Love, respect and tolerance...

... is a matter of the heart, brain and soul - I started this quilt when terrible things happened in France. Since then I often remind MYSELF to love, respect and tolerate more even if my initial feelings tell me differently.

I sent the quilt to Jana from BELLUS in Prague to get it longarm-quilted. I was so excited when she sent me a  picture of the quilt. I´ll attach the binding and the love-respect-tolerance motto too, wait ´til you see the finished quilt!

Nadelwelt Karlsruhe 2015 + workshop with Shizuko Kuroha

Coming home from Nadelwelt Karlsruhe I´m again (like coming back from QuiltCon in Austin) totally inspired, totally confused and totally absorbed in sewing, glueing, patching, matching..... I´d love to do this from 7 to 7 every day!! Well, I did this the last 3 days and it was fun, fun and again fun!

Karlsruhe: an amazing exhibition of quilts and textile arts, some I admired endlessly, some I liked, some amazed me totally and some were just not my cup of tea.

Beautifully modern were the quilts from the MQG Stuttgart Group Heilbronn (a lot of them in my favorite color grey)! 
And the Log Cabin Challenge quilts from the Karlsruher Patchworkgruppe testifies that traditional patterns turned modern is creative excellence!!

I am very sorry that I did not jot down the quilters´names which I should have done - but let the quilts speak for themselves: beautiful, spectacular and traditionally modern!

The quilts that I loved most were the ones from Shizuko Kuroha, a Japanese woman that I really admire. Her 1-day workshop (Log Cabin) was way too short, it should have been a 3-day course. In one day we learned about her ways of patching and quilting and sometimes it was amazing how different her approach to quilting is and how easy it seams once it got explained. Many thanks to her, her assistant and Isolde, the interpreter, as Mrs. Kuroha only spoke Japanese - this day has been a one-in-a-lifetime experience for me.

But you know what: after a few hours listening to Shizuko Kuroha explaining her work, by the afternoon some of us thought we already understood what she was talking about without hearing the interpretation from Isolde......

The woman in the grey kimono is Shizuko Kuroha, the one in black opposite of her is her assistant. The lady behind her with the red Bernina ribbon is Isolde, her interpreter - all three of them very, very nice, kind and devoted to what they were doing.

Shizuko Kuroha explained her way of quilting - it seemed so effortlessly and easy...... but the most amazing thing was her way of basting a quilt so that it does not get any creases, not at the back nor at the front. Seeing this, it seemed so logical....

In the workshop we started the clamshell quilt from her book "Japanese Quilting" called Echo I and Flame. During the workshop we did not get very far and at home I realized that we did not talk about the completion of the quilt.

So I had to check this out myself (having the book on hand was supporting). And this is how far I got after 3 days and the only thing that stopped me today was that I ran out of glue........

We got a bag with fabrics from cut-up kimonos, some very colorful. At first sight you could not believe that with them you could create a beautiful quilt!?!

 

What a laugh.....

I came across the "zipper pouch tutorial" from Jenny, MSQ Company - I loved it right away and got on to search for fabrics, vlies and threads. I did watch the tutorial a couple of times, always one part at a time to get everything right. 

BUT: as always, I am NOT GOOD with measurements, really. So instead of neat, little pouches mine turned out a little bit bigger/higher ...... but you know what: I finally have something to put my scissors and rulers in when I take off to a guild meeting or a workshop as I will next week (instead of using ugly plastic boxes)!!

One is for a give-away, one for scissors, one for rulers and the biggest one is for the sewing machine pedal and cable.

Busy weeks have passed.....

... and I have accomplished sooo much! After my 3-day-trip to Prague (where I visited the Patchworkmeeting) I was so inspired and creatively stimulated that I started right away with a quilt that I had wanted to make since I had that book.

I wrote about  previously, A Quilters Mixology by Angela Pingel - I  love those curves, waves and patterns. But never dared to make it because I haven´t done any curve sewing yet. At QuiltCon in Austin I bought a ruler with Convex and Concave curves so I finally had no excuse not to try!

I love the Medallion Baby Quilt in Angelas´book so that´s the one I chose. There were several things that I had to try out first: pinning the curves completely before sewing but that was too much effort and didn´t turn out well. So I tried with three pins only (the same bad result), in the end I did it without any pins at all and...... it turned out great! I watched a video on Youtube a couple of months ago where a lady did the curve sewing without any pins and to be true, it really was the best way for me, too.

That´s the Medallion Baby Quilt from Angela Pingels´ book.

And here´s my version:

Sunlight streaming across my sewing table

I love to hand-quilt....

 

As the babys´name is Sinah I think the Love Ring pattern is perfect with its´ oriental curves and waves.

Pattern testing for Ellis & Higgs

I was really thrilled when I received an e-mail from Nadra Ridgeway (go check out her blog, Ellis & Higgs) that I can do the SUGAR CANDIES Mini quilt as a pattern testing. So I dove into my scrap box and got all sweet colored fabrics out. I mixed them with a bright green and a soothing grey fabric.

It was a joy to sew the pattern, easy to ready, the images very detailed and clear. And as already mentioned a couple of times: I love chain sewing!!

I have finished this Sugar Candies MINI but until the pattern is released by Nadra you just have to wait a little bit to see it. But I promise: it is super-sweet!!

Spring is in the air.....

....and I can´t wait to get outside.... really?!? With this light in my sewing room I´d rather stay there und sew and sew and sew!! Finish UFOs, start new projects, everything seems to run more easily as if spring is speeding up my work flow!

 

Yesterday I finished the baby quilt for EMILIA. The pattern I got from the MOD BLOCK book from the Missouri Star Quilt Company which we had in the goody bag at QuiltCon in Austin.

It´s the Double Friendship Star pattern, it was very easy to sew and a delight to handquilt.

Happy Easter !!