Merry Christmas!!

As all my friends live far away from me I had some long phone calls during the last few days. One asked me if I have a Christmas Tree. No, I don´t have one, I quit setting up a christmas tree a very long time ago as I rather see the tree in nature than in my living room. I like other people having that tradition, it´s just not one for me. My friend felt sorry for me but with all the christmas decoration around me I really feel content and merry, even without a christmas tree.

To soothe my friends worries I made a christmas tree cushion, started yesterday afternoon, finished it this morning after a nice christmas breakfast with my Mum. It´s made of blue striped men´s shirt scraps (left over from the Mystery Quilt cutting), the back and the zipper is from a size 0 jeans jacket of a friend of mine and the the dark grey loden is also a leftover from a sewing room that does curtains for hotels.

I wish you all the Merriest Christmas with your families, friends and loved ones!

Mystery-Quilt - Surprise Box - Part 3 and 4

A heavenly task for a stormy sunday afternoon: cutting and sewing part 3 and 4 for our Mystery Quilt. See for yourself, can you imagine what will become of it? Me neither, which means waiting for further instructions......

Last minute thank you gifts for Christmas

All my christmas presents are already on its way, christmas cards have been written and posted, almost all is done..... but sometimes there is a last minute thank you gift that I want to give to someone who has unexpectedly been very helpful and supportive. And instead of making just one I always make a couple, in case......

For that I took the day off to make these small give-aways, made myself comfortable with coffee and good music. This year it´s the "Lost on the River, The New Basement Tapes" that I chose for Christmas Music. I am not very fond of the typical christmas music, so every year I select and buy a CD that I am listening to during the weeks until Christmas and after (and should I not find one that I like, I take one or two from the previous years)!

And I love to create something out of jeans-scraps, left-over hexagons and left-over zippers (that a friend of mine didn´t need anymore)!

 

In between

As I was out of basting for my Festival of Trees quilt I finished my birthday-blocks quilt. Last year our group decided that each one of us could wish for a block from the others for his birthday. I chose a crazy log cabin block with green in the middle and all sorts of grey fabrics around it. The only regulation for the block was that it had to be finished with one dark grey stripe that I provided. 

It´s also the first time that quilted a piece completely by machine. I only did straight lines but not without getting all kinds of advice online first - the most helpful one that I got was the one from Jacquie Gering. After reading how to go on with straight line quilting, I really felt confident enough to do it with my little Pfaff sewing machine. Here´s the result!

Thanks to all the members of the Innsbruck group of Quiltirol for their blocks, they were very, very much appreciated! 

I will sell the quilt and donate it to Doctors without Borders. As soon as I have better pictures I will post them (with details and the back).

Halfway done.....

... with my Festival of Trees quilt. I hand-quilted the appliqued pieces, added the yo-yo´s with silver buttons (sewed them on with silver thread, Ophir from Coats) and added the side stripes. After all was said and done I wanted to sandwich it but: I did not have enough basting! That means it has to wait until the bastings here and until then it´s again tea and cookies....

In the (advent) mood....

Only a couple more weeks and it´s Christmas! I´m already in the "advent" mood as we call it here, decorating my appartement, drinking tea and adding one or two cookies, visiting advent markets, hhmmmm, I love that mood - and as for the sewing I am now doing my first Christmas Quilt - a design by Linda Lum Debond, a free download pattern by allpeoplequilt, called "Festival of Trees".

As I am not that bold with colors (yet) I took a light brown-beige fabric instead of the yellow in the pattern and I love it. I did all the appliquéing with fusibel web, it´s like doing a puzzle, adding up all the different cuts until it´s a christmas tree. I will now quilt all the parts, fix the yo-yo´s with a silver or golden button (instead of appliquéing colored circles) before I sew the blocks together, adding the strips in between. Pictures about that to follow next week!

Mystery-Quilt - Surprise Box - Part 1 and 2

Our guild startet a Mystery Quilt project called "Surprise Box", part 1 in October, part 2 now in November. I was really anxious to do this mystery quilt because I´ve been following the one from the Modern Quilt Guild in Minneapolis with great anticipation and was really amazed about the result:

http://www.minneapolismqg.com/2014/11/mmqg-mystery-quilt-along-end.html

So when I received part 1 from our Surprise Box project we had to cut squares out of 2 different fabrics, fabric 1 a background color, fabric 2 either patterend or multi-colored. As I´m always one not to keep in line, I chose 2 different fabrics for fabric 2 as I wanted to use men-shirts that I collected from friends and colleagues. The squares had to be sewn together and then cut up to reveice 96 of these squares:

It is fun to chain-sew squares and it was quickly done but also left the feeling: what now??

Already after the first part of the mystery quilt I realized that such a project is not for impatient people and it was quite a little bit tantalizing to wait for part 2.

Yesterday we got part 2 - we had to sew stripes out of fabric 1 and 2. As my fabric 2 was not 110cm wide I had to scrap them together which did not matter much because in the end I left out the squares with the seams. The next step is to cut 5,75cm rectangles...... 5,75? No problem with the small, squared ruler with the thin, black lines indicating 0,25 / 0,50 and 0,75 cm.

left overs

stripes

cut rectangles with ruler

Then we had to sew the rectangles together, again chain-sewing to get 96 squares like that.

Result of part 1 and 2:

Now it means waiting until mid´December which means it´s like waiting for Santa Claus.......

I´m about to start blogging!

During the next few weeks I will add more and more to my blog, telling about me and my sewing, my quilting and patchwork that I started 3 years ago, showing pictures about it but also adding all the sources of inspiration that I got - I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do, reading all the quilt blogs of all the super-creative people out there, whether it´s their personal blog or a Modern Quilt Guilds´blog!!!

I will keep my blog straight and simple, hoping that it will grow over time into something as enjoyable and inspirational for quilters out there as other blogs are to me. I will add my favourite blog list during the next few day but beware, it will be very, very long.... 

This quilt was a Challenge from our guild called "Dreams and Hexagons" and as I started the quilt in summer, I kept hearing this song "dream a little dream of me" on and on. At the same time I found on one of the blogs that letters and hexagons match very well. So I started drawing all the letters of the alphabet into hexagons, copied them, cut up the paper-hexagons and fabric, hand sewed them over paper. The hand quilting was fun (being done in summer the following year) and finally it became a quilt, 150x200 cm for the guild exhibition. 

The quilt´s title is "Gaps in our dreams" as some of the words are missing in the quilt, as we mostly remember only parts of our dreams the day after.

And as you can see from all my quilts and the ones to come, my favourite color is GREY, no matter if dark, light or shaded, there will always be something grey in my works!