My first commission

I don't know which way is best ...
But there it is: my first quilt on commission!
Might be my only one, but still!!

This one is made of a fat 8ths pack of Earth White Marble.
Now it only needs to be ironed, clipped (so many threads), sandwiched, quilted and bound!

Spring is here

Even though our lawn was a bit frozen this morning, spring really has arrived. Birds are really noisy and using anything to make a nest. Yesterday I say a sparrow robbing from an unused blackbird's nest what ever it could use.
The horse chestnut tree is about to burst!

Yesterday I found these in our letter box:

from the Japanese x and + block swap organised by IssabellatheCat

I had a look at all the other blocks in the swap on Flickr and now I'm tempted to make a quilt with these: I'm starting to love these blocks! I would try and make adjoining pieces of fabric to contrast, so they would stand out.

And this morning I got this from the Somewhere over the Rainbow Charm Swap, organised by Strawberrypatchramblings (that is a bit of a mouthful, actually): a beautiful TESCO bag!! And more:

I've got quite a few of these now and should be able to do something nice with them.
I'll just have to sleep a few nights (weeks, months?) over it.


Now for my Friday Finish:
It's nearly done and it's such an easy quilt pattern (block) that it should've been quilted and bound, but Migraine loves me so much; she keept coming back for more and then some!

size: 70" x 70"

Linking up with Amanda Jean at Friday Finish.

Have a great weekend enjoying SPRING!!

Super shot cottons

There's a great online shop to buy your shot cottons you might have heard about:

Oakshott fabrics.

I blogged about them before having made my Over the Moon with those cottons.

Over the moon, Oakshott cottons + 1fat 8th printed fabric

A Dutch lady asked whether she could buy online from Oakshott without having to pay tax duties like we Europeans have to do when we're ordering from the USA.

NO, the UK is part of Europe (though I don't think they feel the same way) and therefore you don't have to pay extra tax duties if you're ordering from within Europe.

There's shipping costs:
to UK - £3.35 (approx € 4,-) per order,
elsewhere in Europe - £7 (approx € 8,40) per order
Lynne blogged about this last week and has more details for ordering from Oakshott if you live elsewhere in the world.

I'm love the range of colours and I love the depth of the colours which you cannot see on a picture.

Have fun today sewing and/or otherwise!

Henna Garden Star

In December I received these wonderful fabrics that I only wanted to use in a quilt which would show them off really well.

I've found a great and simple pattern. The top is nearly finished now and I'll have to start quilting it this week. That is the hardest part of it: how do I quilt it? So maybe I'll just sleep on that and start quilting later. I just want to get it right!
This time I've already got a name for it: Henna Garden Star. Or at least that's the idea now.

With this quilt I want to enter a competition (challenge) of the Dutch Modern Quilt Guild: "Something old, something new"  ( and no, blue is not a compulsory colour).

(With that in mind, I don't even know wheter I can show you the whole quilt.
I'll have to ask the DMQG and I'll come back on that one!)

Have a great week!

Liebster Blog Award

Sana Saroti made my day by surprising me (again) by awarding me this award

 

Which is fantastic! 

I'm so pleased that in this small community people pay attention to each other, which is what we all want really: a little love and some nice words.

Thank you Sandra for putting me in the spotlight again.

There are rules to applying this award, yes, ofcourse; and they are:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award.
2. Link back to their blog.
3. Copy and paste the Liebster award to your profile.
4. Pick 5 blogs that you feel deserve to be in the spotlight (they must have under 200 followers).
5. Blog about it and leave a comment for your nominations to let them know that you have chosen their blog.

So I picked 5 bloggers, who give tips on their blog, write in an interesting or funny way so you really get swept away by their enthusiasm.

My nominees are:

• Dree from a lotta bit of fun
• The Running Chicken Quilting (what a great name!)
• Helen from Indianna Dreams
• Janine from Rainbow Hare Quilts
• Fiberchick

I have notified them all about their oncoming award and hope they'll pass it on.
Have a look at their blogs: they're worth it!

And with an award, I thought I might do a bit of tidying up on the blog. I think it's easier on the eye now. Let me know what your opinion is on this, please?

Have fun sewing (or anything else)!

Many names for a quilt

Good days, bad days, such is life.
I haven't been very busy sewing. I've been busy buying all the fabrics for the next quilt to make. One of my best friends would like to have "City Harbour" on her bed; she conferred it with her husband and they agreed on this one:

I'm still waiting for a small package to arrive from Oakshott fabrics: I'll make another brown/cream quilt for the company as they liked it very much. It might travel with them in their market booth!

I'm very grateful for all your suggestions to name that quilt:

• Chocolate
• Cut peat
• Trees in Winter
• Misty Woods
• Weathered wooden Jetty
• Chocolate Dreams in clouds of Sweet Cocoa, warm brownies and ice cream
• Chocolate Hugs
• Tiny Tumbleweed
• Calming Movements (a book I'm currently reading on dog behaviour)
• Zen Garden
• Sunshine on a cloudy day
• Over the Moon
• Earth Quilt
• Nature's Edge
• Spinning Earth

I'll just keep this list of beautiful names for future quilts (who knows).
For the time being I think "Over the moon" is most appropriate, as the mom and dad will be too!
(although Tiny Tumbleweed was a great runner up!)

 Happy sewing and hope to see you again this week.

Quilt Guild Meet

How very reluctant I was to go to a meeting of my local Quilt Guild ...
And of course all of my prejudices were swept from the table:
I had fun
I was inspired
I saw some really nice quilts
And I met some really nice ladies!

All good things!

I was inspired to start this project: a quilt made of 365 small houses (incl. 1 big one). Handmade!
A project for the summer holidays? A project to do 1 or 2 houses while your watching TV?
A Dutch lady started this and I had heard about it, but didn't get what they were talking about:
"Has the small houses bug caught you already?"
"What do you mean?"
"You mean you're not building houses yet?"
(I probably didn't ask the right questions, because nothing was any clearer to me)
 So I got my explanation in a picture

You can read all about it here and you can buy the PDF pattern here in French, German and English!
The houses are 7,5 cm square, which is nearly 3"
I'll have to try it!

Have a great week sewing (or whatever you'll be doing)!

FSD & SBM March 2012

It seems funny to put the month and the year in the title, but it just makes me realise time does go quickly. And 'they say' it goes even quicker as you get older.

February has been a good month to me!

Market and exhibition full of inspiration. Like this man, Arnout Cosman, who makes the most beautiful quilts!

Meeting an old friend in Amsterdam and buying ART.

The car crash in which 4 young people were hurt, 1 of them killed, is still ringing in my ears.

Finishing Storm's baby quilt.

Winning this lovely mini quilt (17" sq) made by FrozenKnickers with a tutorial here.

Finishing my brown/beige baby quilt. I had so many positive reactions on this one!

I was over the moon!

I need your help as it is still without a name.

Suggestions, please?

And have I now created a monster that will never be finished?

Well maybe I'll just make my postage stamp quilt a little bit bigger, starting with 2" squares.

As did the ladies here, here and here.

All of those I love.

Today I started working on a quilt with a huge star in the most beautiful fabric (of all?)

Well I have to leave you with a cliffhanger, don't I?

I'm linking up with everything Lynne has on offer today.

Have fun sewing or whatever you'll do!