Lay-Out done!

I'm happy to report that I decided on a lay-out for the Noah quilt. It's along the "crazy quilting" line with some appliqué thrown in.

I will appliqué the animal in pairs - it's the Arch after all, then quilt in overlapping circles around each pair. Hopefully, this will be all the quilting that's needed so that the back will be one solid piece of fabric with quilted circles. The animals, one boat and one Noah will be appliqué-ed onto the dark blue fabric, whereas the sun and wave patterned fabric will be used for patches without any appliqué, symbolising the sky and the sea. The border will be made up of the border fabric shown and the whole thing will be 100 cm * 150 cm.

Now I have to take my design to the copy shop, blow it up to 685% of the original ... hm, not really feasible. So: blow up to 137%, copy it once, cut out the individual patches, blow those up to 500% so that I have the templates to start cutting. (What would I do without Excel?!?)

Spring Cleaning!

Now that spring is naigh and Kristin suggested a swap, I finally managed to sort through my stash. The amount of fabric I own boggles my mind, especially given that I have:

(1) a lot that I have ideas for and
(2) a lot that I don't have ideas for.

This is my mess:




As soon as my newly designated arts storage wardrobe is stocked, I shall proudly post the fruits of my hard labour. In the meantime, there are about 25 men's shirts to dissemble as well as a trip to IKEA planned for a sewing table and two roll-ey container thingies.

365 Days of Art

I just discovered Red Shoe Rambling's365 Days of Art. I like the fact that she takes out time everyday to think about her art and really how she perceives her world. There's a lot of discipline going into this. Discipline - my new obsession! Possibly because I feel I am terribly lacking in that department. But I am trying to get better by planning more, prioritising, making time for certain things on certain days.

I hope all this planning will help me find my world and long list of duties less overwhelming one day. Otherwise, I'll just have to muddle through until my kids are semi-adults and off to college - hey, that would be another 16 years. Where was that list again? What did I need to be doing? Ok ...

Moving on: my next project

And no, contrary to popular belief, it is NOT the Quadrature!

It is another baby / toddler quilt for my soon to be godson Harrison. He seems the perfect match for my Noah's Ark fabrics:




But, alas, can you see my problem. It's a panel style design and doesn't lend itself to being used whole (too busy and not enough fabric), but cutting it up will be a nightmare too.

I'm thinking: pairing the animals because that's what Noah's Ark is all about and then assembling the whole thing crazy style. I have no idea yet how to incorporate the star and wave pattern yet, nor do I have a clue as to how to use the border style fabric. Sigh. Maybe I should draw up a design first?

And because it is now officially - meteorologically - spring time: the only flower near or far:


The flower on the Chinese Yuan coin. Beautiful. Because my garden looks like this:

All done!

It's finished, done, over!

I gave away the Monsoon quilt this past Saturday. When I started the preparations for this quilt, I had wanted it to be a Christmas present for my mum. Because of our move, frequent travelling and a rather deep slump in motivation, it didn't get done in time. So it became a birthday present. And a Thank You, because when we still lived locally and I was first pregnant with my second baby and then had two babies to juggle, my mum was an endless source of energy and help. She always puts herself last and I wanted to let her know that I really appreciate all her support.










The back side complete with its label.


The central pattern somehow sticks out a bit with all that machine quilting around it. Had I had more time, I might have added something in the middle but I didn't, so I didn't.

Having come into quilting under the tutelage of a determined hand quilter, I first struggled with the concept of machine quilting. After I took a class about ten months ago, I always wanted to practise more but never did. This quilt though completely sold me on machine quilting. It was very good fun and also incredibly EFFICIENT!!!

My next project will be a baby quilt for my soon to be Godson Harrison. (And not the square quilt but I will do that eventually too!)

Getting way ahead of myself

All this reading of blogs and seeing how fast some of those quilters work got me motivated. Well, their speed and the sudden realisation, that quilting is not a spectator sport, at least not when it should be fun. So, in that spirit, this is the general lay-out idea for that "quadrature" quilt:



I will use up some of the old shirts my husband donated, the central section being the darkest, the top the lightest and the bottom the "mid" selection. The back will be all white but mirror the front design. I think I'll either quilt in the ditch or a few mm from the seams.

In addition to that I'll need a "hand" project, something to do when sitting on the sofa. This will probably be a baby quilt using the African animals and matching fabric I already have.

Show and Tell Sunday

Last night I finished hand-quilting the lap quilt for my mum. D day is next Friday, which means I need to be done Thursday night. The fact that I am out Tuesday and Thursday nights isn't really helping. Oh well.




The reverse, complete with label saying "Especially for you, with Love from Dorothee"

Now it just needs to be machine-quilted in swirls. This by the way is my first attempt at machine quilting, dating back to March 1995. And no, I've not practised since :-(





It's a doll quilt made of left-overs passed down to me from a class-mate from my first quilting class in Manchester. The colour scheme will give anyone a head-ache. But the pink organza on top of the yellow and pink fabric complete with hippos worked quite well and gave me something to quilt around.

And then, this is my next project: Remember all those shirts I collected? I will make them into a bed spread using this squared square. It's a mathematical mystery showing the minimum number and size of squares needed to form a bigger square.