4/16/2013

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)