Practicing circles

The perfect practice for certain sewing techniques is trying patterns from QuiltCon quilts. One of my alltime-favourites is the "Echo" quilt by Leanne Chaley, a member of the Edmonton MQG. 

I got some red-white fabric to do a "Rep-Challenge" quilt and although I do not like red a lot, the combination with white and some of my dark-grey fabric upgraded my likes for it.

I got the pattern from the QuiltCon Magazine 2015. As my Rep quilt was supposed to be a lot smaller I thought, well, it can´t be a problem to do the circles smaller..... well, again some thinking mistake on my side. Of course it is not a problem, but a lot more difficult to sew and when one fabric is also a little bit "elastic", the result did not get as exact as it should have been. 

But: some of my quilting buddies tell me all the time that inaccurateness is normal during a learning-process and inaccurate pieces of blocks should not be thrown away or hidden, just because they are not as they should be. To be honest, it take some guts to show something you know is inaccurate. I really thought about not handing it in and use it on my kitchen table.... but I keep hearing my quilting buddies voices: mistakes are there to learn what to improve and where to get better. So next time I will make bigger circles with not so stretchy fabrics. 

I love straight line quilting that ends a little bit curved on the bottom part of the quilt. And I love it because my sewing machine doesn´t do free-motion quilting. But that´s ok. Maybe later with another sewing machine.

 

Austrian Quilting Day in Carinthia and exhibition in Friesach

The weekend after our Quilting Day in Styria we visited the Quilting Day in Carinthia, connected with the exhibition of the Carinthian Quilters. Of course, lots and lots of interested people were there, many quilters and friends were met and the Show and Tell pushed my motivation level back to "go and do/sew it".

The first two pictures are from Karin from the quilter group in Graz, the rest are from my camera. Unfortunately the Show and Tell pictures were all unusable because of my camera, I am very sorry for that because Annemarie with her group from Lienz showed some beautiful pieces (one of them my hexagon elephant!).

Some personal quilts, some beauftiful handy-quilted "Amish Quilts", adorable baby quilts turned the cloudy day into a very joyful day. 

 

Hanna Kogler´s "Autodecke"

Turn one quarter of a picture into a mini quilt

My next station will be the Patchwork-Meeting in Prague, see you there?!?

Austrian Quilting Day in Styria

Well, I´m back and believe me, it isn´t/wasn´t easy to get back in but it´s been long overdue. No long explanations or reasons about my long absence, just: happy to be back in the blogging flow!!

Last Saturday we celebrated the Austrian Quilting Day at the Cafe Desperado in St. Michael, Styria. It has been a very exciting day for me, as it was the first AQD for me as the Styrian representative for the Austrian Patchworkgilde. It took a couple of weeks of preparations, mainly for the workshops but also for organizational things. And: the charity quilt STYRIA had to be sewn together, so I could present the top. 

And it´s been a lovely, almost perfect day: beautiful weather, all the ladies from and around Graz, Langenwang, Landl, Leoben and many more places came to be with us, to talk, chat, sew a little, exchange, laugh and marvel about patchwork and quilting. I met some new people and even got some new members for the Austrian Patchworkgilde but what surprised me most was how many quilters there are hidden here in Styria, witout a group, mostly by themselves or with a friend, but continously sewing and quilting and making beautiful things.  

There is a video on YouTube that Johanna´s husband made - see for yourself - I`m loving it!!! 

For all those who had sewn a block for the STYRIA Quilt I prepared a bag (creatively embellished by my mother) with little small thank-you presents like pin-cushions, magazines, books and two of the bags contained fabric-vouchers. Where they came from? Well, I had 3 sponsors who generously donated:

Patchworkstube Gerlinde Fuerstner from Aflenz donated 9 (!) patchwork and quilting books! Gerlinde also presented her fabrics and more at the Cafe Desperado and believe me, she´s been really busy the whole day with all the ladies wanting fabric and more.....

From S.u.C. Stoffe in Leoben I got a voucher for fabrics, thank you so much Susanne and Christoph, the owners of this neat shop where they sell fabrics, sewing accessories and much more - their motto: Sewing with heart and passion! I love their shop because it´s spacey, well sorted and a place to dwell...

And from one of my favourite fabric online shops I also got a fabric-voucher: STOFFKELLER in Vienna, with its owner Sabine Machowitsch - thank you very much for this generous donation! Go check out her fantastique bio-cottons, I just love the color selection and the price of them!

These are some of the goodie bags that were distributed - the STYRIA-block sewers had to draw a fabric-ticket with numbers on them and the bag had orange peel tags with numbers on, too.

  

I prepared 3 little sewing workshops, one was to quilt a little lace fabric and close it around a glas, the second was a easter card with a sewn tullip and the fourth was a pin-cushions with fabrics that were donated very generously from AnnaMaria (very retro, very colorful and fantastic). 

Some ladies enjoyed sewing on the spot but most of them took the kits home and preferred watching and chatting!

Everyone loves the "Show and Tell" at the AQD, and the applause for all those beautiful and absolutely creative quilts and handicrafts the ladies were presenting is always encouraging and motivating.

Johanna´s pillows

her brownie bag

I love her grey-blue-green table topper

small and geometric

Baby alphabet

a quilt for a group members´"round" birthday this year

Berta´s table toppers, all in spring colors

 

Herta´s little bags with cork-like material

Theresa´s bags - perfectly sewn

Theresa´s T-Shirt quilt

 

No, it is not Traudl - it is Christa, her twin sister with her beautiful quilts

Luise´s quilts

fantastique wind wheels

Christine´s wheels in motion

Mum´s first wall quilt

blue baby quilt

and last but not least: the STYRIA quilt top - to be continued with quilting and binding

All in all it has been a wonderful and enjoyable day, meeting with all the lovely ladies and some very patient husbands - thank you all for coming and making it a success - I hope to see you all and more next year!