The double Sliced Layer Cake blog. American Banner Rose Layer Cake.

This is the next quilt in cowboy colours ;-) I used a Layer Cake called American Banner Rose I ordered at Missouri Star Quilt Company. I initially made the quilt for a friend who likes to travel to the US and is something like USA addicted, but during the process the piece got much to expensive so I HAD to decide that I had to gift her something else.
And I am very glad I had a nice answer from the universe on this decision because I sold the finished quilt to my sisters mother-in-law who fell in love with it. And my sister and her family were soo happy they had a present for a special birthday for her.

This quilt was the last I made before I got my new sewing machine :-)

I added a border in bright blue with red spray roses. Westfalen fabric. The back of this quilt is a dark navy fabric with white stars. Westfalen fabric again. The bias binding is bright blue.
The quilting is stitch in the ditch. And because I got my new sewing machine, a Janome Horizon, I added some nice star stitchings and other nice stitches the machine offers.

I will add the photo asap.

The small cowboy quilt

When I saw Jenny Doans hour glass blocks I had to give them a try.
There where some red and blue fabrics I bought at Buttinette.de in my sewing room I wanted to use for it.  Also I included a special red and white fabric which I got from my sisters mother-in-law. She was the heir of an old house together with others and found this vintage bed cloths. She thought of me and asked me if I wanted the fabric. The measurements where really special and I guess this bed cloths may have been stuffed with straw or hay in former times to keed some person warm. It took some bravery to cut into this lovely heavy cotton fabric.

The red and white fabric in this second picture is the vintage one.
While I was putting together the hour glasses I read a blog post from somebody who said her grandmother especially liked quilts in cowboy colours which where red, white and blue so the idea was born to call it cowboy quilt.
After I knew how to do bias binding I wanted to try something different and came across a tutorial on 'continuous praerie points'  on youtube and I really loved the ladies' accent. I guess she said something like "I reckon you can do this on your one".  Again, this was perfect for the cowboy quilty.
When I did this outer border I burned my fingers several times with my iron but it turned out really nice.

The back of the quilt is made from pieces of two of my favorite seerzucker bed cloths I kept for quilt backs. So her we go.

Meanwhile I trained some free motion quilting on this quilty but I haven´t made a photo yet.
We already use the quilt even though it is not ready yet. I guess I will finish the quilting soon.

I have a dream! - A Janome Horizon -

I would love to have a new sewing machine with a bigger throut, more stich programs, needle up and down position selection and so forth.

For a long time I used my mothers sewing machine. At that time I only made small things like shortening trousers, repairing cloths a.s.o.

Then I took this quilting class and really got into patchworking.

When my mum wanted to have her machine back, it was a cheap one from Aldi by the way, 
I bought a Pfaff Hobby 1132 for 400 Euros at Amazon as I thought, patchworkers sew straight lines. Yes, I was so wrong at that time.

While I made good progress with new projects and really had the patchwork virus I had to realise that I bought the wrong machine. I should have contacted a shop which offers service and consultation  before buying a machine.

I did so some weeks ago. I had heard about the Florin family from several sewing people and phoned them to ask for a free motion foot for my Pfaff Hobby machine. He, Mr. Florin, was so gentle and he knows his business well. He recommended to use a Janome free stitching foot on my machine, as there was none available for my model. And so we made contact and a deal.

Then, when I finished my sampler quilt recently and when I looked at it from a distance I realised that it was better to do the quilting, even if it was stitching in the ditch, with a walking foot.
Problem: One cannot put a walking foot on my Pfaff. Duh!

As I had made contact with the Florin family now I asked for an appointment in there shop and when Mrs. Florin asked me on the phone for me requirements she had an idea right away which machine would suit me. She told me to bring some pieces and some fabrics or quilt sandwiches to the shop so I could try some techniques.

Me and Birgit (Stoff Natur Werkstatt at Dawanda.de) went there.

They have a love shop. Mrs. Florin was so kind to let me sew for two hours on the Janome Memory Craft 8200. We tried free motion quilting, stitched letters, numbers and decorative flowery quilting stitches. We put on different feet, sew a zipper, made buttonholes etc etc. And we had a good time chatting, drinking good coffee and eating chocolate. It was so nice.

She also let me try out a Singer and another Pfaff, but I was already in love with the Janome.
The only problem is that I need to wait for some time to get the money together.
But, Janome you will be mine soon!

I like the Memory Craft 8200 better than the 6600 or 7700 because it has a free arm, as I need to sew patches on my kids Jeans, which is not possible with these.

A quick project on a rainy sunday "Happy fuzzy cutting"

I saw these blocks on Instragram:

Fuzzy cut quilt blocks from crazymomquilts

and these inspired me to make a table runner for Easter. Easter is soon to come! ;-) My mom gave me several table cloths with cute embroidered chickens, flowers a.s.o. with Easter themes and I really liked them but I did not not want to put them on my tables. It wasn´t very me. So I kept them in the drawer. I also read the Cath Kidston book "Patch!" again lately in which she shows how to sew a crazy patch cushion from scraps of lovely embroidered pieces. Well, combine these ideas and you have this:

Add white saching, put them together in a row and you have : Tadaaa!

a happy, scrappy, colourful table runner.

May I mention here that I am only going to quilt all the covers I sew at the moment when I have my new sewing machine!

The cat lap size quilt
Susanne, a friend, who recently visited our house, loves my quilts and asked me if I could make a cat quilt for her. She has a faible for all things catty and Hello Kitty.
I asked her what colors she wanted for her quilt and she said red, rose, pink and white and maybe beige. She mentioned that when she was in my house it inspired her to combine red and rose. The colors of her house were mainly red and beige. Now she has a faible for all things cat related and "Hello Kitty style" for some years already and she thought she had a problem combining it. So it freed her mind, when she saw me decorating rosie, pink and red together.
I dare to do so only for a few month I must admit :-)

When I saw the one Aneela Hoey (comfortstitching.typepad.co.uk) posted on Instagram I knew this was the one I was going to make. It reminds me of Whiskas and it is fun to make as it is an easy and fast pattern.

I liked Aneelas color selection. So I went to my friend Birgits little fabric and crafty store after I dropped of the kids ats school and kindergarden and got a pink, rose and a lovely fabric from Westfalen with a white backround for the project.

 I bought Aneelas pattern at her Etsy Shop, cut the pieces and

 this is how far I hace gotten until today. I guess I will add some "stone grey" fabric to give it a bit more tension. Until now I did not add any pink. I think I don´t like it together.

I will keep you posted on the progress. One block measures 15.5 inches square or 40,5 cm so I might make one more and add a cushion to the present for Susanne too :-)

I had this marvellous layer cake pack from moda called marmelade. What to do with it? When I tried a new scrappy four patch technique the idea of a lap quilt came uf to gift to the daycare my little daughter goes to for a few hours a day. She will soon go to kindergarden and I wanted a special present to say Thank you to all the lovely people there. They were part of our lives for meanwhile six years and this little quilt was just the right thing!

I added some thicker fabric in the middle in order to avoid problems with sewing around the appiqué pieces. Which was a good decision.

I selected the flowers and greens plus some hearts.

We added the batting (Freudenberg) and the backing (red and orange Westfalen fabric)
And my cutie pie made a first sitting test. She said it was good. So I proceeded with finalising it:

Tadaa!
It says: You people in this little funky house, gave our little ones a basement made of love and bit of luck on which they grew / grow individually and get strong and big people - ready for kindergarden :-)

The quilting is "stich in the ditch" on the coloured parts and free motion on the white and flowery part.

For this little quilt I made the first label with a little Thank you text on the back.

The vintage log cabin quilt.

I love the movie "Nanny McPhee" and especially the kids´ room. The whole set up of the film is so lovely, inspiring, vintage, shabby and further more. *
I saw this quilt in the kids´ room and fell in love with it - and wanted to have one, make one. When I searched the internet for its history it was even more interesting for me, as it is called log cabin and I live in kind of a log cabin house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_cabin

Luckily a little cute shop opened in the city I work in and I bought the fabrics there. Sadly the ladies who lad the store broke up within 3 months. But I know where to find the fabrics :-)  

When I first started the project I hadnt seen the Elenore Burns (Quilt in a day) technique or the tutorial from Rose Smith (http://youtu.be/2dKefMRiCQw) on easy log cabin sewing, so I cut every piece right before I sew it. Which took me a bit longer, but, hey it´s a learning process. The next blogs will be made with the advanced technique ;-)

I have made 30 blocks by now and the inner part of the other 60. I need 90 blocks for our queensize-bed.
I cut 2,5 centimetre strips (which is about 1.15 inches) because I wanted a more subtle look - and I have stick to this now...  -.-

Well, it looks quick´n easy, doesn´t it? I only have to fill in the little gaps inbetween <- this is how my daughter explained it to me when we layed it out in the sleeping room once.

I will do so, but first I have some more projects to show you / to finalise! 




* I once had a boss in the office...OH...., I am a bi-linguist secretary and I work in my job since 16 years now - as per today I work in the same big worldwide important company for 15 years already... Well, again, I once had a boss who was French and used the word "furthermore ( aka Försörmör)" really often when he would dictate that I cannot use this word ever again without thinking of him (Hi Cambi!! - if you should ever read this :-D)

My daughter made a quilt for herself. She sais she wants to use it for a picknick with her friends in sommer.
We choose four (old) bandana neckerchiefs for this project.

We cut two hearts and put it on the cover so she could learn how to do appliqué - ´Just like an adhesive sticker´ she said.

She chose the pink and red strawberry fabric for the backing. Now its mummys´ turn to do the batting, quilting and binding.

I decided to train myself in free motion quilting on this one here. Lately I discovered LEAH!
On Pinterest I saw a pin of one of her free motion quilting tutorials on youtube. Just now that I looked her up on google to be able to put a link to her to my article here, I found out she is at blogspot.de TOO.  -->>  (http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.de/)
Once I read thru her complete bio, I will ask her how come she´s here - at a .de-website.
I fear I won´t have time to do so today.

Anyways, I will exercise free motion quilting on my daughters first quilt because I am sure, that there is no moaning when it is not perfect.
And as I still have to quilt my spring sampler quilt, I need some practice!

And my first born demands her quilt so I should better hurry ;-) 

Spring has finally decided to come to Germany. 
I made this Spring Quilt to decoy the spring and it worked! Yeehaa!

 

I always wanted to have a sampler quilt. But I did not have enough meassurements fot 12 blocks in centimetre. And the internet is full of blocks - blocks in all sizes and colours and varieties - in INCH. So I finally decided to buy a quilters set in inch-sizes in order to be able to chose from all the blocks in the www.
If you want so some fun and easy quilting projects I recommend watching 
´Rose Smith from Ludlow Quilt and Sew´. I love her accent, her calm voice and her ideas. 
Or the `Missouri Star Quilt Company´ Jenny Doans explanations are nice and easy to follow. 
My inspiration for the above shown quilt came from Vanessa from "The crafty gemini". 
I made some blocks from her Quilt along project. Thanks Vanessa! :-) 

There are are of lot of wonderful tutorials from talented and experienced women on youtube and all over the web, but these ladies mentioned above are my all time favs. 

The four dresdens I had left from a last years´ project. I used some Cath Kidston fabrics in these, which came with her lovely and inspiring book "Patch!" which I bought last summer. The fabrics were "free gifts" and the book recommended to do a dresden and put it on either a pillow or a shopping bag, but I did not want to waste it on these. So I kept them for a special occassion aaaand now they are kind of the stars in my first sampler. 

I chose the backing fabric to be "Rosali white from Ikea" which was designed by Cath Kidston some years ago. The fabric is not available anymore at Ikea, but one can get it at Ebay for example. The binding will be red fabric with little white dots which I bought at a really nice fabric store just around the corner (http://www.kreativehaende.blogspot.de)

I will only post in English from now on :-)

I just figured out how to make a QR-Code for my blogs address :-) 

I used this link http://www.qrstuff.com/index.html and now I think of printing it on mugs or so and gift it to my family :-) or put a sticker on my car. I will keep you posted on this :-)

Meine Inspirationen bekomme ich von 

Pinterest, hier meine Seite: http://pinterest.com/salutaria/

Youtube und aus Filmen wie Pippi Langstrumpf oder Anne of Green Gables

Hier meine ersten Quilt-Blocks 

 Hier habe ich Häkelgardinen, die nun nicht mehr ins Haus passen mit floralem, knalligen Stoff kombiniert.

 Oder hier, crazy quilting.
Dies hier hat Birgit gemacht. Sie hat einen Shop bei Dawanda (http://de.dawanda.com/shop/stoffnatur)

 Vorlage für ein 16er Patch :-)

 Cath Kidston - I love everything about / from her!

This is the book I refer to on April 16.

Per Zufall bin ich wieder darauf gestoßen, dass ich ja auch einen Blog angefangen habe.
Eigentlich, denke ich mir oft, müßte ich mein  Glück mit anderen teilen und bloggen. Aber die Zeit ist einfach immer knapp.
Seit einem Jahr begeistert mich das Quilten. 
Damals habe ich einen Kurs besucht von Frau Gräfje (Sie hat auch einen Blog, Kreative Hände, hier bei Blogspot) 
Auch dafür brauche ich natürlich Zeit. 
Hier zeige ich ein paar meiner neuestern Werke :-) 

Ich habe begonnen einen Vintage-LogCabin-Quilt zu nähen. Für das große Ehebett brauche ich 90 Blocks. 30 Stück habe ich gemacht. Leider ist mir der helle Stoff ausgegangen. 
Dies Bild rechts war die Vorlage dafür.

Hier ist der (erste) Weihnachtsquilt. 
Das arrangieren der Felder macht am meisten Spaß vor dem Fertigstellen :-) 

Dieser hier ist mittlerweile auch fertig und heißt Majong-Quilt, weil ich die Blocks entsprechend angeordnet habe. 

Diese Dresdens sind jetzt Teil eines Frühlings-Samplers.
(siehe auch April, 16)