February

Ok panic .. no everything is goign to be fine - I have officially to clear my current digs until the end of March - so far I have a meager 3 banana boxes filled - but hey I have 10 empty boxes waiting. So besides having my exams and now having trouble getting my papers because my one "very dear" Prof can't manage to grade the last exam so a lot of runnign around getting "provisional" statements etc etc ohh how I love running after papers .. anyway I did some sewing

I started "bluegreenpink" (wow I'm creative with the names) - it's stored now in the "finished tops" box (ohh yes I already packed that one, together with the "big enough to make a back" fabric)

I promise I even sewed the rows together, just forget to take a picture before putting it in the box

I started a Starquilt, it was sort of part of my "want to do list" - I wanted to try out more hand sewing but after I had cut all the pieces (not necessarly like they were given in the pattern - I'm not good with patterns) I figured "hey I can do that with the machine" so I did. Now I need to start another hand sewing project. 10 stars together, how to make them

I started and finished my doll quilt for February - and since it arrived during the weekend I can even do a post how about it - I need to do the "get things done early" more often so I don't need to wait until the next month ... I even remembered to do a lable (sorry that is on the back of course).

That's it as far as the NewFO sewign went - I did work on a few old things so I just have to show them off - because one of them was really giving me a headache.
I managed to finish my Easy Street top (yeah you guessed it - it's in the box too)

my sewing machien looks so tiny ...

I attacked my scrap quilt again ... well it will one day become a scrap quilt - it's just hard work, but I think worth it.

That's all I did - well sewing wise - I think so at least ... I did have some pretty good ice cream yesterday ... but that probably doesn't count towards sewing - it was 3 coloured and basted between to waffles though - it was almost an edible quilt ... it made me bold enough to post a picture of me though - sugar high maybe, not really responsible for my actions...

Pheww that was a lot to read for you ... I might  have ruined my chances of getting comments

 Leo

ice cream and snow

Well I admit I haven't done any sewing, more packign and cleaning and researching and reading books and watching movies and ... but well even I need to go shopping for food once in a while, the are tearing down the supermarket across the street so I had to walk a bit to the next one and came by those huge windows in the new addition to the National Library and as some people have been hinting they would want to see a picture of me ... well there you go:

Much of the snow has been thawing away the alst couple of days, with high temperatures of +2°C. Well I couldn't resist some ice cream for the way - I mean after all I was carryign all my shopping home .. . well just me - ice cream and snow are the perfect combination.

Leo

snow angel

Well it has been snowing a lot lately here and not much thawing for the last few days - so I figured I got myself a great huge white playground ---

I told Janet the other day that I love doing snow angels - I had noone with me, so there was noone being embarassed if I did one. Well I made the angel in a beautiful spot in the botanic garden ...

(sorry I had to play aroudn with the exposure time to make the angel visible, it got a little dark)

Well of course I did a lot of sewing too - it's amazing how much time I suddenly have - I got my 10 pink and brown stars done ... now I have no idea what to do with them. Can I set in huge hexagons? but then what colours? Or set in more parallelograms? and end up with a small quilt?

Ohh and in an attempt to throw things out that I don't need anymore I had a go at my scrap box (it's just one box, without any order, I just stuff anything in there that's "small").

(that's a pair of the fabulous knitted socks from my mum)

 Leo

Heureka! It's over!

Well some might know .. some don't ... I had my last exam today for the Bachelor - I'm done no more exams. Well that's it 3 1/2 years of lecture notes sorted and filed.

Well to endings - and new beginnings (in case you should be one of the really really nice people who send me real letters, would you mind holding off until I can give you a new address? should know that until the end of the week)

Well I also have a quilty finish - not a complete quilt BUT my Easy Street top is finally done - any tips on how to quilt it?

see the thing is pretty huge so I'm having a hard time taking pictures of it - oh yes and I did a third star:

 Leo

lasagna, skirts and a quilt

"We" had some fun yesterday - first eating lots and lots of this:

And then taking up the skirt I started sewing last year ... now I just need to hem it - how do you hem a skirt?

I also started quilting my little pinwheel quilt and as I could hardly feel my fingertips anymore I thought maybe a timble could be the solution - just it wore through the thread really really fast, maybe I'm just using it wrongly. My solution was to cover my finger in tape.

Ohh yes and that's the quilt - which is probably much more interessting ... 

 Leo

Diamond Stars

Well what happens if you show others what you make? - Aye they turn all curious and ask "How did you do that?". Well and me being me and mostly a nice person I offered to do a "How To" - I won't call it a tutorial because I don't do tutorials.

This is what we are going to make today:

What you need:
* 12 light coloured 2,5" x 2,5" parallelograms (with alpha being 60°)
* 12 dark coloured 2,5" x 2,5" parallelograms (with alpha being 60°)
* 6 contrasting 4,5" x 4,5" parallelograms (with alpha being 60°)

[if you forgot your math: the length of all 4 sides is given, the vertical lines bend by a 60° angle, so if you want to cut several, cut a 2,5" (4,5") strip then cut off a triangle by linging up your 60° mark on your ruler with the edge. After that just line up the 2,5" (4,5") line of your ruler with the bend edge and the straight edge with the 60° line and cut and cut until you have enough pieces]

start with laying out your star:

Then pair up the parallelograms or diamonds and sew them together with a 1/4" seam, make sure they
overlap a bit, so you will have an even edge when you press the seam

Once you have 2 of the diamond pairs, sew them together to get a bigger diamond:

line up the big diamond with the small one and sew them together:

line up the next star spike and start where the other seam is - make sure to fold the bigger diamond back

Flip the whole thing and sew the two spikes together, make sure you match the middle seams - again start at the Y-seam (where the 3 meet) and make sure you start 1/4" inward.

Continue until you have half a star

make another half, sew them together, into one big star:

Have fun with the Y-seams!

PS: you can replace the big diamond with a set of 4 small diamonds, if you wish to.

 Leo

weekend sewing

I finally got started on my February Doll Quilt - the criteria were: bold bright colours including pink and red but no yellow and my partner wants something patchworky - I guessI'm getting there

The back needs some red around it, so it will have the right size, but I thought it was a good way to use up all those little squares.

And because I sort of liked the colour combination, even though it's more an aye-cancer colour than anything else I decided to use it for one of my quilts from my NewFO list.

 Leo

bluegreenpink

I haven't made much progress, at least not on anything that I had plans to make progress with. It's a loose interpretation of the "Who's peeking?"-pattern in a Fat Quarterly issue.

I started this one yesterday as a sort of "after exam" treat.

not my colours - but I kind of like it

 Leo