Hopfaldera

Hot pads à la Suzuko

I made two hot pads and/or potholders. I was inspired by two books by Suzuko Koseki: Patchwork Style and Natural Patchwork. These are great books, with lovely inspiring images and doable patterns. Suzuko is a patchwork and fabric celebrity: she designs fabrics that are very popular, lovely, and pretty hard to find (although it is possible on Etsy and her own Japanese website).

While I was making these pads, my sewing machine broke down.... A loud noise from the bobbin holder and lots of heaped up thread. OMG, it was a scary moment, because I can not live without my machine, really not! I took a deep breath, read the manual a bit, and screwed the machine open. Okay, there was a lot of fluff there, so I cleaned it out, even using the vacuum cleaner (the manual suggested this), and after that the machine worked like a charm! Pfff, maybe I should clean it more often... haha, maybe!

Haus Sweet Haus

I made this stuffed house toy from a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love by Hillary Lang. I made the front Friday afternoon, and just finished it with the backing, ribbon gusset and stuffing this morning. Not hard at all! It´s a little break from making Farmer´s Wife Quilt blocks. I have about 10 new ones finished eventhough the quiltalong is officially on a break. I´m just always afraid I´ll get behind eventually so I frantically am trying to make up for that in advance. I´m sure I´ll take a break from them in the future, but for now I have 3 new blocks planned out fabric-wise.

I wanted to say Happy New Year too. Happy Chinese New Year: Xinnian kuai le! May the dragon fire us up to do wonderful things this year!! I'm planning plenty of them, not only Farmer's Wife's blocks, I'll tell you later.

Cocorico October

The October theme in the Cocorico Bee was Orchard! Annabel asked for blocks that were inspired by orchards, and that were 12.5" by 16.5" in size. In this post I'll try to show how I went from my inspiration to the finished block. I didn't take photos during the hardest bits, because I was sweating and sewing, and not thinking about blogging. But I hope the process will be a bit demystified :-)

This picture was my inspiration. It comes from a little booklet I still have from when I was a child. It has German rhymes in it, and cute drawings.

I asked Frederik to make an enlargement of the book illustration at his office. I used that to make a first draft of the pattern. What I did was put see through pattern paper on top of the photo copy and try to recreate the drawing with a ruler. My thinking was that if I can draw a straight line with a ruler, I can also sew a straight line there.

Soon I had to simplify the apple core with the pips, because sewing five was just too intricate.

I felt the magic number to show variety was three, so three pips I drew!

And this is the final pattern that I made. You can see I played around with different stalks.

Now comes the part where I don't have a lot of photos. I did show a sneak peek on Flickr here. But otherwise I was either procrastinating, drawing partial patterns, sick, or sewing...

Here is a photo of the back of the block just after I finished the piecing. You can see that I split the pattern into five sections that I pieced separately. This was necessary for inward pointing curves, very hard to explain, but you'll understand as soon as you try something like this...

Detail of the pattern sections. I made little notes about which fabric to use. Very helpful during the process, where you get caught in the details and loose the bird's eye view for a while.

And here you can see the enlarged illustration and the finished piecing. I was so proud when I got to this point. Proud enough to think about my camera again.

And here I show off the finished block. Including side borders, embroidery and an appliquéd leaf.

Bye bye say the happy pips!! I hope Annabel likes what I made for her. It was great to work on!

Souvenir from Sweden #4

We went to Sweden and we brought home

2 pelargoniums

a CD by Veronica Maggio

a sweet Dalahorse

and a Pippi sweater!!

 

It turned out that the sweater that I had brought with me to Sweden had shrunk in the wash: the sleeves were too short to keep me warm in the evenings! Then I saw a sweater that I knew... Pippi has one exactly like it!

Mine is knit with cotton, so it's perfect for summer. And the sleeves are long enough!

When I wear it I feel a bit like my hero!

Farmer's wife??

 

Yesterday I received this book (I had bought it from Amazon, here ). It doesn't really seem like something for me. I am more of a city person. At the most I am a farmer's grandson's wife, or maybe a wind farmer's wife... But I saw blocks from this book pop up all over Flickr and I really liked what people were making. Then I found out about a quilt along based on the book that is aimed at learning these more traditional blocks and the skills that go with them. I love learning more about quilting (I learned everything I know about quilting from or via the internet), so I got the book and joined the Flickr group.

The fabric that is used in the book are reproductions from fabric from the 1800's. Most modern quilters are not too fond of these prints and don't use them. But when I looked through the book I did like some of them. I went to the Fat Quarter Shop webshop and picked out a few reproduction prints that seemed more modern and that appealed to me. I can't wait to see what they will look like mixed in with the other fabric I will be using.

Right after receiving the book I made two blocks (#4 and #2). These are two blocks that I could figure out how to make without having to use the templates. Most blocks are more difficult though, and use templates that you print out from a CD that comes with the book. I haven't worked with templates yet, so I'm looking forward to learning...

 

What I did

This week I prepared fabric for the 6 blocks I'll be making for my fellow hive members in the 3X6 bee this quarter. I picked and tested a block pattern (it's still a secret) and I needed to cut 10 5" squares for everyone. Here is a sneak peek at the pile of squares.

 

Also this week I put my Etsy shop into permanent vacation mode. It means I quit Etsy. I had been feeling bad about the shop for a long time (no sales, and no clear indication of what to do about it, and consequently feeling bad about my products). Then I read on Carina's blog that she quit her shop on Etsy and a bit about why. Then I clicked on to the info she suggested and read some more. What I found out is that what I thought being part of Etsy was good for (the online community, treasuries, showcases and category pages) actually only generate 4 or 5 % of the sales, and that most sales follow from people being directed from a blog or other place directly to a product they want. This is exactly how I bought the Denyse Schmidt fabric last week. I knew what I wanted and just clicked directly through to somebody´s listing. So I quit Etsy. I don't want to feel bad about what I make. Because generally I feel really good about what I make! Just from within myself and also from people around me and all the nice people on Flickr that comment on what I show there. Only Etsy made me feel bad! And that is just stupid, right!

 

And then finally (or wow, already!) I finished the top of my Block-a-palooza Quilt. Find all the links to the block patterns here.

 

I'm taking a break now, but for when I return I have lots of new plans and ideas:

* the 3X6 blocks, of course

* this Supernova Quilt Along looks great

* this Japanese + and X Quilt Along looks wonderful too

* and I want to make a skirt for the summer from this fabric

 

On my break this is what I am going to read:

 
 

World Wide Christmas Toy Drop 2010

I participated in the World Wide Christmas Toy Drop by the Toy Society this weekend. This is the toy I dropped.

 

I made this little snowman by using the Sleepover Pals template from Hillary Lang's book Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love and leaving the arms and hairdo off.

 

My drop is documented here on the Toy Society blog.

If you want, you can still participate, because the Christmas Drop will continue all this week before christmas. Again go to the Toy Society blog for information. Also if you want to be a toydropper another time of year!

 

Lists

I need to post a list of projects I need or want to finish before Christmas. And also a list of projects that are floating in my mind, in various stages of finished-ness and concrete-ness. So, just to clear my head a bit:

Before X-mas

* three more swap ornaments (for a swap organized by Arawa)

* star mug rug, pattern from Fat Quarterly Holiday edition

* 3x6Bee 4th quarter blocks (3 done, 3 to go)

* Bee Europa November block (fabric received)

* Sew Buzzy November block (fabric not yet received)

 
random photo: a plant that grows on the gravel underneath a wind turbine in France 

Next year

* finish my pickle dish quilt along mini quilt (if I have time it'll move to the list above)

* make the next border of my medallion quilt (will also move up if possible)

* finish my Bee Europa quilt

* finish my Sew Buzzy quilt

* finish my Friendship Star quilt

* finish my spiderweb mini quilt

* make a quilt I saw in Material Obsession 2

* use the Quilt As You Go method to prepare the blocks I received in the 3x6Bee before sewing them together

* Figure out what I want to do with my Etsy shop. I have such a hard time accessing the Etsy website, it's extremely frustrating! So I might end up getting a shop on a different kind of platform.

* Do something (...?) with a fabric jelly roll I got a while back

* Same as above with two fabric layer cakes

* Make some mug rugs, to practice some techniques and get with the mug rug trend (look here if you haven't heard of mug rugs yet)

* Order Anna Maria Horner Innocent Crush velveteen fabric for a skirt (I might move that one up; ordering is easy!!)

* Ever finish 2 UFO knitting projects

 

Fresh September

The new school year already started a couple of weeks ago with Damaris in the first year of secondary school (very exciting for her, and for us all) and Emil in 4th grade at the school we know inside out, with the same trusted teacher as last year. Today, on the first day of September, I am starting to feel the effect of the new routine. This means some fresh new activities!

* My yoga and ceramics classes will start in about a week.

 

* I'm excited to check out some new things that are planned for September in quilty blog land: Project Modern by the Modern Quilt Guild, a new round of the Quilt-As-You-Go Quilt-Along, a quilt-along with Fat Quarterly. Do you know of any other new projects, tell me!!

* I got myself lots of wonderful new fabric:

 
a charm pack cut out of vintage sheets, by JeniB on Etsy

 
Christmas half-yards, I got from Sew Mama Sew

 
a Christmas layer cake, I got from the Fat Quarter Shop

* I have some fresh new craft books:

and I'm even quoted in one of them, Craft Hope: Handmade Crafts for a Cause. Pretty cool!

 

The others are by bloggers I've been following for a long time: Alicia's Embroidery Companion: Classic Designs for Modern Living, and Hillary's Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love.

* New months, and new assignments, in my virtual quilting bees: stars for Anita in Bee Europa, flying geese for Melinda in Sew Buzzy, square-in-square blocks suitable for a boy in do. Good Stitches (I already made those).

 

 

I'm glad the sun is coming out today, and will be in the next few days. I'm not ready for a new season yet! Let us enjoy just a little bit more of the summer season before it gets really fresh!!

Vacation library

These are the books we are reading this summer!

For Damaris: Angsten Academie (School of Fear) by Gitty Daneshvari; Julia's reis (Julia's journey) by Finn Zetterholm

For Frederik: Straf (Punishment) by Birger Baug; I read this one already and liked it a lot!

For me: De Daisy Sisters (I don't need to translate that, do I?) and Het graf (The grave) by Henning Mankell and De zomer van Kim Novak (The summer of Kim Novak) and Van Veeteren en de zaak-G. (Van Veeteren and the case-G.) by Hakan Nesser

For Emil: De vloek van Woestewolf (The curse of Fiercewolf) and Het ijzeren tapijt (The iron carpet) by Paul Biegel (a great Dutch writer for children!)

This is what I read last summer.

Are you reading anything good?