Busy as a bee.....

..that´s how I feel at the moment - as if I did not have enough challenges, sewings for good cause or customer quilts to work on. No, I surely do not have enough or I would not take on and on and on. But you know what: IT IS SO MUCH FUN to do this! I am really happy when I´m sewing, especially when I can share it with others via social media - the comments I get really boost my energy to an unknown level - so thank you to all for your boosting comments, I really appreciate and love them!

See the pictures from the SUGAR BLOCK CLUB April, from the MODERN HST SAMPLER and from the newest addition of challenges, QUILTING WITH CHRISTA (Simple Strips Quilt Along). After this I will get on cutting 200 pcs. lavender sachets, iron them tomorrow and sew´em on Sunday. Monday prepartion for my sewing group on Tuesday........

 

 

Sewing for a good cause - part 2

In February I started a sewing group with asylum seeking women from Irak and Afghanistan. At first we were 7 women and three girls and many children, after seven weekly meetings (two hours in the afternoon) we are now 11 women (one from Syria), 4 four teeanage girls and about 10 children (coloring, playing and running around). There is also one woman from this town that I got infatuated with hexagons (yeaah). It is a very lively sewing circle. Only two women knew how to handle needles and thread, for all others it´s been the first time.

I made little sewing kits (freezer bags with a zipper, just love them now) with paper hexagons, pin needles, a sewing needle, fabric squares and thread. With this first kit we started to make hexagon flowers, first basting, then sewing together, sewing them onto a bigger fabric square, basting again to batting and bottom fabric. They could decide if they wanted to make a mug rug (I sewed the binding onto the front, they hand sewed the binding to the back), or I made a little bags out of the quilted block. 

The first two afternoons we talked with hands and feet as none of them could speak my language nor could I speak theirs. But the words needle, scissors, thread, basting thread are now well in their vocabulary and are often spoken out like mantras.

Those afternoons are immense fun and the feeling I have when driving home is overwhelming. I know that I will not change the world with all its bad vibes and wars through this sewing circles. And I am well aware of the culture clash we experience in those two hours - but it is my small  contribution that I can make into the opposite direction. A small bridge to cross the gap and everybody is welcome to join crossing this bridge. And expressing my admiration for all those people who do voluntary work day and night in this matter.

Here are some pictures from the beginning, I will post more about the progress we make - we are now already into our second sewing kit - again paper half-hexagons, squares, rectangles and triangles to make a pin-cushion (pattern from the book "Easy Patchwork" by Jessica Alexandrakis). 

Sewing for a good cause

My life has definitely picked up some speed since I´m involved in two sewing cases for a good cause. One is sewing little yellow lavender sachets for a non-profit club called TIA, which a colleague of mine founded a couple of months ago. 

TIA stands for "Thanks in advance" and you can check on www.tia-smile.org what it stands for. Sewing those bright yellow smiley bags is mega-fun because is also means meeting new people, all coming to do work for a good cause. 

Everyone is doing a task, one is cutting, one is ironing, me I´m sewing, another one stamps the TIA-logo onto the fabric, one does the filling (ohhhhh, the room smells wonderful with all the lavender), me I´m adding the strips and closing them with one seam. And then there are the TIA-people, distributing them and trying to collect money for this good cause. The costs for the sachets material is completely paid by the people involved in making the bags and will not be taken from the donations - those go 100% to the people in need. 

About the second sewing case I´ll tell you next week about when I have all the pictures of the finished mug-rugs and bags. 

Happy Easter!!

Wish you all sunny and happy Easter with lots of bunnies, chocolates and eggs!

 

Grey T-shirts, grey weather: but not all is grey

Last week my Mum gave me pillow. She made it herself out of an old T-shirt of mine. She used the front with a spring motif and the back of it and I just love this soft "recycled" pillow. She also handed me back the rest of the T-shirt, the sleeves. With them I made some hexagon pin-cushions that I have seen in an edition of "Love Patchwork and Quilting". Happy scrapping!

The magazine came with a package of mini-hexagons. I pinned them onto soft loden and cut them.

I glued the hexies with a tiny spot of Aqua glue marker on to T-shirt srap squares and sewed diagonal lines across the hexagons. But before doing that I put another scrap of fabric beneath it to give the elastic T-shirt fabric better stability.

The sewing lines did not always go exactly accross the points, but the heck, I had so much fun, quilting small pieces without my sewing machine giving me trouble with that. After the quilting I cut them into neat squares, sewed them with a backing fabric (scraps from an old apron), stuffed them with soft fibre balls through a hole that I left open. After stuffing I closed the hole with hand stitches.

I had so much fun making the mini-hexie-pin-cushions that the grey weather outside did not bother me at all, quite the contrary!!

Mountain block for the Modern HST sampler QAL

This one has been the easiest block until now - still, I wonder how this "Mountain" block (done by guest designer Jess from Elven Garden Quilts) fits in with the other ones. And it also means, waiting until the end of this year to find out!

And: although the block was done in less than an hour, I just terribly enjoy sewing with only GREY fabrics! 

 

Sugar Block Club 3.0 - march block "orange peel"

Today I finished the march block "orange peel" for the Sugar Block Club 3.0 with Amy Gibson from http://www.stitcherydickorydock.com/march-in-the-sugar-block-club/.

I hand appliqued the peels instead of zig-zagging them and it took no time at all. After each block, January, February and March I have the same thought: "Well done, but now waiting again for weeks for the next one to come....." That definitely is not easy. It´s not that I do not have any other sewing or quilting projects pending, but......