Back in the game

I never knew a !§)$"§Q$§-boss could intrude into my safe sewing space ... anyway after 8 months of talking, complaining, mediating, ignoring things were finally starting to become slightly bettern. Then of course happy news this week for the boss (and me) he won't have to deal with me anymore come december.

It feels like suddenly I have time to sew again and do a whole lot of others things that I sort of put on hold. After a thorough cleaning of the sewing area and a little prioritizing of things that need doing I spend my sunday fighting with the instructions for a swap ... sooo much math ...

This is going to be part of the "main attraction" of the bag I'm sewing. The backside is already done - but there need to be surprises in life, so that will have to wait till it arrives at its destination. Then I can show the mosaic and the result in all its glory.

I had to sew in a zipper  - I can't remember ever sewing in a zipper without my very knowledgeable mother in "shouting distance". But I won! Ha!

Yes, I know the corners there could be better, and I shouldn't have chose a light pocket fabric, but apart from that I think it is ok.

Now I'm off to figure out the rest ... 

Confusing Mosaics - or how not to do them

I really think I got the basics of mosaics wrong - I joined a swap (again) just because I needed this feeling of not struggling with the next and the next bee block trying to keep up and catch up. Anyway part of most swpas is doing a mosaic. Noone ever tells you how to do them, I mean there are no rules a mosaic needs to look like: a, b, c and include at least g and f and r, s, t are nice to be included.



For me things were perfectly clear ... I want something with that signage on the left, something with circles and rectangles and lines. I want my name to be on it (or at least space to put it on it) - I want to be able to use it for a certain purpose (so it needs to be sturdy and please not white and no trim) and I want blues and greens to be the colours ...

But apperently I was wrong - that is not on the mosaic ... It is one big confusing mess. So we go with option two:



Again ... right upper corner my starting point - now you can for example do a scrappy circle, or you can do some fun colour hue game with the reactangle (square) and you can use some yellow highlights or just read that lines and circles and squares are geometry and really a windmill is geometry too.

But that was apparently still not really clearenough ...

Now hoping not to step on any toes - I find most other mosaics majorly confusing -they rarely have a common theme. Some I can at least interpret as rainbow in any form or shape, but then there are then ones that make no sense whatsoever for me (blue, but other colours too, squares and pixelation, but also paper piceing, animals feathers, buidlings). Maybe I need to take a course in mosaic reading?

Swap°pen auf Deutsch

It feels like a very long time ago that I signed up for the swap and made the pattern - even made the front and then the stress startedand I sort of did nothing for a long time ... and then the deadline drew close and I sat down and finished the thing.

and I even did get aroudn to piecing and quilting a back - I used up the trial block and a miss-sewn block and fabric scraps from the front ... I sort of like itin it's own way, tough it looks slightely better if there is no cuchion in the case ...

It wasfun to sew somethign to someone elses specifications and use fabricsad colours in combinations I would neveruse myself for things I sew for me ...

And this evening I fished the most perfect cushion case out of my mail box - Britta made me the perfect companion to my last swap cushion case and absolutely nailed the orange, purple, red theme with pointy things... 

Löni

crazy mail day

This morning I gotrung out of bed by one of my favourite persons - The Postlady - she asked me to come down as she had some overs ized stuff for me. That usually means I get a swap item ... so I go downstairs and there is a pile of oversized letters and I ask if I can just go through them and pick mine, well she said the were all for me.

That made 4 letters ... ok one was just full of papers I need to send in an application ... but the important stuff ... The first quilt (in order of posting date) is this one - made for the April swap of the Doll Quilters Monthly - now ignorant me needs to find out about diamnods and baseball because "diamonds are forever" was the theme -- I really don't know anythign about baseball except thea use a ball, a bat and funny gloves - ohh and they enjoy sliding through the dirt.

Then the next one - coming from Australia - is the May contribution of the same swap - the theme was "modern" - my partner is very patient because I still haven't finished hers - I know bad bad me.

I think that one is going to be a competition for the leave-mini that is currently on my fabric cupboard, maybe I will exchange them monthly or so ... And alst but not least - I got me a pincushion - actually after waiting for 3 years to get a pincushion in a swap I got 3 today .. (each doll quilt had a small one riding along). Well but this one is very special - well yeah because it's really big and because it's a frog and I have a little somethign for frogs and green. And it came in a July swap - and I'm goign to take it as an early birhtday present.

So yes I think that poor bugger will be full of those basting pins once I'm done quilting redorangepurple that I spend all evening yesterday on my knees to pin baste. And I always have the pins all over because I just take them out while quitling and throw them on whatever "clear" surface I can find and of course they end up on the floor while I quilt-wrestle ... so maybe not this time.

Löni

a travel sewing kit

As I don't seem to get much sewing doen lately unless it's for someone else - I did these  as a present ...



a tiny pin cushion and a needle book and a reasonably sized pouch to carry it along with some scissors and some thread ..

Löni

a new mini

Sometimes university can be fun ... you wrack your brain discussing why Syracusarum Tyranno means Tyrann of Syracus and not Tyrann of the Syracusanians and nothing else either and along comes a:

"Weeeeeell I didn't listen to it, but I think it's wrong!"

So apart from old languages I have been actually managed to squeze in producing something new, a mini-quilt - I'm already terribly late - our theme was "diamond" well I hope you can recognize what I did.

With summer coming up and less weekends for sewing as sport takes over I will have to go through my UFOs and sort them and start finishign some of them. And I really really need to get down to order some (read: a huge lot) of batting, I'm already piecing batting to get big enough pieces for the mini qilts.

Löni

Bee update and a swap mini

When I opend my mailbox after my Esater "holidays" it was full of beautiful bee blocks and my March Mini-Quilt. It was a joy ripping open a handful of letters in one go ...

(you will have to excuse the mess in the corner - I'm slowly working my way through the boxes from the last post)

Now while I'm waiting on 3 more letters with blocks I thought it woudl be great to put all the bee blocks together - I'm wide open for suggestions on trying to sort which block goes where, because I'm sure by just placing them somewhere they won't look random at all ... I can't ever seem to get random by randomly placing blocks ...

this thing is gettig to large to take pictures .. I tryed climbing on the bed - which was too low, so I took a chair which worked somehow next time I will have to lay it out in front of the desk - the table should be high enough ...

Well but I did say something about a mini quilt - it'S from the ususal swap, this months theme was "keen on green" - but I won't keep you from the pciture, it's really a beautiful little thing:

Any ideas oh great wise ones of the quilting world what one could do with miniquilts - take off the binding and put them together like a QAYG-Quilt? turn them into a tote? because I can't put nails the walls here (well the walls are so hard you need to use the drill and then you can put a nail in that hole) and I'm running out of storage space ...

Löni

last doll quilt dealings of 2013

Today I got the last doll quilt from 2013 - so I thought it would be nice to take a picture of all of them. I really need to get them on the wall. Some are already up but not all of them.

Well this is my addition to someone elses collection ... the last one that went out in the mail ... and will hopefully arrive soon.

I had a great time sewing the top and marking the quilt with plates and a glass and some rulers - the quilting was a nightmare though, tension was funny and not cooperating. There were a lot of curves and back and forth and loose threads. But all in all I really like how it turned out. I'm just sad I can't keep it.

 

Löni

unproductive week

yep it really was an unproductive week - I received a doll quilt, I was notified that my Bee Block arrived in NZ ...

The only really productive thigns were passing the Latin exam and doing some bicycle repairs. I will have to put sewing on a halt for a little longer until I find some miracle to get rid of all the black grease again.

Yes well that once was the break cable, well it still is one, but it's a broken one. It really gave me a scare giving up on me downhill - luckily I use short cuts and back ways and was at that time crossing "filed ways" so no cars ... So I bought a new cable today and had to fight with the usual "girl - skirt" can't possibly know what she's doing attitude.

So while I was in the process of taking the bicycle apart I decided why not use the opportunity to get my Christmas present installed - a hub dynamo - no more noise, slowing you down dynanmo pressing on the wheel - no now I have a smooth silent one ...

Good cycling everyone!

Löni

luckiestestest day this week

I could have kissed the post man - if I would have been home wen he came by - he dropped two swap parcels. My Doll Quilt for September and my very special "Swap°pen auf Deutsch" cushion .

Ahh and I had this crazy idea about finishing up the Red Herrign top ... it works out fine - I might add a row in the future ... at the bottom or the bottom and the sides who knows I don't have batting to finish it anyway at the moment.

I decided to go for bigger sashing there because it helps with the shift of the blocks - if you loko at the others with thinner sashing at the top/bottom of te blocks you will see that the "herring bone" pattern gets shifted quite a bit to the right ... I tried to avoid that - the bigger distance with the sashing makes up for that to some degree. Oh and turning the top up sided down helps a lot because it changes the way you look at the shift. [Do I make sense?]

Ohh and I get to drive home and enjoy some motherly cooking - and it's finally autumn - we broke the zero degree margin tonight and we have heavy fog with sight under 50 meters - cycling was hell this morning - the should make pedestrians wear head lamps and reflectors ....

Löni

UFOs - NewFOs

I got even more sewing done - besides doing a sort of "autumn clean out" ... can't really call it spring cleaning this time of the year. I did get my September Doll Quilt almost finished it's missing the binding - but as I know for sure that my partner is sometimes reading the blog - I will keep the pictures to the sneak peek.

I never thought it would actually happen - but here it goes the only website of the US I actually spent hours using and getting acquainted with ... is down too. I wonder how many of the quilters are on unpaid leave at the moment and if there will be a wave of quilts - like depression quilts or civil war quilts .. just they will be named hmmm nahh I better not come up with a name who knows who's reading this and will haunt me later on...

Well yeah I will just keep doing my own sewing ... I don't have enough UFOs I think ... I failed to finish my September UFO, it's still sitting "in" the machine waiting for me to finish the quilting. I get distracted far too easily. And end up starting new things .. like this:

I made sure I can sew it without needing my cutting board and the cutter - maybe I can get some more stars done during the long weekend - being away again ...

Löni

quilt backs and doll quilts

Well yeah I got some backing fabric yesterday and then I got back to writing and then I just had to think about sewing and the August Doll Quilt I still need to get done. So I did a late night sewing session with some ice cream  and another re-run of Firefly ..

 

 Isn't that some great fabric? well I liked it a great deal and I guess I have enought to use it as backing and then have enough left to  us it in a quilt ...

And as I had to store it away - because no I'm not going to start bastign any quilts anytime soon - I thought I would show the rest of them. Some are really ugly - the creme ones, especially the one with stars, maybe I need to swap them.

But I need to start to piece baackings or I will be stuck for always with quilts that are a max. of 59 inch width. And I really don't like "borders".



Any tips on backing piecing?
I read someplace that you should do it in thirds and not in twos - so you avoid the seams being at the same place where the grease from folding and therefore the most stress will be.




Yes and because "storing away" backing fabirc is really not going to do it to calm a fabric-addicted brain on withdrawl - I decided it was ok to do a little sewing after 8. The theme for August was "Nine-patches" and I always liked the "Disappearing ninepatch" pattern.
I also remember me complaining time and time again about no one using orange in quilts - so I decided it was time for me to do something about that.



It's a Quilt for August - so some yellow for the still summer, some orange for the  almost-but-not-yet autumn, some specs of colour - just because and red s a frame, well I like red. Of course that explanation I'm making up as I go here - it's complete and utter nonsense. I just happen to have a lot of orange and a lot of red and like both of the colours. And I really am no one to have hidden agendas when using colours. I do what I like. Choosign colours is gut work.

Löni

progress

Uhhh - well progress is little to none. I did get a non-sewing distraction today though. A short travel to Frankfur aM to have meeting for "Story Drive" on the Book Fair in October. Oh but I guess that's not interessting for you - so the no to little progress on my sewing.

Quilts:

I got a few more inches of binding sewn on my bluegreenpink

I already told that on Monday or was it Sunday? anyway I got a good bit done on my Scrapquilt, that's been in the making since October last year I think - so we will talk again in a year see if it's gotten any bigger.

Bees:

Still waiting on my last June Beeblocks - but I got two more blocks for July today - I'm not sure anymore about the pattern - maybe I need to "invent" something to settle the quilt - maybe a sashing, but that would destroy the pattern hmmm - any ideas?

Swaps:

I started sewing the top for the 9-patch themed Doll Quilt - and I don't liek the result .. now I'm thinking again and I don't have much time left.

QALs:
Sadly I haven't done of the Farmer's Wife blocks - but I will get to them at the end of September.
I might have joined another Quilt along - I have a very traiterous subconsious - well that won't start until September so I'm taking a deep breath and am clming my nerves.

miscellaneous:
I did sew myself some shocking sport shorts - now I'm a bit scared of wearing them in public ... green dots on purple - well give me a few more days. Oh yeah I didn't mention the orange bias tape.

Löni

mindless sewing

Since I'm finally able to really grip things - namely my rotary cutter - again I thought it ws time to get sewing - all the reading was really nice, but I really missed the sewing. And before you ask- let's just say: sport is not healthy. Nature has an amazing range of blues, browns, pruples and yellows ...
But I'm a little preoccupied with those stupid papers - well one of them is actually interessting - but the other urghh ... So yeah I decided to go for some "mindless sewing", no need to aim for matching seams, no danger of messing up a pattern.

It's like making a huge fabric puzzle - it's just that the pieces change everytime - here the middle part is paired up for another round of string piecing. It's still "tiny" but it's getting there ... slowly I just need to keep producing scraps. Or have lovely Ladies send them to me ..

Yeah and of course I absolutely forgot to show the newest Bee-Block arrivals and the Doll Quilt for July ..
Saddly one of the bee blocks is an inch too small - and an inch is not something easily smoothed over so - ahh well we are a 13 persons bee anyway so I will end up with 12 blocks. Oh and good news my missing June bee turned up, she promised to send the missing blocks as soon as possible.

As I mentioned before - my swap partner and me both decided against the usual patriotic theme of red-blue-white. Not that I have anything against those colours, but I don't really need a July 4th Quilt. We settled on baskets.

Löni

not much progress

Hmm yeah I haven't been very productive - reading for my papers - reading for fun, being mad at a certain member of the male populace arghh. Ahh well but ther were a few late comers to my old address and they were secretly collected and send on to me - so I got a great parcel today that I opened after a very traditional summer lunch. My granny used to do that in summer.

It's basically a meat broth eaten on bread and soured milk / clabber (don't know how good the dictionary is on food stuff). Well it's missing the potatoes and far too much carrots in it - but hey I like carrots much more than potatoes. Yeah well it's a hot meal that's not warm - sort of.

And then I enjoyed the parcel goodies:

July block - NewBee Bee - from Tessa

 

June Doll Quilt from Sher

I did some sewing though  - a fourth basket - and I promised I would remember to add some size reference next time I took pictures. The closest I could come to a quarter (as that coin seems to be a favourite when it comes to size reference) was a 50 Euro cent coin. The coin is bigger than the small HSTs. Any idea for a shasing colour? soild? print?

Löni

Queen Bee

Yeah you have all been seeing the blocks pop up in various posts as a sort of add on at the end of other posts. Being still rather a beginner it wasn't easy joining a bee - I mean so many of them want "bee experience". The other problem is of course findign a stash bee - my bank account is not in favour of sending out tons of fabric to have people sew my blocks ... 

keeping the postal workers and esp. customs officers in work

In January it happend - I got into 2 bees - a beginners bee and an intermediate bee (of course there is a constant dscussion what intermediate means). I enjoy making the blocks and sending them off but of course "my months" are the best ... especially as I got both around my birthday.

June blocks - the intermediate bee

each one made 3 purple-red-orange thrifty blocks and one block in their colour

I rellay like having my birthday sort of extended into August. I'm missing one block for June, but that Bee is MIA so I will maybe have to wait a little longer or get busy myself. These are for July and I really like how July is turning out.

My design wall is occupied by the June blocks - so I had to turn my floor into a design floor, which means of course putting the blocks away again as soon as I'm done with taking pictures. As you can see I'm already behind and the newest block hasn't yet been on the "design floor" with the rest ...

I really love how that one is coming together

 Leo