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...