A sweet finish

After the recent flurry of quilty activities and a new job you may think that there was no time to sew. Almost right 😊 !

I did manage to finish a quilt I wanted to finish for a long time, it was a BOM by Quilt It & Dotty (click) in 2012 so it has been in my sewing room for quite a few years.

This type of quilt is not my usual thing, but it was fun to make and is sweet to look at.

Because of its size is was a bit difficult to take pictures of the whole quilt, but with two helpers we managed it.

Some details:

Oh dear, my angel still needs to go to the hairdresser…

These buttons were given to me by fellow Feathergirl Hubertine (click), she bought these when she visited the quiltshop of Veronique Requena in France, Veronique is the designer of this quilt, so this is a special touch to this quilt.

Quilt stats:

Size: 2.00 m x 1.78 m (79” x 70”)

Fabric: cotton and bits of wool

Batting: 100% cotton

Method: hand piecing, hand applique, hand quilting (big stitch quilting), quilt as you go

Pattern:  Veronique Requena, BOM by Dorry from Quilt It and Dotty

Now that this ufo is finished I really want to finish another one. So which one to chose, there are so many lurking in my sewing room…..

Do you have that ‘problem’ too…?

Phyllis

Happy Worldwide Quilting Day!

It has been a while since I posted on this blog. Sometimes life is a bit gets a bit too busy, but with it being Worldwide Quilting Day today I thought I really needed to catch up with you and write a little post about the quilty things that have been going on.

A few weeks ago I went to Judith’s (click) show and tell at Karen’s B&B (click). Pictures have appeared on other blogs already, which is a good thing, because I did not have the best seat in the house to take good pictures, wooden beams were a bit in my way when Judith was ‘showing and telling’ , but never mind, it was a great afternoon. She is a good speaker, loved listening to her stories, getting a close look at all those beautiful quilts and seeing familiar faces.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day, the Les Soeurs quilt by Judith and the Drayton Hall quilt made by our hostess Karen, they both ended up on the table next to me. So much inspiration in this picture.

Some other pictures from the show and tell:

Petra Prins (click) was also there with her shop and as usual she made it look beautiful.

Another one of Karen’s smaller quilts on a table:

In between all the other things that were going on I did manage to do a bit of quilting myself.

Started work again on this ufo, the Jules quilt, at the time it was a BOM from Dorry (click),  I had already pieced and appliqued the blocks,the work now is the quilting, the quilt-as-you-go method, a first for me.

I mostly use this thread for quilting, Aurifil Mako Cotona 12 (red spool), which is wonderful to work with. It is has a lovely shine to it, a beautiful color, glides through the layers and is so strong. At the time I bought this from Laura (click) during a workshop and I hope that more quiltshops will start selling the large spools in more colors of this thread, I see the small spools here and there but they work out a bit expensive to use for quilting. This color blends well with a lot of my work, it is 2326, for darker quilts I use 2370.

And I made a start with this, the third Feathergirls quilt (click) and (click), scrappy things going on here!

So Happy Worldwide Quilting Day, I have a nice quilty trip planned for today, hope you get a chance to celebrate this day in style too!

Phyllis

Time for a quilting update

don’t you think?

In between all the other (social and domestic) things I also have been doing some quilting, so here’s an update.

I worked a bit on my Jacob’s Ladder, you already saw the yellow block I made in my tutorial (link), but I made a few more blocks since then:-

So, when put together, my blocks now look like this:-

Also, another block has been added to my Jules quilt:-

Recently I had time to visit two quiltshops, one nearby

the summer fair at De Quilthoeve in Naaldwijk, not able to take a nice pictures inside, too many people in there, but here’s one from the terrace on the forecourt, with live music (!), also great place for the menfolk to wait and read a newspaper while the ladies enjoy themselves with all the goodies on offer!

Last Thursday (yes, before the Coldplay concert, a day of extremes so to speak) I went to Quilt it and Dotty in Tilburg with Hubertine, always nice to see Dorry and Jose again, where the coffee is always ready (thanks ladies, that is always much appreciated after the ride from The Hague)  & where there is plenty of inspiration! The Dutch home of the Jules version I am making, thanks to Jose’s excellent choice of fabrics. The original is of course by French quilter Veronique Requena.

No quilting yesterday though, just had to enjoy the beautiful weather, read on the news sites that it might be the last day of summer weather, so we headed out to the terraces & with the sunshine opted for an Italian lunch at the terrace of our favourite pizza restaurant in The Hague:-

My choice? The Pizza Crudo, easy on  the cheese for me … mmmmmm ….

Ciao!

Phyllis

Some summer.....

Complaining about the weather is a real Dutch thing, we do it no matter what the weather, it is either too hot, too cold, too windy, too this, too that  … but this summer we do have something to complain about… the sign I saw at one of the terraces in The Hague just about says it all……

With school being out and a teenager in the house keeping totally to her own schedule, my own schedule is sort of out of whack, I just don’t seem to get an awful lot done, I did finish the third block of the Jules quilt, though.

Whopper is enjoying the few rays of sunshine we get now and then in our garden. He has taken a particular liking to our rhododendron ……….. tearing off branches and bringing them indoors, or trying to dig it out completely!

Naughty dog!

But with a face like this I can never stay angry long… he turns on that latin charm and I melt!

How is your summer so far?

Phyllis

A playdate for Black Beauty and The Duchess

Hubertine and I thought it was high time to do some serious sewing on our Feathergirls quilt project therefore we organised a ‘playdate’ for our beloved Black Beauty and The Duchess.

So we got together, got our heads down, our Featherweights got their feet down and soon the place was buzzing! They made a lovely sound and turned out lovely blocks for our quilts:-

For me and The Duchess this was the result:

So in all I now have these blocks:

I managed to do some work by hand as well this last week, so this is block 2 of the Jules quilt finished:

As of today school is out over here, DD came home with a great school report today, so I may post a little less over the next weeks, hopefully will be able to spend some hours here and there on the beach & things like that (maybe get a bit of quilting in as well…).

Let’s hope for some sunshine!

Bi everyone!

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