Quilts for brothers (1)

When our friends moved away, I made quilts for their boys as a special memory to take with them, to remember us from time to time. The boys used to share one bedroom so I wanted to make similar quilts, matching in colour but not strictly in design.

I chose low volume grey and white-ish prints and accent fabrics in blue, green, dark grey and turquoise and started sewing 4 strips together. Out came my 90° ruler and I cut striped triangles from each 4-strip-set.

 

Then the fun pain of trying out different layouts began... I opted for a giant arrow, diagonal rows, chevrons and diamonds. Which one do you like best?!

 

 

Once I decided on the design (Diamonds, because it matched my choise for his brother's quilt best), I started sewing the blocks together. Trying to match those points and cursing when the bulky seams made things difficult...

 

I only quilted within the light strips with a light grey aurifil thread and tried out different fmq designs...

 

(oups, can you see how I kept myself going while struggling with the quilt...? What is you prefered beverage during fmq sessions?)

 

I tried waves...

... and leaves...

... and triple loop-de-loops...

... and feathers.

 

I added his name and used a scrappy low-volume binding, finished off with a triple-zig-zag-stitch.

 

 

And here it is... the first of the two quilts for brothers...

 

I'll be back with the second one shortly...

Happy quilting
Christine

 

 

Optimism – A finished Quilt

If you have been following my blog for the last few weeks, you know that I had a hard time at my real-life-job recently. Fate had struck my dear colleague with a nasty blow. He was absent several weeks and will have to undergo medical treatment for some weeks.

To cheer him and his family up, I made him a quilt. A Plus Quilt has been on my to-sew-list for quite some time now and I think this was the right occasion to make one. I associate many positive meanings to plusses – and that’s what it was all about: to send positive vibes and thoughts to my colleague and his wife.

Amazingly, I pulled all these grey, green, white and black fabrics from my stash (mostly comma and curious nature with some architexture and backyard baby mixed in). As I was in a hurry to get the quilt finished, I used rectangles and squares to speed up the piecing.

I meant to use one solid piece of fabric for the backing but discovered too late, that the intended piece was too small. I ended up piecing the backing and I am glad I did. IMHO I think it looks splendid.

Here’s to my new sewing machine! I managed to quilt straight lines without any problems. Thanks to the adjustable foot pressure of my new machine. I quilted two vertical lines and one horizontal line…

… and bound the quilt with my favourite COMMA. I attached it with my sewing machine, using my usual zigzag stitch.

I really love this rather manly quilt and am happy to report that my colleague wrote me a super-nice-thank-you-note stating that he loves the quilt and that his wife wants to learn how to sew now (o:

Thanks for visiting!
Christine

Samples for London

Good news. The nametag is done and ready to be send out tomorrow. I’ll post photos once it arrived at my partner.

And the samples are washed and dryed (I had to rinse out the marks that helped me keep the quilting even).

Here’s a detail of the Dogwood Quilting.

The fabrics are a pure linnen and my favourite fabric line ever: COMMA. In grey, black, white and green. I just hope my swap partners will like those baskets.

Tomorrow I’ll have a day off, the kids will stay at home (or go to the cinema) with my husband and I’ll head to our Modern Quilt Guild Sew-in. All day long. Yay!

Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Christine

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One year in blogland–a giveaway

Last year, on May 18th, I started blogging. Even if it soaks up much of my sewing time, I have never regretted that decision.

This last year brought some great changes.

• I visited the Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat in London.
• Brigitte and I founded Modern Quilt Guild Bielefeld.
• Our MQG is slowly growing and our meetings (twice per month) are very inspiring.
• I entered an Online Bee (Sew-Euro—bee-an) and the list of blogs that I follow gets longer and longer.
• some stats: I wrote 82 blog posts with 20463 views and 55 followers/ subscribers.
• And the best is: I made some wonderful new acquaintances in blogland. In far-away-countries that I’ll probably never visit… in many parts of Europe… and even in Germany. Before I started blogging I only knew one other quilter in person. It is so much more fun sharing this passion with others than sewing alone.

The (online) quilting community is quite awesome, thanks for letting me join in the fun!

I don’t post regularly and sometimes I’d rather sew than write. So it might happen that you don’t read a syllable about me in weeks. I guess today is an appropiate moment to declare myself a Slow Blogger.

Thanks for bearing with me, dear friends and followers! I appreciate it very much that you still stop by and take your time to drop me a lovely comment.

 

Now it’s time for a little giveaway.

I have often told you that COMMA by Zen Chic for Moda is my favourite fabric line of all times. To celebrate my 1-year-blogiversary I am giving away a large bag full of strips (as many as I can get into one big envelope). The strips are all 42” long and about 2,5” wide.

Here’s another sneak peek (Thank you, Brigitte Heitland for sharing your COMMA strips with us!!!). They would make a great addition to your stash of strips if I dare say so…

This is a giveaway for followers only (New followers, you are welcome, too). I want to thank you for your visits, your nice comments and the lovely way you welcomed me to blogland.

Let’s keep it simple. All you need to do is leave me a comment. Please make sure I have a way to contact you. I’ll draw a random winner on June 1st.

Good luck and thank you again!
Christine

A gift-y kind of week

This was a great week full of surprises (o:

On Monday I received a small parcel with stickers and postcards that I won at Zeug & Gold. My friend Eva is a graphic designer who creates beautiful wall-stickers, stickers, t-shirts, pillow cussions, etc. On her Facebook Page she offered a giveaway with some fun stickers:

I can’t decide which ones I like best. Those moustaches? Or the chalkboard stickers? And wouldn’t the postcard design with that tiny orange fox make a super cute boy-ish fabric?! Maybe I should point her to spoonflower one day?!

On Wednesday, I received an email from Jess who blogges at The Elven Garden, based in Tasmania, Australia. Rafflecopter had chosen my name! I follow her blog for quite some months now and when I she offered a giveaway from her sponsor “sew fresh fabrics” of 8 FQ of Architextures, I couldn’t resist to put my name in the hat. Now I wait impatiently for the mailman to bring me some yummy fabric! Thanks again, Jess!

On Thursday, I received a small parcel at work. I had answered a marketing-survey and they had randomly send out some thank-you-gifts to some participants. Now I have a great wireless mouse for my notebook at home (o: Shaped like an exterior rear mirror of a MINI Cooper.

 

And to top it all off, Brigitte sent me some yard cuts of her now-in-stores fabric line COMMA. Thank you so much, Brigitte!!!

Best week in a long while! My colleagues suggested that I should buy a lottery ticket immeadiately. Seems like a lucky streak (o:

Now I guess it’s time to pay it forward. In 4 weeks time I’ll celebrate my first year’s blogging anniversary. Time to start thinking about a little giveaway over here (o:

And to finish off this gift-y week, I made a small gift for my former flatmate during university. She gave birth to her third child recently. A gorgeous little girl that they named Lotta. I made her a swaddling blanket – yay for another opportunity to use some pink (there are so many boys over here!).

I used Thomas Knaur’s “Pear Tree, Birds and Eggs” and backed it with a brown gingham. It is rather large: 90cm square.

And I finally used the alphabet stiches on my new sewing machine.

Hope she will like it! I finished it yesterday night and will have to wrap it and post it tonight/ tomorrow morning.

See you for more finishes next week (o:

Happy weekend everyone!
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

Houston flimsy

This is the quilt top I made for Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic for Fall Quilt Market in Houston. Her new fabric collection for moda is “Comma”. Using graphic designs with less depth then her first line.
I simply love this one!!!

It was so much fun to play with these great fabrics and the pattern was another beginner-friendly one (o:

Here’s a photo of the work in progress:

And here’s the cover of her pattern:

Her new fabrics are expected in stores in February 2013. I just long for those barcodes, tiny dots, circles and comma prints!!!

Happy Quilting!
Christine