Hopfaldera

My Small World

We are in our new home now. We have been for five months. I love living there. It didn't take much time to get used to the new place and space. I've only been confused once: when we had been  on holiday for a week in Friesland (sailing/family reunion) and drove back home, I was thinking of the wrong place that we were driving to. When I came in the house after that drive I walked into each room and sort of greeted it and felt very happy that this is our place now. 

The first quilting project I started here was the My Small World quiltalong designed by Jen Kingwell. Appropriate as I was establishing my small world in a new house. Here are photos from when I was making all the different sections of the quilt.

 

The design was very intricate and on some points quite challenging. Fun challenges that I took on and some that I thought were too much and found an alternative for. The quilt top is finished now and awaiting it's turn in the quilt finishing line. 

Sugar Block Club quilttop

Hi, I'm back! Not sure why I didn't blog for a while, it wasn't for the lack of sewing or other activities. Maybe it was because of the other activities, house remodeling for instance. That was probably it.

I have finished the quilttop with my Sugar Blocks. Here it is.

I used the blocks that I made in the Sugar Block Club as the outer border. The little blocks in the middle are from my pile of Farmer's Wife Quilt blocks. I picked the sweetest blocks I had made. I also added two pieces I cut from a cross stitched table cloth I found at a thrift store. I fused interfacing to the back of the table cloth before I cut it.

I love my sugary quilt top. It will have to wait to be finished until after we move to our new home. It won't be long now, five or six weeks...

Houses in Yellow finished

Yay, it's finished! I've reached my goal for January in A Lovely Year of Finishes. 

This is Houses in Yellow. 

size: 50" x 60"

blocks made by: the members of the Comfort Circle of Do.Good Stitches (this is a European circle of an online charity bee)

finished by: me

will be donated to: a client of the Foodbank in The Hague

This is the back of the quilt:

Here is the goalsetting post, it was #3 in the goalsetting party. Now I'm linking to the finishes party.

The photos above were taken on the Scheveningen boulevard with a view on the North Sea. I took some close up photos at home:

Here you can see the mustard yellow binding.

I got creative with the label and turned it into a house, befitting the theme of this quilt.

And here is a process shot of when the front and the backing where still separate.

 

Instagram miniswap

In the summer I signed up for a swap of miniquilts. That was exciting! During my vacation in France I saw on Instagram that a swap was going to start. @curly_boy1 was organizing everything. The team I was assigned to was lead by Trash, #teamtrash, which was great. She did an awesome job!

Usually I don't sign up for a swap of such a large and work intensive item as a miniquilt. My solution in the past was to make something for myself instead to be on the safe side. I don't know why but this time I did jump in. I'm glad I did! It was fun to make a mini for someone I hadn't known before. I had to 'stalk' my partner Fiona (@fionamadeit) from Australia to figure out what she would like. In her info she wrote that she liked all kinds of triangles and that her favorite colors were blue, green and yellow. I started on one mini quilt based on a magazine picture, but in the end decided that it was not the one I was going to send. It was a bit too serious, and I felt Fiona needed a sunnier mini because it was summer where she lives. This is the mini I made for Fiona.

And this is the one I kept. In the meantime I finished it for my own wall but when I took the photo I was in the middle of adding the binding.

 

And I also received a miniquilt. It was made for me by Margaret (@formandfabric)!

I love the colors and block designs she used! It is going to look so good on the mini quilt wall I am planning in our new house. Thank you again, Margaret!

Together with the mini I also received a big pile of lovely fabric. You can see it here in my initial Instagram shot.

And here are some more photos related to the swap:

a close up of the mini I made

 

the backing with the label

and the goodies I sent along with the mini

Houses in yellow - alyof

Happy New Year! 2015, I hope it will be a lovely year, with only good surprises and lots of fun experiences. My family and I will move to a new home this year. The work on the house is still being done. We are going for as little stress as possible surrounding this move, but it will be exciting nonetheless. Before May we should be in the new house.

I was thinking about all the stuff I have to move to the new place, especially all the ufos (unfinished objects) that are in my drawer units and I thought that I should probably try to make these units a little lighter. So, finishing ufos! And this is where A Lovely Year of Finishes comes in. In 2013 I finished a lot of projects joining this link-up, in 2014 I didn't link up so often, but still finished quite a few things. This year 2015 I want to structure my work a bit more, so I'm joining ALYoF again.

Here is the goal setting party for this January. My goal (#3 in the link-up) for this month is to finish the Houses in Yellow quilt for the Comfort Circle of do.Good Stitches. I have all the blocks from my fellow bee members. So I need to organize the backing, batting, quilting and binding. And of course I still need to sew the blocks into a top. Good thing January has 31 days...

 

These are all the creative blocks every one made. Here is my original instruction post.

Last of the Sugar Blocks

Whoops, I almost forgot to show the last block of the Sugar Block Club here. I had shown it on Instagram, but it needs a post here too. Here is Still

I loved making the blocks in this club. The name of the club inspired me to make the blocks very sweet and sugary, which I loved doing. It is such a girly color scheme, normally I'd think twice about allowing myself to go that far into the sweetness. But here it was okay.

I have 12 blocks now. I think I will use them as a border around a super sweet 24"  x 24" block that I'll think up soon. Something floral or with another sweet theme.

 

Comfort Circle Christmas Swap

With the Comfort Circle of the do.Good Stitches bee (the charity bee I'm in) we had a Xmas swap. We each handmade a decoration for one of the other bee members. It was a fun swap!

This is what I made for Alexandra who lives in France. It is a Christmas house from a pattern from the Wee Wonderfuls book by Hillary Lang. The original pattern isn't Christmassy, but it is easy to adjust to any theme.

I also received a lovely package. Sarah from Great Britain cross-stitched me a very pretty Santa ornament with shiny beads.

When I was making the house for Alexandra I also made one for myself. Sometimes it is just as easy to make two of something as making one, and this way it's also easier to part with something you really like and put a lot of work into ;)

 Happy holidays everyone!!

 

 

Two projects

Hey, I said I was not going to a start new project before I had some things crossed of the WIP list, but I did anyway, haha. In my defense I had finished two of the three projects on my list. I already showed you my Indian Blanket quilt. I also finished quilting and binding the Double Dutch random sampler. After I add the label that Lotje is making I'll make a blogpost about the finished project. 

Okay, so what did I make before I finished the Mini Lion quilt? Actually they are two free tutorials, maybe you haven't seen them.

First I started on Kviltstina's Modern Christmas Tree, here is the tutorial. I'm quilting this project right now, so it isn't finished, but this is my quilttop. I will turn this into a wallhanging.

Then I heard friends of ours are having a girl. The baby is due any day now, so I needed a quick pattern. I love Fatquartershop's shortcut quilt videos, so I picked one of them, the Fat Eighth Frenzy. Here is the video and instruction sheet. 

the quilt top

 

the backing

 

 This quilt was really fast and I have it all finished and waiting.

 

 

Indian Blanket quilt

Yay, I have a finish! My Indian Blanket from the Angled class (an online class from Rachel of Stitched in Color) is all done now.

Here is a photo of my fabric choices for this quilt. I used several solids, some Botanics/Architextures and Cotton+Steel prints, some other basics from my stash. An AMH floral print and Cotton+Steel horses (not in the photo) add some interest.

 

A bit of planning with a color sheet from the class. For each row I made sure that the triangles pointing upwards were more prominent, so the other triangles would look like the background.

There was a lot of cutting involved for this quilt (all those triangles), but the method in the class made it as efficient as possible.

 The quilting was quite a heavy task. I quilted horizontal lines with varying distances in between, most in a light pink and some in a purply pink.

 

Here is the whole thing.

 

There are some leftover triangles on the back.

 

And here is the quilt rolled up. I made the binding with Doe fabric. It's a tiny triangle print, so I thought that was appropriate. The quilt is very warm and I'm looking forward to sitting under it on the couch this evening!

Tea with a carrot and other bee blocks

I'd like to talk about some recent bee blocks I made.

I designed and made this carrot for Melinda in the Cocorico bee. Her theme was Farmer's Market. I felt the carrot shouldn't be too dainty, because carrots just aren't. Going to a Farmer's Market is quite hip, so this is a hipster carrot. The fabrics convey the textures in a carrot (at least that's how I chose them) and the design is a bit improv like an organic vegetable.

 

For Kylie, also in the Cocorico bee, I designed and made a block portraying a teapot. Her theme was Tea, please! and the blocks were to go with the British-themed blocks Kylie got in the previous round of the bee. This block definitely needed to be dainty, I thought. I added a bit of a seventies/scandinavian twist by using the graphical strawberry fabric.

 

 

The following blocks aren't my own design. The sheep I made for a charity quilt Francis will finish for the do.Good Stitches Comfort Circle. The block tutorial can be found here on Amy's During Quiet Time blog. This was such a cute block to make.

 

The last block today is a classic, the Ohio Star. But a small one, this block finishes at 6 inches square. The block is for Dorothy in Bee Europa. She asked that we use scraps for the block and so I did.