Hopfaldera

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!!

 

 

Giveaway Day

 

***Comments closed! Winner will be announced shortly*** 

Yes, it is Giveaway Day once again, or actually Giveaway Week, as this giveaway (and all the others over at Sew Mama Sew) will be open all week for you to enter and try your luck!

What will I be sending to my lucky winner this time?

These are the goodies:

A metric fat quarter of alphabet fabric, a good size scrap of fairy tale deer fabric, washi tape with happy bunting, and a card that says Smile! These last two are from the Dutch department store HEMA (the HEMA, as we say). Do these look good to you? Then you'll want to read on.

What do you need to do to win?

It's simple: please leave a comment on this post, telling me your favorite color. Everyone can enter only one time, international entries welcome! On Friday the 13th of December (will it be you lucky day?) at 9 pm (my time here in The Netherlands) I will close the comments and let a random number generator choose the winner. Make sure you leave your email address in the comment form or in the comment, so I can contact you if you win!

It is not a requirement for winning this giveaway, but it would be great if you would visit my blog again. Please consider following me on Bloglovin'!

Good luck and Happy Holidays!!

Dalahorses

This week was all about Dalahorses for me. For the Penny Sampler we were making two Dalahorse blocks, and for the Trim the Tree ornament swap I also chose to make little Dalahorses.

For the quiltblocks I decided to make two different horses. Each one in a color of the two Dala horses I have. One is black and I got it when I was on my first vacation in Sweden when I was 7. I thought it was lost somewhere in a box, either in our own attic or in my parents' attic, but when my parents saw me working on Dalahorses last week they took an Instagram photo of the black horse that they had. I was so glad to see it! I remember that when I got to pick out the horse with my parents I chose a black horse because I found that the most realistic color. When I was 7 I thought that was important... The red and blue horses just felt very weird to me.

The other horse that I own is white. I have shown it on my blog very often. Here is the story of how this horse came to live with us.

The ornaments that I made are all very unrealistic in color. But I hope very christmassy! I made them by tracing around a wooden Dalahorse shape I got in Sweden (for free, from a craft table at one of the horse factories in Nusnäs, on which they had wooden scraps from the factory that you could paint if you were inspired by seeing all the horses being produced). For each ornament I piled three felt horses and sewed them together with perle cotton. I glued the saddle and ribbon on with fabric glue. The hanging ricrac was added while I sewed the horses together.

These packages will be on their way to my swap partners today!

 

November goal

I still have so many UFO's left in my drawers that it is hard to decide which one to finish this month. I will choose one that I have had as a goal before but didn't complete: Finish a mini quilt of nine Tula100 blocks with FMQ. 

When this is finished I will have a Sinterklaas (December 5) present for us and our home. I'll make it into a wall hanging, so I should remember to add some hanging tabs when I sew on the binding.

Of course I'm linking to A Lovely Year of Finishes again.

What I made in 2012

Here is a summary of 2012 in photos of quilty and sewy things I made. 

2012 was special: I made so much and loved to do it, I got to meet quilting friends from the internet in real life, I sewed curves, I contributed a tutorial to a quilt-along, I bought lots of lovely fabric, I was part of some wonderful bees and other internet groups related to quilting and swapping, I learned so much!

Of course 2012 was not only wonderful; some terribly tragic things happened too. That is why I said special. 2012 was here, it will never return. I am looking forward to 2013, and I hope it will be great, peaceful, and full of health for everyone!

Happy 2013!!!

A secret quilt...

The last few weeks I had a big secret! Sinterklaas (the Dutch Santa whose birthday we celebrate on the evening of December 5 by giving each other gifts, instead of at Christmas; I wrote about him before) asked me to make a special gift for Damaris, my fourteen year old daughter. It's always a big secret who is making for who, so I had to go about my mission in total secrecy. 

just before wrapping

I found this tutorial for a Houndstooth quilt and bookmarked it in a secret place on our family iPad. I ordered fabric from Simply Solids in the UK: Kona Pepper and Kona Orchid. Good thing that the package came while I was home alone! I cut and sewed everything without leaving a trace, I was careful not to leave black and light purple threads and off-cuts where everyone could see them; I even wrapped them before throwing them in the bin. Even the time to wash the quilt was carefully planned so no one would see anything tumbling about. The hardest part was not being able to share when I had it done: of course I wanted to jump around showing off the quilt to everybody but I couldn't.

finished size 45" x 45" 

Then I wrapped the quilt in a special surprise package. It is part of the tradition to craft a special wrapping, always accompanied by a poem with a some compliments and few jokes about the person receiving the gift. I made a "Chanel bag" (Damaris loves fashion) and in the poem I talked about how hard she always works at her homework, but that she always gets so cold at her desk and that Sinterklaas saw all that and thought she needed a fashionable quilt.

the "Chanel bag" with chocolate C's as the logo

When Damaris unwrapped the quilt she was so surprised that she hadn't even known that I was working on it! And she loved it, so that was great!! Sinterklaas, the best time of the year!!!!

this is the back of the quilt

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!

 

Giveaway Day December 2010

{{Commenting is now closed. The winner will be announced soon!}}

The winner is Cami from Palma de Mallorca in Spain! Congratulations!!

Here it is again, Giveaway Day!

I always play a bit of music for my visitors first, so here goes... This is a video by a very popular Dutch (yes, you have landed on a blog that is based in The Netherlands) singer VanVelzen. It's a Love Song, short and sweet. Have a listen!

 

Now for the Giveway Prize! This time I'm giving away a handmade (by me) Holiday Ornament and some sweet buttons, that I will pick for you from my stash, and cute ribbon decorated with windmills (a touch of Dutch)! I'll ship internationally!

 

If you want to win, please leave a comment on this post (one entry per person)! Do so before the end of the day (NB the day ends a little earlier over here than in the US) on Wednesday December 15. This is a little earlier than Sew Mama Sew suggested, but this way there is more chance that the package will arrive before Christmas. Wednesday night I'll close the commenting and will I let the random number generator help me pick the winner...

Make sure you leave your e-mail address on the comment form, so I'll be able to contact you. And if you leave your blog URL I'll try to visit your blog.

Find the other giveaways at Sew Mama Sew! I'm going over there right now!

Good luck everyone and thanks for visiting! You're welcome to drop by more often...

 

Sneak peek

On Monday December 13 it will be Giveaway Day in blogland again! I'll be participating with a little prize too. I'm working on it now, so here is a sneak peek at my sewing table!

 

Stay tuned!

 

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