Dare to be different – A finished Quilt

Yay! I finally finshed the scrapbuster swap quilt. It was my first swap ever and the first round was postage stamp blocks. I made a bunch of blocks, send them off across the big ocean…

… and received colourful scrappy blocks from around the world. I wanted the quilt to be big enough to serve as a throw quilt and added more blocks…

But I alwasy felt that the quilt was too busy and lacked a bit of interest and a little special something. And then, two years ago, inspiration came disguised as a book:

I knew how I wanted to use all those scrappy swap blocks. I made several grey elephants out of grey linnen. I made Elmer from more scraps and then I got stuck halfway down the way. I needed a background fabric and I was not sure how to arrange the blocks. Elmer in between colourful rows?

So what did I do? I put the entire project in a box and let it rest for almost two years. Am I the only one?!

Three weeks ago, I finally took it out again and suddenly everything went on smoothly. I made some more blocks, decided on a block layout (KISS: keep it simple and stupid) and made a reversible quilt:

And I won’t even try to diguise how happy I am with the final result. I loooooove this quilt. Both sides of the quilt. And as it is going to be used on our sofa, there is no chance that only one side will be visible.

I love how some scraps bring back memories of quilts I made and there are also squares of Mini Charm Packs that my friend Brigitte brought home from Quilt Market. I also used scraps from her four fabric lines for moda. And I love the thought, that this quilt also represents memories that my fellow swappers have of quilts that THEY made.

Here’s a close up of Elmer. Elmer is not grey like all the other elephants and at first is uncomfortable with his appearance. But by and by he realizes that his personality is not defined by his appearance and that he is happiest when he is himself – without disguise or pretentions.

A lesson I try to teach my two little sons as well: dare to be different!

So I kept the other elephants without details. I didn’t even bother to make them eyes. Only Elmer stands out. I wanted to stress his differentness by enhancing the sameness of the others.

I free motion quilted Orange Peels all over the quilt. I quilted with the patchwork side facing up, using the squares as a natural grid and using a blending grey thread for the “back”. Then I turned the quilt and stitched in the ditch of Elmer’s patchwork. Afterwards I turned the quilt again and quilted only horizontal Orange Peels (or Petals) through the other elephants.

This is a look at the back and top. I love how the Orange Peels turned out - if I do say so myself (: I thought about Dogwood at first but somehow thinking of elephants I rather thought of Orange Peel…

I used those Ann Kelle remix stripes as a binding and my favourite method of attaching the binding: the triple zig zag stitch of my sewing machine.

et voilà:

One last shoot with the patchwork side peeking over…

It is that time of the year again: It’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival again! There’s so much to be seen and so many lovely stories to be read.

This quilt is my entry for this fall. I’d say it is a Group Quilt or Scrappy Quilt.

 

Thank you very much for vising.

Please consider leaving a comment, that way I can hop over to your entry, too!

Happy Quilting everyone and remember: dare to be different!
Christine

Beach Trip and Happy Mail Day

Our week at the beach is already over :o( And the picture below captures the weather quite well. We had lots of clouds, much rain and some occasional sunbeams. However, we really enjoyed ourselves. We spent our week with close friends (we just found out that my friend Birgit and I know each other for 29 years now. I guess we are going to throw a party next year :o))) We already went to Kindergarten together, then to primary and secondary school. We had our kids nearly at the same time and our husbands are cousins - so they know each other even longer... made us realize again how old we are...). 

Together we have 5 kids (all boys) younger than 5 and they didn't care about the bad weather at all.

They collected sea shells....

... and digged little river systems...

... and "spoke" to the sheep on the dike.

  

When the rain was pouring down the whole day long, we went to an indoor playground, 

that featured a complete ship to climb. That day was another great success :o)

Another rainy day was spent in a small museum for kids. It was full of exhibits to touch in order to discover and understand natural laws and physics. Even our youngest was hooked, e.g. by this giant soap-bubble-exhibit.

Another favourite: making "permanent" shadows on a fluorescent wall:

I brought along some handstitching (can you believe that?!) that I worked on while watching our national soccer team playing in the European Football Championship. Who would have thought that I'd enjoy handstitching one day... never say never... :o)

The kids enjoyed being with their friends, playing, many shared meals and some "only during the vacations exceptions" that we (aka the parents) made - like unhealthful meals, staying up late and so on.

We (the parents) enjoyed the time with our friends that we don't see as often as we would like to, chatting about the kids, remembering long gone days, drinking a glass of wine/ beer (or maybe two).

And we (as a family) enjoyed spending 7 days together, with no set time schedule, lots of outdoor activities (though often in the drizzling rain), more daddy-time for the kids than usual and we really soaked up the rare sunbeams as spring and summer have been really rainy around here until now. 

I was quite sad that our family holiday was over but was instantly consoled by a parcel that I found in the mail when returning home: Liz of DandelionDaydreams and I had agreed to privately swap the goodies we made for each other for the Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London. As she was ill, she could not attend eventually and sadly we did not meet "in real life". 

I received a gorgeous pincussion that I had already eyed longingly when she posted the picture on her blog (my only two pincussions are samples that I made in my first sewing lesson - I never took enough time to make a beautiful pincussion - so I'm very happy to own such a gorgeous one now!!!). And she added some dandelion fabric, union jack ribbon and a lovely card. 

Thank you so much, Liz! Your parcel really made my day :o)

Tomorrow I'm going to pick up my sewing machine (that was at the retailer's office for a check-up while we were at the beach). I'm really looking forward to some serious sewing. Not the handstitching kind :o)

And what about you? Any "only during the holidays" exceptions for your kids? Or for yourself?

Happy Sewing!

Christine