Thursday, October 29, 2015

Block 1-8 - halftime for the Christmas Tree QAL

Block 7 and 8 were easy to make, block 8 had to be made 2x (one for the bottom and one for the top).
 
I really restrain myself to only making 2 blocks per week because I would rather make them all at once to see the whole top.
 
But, no. It´s like waiting for Christmas to come, anticipation is rising the closer we get to the final blocks.
 
Block 8 for top and bottom
 

Block 7
 
Block 1-8


 

 

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Block 3, 4, 5 and 6

The Christmas Tree blocks are going really well, making block 3 + 4 was a fun afternoon, block 5 too but block 6 gave me trouble all the way - sometimes FPP (foundation paper piecing) can be very challenging, as if I´m doing it for the first time. Well, see for yourselve.....








Wednesday, October 14, 2015

No lazy days....

Been to my old home town Innsbruck last weekend to visit friends and to attend the "Free motion quilting with your sewing machine" course with my guild "Quiltirol". 
Barbara, our tutor did a fantastic job, we all gave our best but one thing was sure: it takes time and a lot of patience to handle your sewing machine. That´s a fact. At least it is for me. And it is also a fact that if you don´t take the time to get to know your sewing machine it becomes very, very difficult to get the results you want.

And: practice, practice, practice. Practice quilting and it will get better. I do hope so. Otherwise I will go back to hand-quilting. 

I´ve been busy too with sewing a pillow (I had a lot of fun doing that) and two more blocks for the Christmas Tree Quilt-Along with Sandra and Aylin. Again, one mistake gave me the advantage of something else. So, making mistakes isn´t always bad, sometimes it serves another purpose very well. See for yourself!

I wanted to do the Chevron pattern for a long time and making a pillow is the perfect thing to try out a pattern (size-wise). I cut up a XXL-sized jeans shirt and cut many, many squares (as it turned out too many). 

I also had this cute fabric with "Vespas" (I would love to ride one, even at my age, really). And for a girl of 13 years it seemed the perfect fabric to me.


Making HST´s
 Front

and back

Block 3 and 4 - my mistake was not to realize that block 3 should have been size 15" and block 4 size 9" - so when I realized my mistake (I did block 3 in size 9") I simply switched sizes and I´m happy with the result.




Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Christmas Tree block 1 + 2

Of course, I should have done a sample first, see how my HST work. I did not do that. And my sewing my sewing machine didn´t want to sew well (which means I have to take her for a check up).
 
For all my meticulous preparation (ordered a new ruler, put everything else aside, ironed the fabrics really well) I did not consider making a sample.
 
So those 2 blocks are now rather samples because only after sewing them I got the hang of HSTs for the next ones to come. And of course I made a mistake in block 2 with cutting the fabrics, can you see it?
 
Preparations here and there, learning by doing is the most important thing to consider!
 
Block 2 + 3 will benefit from my mistakes in block 1 + 2, so will all the others, too.
 
 


 

Thursday, October 1, 2015

UFOs and Christmas Tree QAL

After the crafts fair I had to re-organize my pending projects and as it turned out I have 8 UFOs to finish (4 of them are still in planning state). Nevertheless this motivates me vigorously to sew on and on and on!
 
The first one was selecting the fabrics for the Christmas Tree QAL by Sandra from Hohenbrunner Quilterin and Aylin from Aylin-Nilya. This project also made me do something that I had pushed away for some time because of being afraid of the unknown. No, really: I love working on the computer but things like Flickr or Instagram were not on my radar - I like to view the images but I never wanted to participate myself. Well, that´s over now.
 
After receiving such a nice e-mail from Sandra I pushed those silly doubts away, signed in on Flickr and there I am, participating in this Christmas Tree QAL.
 
Tomorrow I will start cutting block 1 and 2 - pictures to come next week.
 
 
 
Forgot to add:
I chose grey, green and brown because the last two Christmas´we did NOT have snow and in such a case we call it GREEN Christmas!