Meeting and getting to know Nettie here on the blogs created some interesting things: a common project and a trip to Hamburg :-)
We easily came together to work on a swap log cabin project

These are the strips we cut

and here are some of the blocks

In detail

The last one is my favourite, I call it "Hamburger" cause it's made all from fabrics I've got when I visited Nettie

Some red dots

Making a little gift for my brother’s new home to bring with me I sewed this red dotted little cushion. Although all is machine sewed with the new Bernina, the dots look a little bit like hand appliquéd and hand quilted.

80 memories of Amsterdam 3

Long time ago I wrote some news. So much to do and so less time ,-) and I just have a hard time to go through.

But today there are finally some pics of my finished Amsterdam project. The first project I did a lot of effort in machine quilting. Yes, and I think it was worth it...

The border is quilted like pinwheels by stipple quilting

The solid blocks have a quilted wreath, someone called it "Partybread"

Also the white triangles of the pinwheels are quilted while the different colored fabrics stand out. It was a very good exercise to get familiar with the quilting possibilities of my new Bernina. But it also means to have learned one thing makes you more demanding and looking for a new challenge

Another trip to the Netherlands

Last weekend I visited the Netherlands with a friend of mine for some days. There was a very sunny day at the sea – wonderful! And two days more cloudy mixed with a little bit of rain, so we saw Amsterdam, Edam and Hoorn, went for a walk, watched a few DVD’s on our apartment, did some cooking and so on. Visiting Amsterdam I bought a couple of fat quarters of Den Haan & Waagenmakers again. We’ll see which exercise to do they will inspire me this time.

A nice Café in Edam, where we sat down and chat for a while

View from our apartment next to the Ijsselmeer

Cobblestones

Nettie's site shows a very pretty pic of cobblestones. All the soft earthtones in grey inspired me to do a color exercice.

I gave the pic a higher contrast and these are the colors I found ...

... and this is the coloring of a quilt design

Finally finished

My “Hidden Pinwheel” blocks are now sewn together, my project is finished.
The blocks came to lie over an orange solid by chance (there were some left overs of my Amsterdam quilt laying around) and I found it fitting together very well. So I took it for a small border stripe. I added a dark sand solid for a second wider border stripe - so the both are a little bit like a picture frame.
Quilting in the border is very geometrical: zigzag lines sewed with a twin needle. I liked to pick up the diagonal lines in the block and repeat them in the border.

The middle of the quilt has some meander quilting but it wasn’t really worth the effort, because the fabrics don’t show enough of it.
Yesterday it was mother’s day and the quilt found its victim :-)

Thanks again to Bonnie Hunter for inspiration.

Back again

Mother over night - this is my feeling at the moment. My second child, son Jonas, has now lived with his father for about one and a half year. He was there because his college is next to his father’s flat. But there were some difficulties between the both – maybe the age of a 17 year old boy. The situation escalated and so Jonas decided to move and live in my house again.
Some month ago I get used to be more independent and free. Now over night the full responsibility and duties of a mother are back again: My daily rhythm changes. There are vocabularies which will be tested before an exam, must be a horse anywhere which empties my fridge faster than I’m able to fill it, three a.m. I hear giggle and laughter of a cute girl in the sleeping room next to me – boy, will I be strong enough to master my lead?

I hope I’ll get and learn all I need to…

Jonas (17), Ben (4) und Nele (20)