Monday Morning Star Count

Admittedly I haven't much to show you this Monday. Not because I didn't do something - on the contrary - but because it gets more and more difficult to show you without a photo.

What I accomplished: I squared the top up, basted the backing and started to quilt. As for the quilting, a sketch will have to do. Doesn't it always?
This is what I plan.(and partially already made)

I'm not certain yet, if I want to quilt the "piece of land" that comes in from the top in some way. Maybe I'll do something angular.

Even though we don't have any more Monday Morning Star Counts this year, I will keep you updated via WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced, and via TGIFF. The "Big Reveal" will take place at the beginning of October.

Thoughtful (Technique) Thursday - The Papers (sewing templates)

By now, I have the feeling of having gotten acquainted with the blogging world. Seeing that many EPPers struggle with problems I know only too well from my mainly self-taught history, I thought, I'd spend some Thursdays to share my thoughts on techniques and material, design and quilting.

Let's start with the base of all EPP: The Papers.
You could think, there was nothing much to say about Papers. I think, actually, that this is one of the more important things in EPPing since it influences how the entire piece handles.

What possibilities do you have? There are a lot, actually.

- Newspaper. The cheapest solution, often sewn through.

- "Normal" printer paper. Definiely the easiest solution when using shapes off the Internet, from incompetech or other sites. (Try out http://www.kunstundmarkt.com/schablonen.html, it's German, but I like it a lot since it's got almost every shape you might ever need and you can save the pdfs to print again and again and...)

- Thin cardboard. With a grammage of about 120g/m² most modern printers can use it, it's resistable and my fave for self-made papers. Many die cut papers (paperpieces.com and prettyanduseful) are from paper of this grammage. Re-usable for several times, depending on the size, the shape and how you handle them. I'd say ten times is the minimum.

- Coated paper. Used by Patchwork with Busyfingers it is very good for the glue-basting method since the glue easily will separate from the paper.

- Mylar. Also known as Quilt Patis or Brandy's pieces, these are almost indestructible. Unfortunately they're thicker as most cardboard and don't bend well. Personally, I don't really like them.

- Overhead transparency. Never heard of that? I didn't find it on the internet, but I tried it myself. You can print on those transparencies, they are easily cut by scissors, feel about as stable as thin cardboard and are not thicker. You can bend and even fold them and they are re-usable beyond belief. Oh, and if you use the laser-printable variety, they even stand ironing.

Myself? - either I'm using thin cardboard (die cut where available, I'm lazy) or laser printable overhead transparencies for my works. I do have some of the Patchwork with Busyfingers papers and as long as I'm glue-basting I'm okay with them. I don't like them for thread-basting, though, and that is my preferred method of basting.

What I found out really fast is, that as long as you cut along the lines, the self-made templates are as consistent as die-cut ones. The tenth-millimeter you are off on your self-cut ones? Ignore it. The fabric will be thicker in the end :D

Tuesday morning Star Count

I didn't get it finished on Monday Morning. Not even on Monday evening when I'm honest since last night was spent at a phantastic concerto instead of sewing. When the MD's secretary comes in waving four tickets to a Prokofieff and Dvorak concerto, for free, "It's just, it starts in two hours..." Who'd say no? I didn't. And spent a great evening. Not sewing.

But: I only have to close one seam and add six pieces, then it's done. Since I easily will do that tonight, here's what I managed. 111 pieces pieced as today, if I take the picture below we're at 117 pieces and finished.

Now you should have all the pieces in the puzzle to put the square design together. Admittedly, due to fabric constraints (ten fat quarters are more than enough for this, but you have to make colouring compromises if you've sort of over-used one colour. Which I did in my design.) I had to rework the exact colouring scheme on where to use which colour.
When I'm done piecing tonight, I'll have almost three weeks left for the quilting. I think, that'll be enough for a 24" x 24" thingy. Even though I plan this to be my first real attempt at Trapunto quilting. Naaah, nothing as complicated as stuffed feathers. I merely decided to stuff the fifteen namegiving patches so they don't only stand out colourwise.

See you next WIP Wednesday?

WIPs galore...

Isnt't that every quilters destiny? For every finish there's at least two new WIPs. I finished one of my Birmingham "children", the little mug rug, but there's still some more to do. The Mystery Project, of course, which is going rather well and hopefully completely pieced by this weekend.

Then, there's my first art quilt, started under the tutelage of Sophie Furbeyre who has a solo exhibition at Val d' Argent this year.

This one - when finished - will be my Holiday Memories Mini Quilt, since it will remind me of the great day working with Sophie. Presently I plan to add a little more red and to cut back on the black tulle with a soldering iron.

Life sometimes running in strange ways, maybe, one day I'll teach Sophie how to tat :D She wore a waistcoat during the class whose ornaments strongly reminded me of tatting. I asked her if she ever tried to combine tatting and patchwork and she told me she didn't know how to tat and found it rather difficult. I promised her that I would teach her how to make the first ring within one hour and she told me that she might try that promise one day...

But back to my WIPs... there still are two cushion plates to finish from the Sunday morning workshop with Karin Hellaby - Curvaceous windows.
This one is done so far, it only needs a border to be finished.

 Rather than being curvaceous, these are sew simple attic windows.

Playing around with the possibilities Karins technique offers, I started on "fabrigami" and folded wildly around. We all liked this variety very much.

 It needs a a button in the middle, and the horizontal and vertical red lines will be curved in. There also still is a border to be made, but I'm not entirely sure how I will do that in the end.

Hope to meet you all at WIP wednesday at Freshly Pieced to see, what you have under the needle at present.

Post-Birmingham Monday Morning Star Count #4

Seems like I've still got soooo much to tell you about the NEC exhibition at Birmingham, but vacation's caught me up and I don't think that there will be more than some pieces whenever I've got a finish or something pops up in my mind.
First of all, the quilt I entered, you remember?  This one:

First of all: we did get judged, yeah!!! And won three "Excellent", quite encouraging, don't you think?

During our stay, I wrote something about our workshop with Paula Doyle. I managed to turn the little sample into a mug rug, using the binding-less backing technique she described to us. Here it is.

 I just quilted a little in the ditch... Too glad we got a pattern for a handbag and Paulas book... I will have to do that again :)

And now, last but not least, the Monday Morning Star Count to be liked with Life under Quilts - which to be honest is to be a "monday evening star count" since I'm only now done...

 A little teaser first... this is my "workbook" with a lot of pre-cut pieces showing the "true colours" of my little project.

 And here's what I managed to sew during the last two weeks. Yes. I know. I wanted to be done. But reality caught up with me and I needed the time during the holidays to just plain relax.

114 pieces done, which brings me up to 230 pieces done, with 117 still to go. I'm convinced to be finished with the top by next week's monday.

That last day at Birmingham and all the remaining vacation days...

I know, I promised you some more Birmingham stories. But actually, this post is just a quick "I'm still alive".

On the fourth day of Birmingham festival we took a class with Karin Hellaby on "Curvaceous Windows" where we learned to do a lot of things with the good old Attic Windows block. I managed to almost finish two cushion size tops which I will have to show you next post... the "good" camera doesn't go with my tablet.

After that, we did some final shopping, got our quilts back and then stayed the last night at Birmingham. The next day we drove to Shrewsbury (a must-see for all the Brother Cadfael fans out there...) and from there to Welshpool, where we took quarters in the most amazing of farm B&Bs you can imagine. Tynllwyn farm is sited on a hill out in the (almost) nowhere and the perfect place to just relax.

Of course we did some trips starting there, visiting the Welsh Quilt Center at Lampeter, enjoying a Steam Train trip in Llangollen and traipsing through Powys castle. Too sad, the vacation's over and we return to Germany tomorrow. I'll embellish this post with a lot of pictures then. Promise.

Two more days at the festival of quilts

Saturday evening. What???? Already?
Yes, it is. Yesterday I spent all day in class with Sophie Furbeyre, an art quilter of a certain fame here in Europe. She actually managed to overcome my prejudices on the genre and I happily worked on my first art quilt in her class titled "Paint and draw with fabric". And that's what we did. First we painted on Tyvek, then we applied the heat gun to quite a number of different artificial fibers and then we combined all this on top of a piece of white fabric. Along the way I made my first experiences on free-motion quilting, since that was how we were to sew the quilt together. One more WIP...

 It still needs some serious quilting and addition of further pieces of red. And, of course, batting and backing.

On our third day on the festival, we "only" had the plans to attend two lectures. The first one in the morning was with Marti Michell, "Quilting in Sections". We learned quite a lot and after this lecture I think that we'll be doing 99% of our quilting ourselves since she told us about so many tricks that make elaborate quilting possible on a domestic machine.

We went for a quick lunch and were moving through the exhibition, when we recognized another face sitting behind a table. Tula Pink was presenting her quilting and autographing her books. A chance we couldn't let pass by, don't you think? We bought some of her SaltWater collection fabrics in the turquoise colourway and Ellen got herself a book.

Wandering around, we passed by the booth of Margaret Beal (for the n'th time...) and I finally fell completely in love with her fusing and cutting processes. End of the game? Even though I hadn't planned on it, I'll fly back to Germany with her book, a soldering iron and a handfull of rulers. Not to forget the fabrics.
Enough for one day? Hmmm... yeah, that's what I would have thought, too. We went to the lecture of Kaffe Fassett, "Glorious Colour" - and enjoyed it hugely. I expanded my view on colour quite a bit and gave me the good feeling that simply following one's gut feeling isn't the worst idea when designing quilts.

Of course you can't just leave after such a lecture without a handfull of fabrics, above all when they're so attractively priced. I started out with one fabric, as I do most of the time and started combining suitable ones. When I had a bunch of five chosen fabrics, a male voice asked from the side "Can I help you?" Not thinking of anything since there were so many shop assistants running around the Cotton Patch booth that I simply voiced my thoughts "I'd like something violet-ish to go with these." Only then I turned to see that the question had come from Brandon Mably. I gulped. But he simply nodded and took a closer look at my selection. For a short explanation - the three on the left were my choice. I had a green and a blue shot cotton to go with them. His first suggestion was to let go of the shot cottons and replace them by the rightmost fabric. I liked that much better too. Then, for the violet, he suggested the second fabric from the right which has quite some violet, even though you don't really see it on this picture.

Here you are with today's "Designer Approved" selection of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics that will make a gorgeous Japanese Folding Technique handbag.

You know what's the best? There's one more day to come! And... I wouldn't bet what adventures this one might bring.

International Festival of Quilts at NEC, Birmingham, day 1

After a long drive from Heathrow to Solihull last night, we could jumpstart our first day at the festival with full English breakfast, which we enjoyed a lot. It builds such a good foundation for a long day running around fairgrounds.

At 10:30 we entered our first workshop, Mini Mosaic Quilts with Paula Doyle. She showed us the (more or less) quick and easy way of working mini blocks from squares the size of 1" finished. Working with such an inspiring teacher - even if it was only for one hour - was waaaay fun.
 This is what we made under her tutelage - she had prepared and cut most of the fabrics for us:

 At home I'll finish this into a nice little mug rug, from now on it's only sewing straight seams.

After that, we visited our quilts at the exhibition. Of course we didn't win, but then, who really thought? I was absolutely proud to see my quilt hanging prominently between so many other pieces of art. See my grin?

Not that the day was over at this point... we spent long hours admiring other peoples' quilts and - of course - spending money. During the "spending money" we had our next encounter. I spied a stall selling Marti Michell templates, and I'd planned to acquire a set of her perfect patchwork templates to complement the strippers we already have at home. It took me a long while, before I realized, that it was Marti herself explaining to me why those templates were so good, and before long we were chatting happily.

Last somewhat unreal experience of the day was seeing the team of Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably at a stall selling traditional Hungarian prints talking to each other. And watch, how inspiration strikes. I am waiting to see his next collections and maybe think to myself "I watched him having that idea!"

So much to see, and that was only the first day! Stay tuned for more of my adventures in Birmingham!

Off to Birmingham

Faster than I thought possible, August 7th has arrived, and thus the first day of my vacation. Wow...Right now I'm sitting at the airport in Stuttgart, waiting for my flight to London, all the while enjoying my newly bought EPP-bag.
Yes, I was sooooo sure I would use Jess Alexandrakis wonderful pattern for an EPP bag, but then, time is something I didn't have in the last weeks. So then, this morning I went off to buy something suitable. At first, I set my eyes out for a bag that looked pretty much like what Jess suggested. In the end it was the sales that changed my mind. I found the perfect bag. Originally it's meant for toiletries, but then... the size fits, and the idea of being able to hang it on the seat in front of me? Perfect.

That's my new bag closed.

 As I usually have big handbags, I don't need more than the small carrying strap. Though there would be a possibility to fix one.

This is the bag opened up. Maybe you start getting an impression, why I love it so much. The mesh-zipper-baggies let me see what's inside, and it has a second bag (invisible here) that is made from clear plastic to keep the project itself in.

For now, I'm using the bag and its contents for what EPP often is for me, a possibility to calm myself down, as I'm really, really excited to go to the Birmingham festival of Quilts for the first time in my life, and also because I have a quilt entered into the competition and have no idea whatsoever if I'm going to be good or bad.

As long as I have WiFi-access, I will be blogging, promise.  A

Monday Morning Star Count #3

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Another long, lazy weekend gone... Birmingham is drawign nearer and nearer and I'm all excited on how my quilt is going to do in the competition. I do hope that the judges have the same opinion on it as everyone giving me a notice...

But then it's Monday Morning, and I've got some counting to do.

This is, what I accomplished during this week. Another 50 pieces done, bringing the piece count up to 116, leaving  231 still to add. Phew... and only ten days left to my self-set piecing deadline. I'm going to be dead on line, I suppose. But then, on Wednesday I'll be off on vacation, first to Birmingham, then to Wales. With hopefully a lot of piecing time.

Linking this up to the Monday Morning Star Count at Life under Quilts with Jessica Alexandrakis.

btw: Yes, I'm still in the "finding my design"-phase, sorry, if the blog looks different every now and then.

Übung macht den Meister or... TGIFF

Strange title for this post? Yes, sort of. And then, not. Übung macht den Meister is German for training makes a master, and that's what I finally decided to call this piece of qulting art (at least it is to me.):

The block and borders is "Square Dance" by Sue Daley, the rest springs from my own imagination.

It was finished about two weeks ago on a Monday, the day I originally had planned to send it off to Birmingham for the NEC Festival of Quilts. And it was a TGIF-feeling, since I had been hand-quilting like mad despite the heat to get finished on deadline.

The quilt is entered for the Festival of Quilts under the title "Dancing Colours" but, that name only marginally fits it, now that I'm done. The category is "My first quilt" - and that's what it is, the first full-size quilt. It's mainly EPP'd, then appliquéd to the background. Finally I hand-quilted the whole thingie, since I don't yet dare to quilt feathers FMQ.

Here you can see the placement and design of the feathers... most of the quilt was cross-hatched, but it's meant to be a summer quilt, light and soft. It's made with a silk batting to help along with the lightness.

The hand-quilting part is responsible for the name, since I managed to reduce my stitch count from seven per inch to twelve per inch without really realizing what I was doing. I only tried to keep the stitches as short and even as possible. I didn't even know that twelve is really, really, really good, until I was at a mini-retreat with more experienced quilters who couldn't believe the shortness and evenness of my stitches. Blush... I learned to embroider from my mum when I wasn't even at school yet. Guess, that helps.

Last but not least the big question of why didn't I publish this before... simple. I didn't read the rules close enough and simply assumed (...never assume anything except an occasional air of intelligence...) that I was forbidden to show the quilt beforehand. I am not, so here we are :) Right in time to share it with you on TGIFF, hosted by Quokkaquilts this week.

MQF, MMSC and other WIPs

The title does look like I have the acronymitis, must be a left over from the heat of the weekend.

Phew, finally back from Aschaffenburg. And didn't manage to write anything on Sunday. We've had the hottest weekend in Germany so far, and the weather people say, that we even beat Italy and Spain on temperatures. It was... bad. At least for me. At temperatures of 100° plus with a humidity beyond 85 percent, I'd love to crawl down into some cellar and never come out again.
Air Condition? In Germany? Not really, only in big hotels and convention centers. So, fortunately for me, the Aschaffenburg Convention Center where the Main Quilt Festival was held had bearable temperatures.

I spent my Friday happily working at a Crazy project under the tutelage of Rita Schaffer (www.crazyaboutcrazy.com). Here's what I managed:

Of course there's still a lot to embellish and sew... I decided to call it "Walking on broken glass" - yepp, another quilter with the habit of calling her quilts after songs.

After my composing adventures I decided, I need something easy. Besides that, I still needed an anniversary gift for my wife and the idea came my way in form of a mini-wholecloth stencil that will make a great cuddly pillow. I asked her to choose a colour and she went for a bright turqoise.
I managed to quilt about two thirds of the center on Sunday while hoping on the couch that the heat will go away (which it did, btw).
The entire stencil measures 18"x18"

 That's the overview - okay, not much to see here.









But there's the detail of what I managed. Unfortunately the photo-light of my camera changes the colour quite a bit. I'd say, the truth is somewhere in between the two pictures.

And, not to forget, the Mystery project. It's MMSC with Jessica at Lifeunderquilts (Thank you so much for your encouragement, by the way!) and I've got at least a small success to show. I've added another 25 pieces, bringing the piece count up to 66, leaving 281 to go. Gotta work more on it this week.

 In case you wonder, I've added two 36° triangles that are not visible in this rendering but necessary to stabilize the whole thing before quilting and squaring.

Edit on Wednesday 31st: Also linking this post up with WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced since I don't have any new WIP :)

Off to MQF

Seems like my life consists of quilting, quilting and quilting these days. Sure, there's my day-to-day office job, but for the rest? EPPing, designing around, going to retreats and - starting tonight - the Main Quilt Festival in Aschaffenburg. My wife and I will be staying there for two nights and are going to do a workshop about crazy quilting by hand and I'm looking forward to show you the outcome.
I'll be taking along a bunch of 4" charm squares in different colours which I have left over from another WIP, my Mom's "Pink Panther Cuddly Quilt" which I hope to be able to finish until Christmas. Of course, the charm squares are all colours except pink and violet...

Since this is a blog and you certainly are in for eye candy... I'll share the next finished project with you. From now on I'll have to do with working photos, since this is the last finished one...

"Lazing on a Sunday afternoon" was born just like that, on a lazy Sunday afternoon when I was asking myself how to try out that handquilting thingie. I used some solids that were on hand, but realized that the charcoal combines just wonderfully with the warm red and the forest green. It's about 16x16 inches in size, the narrow red border measuring not quite one inch finished.

Since I made the complete miniquilt out of a book (Klein, aber Oho!), they also provided the quilting patterns and I only had to make up the templates. The crosshatching in the middle of the red feather circles are 1/4 inch apart.

 

This is one of the corner hearts, showing the variegated gray Sulky handquilting thread I used. Also, just because it was there. But I like the way it looks. A lot.

So then, see you on Sunday? I don't think I will be able to post before.

Baffled...

Now you did it, I'm completely baffled. Yesterday my blog had more traffic in one day then in the days before. One can get addicted to statistics, I suppose. But then, that's the easiest way to find out if you're writing for yourself or if anyone else is actually reading all the stuff.

Yesterday I took the time to count the EPP shapes for the "Mystery Project" - I will need 345 pieces in all, I'm done with 41, leaves 304 until finish.

Since the "mystery" component was remarked upon very positively, I decided to not just use "any screenshot" of my pattern, but to use one specific picture, so you always will have the same scale.
Here's the "new official" version of the Mystery Project picture from yesterday, this one is made up to my new specs.

If anyone is so crazy as to try a little QAL, all necessary templates and papers are - of course - available at paperpieces.com, but also at my best-loved German resource, prettyanduseful.com. Just drop me a note and I will tell you which shapes are needed.
Actually, without Evelyn Zuber and her templates and papers, I wouldn't be so happy trying whatever design comes to mind, since ordering at paperpieces.com always brings the "customs" problem.

Oh and, in case someone is afraid of following a newbie bloggers QAL - this one WILL get finished, otherwise I couldn't take part in the competition ;)

Monday Morning Star Count

Two posts within such a short span of time? Hummm... yeah. I'd rather have some things separate. I spent much time thinking on how I can take you on the journey of my present EPP piece, the one I mentioned two posts before. As it is custom in Germany, when you enter a quilt into a competition, you are not permitted to show the quilt on a blog. Stupid rule, but that's what they say.
I figured though, that using a part of the the computerized design - in "false colours" - wouldn't give too much away.
So. here we are with my first MMSC:

We're up to 41 pieces now, 23 pieces during the last week.

Linking up with Jessica of Life Under Quilts, for the Monday star count.

Retreat Weekend

I guess, by now you should get an idea about how chaotic and sometimes disorganised I am. I was talking about the retreat bag I was going to sew, was I?
Of course I didn't get it finished... I'll be working on it tonight and see if I can get it done in time for next weekend.

The Retreat Bag of course was designed with something in mind, my quilt group had a short retreat at Schöntal Abbey this weekend. It used to be a cistercian abbey and was built somewhere in the 17th century. The atmosphere is great , the rooms are open and well-lit, and - even greater for us crafters - they kept the basic timing (8 AM, 12 AM, 3 PM, 6 PM), but instead of prayers you get food four times a day :D Really good food.

My goal for the retreat was to tackle triangular log cabin with 3D-effects. This is what I managed to finish (please forgive me for not having the part-top pressed... this is how it came out of the bag):

I decided to call it "Cold as Ice" and - in case you wonder, the base design was made on a computer, I would't have managed the colour play on a design wall. Not yet. I suppose, the quilting is going to help the 3D-Effect which works a lot better when the top is pressed and doesn't have any crinkles and creases, but as yet I haven't even deicded what I'm going to make of it... it's about 60cm x 80 cm, which would be approx 24" x 32".

I could turn it into a wall hanger with maybe an added icey border. I also could turn it into a throw sized quilt by adding more of the charcoal surroundings and... maybe a border of baby blocks or something. What do you think?

Linking this to WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced

Counting pieces

My Birmingham quilt is finished and finally in the mail... Here's a little glimpse for you:

This is the feather quilting inside one of the blocks. Most of the quilt is crosshatched, and the colours are rather bright (well, on the other parts of the quilt :) ) since they are a scrappy walk-through my batiks.

I'm rather proud of this little detail... I managed to quilt the year in, the side of the blue shape on top of the picture is two inches long. Full pictures and more will follow as soon as the quilt is on display at Birmingham (7th of August)

Now up to the next project(s)...

I intended to start with our quilt retreat bag for the rotary cutting mat and the in-built ironing surface yesterday. I actually managed to buy the piece of thin MDF which I will need for the ironing surface, but it was so hot and humid, that I didn't bring myself to get the sewing machine and start. You know, it was like "I've planned it all, made up the pattern and it's noting but a bit of straight-line sewing" and I'm certain one evening will be enough and that's... today. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I'm right :)

Well, what instead? I went onto my next competition quilt. The theme is "15 pieces blue", it's for the anniversary of a German quilt shop and the only requirements are to use 15 pieces of their logo colour, Kona Cotton Ocean, no matter what shape or size and that the quilt be 24" by 24" (okay, we're in Europe here, it's 60 cm x 60 cm)
Unfortunately I'm not permitted to share any pictures of my progress with you, but I'll try to describe it as good as possible. I'd decided to do some EPP in different blue shades of Fusions 4070, the only solid pieces to be the Ocean pieces. The pattern is based on one of Willyne Hammersteins Millefiori quilts. Progress-wise I'm pretty proud of myself, since I managed to put together a big part of the center star consisting of ten diamonds and (as yet) eight pentagons.

Hope to read you soon, Julia

Cityscapes

Just to get myself used to blogging - and to introduce you to my already finished quilts and add some pictures.

 I'd like to introduce you to my very first piece of quilting and design. It's based on an idea published in the Austrian "Patchwork- und Quiltjournal", but I changed it... quite... a bit.

I called it "Cityscapes" and it's a wall hanger that usually hangs above our sideboard in the dining room.

It's made up of EPP'd Inner City Blocks, the biggest one the size of one inch and going down to 1/2 inch. I used Moda's "Over the Rainbow" jelly roll for the colours, the background fabric is just some Batik I got at my local quilt shop.

Unfortunately the picture does not show the quilting quite well, so I did a closeup of the biggest of the three cities.

At least you can guess that all the blocks seem to hang on yellow lines, while they are spanned to the bottom by blue lines. When the light plays over it on our wall, it's really fascinating and sometimes the cities even seem to dance. Maybe I'll be able to get a better picture when I'm using the real camera, not only the mobile phone.

Thanks for coming by. Please check the other beautiful quilts at http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/show-and-tell-tuesday/

Hello, blogging world!

Huh, it took me a long time (too long?) to finally decide that I'd like to have a blog to share all my needlework adventures with the world. I tried to have a traditional website and have that updated, but, well... it's difficult to need a special computer to edit it all. So, this is going to be my blog, accessible from every computer I have access to which makes it heck of a lot easier to share my quilting adventures with you.

Let me firstly delve into history.

At first it started with "I do not need another hobby, really. I do all these laces, that's enough." But I had myself talked into joining a local quilt group for some creative input. We made up a bag or two and then it happened. I discovered English Paper Piecing and the quilting bug bit. Badly.

My first two works are

• a wall hanger going by the name of Cityscapes. This is a variation on the traditional Inner City block, appliquéd to a batik background and quilted with embroidery thread.
• an Amish style miniature to find out if I could do hand quilting and if I'd enjoy that.

After that... I decided that if I was to fly to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham this summer, I could join the competition on "My First Quilt" as well, since I hadn't made up one.

I finished it yesterday. Batik, in EPP, appliquéd to a cream background, all hand-quilted with crosshatches and feather patterns. Unfortunately, I'll only be able to share pictures after... you know... it's shown in Birmingham.

As ideas seldom stay alone, at least not in my head, I've got a notebook full of "Quilts I want to do", some in early design stages, some in later design stages. As the next two are also going to be competition entries, this is going to be a picture-less blog for now... but not for long. I know myself. The first project which I can show off already is in preparation, it's a quilting-retreat-bag with built in ironing surface. Just wait and see...