In memory of grandma - blocks are finished

Right before Christmas the blocks of the Memory of Grandma quilt are finished and I passed the afternoon to arrange them on the design wall. Now there are just a fews white blanks left, but I will start to sew the blocks together and decide later how to fill the the blanks.

I wish you all a joyful Christmas and hope to bog more regularly next year.

Greetings,

Petra

New Quilt

A new quilt project is born: In Memory of Grandma - called like that because the sketch has been designed during the last weeks of my grandma who died last week at the age of 97. The sketch shows a first idea: a mix of stars and hexagons in the colours of a sun rise.

And the first elements are already finished... I will work it in English paper piecing method, like that everything will fit very well together. Colours are not very bright as I did not have a good light today, but the I promise to upload a better foto as soon as the blocks are on my design wall.

Flower Jane - the final

After almost 10 years I finished my Flower Jane and offered the quilt today to my parents for their golden wedding anniversery. I was very excited as I wasn´t sure if the liked it or thought it would be too much. But they really loved it and showed it around to their guest ;-)

The quilt has 4373 patches and measures about 2,20 x 2,20 m.

Bobbin Sewing Machine

Finally, I placed my grandma´s old Bobbin in my sewing room. 66 years ago - in 1946 - she made the way from Sudetenland to Oestrich-Winkel, when my grandparents were expelled from their home. Of course, they were not allowed to take it, but however they managed to bring it tho their new home. My grandma used to sew on this old machine until a few years ago and it is still possible to use it. For me, it is just decoration, but a wonderful one I think...

Discovering new textile activities: Felting

Last month my mother and I attended a course in felting. We felted bags and had a lot of fun although the work is more monotone and hard than patching and quilting. It took me 5 weeks to finish my first felting project: attaching the strap to the bag, embellishing the bag with some beads and pearls etc.

One end of the strap has been worked in form of a leave.

 And the other end of the strap has the form of the corresponding flower...

I´m quite happy with the result of this fist trial ... hope that other projects will follow.

Die Patchwork-Oase wird bald ihren neuen Onlineshop auf patchwork-oase.com starten mit einem neuen Design, neuen Funktionen und einem komplett neuen Stoffsortiment. Um das zu feiern gibt es eine spezielle Aktion mit tollen Preisen. Mitmachen lohnt sich!

Cherry Pit Pillow

For my godmother´s 80th birthday last week, I bought a cherry pit pillow and patched, sewed and stitched an individual pillowcase for her. As her knees are often paining, I assume this made a nice present for her.

Apart from that I´m still quilting my Dear Jane - almost all blocks are quilted know but all triangels have to quilted then. And the nice weather slows down my progress.

TAST 12

This week´s TAST was the Barred Chain and Alternate Barred Chain. I knew the stitches, but never worked these chaines. I used both to complete my block of last week, which is now a real spring block which reflects perfectly the wonderful weather which we have this March. I had a lot of fun to experiment and work the heart, the rose bush and the seam embellishment.

 And this is how the complete block looks like:

Birthday

Yesterday, it was my birthday and finally I had the joy to open envelopes with crazy birthday blocks. We are a group of 7 women who worked crazy blocks on a pre-defined theme for each other. My theme was Black and Colours - Patches in black, grey and white with a small colouful patch, Stitching and embroydery in strong colours.

And this is the result:

Birgit was the only one who has worked a coloured patch. I like the sunny yellow and the red chain - very warm and sunny.

Heidi offered me roses in black as well as in red. Red roses on black - what a great combination.

Heidi set the focus on that wonderful tree which she embellished with smal nots. I like also the white pigeon as a symbol of peace.

And Momo could not work on a crazy block due to a health issue. But instead she offered me this wonderful, colorful block with embellished circles.

Thank you to all of you for enlightening my birthday.

I´m still missing two blocks: one of the stitching ladies is currently sick and will send her block later. And unfortunately I don´t have any new from the last one. But as soon as the blocks arrive I will post them here.

TAST 11 - whipped wheel

This week, Sharon asked for variations and creation on the whipped wheel  (TAST 11)- a stitch that I really love. After my first mountain bike ride into the forest of the Rheingau region/Germany for this year my idea was to stitch my bike leaning on the flowery wall in my garden and waiting for me...

This is a real spring-block - with the rainy day in spring from a 2 weeks ago and now the sun shining on my flowers and my bike ;-)

TAST 10

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The stitch of the week is the running stitch (see TAST), a stitch that I never expected to be creative. But the work of the other participants on Facebook and Pintangle showed me that the possibilties of this stitch are huge and can be wonderful.

However, as I´m currently quilting my Flower Jane, I´m doing lot of running stitch ;-)
Therefore I decided to show you a selection of my quilted block and hope that this counts for the experiment on running stitch

 



TAST 9 - couching

This week, Sharon asked us for couching - and this is rather unfamiliar to me.
But after a while and after admiring the work of my fellows, I started without a plan and finally finished this block: The long dark line was the first line - it is a very thick threat and I tried to trim it with a perl threat in rose.

 This was the easiest: a rest of wool which I used year ago for a pullover for my daughter.

 And here, I tried to draw the lines of the rose with perl threat.

This threat was quite difficult to couch because I didn´t want to couch the "hair" - therefore it had to be done with utmost care.

TAST 7 + 8: A rainy day in spring

This week, Sharon asked us to work on the Chain stitch (TAST week 8). As I was not very creative last week, when it came to work on the Detached Chain stitch, I combined both of them this week and work on a small impression on "A rainy day in spring". This is the outcome:

Almost everything is worked in Chain or Detached Chain stitches, only mixed with a few fly stitches in the umbrella and a few dots in the flowers.

Progress for Flower Jane

I have to announce some new progress on my Flower Jane: the borders are patched (very simplified version) and added to the top and today I basted the whole quilt and can now start quilting. I have about 32 weeks left to do the quilting, which will make about 7 blocks/triangles to quilt every week. Hope is will be feasible, also in summer when sun is burning down... but it will come to a good end.

Birthday Block

Yesterday was Heide´s birthday. She  belong to the Crazy Quilters and particpated in the "Birthday-Block-Initiative". She asked for blocks in beige, ecru and brown and wanted to have an elegant block. This is the block I worked for her - and I had lot of fun with it.

Next month will be my birthday and my wish for the blocks was black and grey with a tine piece in strong colours like red, green, yellow or blue. The stitching should be very colourful. Am still looking forward to seeing what the ladies have created for me...

TAST 6

This week we were asked to experiment with Chevron stitch - I like that stitch but never experimented a lot on it because I just like it for itself. But now I took my time to be more creative. Here are the results. The complete block looks like that:

And here are the details: cominbations with other stitches:

And here some overlaying Chevron stitches in two variatons:

TAST 5

This week´s TAST stitch of Sharon´s challenge has been heringbone stitch. And this time I only worked on one combination which includes 2 heringbone stitchen combined with buttonhole stitch, chain-stitch, knot stitch and fly stitch. It seems to be rather colourful, and it is indeed - may be a bit too much.

News about Flower Jane

Finally I have patched all blocks of my Flower Jane and sewn them together. One more milestone completed!  As I patched all blocks by hand applying the English paper piecing method, I have to take off all the paper now. Crazy and awful work that I don´t like at all. The quilt needs to be finished until November, therefore I will not sew all the triangles as Jane A. Stickle has done in her famous quilt, but I will use plain triangles for the borders.

TAST 4

This week, the selected stitch of TAST was Kretan stitch - and I never knew how creatively this stitch could be used until I tried tonight. This time, I tried some stitch combinations - all of them on the basis of Kretan stitch. And these are the results.
The complete block looks like that:

It was a block from a crazy swap and it seemed the right one to bring forward the effect of the stitch.

Picture below: On the left, I made a pattern of Kretan stitch, combined it with some kind of weaving and a detached chain stitch. On the right, another pattern combined with dross stitch, knot stitch and detaiched chain.

On the left, a third pattern and buttonhole wheels. And on the right a pattern which can be easily used to fill a complete field.

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On the left a furhter pattern, combined with fly stitch and detached chain. An the yellow one pure Kretan.
And below, just a fantasy line with Kretan stitch.

I really liked this one and am looking forward to next week´s task.

TAST 3

This week was rather difficult for me. First, I tried variations with the demanded Feather Stitch without using other stitches. The first results were disappointing: the first was not very nice and the second one not very creative.

Slowly, results became better:

And I really liked the last one, were I combined Feather stitch with other stitches.

The final block is acceptable, I think:

I wonder which will be next week´s block ...

TAST 2

Oh, I liked this new TAST stitch of Sharon B which was communicated yesterday in the late evening under http://www.pintangle.com/journal/category/take-a-stitch-tuesday . The challenge of the week was the Buttonhole stitch, and I was so excited to experiment with it that I finished the block of last week just with Buttonhole combination. This is the complete block:

 


The details come out more clearly on the following fotos:

Thanks to Sharon who organizes all this for us - this challenge is very motivating and the work of the participants is really inspiring.