Cathedral windows pincushion

Hi all,

I am bad with pincushions. I am a passionate about sewing, I send a consideral amount of time with my sewing maschine, I have several hundreds of pins.... but no pincushion.
Until.... today!
I have eying with the cathedral windows pincushion pattern from the modabakshop (found here) for ages and today it was the time to try it. Since I have embarked on my quest to sew Bonnie Hunter quilt with gazillions of little pieces, I needed an instant gratification project.
So here it is:

I like the way the pincushion came out. However I disagree with the amount of "waste" fabric in the initial pattern, but I anyway cut my fabrics mainly from yardage and two leftover charms (the purple fabric) so I wasted less treasured fabric. Next time I would also sew the button on, before I stuffed the cushion. It was q bit tricky, though not impossible to do it afterwards.

What kind of pincushions do YOU use?

Another babyblanket for a coworker

Hi all

as soon as I heard my coworker is pregnant I announced, that I want to make her a babyblanket as gift. She requested mint colour, so I pulled all the mint, turquoise and aqua together and combined them with several shades of grey.

I like very random patterns, which require the recipient to look carefully and always discover something "new" in the pattern. The pattern I chose, was inspired from this blog post flying geese gone wild, though I scaled the pattern down a lot.

For the backside fabric I chose an Ikea fleece blanket I bought for 1 €. Fleece makes the quilt nice and cuddly and warm, perfect for a baby to crawl around without getting cold. I practiced my FMQ on this and did a meander with daisies every now and then.

The quilt finishes at about 1.10 m x 1.10 m.

I hope you enjoy. What have YOU been stitching?

A baby blanket for a coworker

This blanket was a gift for a coworker, who's wife expected a baby. They didnt know the gender and asked for a neutral green quilt. I added orange and yellow for contrast and made a quick and easy diassapearing nine patch. This is truely one of my favourite quilt patterns.
Quilted with green-yellow-blue variegated thread in a large meander. The batting is a high-loft poly and the backside is fleece, for extra warms when baby lies on the play and crawl blanket.

Finally DONE

This is a sort-of commissioned work I did for my sister. I wanted to make her a quilt and asked her to pick out colours and style, I wanted to make sure she really likes her quilt.

So, she asked for a charcoal and white chevron quilt. I ordered Kona cotton for this project and was very pleased with the feel and look of it. But beware, thinking “chevron quilt” I think “half-square triangles” so nice and happy I started cutting squares at 8 cm per side. Half way through the cutting I realized, that using half-square triangles would only be necessary for a scrappy chevron quilt. The two coloured version could have been done sooooo easily by cutting stripes and sewing blocks. Aaaaah, well, too much fabric already cut so I had to bite my teeth and continue the way I started.

I didn’t count the squares but they were PLENTY. I cut 9 yards of each colour into 8 cm square, so how much makes that?

Sewing was surprisingly nice and relaxing and the quilt top went together fairly fast, only being disrupted by a half year break due to work reasons.

First I decided to use a polybatting to work help with the weight of the fabric and doing some simple meandering to get the quilting part quickly over. I got talked over by the lady of our local quilt shop and simultaneously being a patchwork teacher to do a zig zag echoing the chevron pattern. Well, that resulted into a lot of threat breaking and frustration. Finally I figured I cant push this huge quilt around in zig zags, so there I picked out all the quilting and tried meandering. I managed to do over half of the quilt when I realized I didn’t like the look, also the poly had a too high loft, making it very difficult to freemotion on it. The meander took too much away from the graphic look of the quilt. Seam ripper how much time we spent together…

Next I figured I need a thinner batting, so the zig zagging might work after all… back to the LQS and I bought some thinner cotton batting. I freemotion quilted the zig zag echoing the chevron approximately 1.5-2 cm inside the seam. The plastic freemotion food was my guide and it worked quite nicely. Lots of repetitive sewing time, but this is something I enjoy and meditate to. I am pleased with the results and can’t wait to give it to my sister.

 This quilt is huge, measuring 2.6 x 2.8 m.


Update: Here is a picture of the quilt "in action". It fits nicely :-)

Berlin Quilt Inspiration

We just came back from a minibreak visiting Berlin. While we didn’t have time to visit any quilt shops or to go on any fabric treasure hunt, there was plenty of quilt inspiration anyway. While walking through the streets I spotted several second hand shops, I am sure there would be lots of vintage fabric to discover here. Not open though on a Sunday and no time to go with the husband…

My husband knows, that anytime I ask for the camera to take pictures it will be for quilting motifs. So here are a few of my favourites:

This blue and red ornament was from the Pergamon museum, it depicted the decoration of some palace in Assur (I might be wrong about that, there was LOTs of information...)

I can just imagine using some pastell colours and making a cute little baby quilt out of this. A dresden plate on a backround circle with pieces borders. Onto the background fabric in the corners those leavelike appliqué shapes. Another pieced border, maybe with some other pattern or a vine appliqué to finish it off.'

 This brown star and cross pattern was from the islamic section of the museum. I love how the crosses and stars form a pattern. That would be cute for english paper piecing

In the evening I asked my hubby, what would be a quilt that HE would like. No need to decorate our house only MY style. His answer: "Make me a quilt with the picture of a 17th century fregate. That would keep you occupied for a while!"

What would be a quilt or a pattern, that would make YOU busy for a while???

My teal and brown sampler quilt

This sampler quilt is so far the quilt I like best.
It was made following "Lynne Edwards' New Sampler Quilt Book" and adding a pieced border. Each block introduced a different technique, which was fun to try without dedicating oneself to a whole quilt. It truly forced me to push some my boundaries, but I enjoyed working on it very much. Seven of the twenty blocks were handpieced, too. The reverse applique and the celtic block were my favourites. The schedule was one block per week so the whole quilt took me about 10 months to finish. It was quilted using the quilt-as-you-go technique.

The quilt was sewn on my old sewing maschine without a walking foot so unfortunately a lot of fabric shifting had occured while adding the borders. But I still like it and am very proud of the result.

The pictures are a bit blurry, they were taken indoors.

A baby blanket in pastels

This is the baby blanket for my second child. It was made out of two fat quarter bundles with a dissapearing nine patch pattern. It was my first try on free motion quilting on a friend's Bernina 440QE. Easy, fast and fun. The backing was a light blue fleece blanket. I had a great time making this quilt.

A start to blogger's life

Hello all,
I am a german quilter with two kids and two cats. After the days business is done I like to retreat behind my sewing maschine and relax to the humming sound of the needle and the maschine.

My quilting life started with the birth of my first niece, when I decided I wanted to "make" something for the new life. A baby blanket it should be then. Though I started with scissors and cardboard templates, I was hooked. Already my second quilt was a full sized quilt that took my on and off almost two years to finish (still with scissors...). The next practice pieces were the baby blankets for my own children. There was a long sewing break in between, because my sewing maschine broke and I just could not quite justify to buy a new one. My mom chipped in and borrowed me her old Privileg maschine, simple but sturdy.

Soon it became evident that the old maschine doesn't fit my ambitions anymore and after a few more quilts and a large electricity payment return, we decided now be it and I went sewing maschine shopping. I am proud owner of a Janome Horizon 8900 now and am practicing my freemotion quilting on it (a feature my old maschine didn't have!).

Nowaddays I am almost daily doing something quilty: sewing, planning or looking for new patterns.

My second baby quilt

I am looking forward to comments and critique about my work and hope for active conversation.