In the (advent) mood....

Only a couple more weeks and it´s Christmas! I´m already in the "advent" mood as we call it here, decorating my appartement, drinking tea and adding one or two cookies, visiting advent markets, hhmmmm, I love that mood - and as for the sewing I am now doing my first Christmas Quilt - a design by Linda Lum Debond, a free download pattern by allpeoplequilt, called "Festival of Trees".

As I am not that bold with colors (yet) I took a light brown-beige fabric instead of the yellow in the pattern and I love it. I did all the appliquéing with fusibel web, it´s like doing a puzzle, adding up all the different cuts until it´s a christmas tree. I will now quilt all the parts, fix the yo-yo´s with a silver or golden button (instead of appliquéing colored circles) before I sew the blocks together, adding the strips in between. Pictures about that to follow next week!

Mystery-Quilt - Surprise Box - Part 1 and 2

Our guild startet a Mystery Quilt project called "Surprise Box", part 1 in October, part 2 now in November. I was really anxious to do this mystery quilt because I´ve been following the one from the Modern Quilt Guild in Minneapolis with great anticipation and was really amazed about the result:

http://www.minneapolismqg.com/2014/11/mmqg-mystery-quilt-along-end.html

So when I received part 1 from our Surprise Box project we had to cut squares out of 2 different fabrics, fabric 1 a background color, fabric 2 either patterend or multi-colored. As I´m always one not to keep in line, I chose 2 different fabrics for fabric 2 as I wanted to use men-shirts that I collected from friends and colleagues. The squares had to be sewn together and then cut up to reveice 96 of these squares:

It is fun to chain-sew squares and it was quickly done but also left the feeling: what now??

Already after the first part of the mystery quilt I realized that such a project is not for impatient people and it was quite a little bit tantalizing to wait for part 2.

Yesterday we got part 2 - we had to sew stripes out of fabric 1 and 2. As my fabric 2 was not 110cm wide I had to scrap them together which did not matter much because in the end I left out the squares with the seams. The next step is to cut 5,75cm rectangles...... 5,75? No problem with the small, squared ruler with the thin, black lines indicating 0,25 / 0,50 and 0,75 cm.

left overs

stripes

cut rectangles with ruler

Then we had to sew the rectangles together, again chain-sewing to get 96 squares like that.

Result of part 1 and 2:

Now it means waiting until mid´December which means it´s like waiting for Santa Claus.......

I´m about to start blogging!

During the next few weeks I will add more and more to my blog, telling about me and my sewing, my quilting and patchwork that I started 3 years ago, showing pictures about it but also adding all the sources of inspiration that I got - I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do, reading all the quilt blogs of all the super-creative people out there, whether it´s their personal blog or a Modern Quilt Guilds´blog!!!

I will keep my blog straight and simple, hoping that it will grow over time into something as enjoyable and inspirational for quilters out there as other blogs are to me. I will add my favourite blog list during the next few day but beware, it will be very, very long.... 

This quilt was a Challenge from our guild called "Dreams and Hexagons" and as I started the quilt in summer, I kept hearing this song "dream a little dream of me" on and on. At the same time I found on one of the blogs that letters and hexagons match very well. So I started drawing all the letters of the alphabet into hexagons, copied them, cut up the paper-hexagons and fabric, hand sewed them over paper. The hand quilting was fun (being done in summer the following year) and finally it became a quilt, 150x200 cm for the guild exhibition. 

The quilt´s title is "Gaps in our dreams" as some of the words are missing in the quilt, as we mostly remember only parts of our dreams the day after.

And as you can see from all my quilts and the ones to come, my favourite color is GREY, no matter if dark, light or shaded, there will always be something grey in my works!