Hopfaldera

Working on my skirt

How is it going with my goal for May, my skirt from feathery AMH fabric? I made the pattern, washed and ironed the fabric and cut out all the pieces of fabric needed for the skirt. 

So it is going pretty well. Next I have to secure the raw edges that will be at the back of the skirt. I found a great tutorial for french seams, so I'm going to make the side seams like that. I couldn't figure out how to make a french seam in the back because I also have to add the zipper there, so the back will have a different finish. I added an inch of fabric to do that. 

I also cut fabric for a second skirt. I used the fabric that I had planned to make a skirt from last year (or was it two years ago?) I had the pattern ready, so that was easy. And I'll end up with two new skirts!

I'm linking up to the mid-month check-in of A Lovely Year of Finishes.

 

P.S. To get back to my previous post: Anouk has made it to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest!! We're very excited for tomorrow's show!

Three zippers in one pouch

I joined the Triple Zip Along. It's a Flickr group with the goal of making the Triple Zipper Pouch that A Quilter's Table has made a tutorial for. The sew along started yesterday and continues until February 15 (there are prizes and everything). I found exactly three zippers of the right size in my zipper box, so I chose fabrics to go with those.

When I was making the pouch I found that shorter zippers would have sufficed (you cut about 3 inches off), so I can go back to my zipper box and choose another color combination. I think I will try another version of the pouch. Also because it wasn't too easy working with the padded outside fabric the way I padded it. The tutorial calls for fusible fleece, but I didn't have that, so I fused some flannel to the inside of my outside fabric with vliesofix. I used flannel because it was the thinnest batting I could think of, but I still found it very stiff to work with. I think I will try to reinforce the outer fabric with just another layer of regular cotton fabric for my next version and see how that works out.

Here is my finished pouch. I love it anyway!!!

No precious fabric was wasted while making this quilt block

You know how when you cut fabric for a quilt block from a larger piece from your stash you very often cut it a little bit too big, then you iron it, and then you cut your piece to the exact measurements you need. Or when you're foundation paper piecing you cut a generous piece of fabric that will definitely cover the bit in your pattern that it should cover and then later you trim the excess away. When you do these things (I do, it's very handy, you don't run the risk of accidentally cutting your fabric too small), you end up with waste. Very pretty, but useless waste.

Usually I find that no problem, it's just the way it goes. Sometimes you want to do things differently though. For instance when you only buy fat eighths of the Chicopee fabric line (like I did, to save a bit of money) or when you would like to start cutting into your Liberty Lifestyle fabric and don't want to waste a thread.

My pile of Chicopee fat 8ths

My Liberty Lifestyle fabrics, too pretty to waste

For that situation I came up with instructions and measurements for a little quilt block that is usually made by foundation paper piecing. These measurements give you no waste, except for possibly a little fluff that you cut off at the end to square up the block if you need to. You end up with a 6 1/2" block (6" finished) that doesn't have any fabric running on the bias.

This is what you need to do. First iron your fabric. If you have only fat eighths it is not such a task, otherwise drag your yardage to the ironing board and iron the corner that you're going to cut from. For the center cut a 3.5"square. For the triangles around the center cut a 4 1/4" square and cut it on both diagonals to create four triangles. Sew these triangles to the center square using a 1/4" seam allowance. For the outer triangles cut two 4" squares and cut each diagonally once to end up with four triangles in total. Sew these triangles to your block, again with a 1/4" seam allowance. Check if you need to square this up to 6 1/2 ". Done!

This way you only use a little bit of fabric to end up with something lovely! Hope I helped someone getting over the fear of cutting into those precious fabrics (fyi, my Liberty Lifestyle is still untouched...)

Fresh Sewing Day

 

Today I am linking up to Lynne's blog feature Fresh Sewing Day. Lynne taught me how to make a Union Jack pillow at the Fat Quarterly retreat in London, and look at her beautiful Jack Attack quilt that she finished last month. My Union Jack pillow is still not finished (almost, almost), but I have made other things last month. Here they are:

 

Five blocks for the Grandmother's Choice block of the week quilt along, four bee blocks, a Chicopee pillow cover in the making, and a basket totebag.

I'm also linking up to the Small Blog Meet (can't get that button to work though...). I would love to have a few new visitors here, so WELCOME if you came through that link, or otherwise. I am Muriël from The Netherlands and I love to quilt and sew. I'm part of some online bees: Bee Europa, Sew Buzzy, Cocorico, do.Good Stitches. I share a lot of my work on Flickr, and also here on my blog. Over here it's easier to give a bit more background than in the descriptions of photos on Flickr, and also to show a few more shots of the same object. You're more than welcome to visit again!

Japanese basket tote bag

When I was in New York this summer I went to the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya. They have a wonderful collection of craft books there. These are the ones I bought.

Umami, about very modern and organic looking bags, Colour Couture by Suzuko Koseki, and Machine made patchworks 02 also by Suzuko Koseki. 

This week I found the courage to try one of the patterns from Colour Couture. The book is completely in Japanese except from some titles. But luckily the measurements are written in arabic numerals a.k.a. the way I do it, and even in centimeters! The diagrams in the book are very clear and helpful too, so it was not so hard to figure out how to make what I wanted to make: a very cute and clever bag.

Here it is, all finished. It looks like a cute basket, useful for when you're buying just a few things.

But when you decide to buy more, you can unfold the inside of the bag and turn it into a full shopping bag.

For the front panel I used a piece of vintage fabric I bought from Carina who was destashing a bit. The aqua tape measure fabric I used for the back is also from New York, from Purl Soho to be specific. The rest of the fabrics I pulled from my stash.

Distraction

I was working on finishing my Union Jack pillow case from the FQ retreat in London.

Then I came to the part where I had to take the paper of the back and make decisions about what fabric to use for the sashing and the back of the pillow and I got distracted.

By a cute tutorial for a flex frame pouch that I saw on Leila's blog, and the fact that I had everything necessary to make two of those pouches (I had bought my flex frames at U-handbag), even using Liberty scraps (like Leila also does in her tutorial).

So then I spent the rest of my day making two flex frame pouches with Liberty fabrics (but not with hexies like Leila because that would have gone too far, and I am not ready for the whole hexy thing, hand sewing them and everything...). I finished both!

Aren't they lovely?! It's just incredible to me that you can actually make something like this with your own hands. Thank you, Leila, for the great tutorial and inspiration!

A succesful day I would say, even though I still haven't finished my Union Jack.

 

FQ London 2012

Where to begin?! Last weekend we went to London. Of course I went for the Fat Quarterly sewing/quilting retreat, and Frederik, Damaris and Emil went with me. Afterwards Damaris and I said to each other: we have had this much excitement before but not in such a short time. I'm still a bit quiet about it, it was so wonderful, overwhelming, fun, like nothing else! And we're tired of course.

Damaris blogged about her experiences on her Dutch fashion blog (she's 14 and has this blog with her best friend). 

So now for my experiences. I'll start with some photos and then hopefully the words will come.

We flew to London from Rotterdam on Friday. It took only 4 and a half hours from door to door, which I thought was incredibly fast! We had dinner at Jamie Oliver's Barbecoa restaurant, great food and fun!

Royally approved!

Then, on Saturday morning I went to the Baden-Powell House to the retreat. I was greeted by lots of friendly and familiar faces, the nerves left immediately. The main hall was already filled with lots of people and the great opening game was to talk to six people whose names I had on a card, and get their autographs. It was a great trick to break any ice that was left, and I had soon met all kinds of people that I had only known through the internet up to now. John (Quilt Dad) made a little opening speech and then some classes and other activities started. I first went to swap some nice FQs of fabric.

This is what came home with me

After some coffee and chatting to people, my first workshop started: the Design Challenge. John, Brioni and Lynne talked about the design process for the Fat Quarterly book and showed some samples from the book. Then we got some short assignments (like draw a block with squares and rectangles), did some drawing and talked about what we had come up with. This was a fun exercise that I want to do more often. I usually start by looking at fabric, or with a theme.

These were my sketches

After this it was lunch time (actually it was Sample Swap time, but Vicky and I missed that a little bit and upset Trash's plan somewhat (sorry!), all was fine in the end though (I hope for you too, Vicky!))

 

I swapped my samples with Annabella, Linda, Lorna and John and got lovely gifts back from them. Thank you all so much!

After lunch I was in Lynne's class to make a Union Jack pillowcase using foundation paper piecing. Lynne was a fun teacher and had made an excellent pattern for us. Working in a different place than usual and with a different machine than at home is not easy, so I made a quarter of a Union Jack with some Lotta Jansdotter and Meadowsweet fabric. I will definitely finish this at home because it will be a great souvenir from the Jubilee weekend spent sewing!

In the main hall some exciting things were going on. One of them was that a representative from Liberty came to show us their new range of quilting weight fabric, Liberty Lifestyle. This was just awesome! Such beautiful prints! I cannot wait to buy them all! I received a pretty tote bag from the Liberty lady (as did a lot of people).

Liberty Lifestyle

Liberty totebag and contents of the goodie bag I received from the FQ team

Another thing was the Iron Man challenge. I was in group 5 and with Lucy, Amy, Tammy, Elisabeth and other that joined us we worked on designing and making a quilt top.

Our finished Iron Man quilt top

Of course we had to swap our ugly fabric too. Some were really ugly, but some were okay. This is what I ended up with:

what do you think: ugly or alright?

After this was the raffle. There were lots of prizes, I was impressed. My family had already come to have dinner with me and they saw me win a huge prize: A fat quarter set of Blitzen by BasicGrey, really good!! Thank you!! I want to make a quilt with stars from it, because it is Christmassy fabric (but I won't promise it will be done this Christmas...).

my super prize!!

During dinner I almost fell asleep, so after that I only went back to collect my things and went straight to bed after that!

The next morning Frederik, Damaris and Emil got up very early to go to the Harry Potter Studios, so I had breakfast by myself. I think I saw some wizards posing as muggles in the breakfast room though... Then back to the retreat!

First I had a freezer paper piecing class with Kerry. She is in the Cocorico bee too, and she's just really good, technically and creatively!! It was fun to meet her, and learn tricks to conquer the dreaded y-seam (just do it, step by step, leave the paper on until the end, use tick marks), and it worked! I only finished one block, because I sewed by hand (not my favorite thing). And also because I had a fun chat with Ulrike (Floh) and Mary about our various bee experiences. At home I turned my little block into a pincushion.

After another great lunch I chatted for a while with Nicole, Tacha and Linda. And I listened in on Lucie Summers porthole technique class. Then we found out that the frame purse class from Katy had started and we rushed upstairs. I managed to finished my frame purse, and I was so happy! It's really not that hard (Katy explained it step by step), and the result looks great! Next day at home I ordered frames, glue and piping cord from U-handbag to make some more of these purses.

After finishing the purse and saying goodbye, I went back to the hotel and waited for my husband and kids. They had managed to see a glimpse of the Jubilee boat pageant, and they made it back in time too. I heard all about their wonderful time at Harry Potter in the taxi to London City airport. We made it in time for the plane back home and Nicole, who had taken the tube had luckily also made it through the rush, she was on the same plane.

Okay, once I got talking, the words did come; this is a very long post. I want to thank everybody for making the retreat so wonderful: the FQ team, the teachers, all the other helpers and all my fellow participants!!! Let's do it again next year! I loved it!!

 

FQ London 2012 - preparations

In less than a week I will be doing something very exciting: go to London meet lots of fellow quilters and sewers at the Fat Quarterly sewing retreat!! Fat Quarterly is an e-magazine about quilting. They have wonderful patterns and projects each quarter and it is run entirely online, although the team have now made a book, Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters, that is actually on paper.

Here are some photos of the preparations I made for the retreat. First of all, I made a nametag for someone (I hope she has received it because I didn't hear...)

And here is the nametag I received, made by Kelly! So lovely!! I'll wear it proudly! Thank you, Kelly!!!

We are going to swap some fabric at the retreat. Some nice FQs:

And also some ugly fabric:

I hope people won't think it's the other way round! And I'm very curious what ugly fabric the others will bring. I think we'll have a good laugh!

I prepared some fabric for a paper piecing workshop; I'm going to make a Union Jack pillow.

And for a Frame Purse workshop.

I also made some pincushions to swap in the Sample Swap. I printed the text fabric myself. Here they are:

Now I will need to pack some tools and other sewing needs (and maybe some clothes and a toothbrush) and I be ready to go!! I can't wait to meet everyone!!

More curves

Curves Class from Rachel has come to an end. It was fun! I learned very much. I feel I can tackle curves now, so that's great (I used to completely avoid curved sewing lines in patchwork). I even feel I can design my own projects with curvy lines now, so stay tuned for those.

First I still have a lot of homework projects to show. 

My D.P. potholder

Some more drunkard's path units sewn together

One Orange Peel unit made into a mugrug

My Mod Bud notebook cover

Rachel said that she might teach the class again, so, if you are interested, you can sign up to be notified when she does. Here.

Right now I am still working on a bathmat from the class and I also want to make a full quilt to finish the class, so I'll show them later.

A sneak peek at my Slices Mat

My homework

I'm in the third week of Curves Class, and it's fun! I love what Rachel is offering us. And I'm learning a lot. Especially just to keep going even if things become difficult, because it'll turn out alright. Or you can always get out the seam ripper, and start again. 

I want to show off what I've made so far.

Scallop bunting

That was fun and easy to make. And it came at a great moment because it was finished and hanging in my sewing room when I had my birthday a week ago. I used some of the FQ pack of Echo by Lotta Jansdotter that I was saving for something special.

Then came the Clamshell Pillow. I had a lot of fun selecting fabrics for that. The background is a mix of linen and silk that I bought in China last year, and the scallops are all fabrics with one color on white. I love how it turned out!

After this we went on with improv curves. I made some notecards, that I'm not too sure about... To me they look a bit messy and wrong instead of purposely curved.

I was hoping that continuing with a bigger project would make the curves look more like deliberate swirly lines instead of just crooked sewing lines. I think it worked! I made the Rainbow Road table runner and I love it!

Rainbow Road

This week we are starting with precise curves, and I can't wait for the first project! I'll show you soon!