WIP wednesday

These cooler temperatures are ideal for quilting, aren't they? Now that autumn has arrived I love the crisp mornings, the sunshine throughout the day and the longer evenings.
This week I am making good progress on this simple Christmas quilt. I would have loved to have finished it last year, that didn't happen, but I have a good chance for this Christmas! It really is a very simple pattern, just sewing charm packs together! I think Amanda Jean of crazymomquilts gave me the idea several years ago. When Basic Grey came with the lovely Jovial collection, I just couldn't resist and bought 5 or 6 charm packs.
The little notes you see are for marking the rows - I laid out all the square before sewing them together.

A new machine

I am so happy with this purchase! Although I love my Pfaff Expression 2.0, it is a very heavy sewing machine und totally unsuitable for travel. Or I am simply not strong enough for it. :-) So I thought maybe a second machine would be nice to have for workshops and quilt bee gatherings.
A friend of mine is very happy with her Janome Jem Platinum 720 and the internet reviews of this machine were also positive.
When I visited my sewing machine dealer, he told me he didn't have a Jem Platinum for me. Bummer. But then he introduced me to the Brother Anniversary or Innov-is 10 and I fell in love. A nice little machine, with a very 'clean' feel to it. The Brother tested very well in a German consumer test of sewing machines. And the best part was the price: 200 euro's (that's 250 dollars) less than a Jem Platinum.

In other news: fall has definitely arrived in the Netherlands (photo taken with Instagram):

WIP wednesday

Over the years, I have seen a lot of bloggers do a series of "WIP wednesday". I always love to see what people are up to. Starting today, I am going to show you every week one of my works-in-progress. I'll 'start' today with my klosjes I wrote about a few weeks ago. As of today, I have finished 18 of them (I don't have a picture of them all, I'm sorry). What is so special about this project, is that the fabrics come from all over the world, as you can see in this picture:

I also have fabrics from a few other countries, such as Norway and, of course, the USA. It would be great to gather some more blue and white fabric from other countries, if you have ideas where I could purchase them, please let me know!
ETA: I meant an online purchase. Although it would be great to travel around the world to gather fabrics. :-)

This is what happens when you forget to harvest lettuce...

... it blooms.

No more word verification on this blog

Just a quick note: through browsing I stumbled upon this insightful blogpost from Bonnie Hunter. She explained how to turn word verification off for comments. I did it immediately, as I had problems myself on several blogs with word verification in the last weeks.

What I learned this summer

At the start of this year, my quilt bee decided that everyone would make a blue and white quilt, with the theme "Multiculti". Deadline: january 2013. Some members visited the quilt show in Birmingham (UK) last year and brought with them Hungarian, South African and Chinese fabrics. Every member of the bee got a piece of each and we were told to incorporate fabrics from as many countries as possible.
I had a hard time deciding which pattern to choose for this quilt. Finally, I went with the klosjes. I had the stamps from Quilt it & Dotty and thought it would be a piece of cake to make a beautiful quilt. Well, that was a bit naive. In the last months I have learned several things:

1. Don't use too much ink! At first, I stamped and stamped enthousiastically with lots of ink (like I used to do in paper crafting) but the ink bled to the other side. I was suprised, but if you think about it, that could be expected... Dorry from Quilt it & Dotty had never before heard of this problem, but she was very nice in giving me the solution. From then on, I stamped very lightly which worked beautiful.

2. Not every quilting needle of the same size has the same size eye. I sewed the first klosjes with a needle that had a too large eye (I don't know the brand). When I didn't concentrate, the needle would loose the thread. Now I sew with another needle, with a smaller eye. (The needle is from my stash, so no brand either.)

3. If I don't patch by hand for three years, I have a hard time remembering the technique... I didn't think of simple looking at Youtube for tips. I just tried to remember what I know and for now, it seems to work.

4. Photographing small blocks outside isn't easy:

I had arranged my blocks in the shade under a tree. Every time I stood back to take a photo, the wind came up and blew my carefully positioned klosjes away...

5. And last but not least: don't try to patch a large quilt by hand, if you're diagnosed with a tennis elbow. Progress is s-l-o-w. My remedy: a charming miniquilt.

So, how far along am I? At 13 klosjes, at the moment. I am still undecided on the final count of klosjes, but 25 looks to be a minimum. I also haven't decided yet on the colour placement, that's why they are still unattached (the photo is taken securely at home (-;):

Vacation

The last two weeks were wonderful! After a tiring but very succesful week of helping my mother moving house, my vacation started. We went camping for two weeks near Dresden, in the eastern part of Germany.
Although it rained almost every evening/night, we had lots of sunshine and relaxed days. We explored the area almost every day, but there is still a lot to see. So we'll probably head back sometime.

I took a lot of Instagram photo's (you can't beat the weight of a smartphone!), here are some highlights of the trip:

Dresden


Pillnitz


Prague