Swap°pen auf Deutsch 5

Diesen Herbst habe ich mal wieder beim Swap°pen auf Deutsch mitgemacht. Leider schaffe ich es nicht jede Runde und auch dieses Mal war es wieder stressig. Aber wenn man die schönen Produkte sieht und sein Geschenk in der Hand hält, hat sich die Mühe wieder gelohnt!

This Autumn I participated at the German Swap "Swap°pen auf Deutsch" again. I would love to participate each time but that's too much work and it was a bit stressful this time again. However, if you see all these beautiful products and have your present in your hands it was worth the effort!

Meine Partnerin Iris hatte sich was Weihnachtliches gewünscht. Also habe ich die Gelegenheit genutzt ein paar neue Techniken an einem Miniquilt/ Deckchen auszuprobieren: Zunächst habe ich einen "rose star" mit English Paper Piecing gemacht und diesen auf weißen Stoff appliziert. Die Tannenbäume habe ich "frei Hand" improvisiert, und schließlich habe ich das Binding nur 4-lagig nach Susannes Anleitung gemacht.

My partner Iris had asked for something Christmassy. So I took the chance to try out a few new techniques with a miniquilt/ tablecloth: First, I made a "rose star" with English Paper Piecing and applied it to white fabric. I improvised the Christmas Trees"free hand" and made the binding only in 4 layers following Susannes tutorial.

Da Iris so viele niederländische Referenzen in ihrem Fotostream hatte, habe ich ihr noch einen holländischen Frühlingsgruß auf die Rückseite genäht.

Since Iris had so many dutch references in her photostream I put a dutch spring greeting on the back.

So, jetzt zu dem wunderschönen Kissen, das ich erhalten habe: Ich hatte mir ein Kissen gewünscht, das zu meinem ersten Quilt passt und ein geometrischen Muster hat. Die Astrid hat es super hinbekommen!

So, here is finally the beautiful pillow that I got. I had asked for a pillow that would go well with my first quilt and with a geometric pattern. Astrid did a really good job!

Meinem Freund gefällt es auch, besonders weil das Muster so nach "Space Invaders" aussieht ;)

My bh likes it as well, especially since the pattern look like "Space Invaders" ;)

 

Baby Boy Quilt

Diesen Sommer sind liebe Freunde von uns das erste Mal Eltern von einem kleinen Jungen geworden. Ich konnte natürlich nicht widerstehen und habe eine Decke genäht. Eigentlich sollte das erst eine kleine für den Kinderwagen werden, aber dann dachte ich mir, dass das Kind von einer etwas größeren Decke länger etwas haben würde.
Auf Wunsch der Mama ist der Quilt (fast) einfarbig blau geworden. Die meisten Hintergrundstoffe sind Westfalenstoffe (auch die Rückseite), die bunten "Bilder" habe ich als Kollektion im Internet erworben.
Bei diesem Quilt habe ich mir mal etwas mehr Mühe mit dem Quilten gegeben, aber von allen Arbeitsschritten ist das nach wie vor meine Schwäche. Ich bin einfach zu ungeduldig...

This summer dear friends of ours became parents of a little baby boy. I could not resist and made a blanket. First I was planning on a quilt for a stroller, but then I thought that the child might use a larger quilt for a longer time.
The mother wished for a (nearly) monocoloured quilt in blue. Most of the backgroundfabrics are by Westfalenstoffe as well as the backing. I bought the "pictures" as a collection online.
With this quilt I put a bit more effort into the quilting but it remains my weakness in creating a quilt. I'm simply not patient enough....

Trip around the Sea

Endlich habe ich es mal wieder geschafft, einen Quilt fertig zu stellen. Ich habe zwischendurch zwar noch einen gemacht, aber vergessen darüber zu schreiben ;)

Finally I managed to finish another Quilt! I've made another one in between but I forgot to write about it ;)

Ich habe vor allem blaue und türkise Stoffe benutzt: Einige FQ "Salt Water" von Tula Pink, einige FQ "Seascapes" von Deb Strain und ganz viel aus der Restekiste. Eigentlich dachte ich erst, dass die Stoffe nicht besonders harmonisch zusammen sind, aber in der Kombination und durch die starke Mischung des Musters gibt es einen ganz tollen lebendigen Effekt. Vielleicht sollte ich dieses Prinzip für die Zukunft übernehmen.

I chose mainly blue and teal fabrics: Some FQ "Salt Water" by Tula Pink, some FQ "Seascapes" by Deb Strain and lots of fabrics from my scrap bin. At first I was sceptic about the harmony of the fabrics, but in combination and with the strong mixing by the pattern I got a lovely and lively result. Maybe I should keep to this concept in future.

 

Natürlich wurde das Projekt nur fertig, weil der Übergabetermin anstand (ein sehr verspätetes Weihnachtsgeschenk für meinen Onkel). Und dann war die Zeit so knapp und das Wetter so bescheiden, dass ich nicht mehr zu Hause fotographieren konnte. Also musste improvisiert werden:  wir hatten uns zum Frühstücken bei einem großen schwedischen Möbelhaus verabredet, meine Schwester hat mir geholfen, den Quilt hoch zu halten und mein Onkel hat das Foto gemacht - ein richtiges Familienprojekt!

Of course, I only finished this project because the delivery was due (a very late christmas present for my uncle). And then I was running out of time and the sky would not brighten up, so I could not take nice photos at home. Well then, time for improvising: we met at a big swedish furniture place for breakfast, my sister helped to hold up the quilt and my uncle took the photo - a real family project!

Der Vollständigkeit halber sind hier noch ein paar Fotos, die ich zu Hause gemacht habe:

Here are some more photos I took at home for the sake of completeness:

Wenn ich eine Liste machen müsste, was mir an der Herstellung von Quilts am Besten gefällt, dann wäre die Stoffauswahl ganz oben auf der Liste. Deshalb habe ich mehrere Stoffstapel für Quilts bei mir liegen und mehrere halb angefangene Quilts. Das Nähen ist auch ganz schön, da kommt es auf das Muster an. Ich mag es allerdings garnicht, stundenlang auf den Knien herum zu rutschen und mich mit den Sicherheitsnadeln abzuquälen. Spray-Basting ist keine Alternative für mich, weil ich darauf achte nur mit natürlichen Materialien zu nähen. Und deshalb werden die Quilts bei mir lange Zeit nicht fertig ;)

If I had to make a list what I like best about making a quilt then I would put picking the fabrics first. That's why I have several stacks of fabric wating to become a quilt and  also some half-finished quilts. I also enjoy to sew, it depends a bit on the pattern. What I don't like at all is to skid around on my knees for several hours and to struggle with the safety pins. Spray-Basting is no alternative for me because I try to sew with natural products only. And that's why quilts stay unfinished for quite some time with me ;)

Baby Quilt

I finished my first commissioned quilt! Good friends of my sister became parents and she wanted to give them a baby quilt.
For this I took some gorgeous birch fabric and improv pieced around it. This was my first try at improv piecing and I have to say that although I love the result, the process was quite tedious and stretched my patience.

front

back

back close up

front close up

ready to give away

overdue updates

Is it really that long ago that I wrote my last blogpost? Time flies...
I have been busy nonetheless, I just forgot to write about the projects (and to take photos in some cases).
So here we go:
First the projects I finished for Christmas:

A bowtie quilt for my grandparents. My gandma expecially likes how the backing goes with their carpet which summarizes quite well how the orange does not work with the rest. A lesson learned...

I made a weighed pincussion organizer with this tutorial for my mum.

A few days before Christmas I finally finished the top for the sew.quilt.give bee. Jenn was so nice to make it into a quilt and even made a second babyquilt with the spare blocks.
I did not take any photos and accidently deleted her mail with hers, so no photos now.

In February was my grandpa's birthday. To my grandma's regret he is a lover and collector of stamps. I made him a sheath to transport stamps. It looks like a pencil case and I worked along some tutorials on the net. In the end it was quite hard to make because I used a lot of heavy interfacing to make it sturdy and to protect the stamps.

Uh, and there are so many projects in the making and in planning that there will be more news coming!

Work in progress

It's less than a month to Christmas Day and I'm already late with my presents. Thankfully I have had a moment of cleverness and planned only one self made present: a quilt for my grandparents.
Here is a photo of my work in progress:

It will be a bowtie quilt and right now this is my favourite layout. There are still a few blocks to sew to make it a nice size. I'm not quite sure how to proceed though.
Should I sew rows or should I first sew x and o blocks and than sew into rows?
Moreover I have to think of a quilting design. I could do an allover meandering design, but I was thinking to try something new this time. First of all I hope it makes the quilt more special and second I think the orange turned out to be less subdued than expected. So I was thinking to quilt the orange parts in a dense pattern and only to outline the other parts to make them pop out more.
Let's see.

Flower Prism Quilt

Even before I had finished my first quilt I could not resist the temptation to plan the next project (and to procrastinate). Those who know me know of my love for bold and flowery patterns. There are so many beautiful fabrics available, especially reprints of old 30s fabric and new fabric in retro style. So I bought lots of them. A really great way to show of these fabrics is by making large blocks. Squares are too boring so I decided for the beautiful (and free) Patchwork Prism pattern by Anna Maria Horner.Cutting the fabric took ages, but that's the point about procrastinating ;)
Here I made a first layout of the blocks. Sorry for the poor quality, there are so little bright hours now and there's a lot of raining.

If you're interested in this pattern you can find it here and a video with Anna Maria Horner giving tips for the pattern here.

Quilt N°1 - finished!

Finally! I have finished my first Quilt! (And I took a lot of photos of it ;) )

It was a great experience to make a quilt. There are so many steps in the making:

This year I started sewing with a few totes. Then I came across some fabric I liked and bought just for the look of it (the robots in green and blue). I browsed the internet for some more bag tutotials and came across Jessica's blog How About Orange. You know how it goes: I clicked here and there and ended up on Elizabeth's blog Oh, Fransson!. Elizabeth makes modern quilts and is great at explaining techniques. Her modern quilts were a real eye-opener. Here in Germany quilts are not so common and I only knew these that are made with batik fabrics. I admired their craft(wo)manship but I could not imagine me making a quilt like those. With these modern quilts however I felt that they were the perfect creative hobby for me. 

I bought Elizabeth's book "the practical guide to patchwork" and picked the "small plates" pattern. Now I could get started with my favourite part of the project: the choice of fabrics. I started only in blues and greens, added some browns until I came upon Lotta Jansdotter fabrics in beautiful orange. I decided to add orange to the brown stack and found the most beautiful (and most expensive) fabric to complete this stack:  Birch by Ink & Spindle in saffron. For the solid I used some great shot cotton by oakshott (by the way: They changed their online shop so now you can see the prices also in US$ and €).

Remember: this was all around Easter. By the end of June I had finished the blocks and decided for a layout. And then? - Well, for a long time there happened nothing. I had a lot of work to do (the money earning kind), other projects (birthdays!) and I did not quite know how to proceed. If you check the photo where I did the layout you can see, that the squares were no proper squares. That happened because my first (very cheap) sewing machine did neither have a 1/4" foot nor a walking foot and I was not experienced enough to manage anyway. I tried to sew rows but it turned out uneven. Hence I had to use my best friend the seam ripper quite a lot before I could go on.
Moreover I did not want my quilt to be the first piece to have a try at the techniques needed. Hence I made the placemats and baby quilts first - more time gone.
These summer holidays finally gave me the time needed to finish the quilt top and this autumn I managed to quilt and finish it - yeah!!!

It took a lot longer than anticipated by me but it was so much fun! There are already a few more projects in planning (even fabric bought and cut).
Today was glorious weather and I had to grab this opportunity to take a lot of photos of the finished quilt. Beware!

At our "Golden Gate Bridge"

 

With horses

  

The back

Two Baby Quilts

Last Weekend we visited our friends Björn and Sandra with their kids Justus and Iris at their new built house in Wesel. They were really good hosts (as always). We ate way too much pizza and played games until long into the night (as always). Several of our friends have bought or even built houses recently. We liked Björns and Sandras best so far. The proportions and dimensions of the rooms were very thought-out. Moreover the house was built with materials and techniques that it uses only about 70% of the energy a conventionally built house needs.

In contrast to my previous post I like to sew baby quilts as long as I can give them away. I have not written about it yet but I have been queen bee for sew.quilt.give in august. Due to customs duty I have to wait quite a long time for the blocks to arrive. Since patience is not one of my stronger streaks I decided to make baby quilts for Justus and Iris using the same pineapple log cabin block tutorial as for the quilting bee.

I used mostly scraps from other projects. 

Quilt for Iris

Quilt for Justus

I was in a hurry and thus opted for straight line quilting. I like the way it turned out.

Quilting Bee

When I started to look for quilting tutorials on the internet I soon stumbled upon virtual quilting bees. It's such a great idea to work together and meet new people all around the world! If you're interested in quilting bees you can find a very good summary by Elizabeth Hartman here.
I found my first bee over the flickr group mentioned in Elizabeth' post.
It's called sew.quilt.give . As you might guess by the name it's a charity bee. The finished quilts will be given to homeless women with children in a shelter.
Jennifer, who organized this bee, was the first to host a month. She asked for a disappearing nine patch.
These are mine:

Block for girls

Block for boys

They were far more easy than they look. So much fun!
I also finally came around to sew the kitchen curtains I had planned since easter...

Quilt Layout

This week has been really busy at work but now the weather is perfect and a long weekend ahead of us. I probably will spend a lot of time outdoors and keep the sewing for rainy days. Nevertheless I layed out the blocks of Quilt N°1.

 

 It was evening already when I layed out the blocks so the colours turned out a bit dull.

I still haven't made up my mind about the binding. Do you have any suggestions?

Quilt N°1

This is hopefully going to be my first quilt.
Note: This will be a checkerboard design. You cannot see the blocks with white border on the photo.

I'm using one of Elizabeth Hartman's Design from her wonderful book "The Practical Guide to Patchwork" .
Elizabeth Hartman succeeds to explain vividly the techniques used and gives alternative colour options as well. Her book gives me confidence to accomplish my aim.