And the winner is…

Thank you very much for your comments and your interest in our little design challenge. I really enjoyed reading about your approach to quilt design vs. using a pattern. I think it is funny that most of us use a pattern but give it a personal touch by altering it on the go. Somehow we all like to put our heart and our personality into our quilts.

Now without further ado, here is the random winner of Brigitte’s book and of my mini quilt/ pillow cover;

Congratulations, Helen! I hope you’ll enjoy her book as much as I do.
I’ll be in touch via E-Mail soon (o:

Happy Sewing!
Christine

Zen Chic Inspired – a design challenge and a giveaway

As you might have seen, Brigitte Heitland, the person behind “Zen Chic”, published her first book with Martingale.

the book
In “Zen Chic Inspired” she describes her approach to designing quilts that really match one’s peronal style. She begins by questioning if you ever bought fabric that you loved when it was on display at your LQS but at home you realise that it looks less appealing and strangely out of place?! Yes. Me. Guilty.

She then shows how to design quilts that match your living space: your flat, your house, your mobile home. She starts from a photograph of a room and deducts shapes and colours from it.

the challenge
When she wrote the book, several members of our Modern Quilt Guild Bielefeld, helped her sewing the quilt tops (yes, me too). Brigitte threw a party when she received the first copies of the book and we had a blast sketching quilt designs based on random photographs that evening. We decided to carry it a bit further and to make a little MQGB challenge – just for fun. Brigitte chose a picture and we were to make a matching quilt, mini quilt, table runner, wall hanging, etc. based on it.

photo by Houseology Interiors, flickr

fabrics and colours
In her book Brigitte shows different ways to deduct colours from a photo. I tried Moda’s Palette Builder: but seeing that I was on a short timeline (no time for ordering and waiting for shipping of chosen fabrics) I pulled solid fabrics from my stash instead:

design
Next up was shapes and design. I liked the shapes of the lampshades but as there is similar quilt in Brigitte’s book I thought it might be too simple to just copy her quilt. I still wonder how it happend that I chose the wall clock instead.

Here’s a close up of the clock:

And these were my first thougts for a possible design:

I never made a dresden plate before so this was entirely new to me. I thought of differnt sizes for the wedges and of using negative space between them.

work in progress
I found a tutorial “how to make your own dresden plate template” here and just followed the instructions. Easy peasy. I can recommend this tutorial, if you ever want to make dresden plate templates in your exact size.

Once done with sewing the wedges together (I skipped the wonky idea and made a “traditional” dresden plate), I wondered how to achieve that translucent look of the wall clock. I opted for a second layer, more fragile and quite thin. I made another template and drew the design directy onto the paper side of a fusible web.

The next step was tedious. I ironed the fusible web onto a light grey fabric and had to cut out all the shapes with an exacto-knife.

The dresden plate was ironed onto the background fabric and the second layer was ironed onto the dresden plate:

I appliquéd the second layer with my sewing machine, using a wide and dense zig zag stitch in a similar light grey aurifil thread. Thereby I attached two layers in one step. Here is close up shot:

I kept the quilting fairly simple and just stitched some straigt lines “radiating” from the tips of the wedges, using a white aurifil thread.

the result

The binding is made of the same newspaper print (from Brigitte’s Modern Background fabric line) that I used to break up the solids-only-look of the dresden plate.

I added a zipper and an extra backing at the back so this mini quilt can double up as a pillow cover.

Here’s a photoshop image, showing how the mini quilt might look as a wall hanging in the original room:

summary
This challenge was a greate experience for me. If you look at the quilts I made during the last years you will discover that I rarely follow quilt patterns. I love to make up my own designs. This book helps me to get better at choosing fabrics and designs matching the surroundings/ person the quilt is intended for. When I plan to sew a quilt for my sister next, I’ll snap a photo of her home first. Of course I know her living room, but do I really remember the hues of green she used for decorations? No. And I might not have noticed the unique shape of that armchair leg that I could use as a shape in my quilt design.

So if YOU like to design your own quilts, this book is for you. And if YOU have always be terrified by the thought of designing your own quilt, this book is for you, too! I takes you step by step through the design process and includes 12 patterns, deducted from 12 different photos of 12 living spaces.

If you’d like your own book, Brigitte offers signed copies here.

giveaway
As a bonus for those who read through this lengthy post, I will give away one copy of “Zen Chic Inspired” AND the mini quilt I made. Just leave me a comment below, telling me if you prefer to design your own quilts or if you rather follow quilt patterns (there are so many lovely ones out there!).

This giveaway is open until midnight, May 29th, CEST. I will draw a random winner on May 30th.

Happy sewing everyone!
Christine

P.S. If you’d like to see who else participated in the challenge and what they designed for the same room, click here and here.

P.P.S. Yes, Brigitte is my friend but yes, these thoughts are my thoughts and I really like the book. And no, I don’t get paid for writing a review and yes, I really bought this book to give it away to you.

Hexies and hidden stars - a baby girl quilt

Some weeks ago, the topic of our monthly sew-in at Modern Quilt Guild Bielefeld was Modern Hexies.

I had a treasured Cotton & Steel charm pack and I wanted to make a baby girl quilt for my sister’s second child – due in April.

I auditioned different layouts and decided on the one that formes little stars on the negative space – which instantly prompted the quilting design.

I applied some marks with chalk to keep those quilting lines straight.

I defined three big and some small stars that I omitted while straight line quilting and quilted them free-hand afterwards. Each with a unique quilting design. I used a variegated Aurifil thread in shades of white, light grey and dark grey.

To show you the free motion quilting, I used directional and natural lighting instead of artificial light. The fabric I used for the Background is "Notes in silver on white" from Zen Chic's Modern Backgrounds.

 

Once the baby was born, I added her name in light pink thread.

And this is the back: I used a dotted flannel and some leftover Cotton & Steel scraps.

 

 

And this is the entire quilt, already puckered and crinkly as I had to wash it 5 times to get rid of ALL quilting marks... BTW: what is your favourite method or tool to mark grids and designs?

 

I had a hard time giving it away as I really enjoyed the free-motion quilting a lot but I am sure it will be put to good use at my sister's home.

Happy Quilting!
Christine

Bye bye 2014

It’s been quite a while since I last found the time and energy to write about my sewing projects (it’s half a year actually!). Looking back to the first months of 2014 I realize how everything was too much for me – especially too much work at my day-time-job. Hours and hours of overtime that made me impatient with the boys (which made them uneasy and even more agitated), unnerved by the workload at home and generally too exhausted to enjoy my freetime (which I mostly spent sleeping).

But! Everything is better now. I have a new colleague that took over a large amount of my workload and circumstances made it possible to return to normal schedule at work during October/November.

I made a re-start at running, sewed more often and generally enjoyed my life much more than during the first months of 2014. The boys were easier to handle, more balanced and family life got calmer, too.

There. I thought I’d share these good news with you and I really look forward to enjoying 2015 as much as possible.

But first let’s have a look back at the last months of 2014:

In August, big boy started primary school:

In case you are wondering what he carries in his arms: it’s a “Schultüte”: In Germany the kids get a cardstock cone filled with candy and little gifts to “sweeten up” their first and exciting day at school. Very often the cones are handmade by parents (or parents and kids together). When I asked him, what kind of design he’d like to have (soccer, superheros, etc.) he said that he wanted me to sew him a cone. When I told him that I didn’t know how to sew a cone he simply said: “we’ll look it up online”. Ha. Clever boy he is. He chose a star-y theme and I machine embroidered the date of his first day at school, his name and his class.

In September my sister had her second child – a girl! The first baby girl after 4 baby boys in our family! I was so looking forward to sewing little dresses for girls that I started right away:

  

October, November and December flew by with secret sewing projects.

But the best thing that happened during the last half-year was the visit of Ann for a private sewing retreat in August. She came over from Denmark for an extended weekend and we had lots of fun together. (Some pictures are from our Instagram Accounts: she is kvintaen on IG and I am grapesandhearts)

She taught me how to sew a Sew-together-bag (pattern by SewDemented):

 

And I showed her how to use a Serger to sew t-shirs for her son. We made an entire production:

 

And we visited Zen Chic Owner and Designer Brigitte Heitland. She lives approx. 30 minutes away from me:

 

This was truely my sewing highlight of the entire year. Thanks so much for flying over, Ann! It was so much fun to have you here, you are very welcome to come back at any time!!

So in a nutshell, this was the second and better half of 2014. I made many more things during the last months (christmas gifts, baby quilts, big boy quilts, bags), that I plan to show you during the next days (the kids are visiting grandma so I hope to get some blog post up during the weekend).

Enough for now. I sincerely hope that 2015 will be a good, happy and healthy year for each and every one of you and your beloved ones.

Happy Sewing!
Christine

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

New Zen Chic Quilt Patterns

I have been guest blogging again over at Brigitte’s Blog. I wrote a blog post introducing her seven brand new Zen Chic Patterns that she designed for her fabric collection “Barcelona” for MODA (due in stores Fall 2013).

Hop over to see the beautiful quilts she made for Portland and photos of her little elves who helped piecing the quilt tops.

Here’s a sneak peek of “my” quilt top(in wip state):

Happy Quilting!
Christine

New Zen Chic fabric line

In the last few weeks there has been some secret sewing going on over here. Spring Quilt Market is fast approaching and I have been helping Brigitte of Zen Chic to prepare for Portland. Her new fabric collection for Moda is “Barcelona” and I wrote a guest post on her blog today. Hop over to see the beauties she designed this time.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Happy Quilting!
Christine

P.S. there might be a little giveaway at the end of my guest blog post ;o)

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