Icky and sticky.

Please tell me that those of you with small children also know this sight:



My children (3 and 5 years old) seem to be unable to use paper napkins. Infact I am afraid that they are unable to use any kind of napkins. Their glasses are frightfully icky and sticky when they are done with their meals. Paper napkins often made the whole “wipe your mouth before you drink” affair worse because they were soon torn into pieces and the prettier paper napkins were kept as treasures instead of using them (o:

Solution: Fabric napkins. I used some light boy-ish prints and backed them with cotton chenille. I was happy to use some of my favourite backyard baby fabrics



I made a whole bunch of them and am delighted to report that they are loved and get lots of use. They even quarrel about their favourites.



Above is my youngest with the enourmous stack of fabric napkins.



And here you can see my favourite fish fabric napkin with our kiddo’s cutlery and cup (btw. how many unbreakable cups did your kids break?!).

Hoping for less icky and sticky meals from here on out (o:
Happy Sewing!
Christine

Modern Mosaic - A Quiet Quilt

My christmas gift for my mother.

You saw the work-in-progress here and it was also part of my Finish-A-Long Q4 List.

She asked for a quilt that matches their new sofa which is dark grey. The walls are beige and brown-beige and I wanted to make a quiet quilt – few colours, no complicated design, just one block to rest your eye upon.

So I took my fabric colour chart along and chose the colours that match the room perfectly. I pieced five mosaic blocks and put them together to one big cross and put it off-centre in a large dark grey space.

I free motion quilted within the white narrow stripes of the cross. Then I quilted some irregularily spaced straight lines in all four directions of the cross. I wanted the cross to “radiate”. The negative space that was left was filled by “cobblestones”: free motion quilted rectangles with rounded corners. I wanted to revisit the design of the mosaic though in a calmer way.

I used a lighter grey thread to let the quilting show a bit better. I did not want to let it blend in completetly with the background as the negative space takes such a great part in this quilt.

I finished the quilt with a beige binding and my favourite triple zig zag stitch.

And here is the picture that inspired me to make this quilt:

I saw this church flag during our summer holidays and wanted to turn the design into a quilt. We passed it several times during strong winds and I never stopped to take a photo. I alwas wanted to but never had my camera ready. Oh how I regret that! On our last day I remembered to take my camera – and there was nearly no wind at all )o: I had to wait several minutes for a gust of wind to take this picture.

Here’s hoping that next time I’ll remember to take photos of inspirations right away instead of waiting… At least they didn’t pull down the flag for good…

Happy Quilting!
Christine

bright-eyed boys

I hope you had a merry and very happy christmas with all your dearest ones.

Our kids were beyond excited. Christkind (the holy Christ child) came on Christmas Eve (as it is usual in most parts of Europe) right after we returned from church. Oh those nervous screams and squeaks and giggles. And their bright eyes! They behaved beautifully and unwrapped their gifts in turns without interrupting each other. They were asked to pay attention when it was someone else’s turn to unwrap a gift and they played along quite nice.

He unwrapped some long black lego sticks and immediately started constructing…

My youngest with his favourite gift: a Lego Duplo Pirates’ Sailing Ship:

And here are some fabric baskets I made for my sister:

There are several other gifts I made for friends that I did not meet yet so the revelation will have to wait some more days.

We had to go back to work today so the christmassy feeling is already gone – but the kids are playing enthusiastically with their new toys. I had managed to get all the laundry done right before christmas so I can now relax a bit while my boys are building knights’ castles…

Oh and did I mention that Christkind (aka my dad) promised to build me a drop-in sewing table?! And my husband consented to remove the giant sofa from my sewing room in the basement – I will have lots of additional sewing space pretty soon!!

Bright-eyed me (o:
Christine

Another quilted patchwork panel project

Confession: I’m addicted to quilted patchwork panel projects. I tried Elizabeth Hartman’s technique once (about 6 weeks ago) and made around 10 projects since (most of them are Santa’s Secrets for some more days…)

Here’s one I made for myself. (Btw. one of those things I want to do next year is to do more “selfish-sewing” – sewing for myself and my family).

When I saw Rachael’s blogpost about her craft book project, I knew I had to make a bath mat for our own bathroom. The bathroom is grey and white and I used red as the only other colour (for towels, paintings, kleenex box covers, etc.).

This is my quilted patchwork panel bath mat:

Once again finished with my favourite triple zig zag stitch:

Thank you very much, Elizabeth, for your great tutorial! I love my new addiction (o:

Happy Quilting everyone.
I hope you’ll all have a joyful christmas time!

Christine

Gift revelation

Some weeks ago I have shown you this quilted panel but could not reveal the completed project.

Infact, I made two of them:

Here they are cut to shape… No more clues needed, I guess (o;

And this is the finished gift: A BBQ Glove for my friend Brigitte made from some scraps and a mini charm pack of COMMA and bound in a dark grey cotton print.

This is the end of my non-official COMMA series – I promise to turn to other projects for some weeks. But I will get back to this fabric line sooner or later – it is my absolute favourite and I can’t wait to get my hand on larger pieces (o:

Hoping to get back to you soon,
all theses christmassy preperations just beat me up…
Christine