This memory quilt is an upcycling project at its best! 

So my mother in law gave me a box of fabrics a few years ago she had kept for years for a special occasion. They were dear to her and she had wanted to sew something from it one day. And now I had it and I was honored, excited and a bit scared actually. So I put the fabrics together in a quilt and it is telling a wonderful story. 

My OHs family spent many summer holidays in Sweden - and holidays during other seasons, too when he was a child. They went there in 1979 for the first time and they came back every year! A woman who was their relative and which they adopted to be their aunt lived in a simple yet cute house in Tommarp / Oesterlen. 

She had a loom and made her own fabric. 

She even made Christina, the oldest sister, weave and later in her life she became a professional weaver.  

 

For me the first step for making this quilt was to collect all the fabrics that I wanted to go into the quilt. So I put these Swedish ones in one box with others from my stash. When the content of the box had grown I took a closer look.

Only the blue Swedish fabrics made it into this quilt. I am keeping the ones in other colours like red and brown for some other project. 

And because the colors rose, pink and magenta go nicely with this royal and bright blue these became the contrasting fabrics. I took these from my stash - as follows:  

Pieces of fabric from  

- an older blouse one of my sisters gave to me to wear (light blue with millefiori)

- Stefans shirt (dark blue with white dots)

- one dress of my girls (pink with tiny flowers)

- one blouse of my girls (denim blue with rose flowers)

- a piece of blue Kaffe Fasset fabric from Andrea (Sewfullofdreams) - which was once the backing fabric of a quilt she had quilted in very, like very dense FMQ quilting and I volunteered to rip the sandwich apart for her because I really want her to use or finish the quilt because I like the top!    

- a lovely Liberty fabric which I ordered London (pink)

And so London comes into play. 

The receiver of this quilt, Eva, spent one year in London as au-pair. Back in 2016. So I wanted to pay it credit and weave this in the quilt, too. She had actually been to Regent street back than (envy-envy!!) 

The flower stems are made of Liberty fabric too. The bias tape was appliquéd on by hand. Also made by hand were the Suffolk puffs, the English paper pieced hexie flowers and the appliquéd flowers. 

The spiral flowers were designed by Sarah Fielke (www.sarahfielke.com) and I made some for my "A little Wilderness Quilt" and so loved making them! I also wanted to see them made in blue and rose and pink and, as you can see, they look fabulous in this color combination! Thanks Sarah for coming up with these fab dizzy flowers! 

While I was finishing the quilt the other week I listened to Karen Browns interview with Pearl Ann Gooding. Thanks for this interview ladies! I loved it. A big door opened for me! I found out one very important reason why I make quilts! 

I also read Thomas Knauers book "Why we quilt" the month it came to the market and it resonated with me a lot! I recommend this book to every modern quilter! He put so much in words which I only felt and had not put into actual words in my head. Go ahead and read it, if you are a quilter or if you want to understand the quilter in your life better. 

But just like Pearl Ann Gooding one thing I really want to do is to conserve fabrics and the memories which are linked to them. Or I want to keep the memories alive and put them on display by making a project with fabrics from a certain time and place. I like to have them around on my bed, on my couch or on the walls, in my car, in the garden and actually just everywhere. 

Also one thing which I love about sewing and quilting is that once you make a mistake you can rip the fabric apart with a seam ripper, or you adjust the seam, or you remake a certain part in a project... but this will be another blog post. 

Also am I the only one who loves that decorating the house, putting quilts and cushions everywhere is on vogue again? It is called cocooning and posts about it can be found everywhere on Pinterest. Ha! So I am a hipster I guess :-D 

CU :-)

Caroline 

OH, and I also made a flange binding for this one which is just darling and the perfect frame!! Love it so much! And the backing is a lovely Kaffe Fassett fabric in blue with daisies and other lovely bed flowers. 

Hexie quotes

The project that never finishes 

... turned into something nice (until it becomes an actual quilt one day, right?)!

Many quilters want to make at least one hexie quilt in their life. And so do I. So I started the project in 2018 by printing out a template I found on the interwebs many times on sturdy paper and cutting out all the hexagon shapes. My kids helped cutting some of the shapes which was cute thing to see them do. 

Then I dug deep into my stash and scrap boxes for my favorite colors,  cut out these fabrics eyeballing the quarter inch seam allowance. I like pinning. And I like my needles. So I put one needle to hold paper and fabric together. Then folded the fabric around the papers and fixed them with a hemming stitch. Six petals for each flower and one contrasting fabric for the centre. Then whip stitching them into flowers. Making sure I make knots at the end of the sew line. (And still the seams opened on some, ugh)

I enjoyed stitching them! Sitting and stitching in a nice frequent motion is one of my favorite things to do and it makes me happy! 

This is what the beautiful flowers look like all together laid out on the floor in my living room. So fun! Later I flipped them around and numbered them by rows. 

Now that I had seen the end result, I could not wait to put the rows together. And this was trickier than I thought it would be. When putting the hexies together it is easy to sew then together in a wrong angle. And this happened to me several times. And after working on this quilt for a few weeks in a row I had to stop and put it aside. Now I have about three rows together which I keep on a trousers hanger in my big linen cupboard from the old days and then there is this beautiful pile of hexagon flowers on the shelf.  

So a few weeks later, inspired by Bonnie K. Hunter (which I adore for her piecing skills and the positivity she brings into the world, to only name a few) I photographed the hexie flowers in my (back then new) light frame and put quotes on them to brighten up peoples lives who follow me on Instagram. 

And so the Hashtag Hexiequotes was invented. 

Do you also have a pile of hexagons sitting somewhere on your shelfs or in a UFO-box? Yes, I hear you! I will let you know when I get back to my flower quilt. Until then, there may be some #hexiequotes coming your way. 

Love

Caroline

A star is born! 

And what a nice big and shiny star it is. I am loving this quilt! And it´s owner does so too. 

Last year I came up with the idea to gift one of my sisters in law a quilt and it had to be an easy and quick pattern. A week before I had seen the "Big wonky star" tutorial on Missouri Star quilt companies youtube channel. Missouri Star Quilt Company 

They always come up with fun ideas and easy to follow instructions. Now although I make up a lot of my quilt patterns up myself I always like to use a fun one from the big companies. So I was set pattern wise. 

Whenever I make a custom quilt I try to get to know the receivers favorite colour. In this case I asked Katrins daugher Eva. We exchanged a few secred WhatsApp messages and purple had to be the one! *Gnehehehee* 

Once I have the colour I am going to work with I sit with it. Sit with the idea. 

After some time I know which designer or fabric line I want to go with or I google, in this case, purple and lilac fabric in order to find out which online shop to buy from or maybe I realise that I can make the project from my stash. In this particular case I decided to go for Kaffe Fassetts paperweight fabric in purple. Kaffes paperweights are some of my favorites! I love the feel of the fabric, its rather light quality and that it gives me so many options to combine other fabrics with it. So I ordered some online at Maritas online shop www.quiltmaus.de She is my go-to-shop for Kaffe Fassett fabrics!

The fabric for the big star had to be a high contrast and fun one. So I chose Tula Pinks fairy dust. I had loads of this one fortunately because it makes the best fun and playful yet modern background!

The quilt top was easy peasy cut and put together in two afternoons. 

The backing had to be a flannel because it was ment to be really warm and cosy. Katrins daughter and I are both interested in all thinks GB! We watch royal weddings, trooping the color and may even have a little bubble water to say a toast to the queen once in a while. And I love that. Eva spent a year in London as au-pair and the whole family felt special about it and everybody followed closely what news where send from UKs capital during this whole year. Sooo, long story short, (Eva, I love or little chats about the queen and her family and all things English! Um, just wanted to make really sure you know this! :-)) 

I chose a tartan flannel with purple in it. 

Back then I had no longarm so I chose straight line quilting on my Janome horizon. I always use the walking foot for this kind of quilting because the first three quilts I quilted on my old Pfaff machine about 10 years had wobbles. Due to the pressure the normal piecing foot puts on the three layers of fabric these shift. And even if the shifting is minimal, one can recognise it on a bigger quilt. 

So the solution is the walking foot which distributes the pressure equally on all layers. If I use the big walking foot I have the perfect guide for double line quilting. Which I did on this quilt. 

When we went to Katrins house before Christmas I gave it to her. It lives on her sofa ever since and I am loving this!

Early 2020 some of my works were displayed in a cute little exhibition house in my town. 

A week before I this happened I had felt like joining the www.kunstfreunde-wetter.de a little group of artists who organize themselves in a registered society. It felt a bit like being part of some Midsomer Murders episode to be honest and this might have been something I actually enjoyed. Nobody was murdered though! 
I e-mailed two members of the club that I wanted to join, payed the yearly fee and a few days later I held the key to their exhibition housy in my hand. I was very lucky that for the next four weeks there was no other artist booked to exhibit anything in the little house.
After one of the club founders showed me the house (like where the power switch was and which kind of equipment I could use too) my brain started working and I wanted to get started!

In one day I put together what I wanted to show. It was really easy to do so actually and I kinda felt that I had trained for this opportunity my whole life :-) If you follow me on Instagram you know this. (If not please feel free to do so: www.instagram.com/whitetimbercottage) 

So this afternoon in January I went shopping for design elements in my house. I grabbed the old willow chair I got from my mum, my favorite laundry basket, some big fabrics to fake the white brick wall and of course quilts, quilt tops, little wall hangings, notions and books.

We put the goods in our cars, thankfully Stefan has a van, and drove downtown twice. Then I set up the small house like a room in our house.  A space where I could imagine to sit and sew. 

A highlight for me was the fake cat I put on the old armchair. It looked so real that we feared some animal friends could break into the glass to free it, hehe.

The whole set up looked so pretty to me. I felt like moving in almost :-) 

The hard part, at the end of this day, was to leave all my treasures in this house unattended. My heart ached actually. But I also wanted to share and show them so it had to be. And showing and sharing what I created was the fun part. 

Here are some photos of the exhibition house:

A lot of people talked to me about the exhibition and we had some nice chats about the patterns, fabrics, the web and its impact on the crafting community. Some people shared what kind of crafts they do and we agreed that creating is a nice thing to engage in. 

There was also a little tiny article in our local newspaper. 

Showing the peeps here in town what I do was a nice experience. But, actually, afterwards I was glad all my treasures were back where they belong. 

There will be a craft and art exhibition here in town in autumn - maybe. I might participate and take some huge and small works with me. Currently I am preparing to participate and while I always work on big projects this time I also craft  a few small things people might want to take as give aways are pieces of art. 

We will see :-)

Sew alongs are so fun – My love for clothlines - BOMs

I am a huge Sarah Fielke fan. I am loving her BOMs and sew alongs.

I bought a Sarah Fielke Patchwork book back in 2011 and love her quilts, patterns and fabric choices ever since. Later I found out she is a great teacher, she is patient and funny  and a lovely person to write with.

When my friend and quilting partner in crime Andrea participated in Sarahs BOM 2018 called Down the rabbit hole I wanted to be part of one of these BOMs too.

So I started Coming Home in January 2019 and worked on it until early 2020. You can get all the info on the pattern on https://www.sarahfielke.com/  
I shared my journey with my version of the quilt on https://www.instagram.com/whitetimbercottage/

 

And, hey, if you want to show my Coming Home Quilt some love -  it is in the yearly Quilt competition - please hop over to  https://www.sarahfielkeblockofmonth.com/quilt-competition-2020.html

Mine is no. 21 :-D

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During the course of 2019 Sarah also published another pattern for a 4 months program called Windy Washday and I had to make this cute wall hanging right away.

In Europe people hang their laundry outside when ever possible, I would say. When I was a kid my grandma had these classic loooong clothes lines in her garden. The two clothlines were made of painted iron poles with plastic strings attached which stood alongside the beds next to the garden trail. She had all kinds of salads, cabbage, herbs, beans, potatoes, strawberries and red currants in her garden as well as colourful rows of snapdragons and other flowers. In my minds eye I can see my grandma hanging the laundry on the clotheslines in her clearly structured garden. My grandma is rather tiny so she had to tiptoe to put the clothespins on either side of the shirts. One thing that was always really important to her was that the pieces hung properly or in some kind of order so the neighbors would approve too if they would happen to look over the fence.

I sure had to make this wall hanging!

Here is my version of the Windy Washday wall hanging quilt.

And I am loving it. It lives in my laundry room now.

In summer I had a reporter come to my house and we chatted for two hours.

I wanted to share my story and my love for quilting. The main reason I wanted

to have an article in our local newspaper was to be able to show it to my mum and

grandma because they are not too familiar with the things I do online.

And the article was printed in our local newspaper when we where on holiday but

friends sent me a copy on my phone.

It is also available online and you can read it here:

https://www.op-marburg.de/Landkreis/Suedkreis/Caroline-Pitzer-naeht-begeistert-Quilts-aus-Patchwork

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I am delighted to have a logo now which is very me :-)

When I am teaching I hand out little idea books with this logo on, you can find it on

the parcel when you buy a quilt from me and so on. Isn´t it the sweetest?

It shows my house, my furry quilting companion and me with notions in my hand.

My balcony is a very nice place to hand quilts and photograph them in the sunlight.