Tadaaaaah!!!

As we Feathergirls promised in our previous blogposts, today we will show the blocks each of us has chosen for our Featherweight quilt. As I am writing this post, I still do not know the choice of my fellow Feathergirl Hubertine, but here is mine….. tadaaaah!

Jacob’s Ladder!

I will be making light and dark variations of the block, my blocks will be 9” finished. I do not know yet how big my quilt will become, how many blocks I will make, I will get an idea of that further into this project.

Dark variation:

Light variation:

I love this block, I like looking at quilts made from this block, I like making it. It makes for a really nice varied and colourful quilt,  I can use a lot of fabrics! Also, it is perfect for our purpose, to do a lot of sewing on our Featherweights, getting to know our Featherweights and in the process make a nice quilt top.

This is what I mean:  there are quite a number of points in the block alone (let’s not even begin thinking of putting the blocks together into a quilt top) where the seams have to come together. Well, this is what happened to me:

And this is what I am aiming for…

My first try at making this block was at the first workshop I took that involved using a sewing machine, so this block was really my initiation into machine patching. After returning to quilting late 2009 and working by hand for over a year, I was curious about patching with a sewing machine, and with  a newly bought sewing machine enrolled in a workshop by Lucy Kramer at the De Sampler in Haarlem. I loved her quilts, having seen them on her blog, so was really happy to get a place, even more so after I found out during the workshop that it was her last season of teaching. Apart from learning some great techniques and getting some good tips, there were more things I took home with me from the workshop that day.

Lucy follows her own path in making her quilts, she is true to her own style, not letting trends etc. get in the way of this. Her quilts are traditional (I can just picture them in a log cabin in the woods somewhere in the US), colourful, cozy, friendly, feminine and inviting, I love them.

I have to admit that in my new found enthusiasm for quilting I have too often let myself be carried away and subscribing to BOM’s etc. They were not around during my first period of quilting, you see. I still find each and every one of these projects beautiful, and enjoy making them, but mostly they are someone else’s choice and I subscribed to so many of them that they are somewhat keeping me from ‘doing my own thing’. My own fault, but there are only so many (quilting) hours in a day and I was spending too many of those hours  executing other people’s ideas, beautiful as they may be. So for me, there is another goal in making this quilt: going back to making my own choices and executing my own ideas.

Thanks Lucy, you showed me a lot more than just making a good quarter inch seam allowance on January 28, 2011!

And now quickly to Hubertine’s blog, Quiltwel,  to look at her choice and then back to my stash to find more combinations for more blocks!

Enjoy your day!

Phyllis

The Feathergirls!

Being in the same bee, interested in the same kind of quilts and both loving and owning Singer Featherweight sewing machines, we (Hubertine from the Quiltwel blog and I) decided to join forces and each work on a project in honour of our beloved Featherweights. Talking about this we quickly came up with the following: we will each start a quilt on our Featherweights in the style we love so much: civil war/antique quilts.

Furthermore we also came up with a name to call ourselves for this purpose:

The Feathergirls!! J!!

Our idea is to have a quilt top finished a year’s time, a top which will have an antique look. The idea is just to have a lot of fun sewing on our Featherweights, working with lovely, antique looking fabrics and to have a nice quilt to show for it in the end, the idea is not to make a very complicated kind of quilt (we both have wip’s that already challenge us in that way).

Next week will we show you on our blogs what we  each have come up with as a project, it will also be a mystery for us, because we will not tell each other what we have chosen, we will find out from each other’s blog post that day!!

Every month we will each show you the progress we made on our individual projects on our blogs, so watch out for it!

Enjoy your day!

The Feathergirls

She's here!

Always having been a handquilter I never owned a good sewing machine, but when I 'crossed paths' with a nice Featherweight machine some time ago I could not pass it by and bought it, I just thought it was beautiful.

Again, always having been a handquilter I never did much with it. I did buy a really nice Pfaff sewing machine sometime thereafter (in a bid to work on some projects a bit quicker and out of sheer curiosity) and after help from among others Jantine and workshops from among others Lucy, I found I really liked working on a sewing machine as well, even patching and quilting a quilt on my Pfaff.

But because I have soooo many projects going on (does that sound familiar?!), there was just never time to do something with my Featherweight.

Until recently that is. I got the machine out and did some sewing on it. I really enjoyed it, the sound, the stitches….

But then of course, having contracted the Featherweight bug, I started looking at websites ….   and I saw a beautiful machine which had something my old gal did not have, a side plate with a beautiful design on it!

Irresistable!

And the rest is history as they say ….  ‘new’ machine quickly bought and ‘old’ machine quickly sold.

And then the waiting began for my new lady to arrive.

Today was the day! She is here!

Unpacking…

After unpacking…

Isn’t she gorgeous… look at that…..!

What shall I call her? She is very attractive, shiny, sleek, slim, classy, elegant, surely disciplined (considering  the very good condition she is in at her age), I know… The Duchess!

In case you are interested, I found The Duchess here:www.singersewinginfo.co.uk

Time to try her out!

Enjoy your day!

Phyllis

Mother's Day!

A few days early, but I saw this video early this morning and it brought tears to my eyes. A truly inspirational video about mother love & lot of other things ….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aeItyVFx0Zo#!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Phyllis

Jules, George and a bunch of flowers

Now that the excitement of the Open European Quilt Championships in Veldhoven is behind us (wasn’t it great?!), time for an update of what I am working on.

First of all Jules:-

I have always called it ‘Jules’, but actually it is the by now famous mystery quilt from French quilter Veronique Requena, loved it from the moment I saw it in her book, bought the book, but never came around to starting it. Until Dorry offered it as a BOM so I joined first time around (I understand there is a second ‘batch’ of quilters making it again via a BOM from Dorry’s shop).

The fabrics were chosen by Jose, great job, and the blocks were just so much fun to make. I have finished most of them, just one more block to patch/applique, but I do still need to embroider most blocks and put the lovely wooden buttons on.

So here is block one, a lovely, but large angel. All finished except for her hair, I will treat her to a trip to the hairdresser’s once the quilt is finished.

Second George:-

Actually King George III quilt. Via the Scrappy George program of Petra Prins’shop, I receive the pattern of one of the blocks each month together with a bag of assorted ‘scraps’. Each participant receives a different bag with fabrics, so all the quilts will be different.

For this first block I used most of the fabrics I received. In the following blocks I found myself using less of the fabrics received and more of my own. Not because I did not like the fabrics (au contraire!), but further into the program you get more of a feel for this quilt and I find I want to go into a certain direction with the colors I am using for my blocks. More on that at a later stage.

And then DH surprised me with this last Saturday:-

I guess I acted somewhat surprised, because he said: “You did not think I would forget Mother’s Day tomorrow, do you?”…….

Well, obviously he did not, he was a week early!!

Enjoy your day!

Phyllis



OEQC in Veldhoven

This is going to be a blog entry with a lot of pictures and little text.

Today I went to the Open European Quilt Championships in Veldhoven.

I’d like to share with you some of the quilts I saw, there were a lot of quilts to see, all types of quilts to see, but since I love old quilts and we do not get many chances
to see them in The Netherlands most of my pictures are of these quilts.

 

A folded log cabin quilt, 1900’s , maker unknown

Frame quilt, 1900’s and 1920’s, maker unknown

White on white quilt, with red polka dots, love it!!

And this beautiful white on white quilt has the strangest name, look at the card!

There is a story here, what do you think the daughter has done??

One of my favorites: a quilt called ‘Deep within my heart lies a melody: A memory of Texas’. Great subject matter :-), wonderful execution.

Again it is all in the detail: look at this label!

Beautiful antique quilts from the collections of Joes Meester and Isabeau Reinders

There is so much more to see in Veldhoven, so if you are still going, have a really good time (I had!) if you do not get a chance to go, I hope you enjoyed my pictures!

Phyllis