Up, up!

Last week we ( BikerSon, his GF and me)climbed the medieval St John’s basilica…..

Scaffolding was up because the roof tiles need replacement.

( pic from the internet)

Some photo s were made by me, some ( the really good ones :p) by BikerSon.

Well worth the effort!!

Sidetracked..

 After crocheting the avatar characters, I got another pattern..

Gabby and the kitty cake. I crocheted the kitty 3 times, for each one of the girls, the Gabby doll once. It was too much of a hassle to make 3. Happy it is done!

DH, meanwhile, was/is busy getting  bikes for the 2 eldest. He bought the bikes secondhand and is fixing them up. I do the styling….Bike one ( of 2) is ready.

Since I had the needles and cotton at hand, I made them keychains ( free pattern here https://www.mariskavos.nl/free-cat-amigurumi-pattern/)

After all that was finished I sat drumming my fingers in a “ now what” mood. I had no quiltproject immediately at hand, only a sewingmachine project.

So…..

Crochet project

 At a request of my DD I tackeled an Avatar crochet project. Not the blue creatures from that movie, but air, fire, water and earth benders. My grand ladies watch cartoons I have never heard of and this was one of them.

I watched it while crocheting ( and found it extremely boring LOL) so now I know what the girls are talking about. The middle one has a birthday coming up and she really lóves the cartoon so I decided to make these characters for her as a bd gift.

I made the water bender and her brother

Fire benders

Friends…

And the Avatar himself

The patterns were fiddly and had a number of typos. Not for an absolute beginner, but the designer has loads of very recognisable characters.

Perhaps I will crochet myself a small Freddy Mercury….

Something else….

 The third granny quilt was signed, sealed and delivered. Time to put my It Takes Two red and white in the wall and start with the borders. So I thought…

Quilting DD had another suggestion: middle grandgirl is apparently very fond of a Netflix cartoon called Avatar. Not the blue characters, but another series. Quilting DD found some amigurumi patterns online and could I, would I, but only if I feel like it! 

So C and I went off on a field trip to a nearby huge wool shop to gather the crochet hook I needed (2.75) and some yarn colours I didn’t have.

The amigurumi s are very tiny. This is a leg e.g.

But we’ll get there!

One down, 4 to go!

Meanwhile I celebrated my 67th birthday with an annual visit to a museum. Van Gogh this time. It has been 3 years since I was there and enjoyed it very much.

Another visit to Amsterdam is planned for March 13th. I managed to get a ticket for the big Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum. Looking forward to that one!

What annoyed me, were the “ influencers” flocking the streets of Amsterdam. One couple even tried to block a narrow alley because “ they were doing a reel for insta”  and if everyone could wait for “ let ‘s say 10 minutes” Uhhh: no

Stopping in the middle of the road, bike lanes, etc to make pics, walking around while holding selfie camera/phone and only looking at yourself constantly… that sort of thing 😩

67 is a perfect age to finally turn into a CrankyOldWoman 😠 LOL

Three is a charm!

 Granny Square 3 is sewn, doubled and pinned

Threaded needles

And the first stitches are in!

Got to hurry, youngest granddaughter has a “big” bed now and she’s waiting for her quilt!

Keep calm and quilt on

 I finished the binding of the second Granny Square in the car, while driving to the recipient. Wednesday was granny daycare day and I had just over a meter left to do and just over an hour to do it. 

I got it done with a few minutes to spare. Granddaughter was very pleased with her quilt and after a very active day, I tucked her in with the new asset on her bed.

Next day, or I should say evening, I wondered what to do next. I usually sew by day and quilt in the evenings while watching some serie/movie/film. I took out the Gossip in the garden, but I had no backing that was big enough ( so that’s on a shoppinglist).

While I looked for backing material I came across an almost forgotten project: the Midnight at the Oasis!

It was layered, pinned, all set to go…so why did I abandon that one? First it is not a bedsize  quilt, so it has only a decorative function, same as the Gossip. And however fun and nice to sew, those quilts end on the rack with no immediate need to quilt and finish. 

Upon further inspection I remembered another reason why I put it aside: I was not happy with the quilting I already did. Since I just cannót sit with idle hands, I took a breath, unpicked all the previous stitches and started over

My choice of the day, being a Nordic thriller serie, was not helping. Very suspenseful, but if you don’t speak the language ( Norwegian and Danish) you have to constantly watch instead of watching/ listening.

For today I will add, hopefully, a few more blocks to the third and last Granny Quilt and pick something to watch later, in English….

(Omg, just found that I sewed the Midnight in 2013…… I think, hope,  it is the oldest ufo in my collection. I did find a small box labelled “ ufo’s”. I don’ t want to open it…..

Stitching together again!

 For the very first time since the start of the COVID pandemic, C and I got together Friday afternoon to sew, quilt, chat, gossip and láugh again. I, and I presume C as well, had a lovely time. It had been too long.

C was planning and cutting fabric for her Farmer’s Wife quilt, and I stitched up some blocks for the Granny Square 3.

For comparison I pulled my Farmer’s wife from my bed. C is doing hers with mainly Fasset and Tula fabrics. Mine is completely different and we had trouble to identify my blocks compared to hers. 

Since mine was on the floor anyway, I took some pictures

Still love my signature block!

It took us a while to get going again btw. C didn’t sew or quilt for, I might say years and I haven’t sat behind the machine all summer. It was too hot to do anything. We spent a lot of time gathering our supplies back together. But after today, we will plan more and frequent quilt-get-togethers again. We also made plans for days-out-to-go-to-quiltshops. Looking forward to those too.

Granny Square nr 2 is almost done: the border is halfway done and I’m quilting every evening now. I’ve been told that the little recipient has a duvet that is a little thin, so she’s in need of an extra layer aka gran’s quilt. 

I understood the assignment.

Bringing out the tea towels!

 There are a few moments while hand quilting, that I love best. After your quilt is sewn, layered, pinned or basted…you put your quiltring on, draw the pattern on the fabric and then you put in that first row of stitches….. ahhh pure bliss! I also love the sound of the thread knot `plopping` through the top layer of fabric when you start a new piece of thread and when you finish it. Ofcourse the moment when it`s all finished and you can finally attach a binding.

I`m now in the middle of things, at another `milestone`: putting on the tea towels!! This means that the middle part of the quilt is all done and I can move on to the borders! Yeey!

When you`re doing the borders, you can only put half of your quilt into the quiltring and that simply doesn`t work, hence the towels.

Mine have a waffle structure and the are rectangular, so when folded in half they are fairly long and because of the structure, they are as thick as the quilt itself. Now, how do I use them?

A picture says more than a 1000 words…

(Oops, upside down..)

And you` re ready to quilt!

I will start a little above the corner, so there`s room to attach a label later on. I like to quilt through the label, so it will never get loose and lost.

Ofcourse you can start at any corner you want, but neighbour friend C has this rule; she calls it `quilt psycology`:

When quilting a rectangular quilt, always start at a longer side. Spirits are up, energy flows, yeey borders.

Then you reach a short side, all good. 

After that the second long side: am I done yet, how much more must I do, I`m fed up, this is never ending…

Then: ahhh only one short end to go, I can do this, I`m nearly there, it`s DONE!!!

So, I will start at a long side……:)

Tools of the trade

 I am a hand quilter. I tried doing it by machine, practised, got lessons online and in real life ( which was a very disappointing experience: to many people next to each other, hence no room for your bigger machine table and a teacher that did not know one answer to any question…) After that I stopped trying and sticked to hand quilting. Yes it is painstaking slooooow and it takes forever to finish a quilt, but that`s the way it goes.

Since I`m in the midst of quilting the second Granny Square quilt for granddaughter 2, I thought to share the tools I use.

Thread, obviously: Coats and Clark has been my number one choice from day one. A pair of scissors, a quiltring and 

This ruler. I had it for ages. It is a bigger version of the one everyone uses at school here in e.g. geometry.

Can`t do without! I use it to draw my templates, a patchwork pattern, quilting lines etc.

A somewhat better picture… A Sewline pencil. I have a black one, a white one and this with all of the above.. Used all kinds of chalk pencils, powder but once I saw these, I never turned back. The sorry part of what once was a genuine fabric eraser, erases the pencil lines if needed.

Roxanne needles nr 11 and thimbles. I use a modified sashiko  ring thimble and a `normal` one. Since my finger joints act up every once in a while, I can`t push a needle through the fabric with my fingertip, I push it through with the side of my finger. My hands look like this:

The finger`condom` is to easily grab the little point of the needle easily when there are 4 to 5 stitches on it. I buy a cheap box of latex gloves and cut the fingers of for my quilting needs :)

And last but not least: 

I once picked up a piece of wood in the shed, put my ring on it and drew a cirkel. I cut it out and there you have a wooden board that fits precisely in your ring. Why? When the quilt is in there I slide the board in and I have a sturdy flat surface to draw the quilting lines! 

Now I don`t know if all this makes sense to anyone, but it does to me LOL…