Photo session at the park

I finally got to make pictures of my quilts that I haven´t given away or sold yet. There is a local park in my town called "Europe Park" and we sometimes go there to quilt, sew and knit. 

You can find more detailed pictures of my quilts in the "my quilts" section of my blog. Enjoy!!!

Another summer day is ending today....

...as it has the last two days with rain, thunder and lightning. Whether it´s sunshine or rain, finishing quilt tops is always fun

Another lazy summer day.....

.... no way!! 

Not after having watched Jennys´ tutorial for cathedral windows (Missouri Quilt Star Company)! Jennys´ videos certainly fire me up to try the pattern at once even if 3 other quilts are waiting to be worked on.... what´s another UFO when all is so much fun? And as I swam laps for an hour this morning, sewing the whole day should be justified, no?

Well, sewing is not just sitting at the machine endlessly, I´ve been getting up and down from the chair a hundred times today, cutting the blocks was pure arm muscle exercise and ironing, haah, I certainly sweat off my ice-cream today at the iron board!

Go and check out Jenny´s tutorial, it´s worth watching, believe me. The blocks are really easy to make, you can choose your own size for the squares. The only thing that I advise: cut the inner square (the one you put on top to pull the fabric around) a little big bigger, otherwise they won´t fill out the corners when pulling in the fabric around.

I can´t wait to finish the top as I already have the quilting pattern in my head! Which means another lazy sunday tomorrow......

Summer days.....

...and I´m still working. Although I spend most of my time with quilting my Clamshell quilt, I could not resist cutting up the dyed fabrics to make an autumn quilt! Even if that takes until midnight.....

To continue on a day like this (perfect morning start with Stuart Freeman on FM4 morning show, sewing, ironing, sewing, going out for lunch with my Mum, having a delicious ice-cream dessert afterwards, back home sewing, ironing, sewing), what more can a quilters´heart desire?

Big blocks, easy to sew...

Small blocks for the stems....

I love to trim blocks, don´t know why but having them neat and straight after they are mostly wonky after sewing is a pretty good feeling. Maybe I should think up front before choosing stretchy fabrics.....

And trimming blocks on my "Turntable" is fun too, how have I done that before owning such a helpful tool??

Coincidence or not: when I started trimming my leaf blocks this morning there was a terrible noise from outside, caused by yard-men, trimming all the bushes around, getting rid of big masses of leaves. Lucky they haven´t spotted my leaves!

I love this easy quilt with hand dyed fabrics combined with bigger scraps!!

Summer time.....

....and our creativity is flowing! We added another Quiltirol afternoon to the schedule (normally we have a summer break from July to August and continue in September) but when Annemarie told us about fabric dyeing with all kinds of leaves we were all very happy to meet again and see what´s in store with this technique.

Annemarie had already done a lot of this dyeing with leaves according to the book "Naturdruck mit Pflanzenfarben auf Stoff, authors Brunhilde Scheidmeir, Fritz Jeromin, Andreas Scheidmeir". 

A lot of our members brought all kinds of leaves and branches so the choice was big - it took some time to do the layout, rolling up and "steaming" the fabrics but it was worth for all the fun. The results were surprising, unexpectedly beautiful and very inspiring for what to do next!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will use my samples for a small autumn quilt that I have as a backlog (which I have many) using the design from Michelle Engel Bencsko, Turning Leaves (one of the Make It Sew Projects from Cloud 9 Fabrics).

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!?!