{Misc} Adventskalender

Eines meiner Geheimprojekte, von denen ich noch nichts bloggen kann, ist der Adventskalender mit meiner Patchworkgruppe.

Jede von uns werkelt 12 verschiedene Dinge (muss nicht genäht sein) und kauft 12 verschiedene Dinge, die mit dem Hobby Patchwork / Nähen zu tun haben.

Das hat jede Menge Zeit im Netz (u.a. Pinterest) gebraucht, bis alles zusammen war. Da ich nicht so die Verpackungskünstlerin bin, hat das Verpacken ähnlich lange wie das Nähen gebraucht.

Die 10 Kisten wurden von zwei Gruppenmitgliedern mitgenommen und jetzt wird so getauscht, dass jede von jeder ein selbstgemachtes und ein gekauftes Geschenk erhält. Die Päckchen gibt es dann Ende November bei der Weihnachtsfeier zurück.

Ich bin schon sehr gespannt und freue mich wie wahnsinnig.

Ufo-Nähen

Am letzten Samstag hatte ich mit meiner Quiltgruppe einen ‘Ufo-Nähtag’. Wir planen für das erste Novemberwochenende eine Patchworkausstellung und da sollen mal ein paar unfertige Tops auf den Weg gebracht werden.

Es wurden Lasagnequilts genäht, ein komplettes Top aus selbstgefärbten Stoffen, ein Weißwäschequilt, der in quilt-as-you-go gearbeitet war, wurde zusammengesetzt und ein Top aus gestickten und gepatchten Elementen weitergearbeitet.

Ich habe hauptsächlich weiter an den Streifenblöcken gearbeitet und dabei noch ein paar Spiderwebblöcke und einen 2”-Leaders und Enders Block.

Heartpillows

Issue 95 of the german patchwork guild magazine featured an article about Nancy Friies-Jensen, a danish nurse, who learnt about the heartpillow project for breast cancer patients during a congress in the United States. She brought the idea back home to Denmark and a lot of quilt groups are working on these pillow now.


A danish quilter living in Germany brought that idea into her group and they started to sew the pillows as well. And now it spreads word in the german blogesphere as well.

This post on Heike's blog brought that project back into my mind. I talked about it at my quilt group and we decided to bring some fabric and the pattern to the next group meeting.


While some of us were working on a ravelquilt the other part worked on the heartpillows. We managed to cut, piece and turn 23 heart pillows. Heike is working on a solution to find a sponsor for the polyfil.


Last Tuesday Heike came to pick up the pillows. We had a breakfast with Heike's delicious homemade jam, croissants, chatter, discussing dressmaking pattern, patchwork pattern, how to cast on a moebius scarf. We were very busy. Around noon Heike had to leave for work and I had to pick up my daughter from nursery school.
When I went into the basement to pick up some food for lunch I saw the pillows still lying there.
Heike will come back in October and before she will step in the house I will bring the pillows to her car that they can be filled and brought to the patients.

Main-Quiltfestival in Aschaffenburg 2007

Like last year I visted (together with 7 ladies of my quilt group) the Main-Quiltfestival in Aschaffenburg.

The exhibition has grown a bit and there was an additional show room. It was in a district and required a ride by car or the quilt bus. We didn't had so much time and so we missed it. (On Monday I had a quilty meeting with a lot of nice quilting ladies and they told me that I missed a lot of beautiful quilts).

First of all we visited the shopping area and get rid of our money. After that we went for a nice lunch in a nearby cafe and after we regained strength we went to the exhibition sites. One was the foyer of the city hall. There was an exhibition of Dorle Stern-Straeter and of the Sulky Creative Team.

At Martinushaus were exhibitions of Karen McTavish, Gruppe Glashaus, Eli Thomae, Ingeborg van Spankeren, fabric books made by a group of european textile artists and competiton quilts about 'Dreamhouses' hosted by the german quilt guild.

In the shoping area were some quilts of the competition of 'hot and cold' of the european quilters association.
And the quilts of the kids competition 'Hello, how are you?' where each participating (german) kid gets an embroidered fabric that was made by a kid in Afghanistan. The challenge was to make a quilt where this embroidered fabric fitted in. There were so many beautiful quilts shown and it was nice how they solved the challenge.


I bought some FQ and some pattern.

Sail Away Top finished

Wednesday evening I (nearly) finished the quilt top for my sail away quilt. I still have to applique some boats, but we had our groupmeeting yesterday evening and that was the best possibility to get the top basted by a group of quilter instead of basting it on my own.


I plan to handquilt because the only time I can spend on my maschine is in the evenings, but I hardly see quilting marks then. When I handquilt I can sit on my sofa while my kids are playing.
I plan to quilt waves in the middle part and another pattern on the borders. The stiches won't be the tiniest ones because of some bulky seam allowances.

Beside basting my quilt we celebrated a birthday and pieced some cans.

Patchwork class with Bernadette Mayr

Last year I started organizing a two-days patchwork class with the german quilt artist Bernadette Mayr for my quilt group.

Bernadette explaining theory at the board.

During the last years Bernadette wrote two books about the technique to create blocks and quilts for flowers and blooms (1st book); houses and buildings (2nd book) without the help of any rulers. You are allowed only to use the rotary cutter on a cutting map and cut everything free-handed. She is also an APQS quilt artist and some of her quilts were exebited around the world. I also saw one of her flowerquilts in a blog, but I don't remember whose blog it was.

Bernadette is an excellent teacher, telling funny stories and having very helpful hints and tricks. Okay, I had to make my own mistakes which I hopefully will avoid in future.

The first day we cut and pieced houses. We started with country houses, followed by city houses and the first day ended with elegant historic houses.

The second day we made churches and italian palaces. This was followed by all types of trees even in the third dimension. In the afternoon we had time to combine all these blocks we made to a quilt, but the country houses doesn't fit together with the city houses. So I pieced all the cityhouses blocks together and maybe I will make a pillow as Bernadette has in the book.

My houses are those in bright colours.

I will have to think about a quilt design, because we made the class for two purposes. First as an incentive for our last exebition and the second purpose was to get new ideas for quilts we will show at our next exebition.

After the lunchbreak of the second day we asked Bernadette for another class next year – same place, same time.

Round Robin quilted and group meeting

On Thursday I finished quilting my round robin quilt. I hurried up a bit because I wanted to show him in our group meeting. So we discussed which colour I should use for the binding and we agreed on the red fabric. Unfortunatly I run out of this fabric and the shop where I bought the fabric sadly closed down end of December. So I surfed the web and found a german online-shop (Quiltmaus) which has this fabric on stock. After blogging I will order the fabric.


During the group meeting (beside from chatting, laughing and clinking glases of sparkling wine to welcome the new year) we made different kind of snowmen.

So I can tick of one of my January goals but with the new blogger I have no idea how to do it.

X-mas party with my quilt-group

Yesterday we had our X-mas party at my quilt-group and this was the last meeting for this year.
Each member brought some beverages, sweets and - most important - a handmade, quiltrelated gift to the party.
Each year we play a game. We put all the gifts in the middle of the table and then we play the dice. During the first round you have to have a six to choose one of the still wrapped presents. When everyone has a present we unwrap and look at the gifts. After that we set a timer for 7 to 10 minutes and dice again. When there is a '1' you have to rotate the gift leftwise, with a '2' rightwiese and with a '6' you can swap for another gift. When the timer rings the gift in front of you is yours.

This year we changed the rule. We didn't make a homemade gift. Each member has to look at her stash and cut a LQ of her favorite fabric, one LQ of her ugliest fabric and bring one needful thing for quilting. We didn't unwrap. When the timer rings we again play the dice and when you have the '6' you are allowed to unwrap. And then we discussed which of the fabrics is the beautiful one and which the ugly one.

The first picture is what I packed and the second one is what I got.




In general I have problems to get into the pre-x-mas mood. We have temperatures of 15 degrees and it is rainy and windy. It is very strange to have a hot Glühwein, listen to x-mas carols and the temperature is more like early spring than two weeks before x-mas.
This year I'm better prepared because I did some of flyladies journal and planned the gifts very early. And the daily habit for this month is the one I like best of all habits: having 15 minutes time for myself. Each day I can quilt one of the windmills on my Round Robin quilt.