Crochet finish, sort of...

After finishing my Lucy’s Ladder quilt, I wanted to do something different, just for a little bit, so I revisited my granny square project.

All 120 granny squares were finished, they needed to be put together into a blanket. I tried to crochet them together, in two different ways, but did not like the effect. The whole thing did not lie flat, which is what a want, I am a quilter after all! So, being a quilter, I decided to sew them together.

I made rows to make sure that – even though they are all different – granny squares that looked a bit alike would not be put next to eachother.

Whopper was guarding the little piles to make sure no one would mess them up!

Sewing these granny squares together goes so much faster that sewing those fabric patches!

After a few days this was the result.

It still needs a crochet border, I will think about that later, after a week of this crochet project I was itching to go back to quilting again!

During the weekend we visited a culinary festival in Scheveningen and with Scheveningen being a fishing port it could only be about fish, the name for the festival was appropriate: Vissch!

The set up was that several fish restaurants from Scheveningen presented smaller versions of some of their dishes, a great idea!

A few dishes that we tried:

The fish and chips from restaurant Day by Day

The lobster from restaurant At Sea

The lobster ravioli from restaurant Het Gouden Kalf

Crabcakes from restaurant At Sea again (crabcakes on any menu anywhere, I have to try them!)

And these had loads of crab meat, yum!

Also for dessert we stayed at the At Sea tent, Caipirinha ice cocktail with strawberries and limoncello froth.

It was a the first time for this Festival, I sure hope it will return!

 Enjoy your week!

Phyllis

First Feathergirls Finish!

Finally, Hubertine and I can reveal the quilts we made for our first Feathergirls project!

And that it took a while was ‘my bad’ as they say, since I really wanted to handquilt my quilt, Hubertine finished her quilt a while ago.
Click here to look at Hubertine’s finished quilt.

And here is mine, tadaaah!

 

Quilt stats:

Size: 79.5” (202 cm) x 62”  (157 cm)

Block: Jacob’s Ladder, 9”

Quilting: by hand with YLI quilting thread in Ecru

Fabric: 100% cotton

Batting: 100% cotton

 

Of course my quilt has a name and a label:

 

I named my quilt after Lucy (click), for the reasons explained on the label. Ever since I found out about quilting blogs and found Lucy’s first blog (click) I loved what I saw there (same as on her second blog (click) ). Her work is beautiful, she takes her inspiration from old quilts, the kind of quilts that would actually be used and I love her fabric choices. What I also admire is that she works so independent of trends and fashions in the quilt world. Her quilt blogs and also her 365 days blogs here (click) and here (click) are a great source of inspiration for me.

So when I saw she gave a workshop at the Sampler in Haarlem a few years ago I jumped at the chance. It was a workshop for beginners on the sewing machine and – having made everything by hand up until then – I really wanted to learn making quilts on the sewing machine, that would be so much faster. I had done a workshop like that before but I after that first one I still did not like working on a machine. So I decided to give it another try.

During Lucy’s workshop we made a Jacob’s Ladder block and even though I made a number of mistakes that day, somehow her workshop gave me the confidence to do patchwork on a sewing machine. After her workshop I made Eline’s Stars (machine patched and partly machine quilted) and found I really enjoyed working on a machine.

So when Hubertine and I decided to make our first quilts on our newly acquired Featherweight machines as the Feathergirls (click) it was only fitting I should use the Jacob’s Ladder block.  I did make it a different size than the block we made during Lucy’s workshop, hers was in cm’s , mine is 9”.

 



Since this is a combined project, Hubertine and I wanted to photograph our quilts together and last week it was perfect weather to do so:

 



Fun to see the quilts like this!

 

We really enjoyed doing this together and as you may know we have each already started our second Feathergirls quilt, here (click)  and here (click).

So onwards and forwards with our second Feathergirls quilts!

Phyllis