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)

80 memories of Amsterdam 2

Now this is my result by doing exercise in free motion stipple quilting. With this new Bernina I bought it is such a fun!

80 memories of Amsterdam

I visited the Netherlands for several times mostly on May when everything has this inspiring fresh green and the air is full of the smell of blooming. Amsterdam is so relaxing to stroll through with its wonderful “Grachten”, small channels of water between the rows of houses. There is a beautiful patchwork shop called “Den Haan & Wagenmakers“ which sells fabrics with old Dutch prints of a very high quality. I love them. I brought a little package of scraps with me, just 80 three inch patches, not knowing what I’ll do with.
Now those 80 memories are my project to improve my skills for sewing triangle blocks. I fear I’ll never master perfect triangle piecing.
Since I had not so many Dutch pieces and I liked to get a quilt of 60 x 60 inches I filled the empty spaces with a warm orange and a fresh white (The pic shows only a little part of my quilt).
Next exercise will be to machine quilt it.

Robert Kaufman-Challenge

Surfing through the web last summer I noticed a challenge: ”Life, love and hope” by the Robert Kaufman Company. I tried my luck and sewed a quilt.
The job was to take some of the fabrics of a certain new Kaufman collection and to design and produce a quilt which uses the fabrics in a creative way. Part of the fabric’s proceeds is designated to Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Now this is my result:
As many of the fabrics are of an axial symmetry they were very right for kaleidoscopes. I love the work of Paula Nadelstern and inspired by her I pieced different kaleidoscopes, some with 5, 6, 7, 8 or 12 segments. Paula often uses a very picturesque background, fabrics which are vibrating such as batiks. In contrast to her I chose a solid background. I didn’t want to steal the show from the kaleidoscopes and a solid shows much more of the structure of machine quilting. So I applied the kaleidoscopes on “invisible curved lines”, sewing by hand. The both tallest of them are nearly identical. Only the colors of the fabrics vary. These are placed on the so called “Golden Mean” and perhaps the two symmetric round shapes were a little bit inspired by the Research Foundation ;-).
Ok, finally I quilted the background by machine.
I think cancer always casts a shadow on life. It brings a lot of pain and tears. I know what I’m speaking of because I lost my father this way. But this is life: Although raindrops are falling the beauty of blooming doesn’t go down. You must only perceive it.

These are some pics of my quilt
Here you can see the jury’s decision

http://www.robertkaufman.com/lifelovehope/

Because I am aware that the mentality and taste of American people are very different to European ones I’m exited that my work has been choosen as award winning (where the hell is this little nowhere village Werther again? ;-) )

Strippy Pottholders

Just a little project for a Saturday afternoon to improve my machine quilting skills - my strippy pottholders

Color formula 3

Have you ever tried to have a drink mixed of red vine with lemon? I guess it wouldn’t taste at all. And so are some fabrics we have in our drawers – they don’t fit together well.

But there is a simple trick: Put something in the middle, to create a connection, so put a yummy golden grilled chicken in the middle of your casserole, add your tasty red vine and decorate with sour lemons.

Something is missing? Could be a special sauce made of white cream spiced with nearly black juniper berries, to get the necessary deepness of taste.

I think now there is a wide scale to eliminate colors for a design.

And to make it smoothly I put some silver shimmering green leafs of basil on the top.

Bon appetit!

Leftovers

Inspired by the excellent hints of Bonnie Hunter how to use all your stash I tried the “Hidden Pinwheels” and sewed a few blocks of leftovers of a bed quilt I had given to my mother. (I’m not so in love with all the “brownies”, but in her house those colors fit so well).

I separated the scraps in two halves: lights and darks. And so you can find out a pattern, one block has a darker rhombus, the next a lighter one.

It was a fun using the hints for efficient sewing.

Color formula 2

I often like to use an impressing picture for example of a landscape

and take the most important colors as a guide for my quilt design. Here I could use a very popular color scheme from darkest blue to white

which colors my design like this

I think it's not too bad, but the colors are very pure. May be a good effect (think of Japanese indigo quilts), but could be also a little bit boring. So my second try will be to look for more nuances. In the picture I saw greens and browns too.

This wider range looks livelier.

Well, I like this one better, but best I like to add a very little pinch of exotic spice, means a contrasting color like a warm red in these cool blues.

That will do.

Color formula 1

Choosing and combining colors is for me like cooking. One has to find the right measurement of ingredients and to add a few yummy specials. And the most important is how it is spiced:

Oh, too dull, seems insipid and needs definitely more salt and pepper, perhaps a little bit chilli

But this one has got too much sweetener. Bah, such a toothache ...

For me nature is a perfect guide to find colors with brilliance which aren't garish at all. Just look at a picture of landscape or a flower like this marigold.

This seems to be the right luminosity to me

I found this wonderful example for my "color formula":

Isn't it a beauty? Simply using scraps in easy pieced blocks, but wonderful contrasting colors.
(I found it as an advertisement of a German manufacturer for quilting equipment)

A surprisingly Japanese wedding ring

That’s why I love the Japanese magazines: I get to see Quilts, which show a traditional block such as wedding ring in a completely different way.