it's flaws but it was a good learning piece. Thanks to advices such as clip the seamallowance and pin differently I managed to sew it all together. I even started to piece other round shaped blocks. Bigger and templates without seamallowance. Ánd I found some fabulous designs on the internet for even more round projects, that made me want to get Marti Michell's drunkard's path templates. I'll share all this when the projects are "a bit further developed"
What else did I do? Black and white top is finished! Yeey!! ("black and white experience 2" WILL be posted asap. Got to sort the pics first)
Since I had the idea to MACHINE quilt this one (OMG, that'll be a first one) I headed to the fav quiltshop for advice and thread.

A pic of some Aurifil spools are not interesting, a pic of the paper bag they were put in, IS! *lol*

Aaahh....dots and checks in red and white make me so happy :)

While I'm at it, i might as well show the paper bag (back and front)from a local store where I bought a new battery for my watch.

Daylight saving time ends tonight here so the weekend is prolonged with an hour. Just the time i need to show you the black and white pics tomorrow.... 



Happy birthday Maren!

This cutie, my youngest daughter, is turning 21 today! A very happy birthday Maren and may your birthdaycake be the best one you ever made :)
hugs, your mummy

We interrupt this program....

 C and I signed up for a workshop almost a year ago and last wednesday it was our first lesson. Next session is next week so I had to put the black and white aside to do my homework. Can't show up empty handed, can I??
The workshop is about round shapes and we wanted to master that on the machine.
It involved lots of these...

Colour aka dots..needed that after all the B&W.

 Plastic templates...yuk! So slippery and so invisible in the midst of fabrics that I spent most of the time searching for them.

 I immediately replaced them at home with old fashioned paper on sandpaper!

 Then you had "how do I get these ridiculous amount of pins under the machinefoot????"
It took me so much time that I could have easily sewn 2 by hand in the same period. But....we didn't gave in and persued the mission to master it by MACHINE. Hell yeah!

 Not the accuracy I was aiming for :(

 But with lots of trimming and pressing I finally managed to sew a block.

Next assigment is to sew rather crooked blocks into a straight and accurate top. *sigh*

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!