23 years ago

I became a mother.
Well I had been at least for a year (for wanting a baby), but having a child puts the cherry on the cake.




I was young then (28).
No grey hairs there!

New pages

I'm sorry to cause confusion in publishing
the tutorial for the strip quilt again.
Now it's not on a separate tab but on a separate page.
I wanted to get all my tutorials on one page.
That's always handy if you find them quickly.
And there will be more.

Wednesday's Work in Progress

I finished a few quilts lately: a baby quilt and two a little bigger.
A friend of mine was expecting and I was sure she was going to have another boy as I can imagine her easily with a flock of sons around her.
Then she had a girl and I had to adjust.

I made a quick and easy quilt for her baby girl:

Don't you love IKEA?
And one for her two year old son

The original quilt will be for another friend of mine who requested a playmat for her baby son.
It's made of bits 6 old shirts,  1 old dress and 1 old curtain all from the trhift shop. It'll get a red border a both of these need to be quilted and bound. Today and tomorrow!

So I'm very happy everything has turned out well for the moms, their babies and the quilts! (&me)

I'll be linking up to Felicity wo's guest posting at Lee's Freshly Pieced.

Strip quilt tutorial

My stripy, brown and cream quilt Over the Moon was made by adopting the Jelly Roll Race pattern: I didn't use a jelly roll, but I made fat 8ths into honey bun strips to get a finer, more delicate feel to it.

I got a lot of positive reactions and decided to write a pattern for it.

This pattern is quite often found on the internet; these particular instructions are mainly from: http://www.heirloomcreations.net/sewing-tips/the-jelly-roll-1600/

Two of my quilting friends, Nicolette and Alison, have read the pattern in Dutch and English. Well, they sort of rewrote it, with all the corrections, but that's why I asked them in the first place. I wanted it to be a pattern anyone can read, so anyone can make this quilt.

It's easy, it's fast and the result is GREAT.

I might be prejudiced here ...

So let's start.

First read the Jelly Roll Race pattern. This is the basis for my quilt.
Right underneath this one you can find my pattern.

Jelly Roll Race Pattern

Please read through all the instructions before you start sewing.

Materials needed:

- 1 Jelly Roll (40 strips 40" x 2.5")

- scissors or rotary cutter

- sewing machine, thread

- abric for backing and binding (size depends on adding borders or not)

- batting (size depends on adding borders or not)

1.    Open your jelly roll

2.    Sew the strips together in the order they came or randomly: you sew together the 2.5" sides, with a 0.25" seam.
You can sew them together straight or diagonal (at a 45 degree angle) like you sew your binding.
Trim the triangels from the diagonal seams up to a 0.25" seam.

3.    Then cut off about 18" from your first (or last) strip, which goes into your scrap basket. This will randomize your (diagonal) seams in the quilt.

4.    Find the beginning and the end of your strips (the 2.5" bits). This is where the racing begins:

5.    Sew  all your strips together, which is an enormous length of 1600", by laying 2 jelly roll strips right sides together (again with a 0.25" seam).

6.    At the end a fold wil arise: cut where the ends meet: at the fold.
You now have a long strip of 800" made up of 2 jelly roll strips, from different colours and/or prints.

7.    Repeat step 4 and 5 another 4 times (in total you do it 5 times)

8.    Iron all seams in one direction and cut the sides of the quilt the same size.

Yield: a quilt of approximately 48" x 64"

You can add a border if you like.

The pattern for the above quilt was made with Oakshott Cottons:

 Please read through all the instructions before you start sewing.

Materials needed:

- 1 fat 8ths* pack Earth Chalk  or Earth White Marble (each contains 16 fat 8ths)

- 1 fat 8th of a coordinating print, matching, but subdued

- scissors or rotary cutter

- fabric for backing and binding (size depend on adding borders or not)

- batting (size depend on adding borders or not)

1. When using Oakshott fabrics, I always give them a quick rinse, which makes ironing a lot easier too.
2. 1.    Cut each fat 8th into 6 strips of 1.5", which gives you 102 strips of 9" x 22".
   You could cut the print strips up into smaller sections, so they'll be more evenly distributed, but that's up to you.
3. 2.    Now all you have to do before the race starts, is to cut off 9" from the first strip.
4. 3.    Follow the instructions from point 4 onwards of the Jelly Roll Race.

Yield: approximately 34" x 62".

I cut the quilt in two at the 40" mark, to make a baby quilt of 40" x 32" and used two strips (40" x 8.5") on the back as you can see in the picture in the middle.

* 1 fat 8th = 9" x 22"

If you have any questions mail me: bettyvanos at likestohearfromyou dot com

And if you've made one, I'd love to see it.

Loving solids @fluffysheepquilting

Cindy of FluffySheepQuilting has set us a challenge and has offered 2 yards of solids in return. Here's my first entry, for I'm sure more will follow:

Loving solids @fluffysheepquilting, a photo by Betty van Os on Flickr.

Read all about that here and join in!

Quilt festival Groningen 2

Woodwork in the old churches with Lions,  two-headed Eagles (on the other side, you cannot see it here),  Cherubs and Griffins (I think they are)

You might think it a privilege to sit in these benches, but they're just as hard as all the other ones: it's to keep you awake during the sermon! Which is why so many people brought their own cushion (and left it in the church till the next Sunday)

Even in death I'm still important, don't you forget it!
I hope that you can see some of the family arms: I think this shows the complete descent (ancestry) of the person who died. Yes, this is to commemorate the death of 1 person!  They're called mourning boards (in Dutch).

 

and quilts 

 

As the rich were buried inside the church (and dead people don't tend to smell very nice) in Dutch the rich were called: stinkin' rich

 

and quilts

Organs

Here are the cherubs and griffins.

And here's the organ in a Mennonite church; quite a contrast ...

And quilts

So young and already interested!

 

I hope you enjoyed it even just a little bit as the Mister and I did.
More pictures of quilts you can find in the Photo Gallery here.

Have a great (quilting) weekend.

Quilt Festival Groningen 1

The weekend following the (FQCR) retreat in London I visited a quilt festival.
For the second time it was organised in different venues, mainly very old and small churches.
So lots to see!
And I don't know what impressed me the most: the woodwork, the organs, the (richly decorated) benches, the tombstones or the quilts. It's probably the combination!

Church at Breede, a hamlet near Warffum (above)

 

On the left the church tower was built separate from the church, but close by. The church on the right has extra support: the tower started leaning outwards ... The extra support was built in the year (that in the UK the king brought back partying*) 1660.

These birds are made of all kind of fused bits of fabric. On the right of the organ is a quilt of 8 separate pieced or fused quilts. This was made by a quilter who lives in the same village as I do. Here's her website (in Dutch).

We weren't allowed to take any pictures of a lot of modern quilts by Nancy Crow and her pupils/followers. I bought the book accompanying this part of the festival: International Invitational of contemporary quilts; Curator Nancy Crow.  We especially loved the quilts made by Bonnie M Bucknam. (Google them both if you'd like to see pictures: I cannot show you any. Esp. Tangle and Bramble)

Wow, so many shapes, colours, quilting in straight lines and free motion.

Even some knitting was on display: don't you love these?

 Churches in this part of the Netherlands are very basic, very simple. The really old ones, like these still have the ornate woodwork in benches where the rich or the noble would sit. They're about the only ornate decorations.

I'll give you the rest tomorrow, because I'm having trouble uploading pictures ...

See you then.

Happy quilting to you!

* thanks to Horrible Histories, my favourite BBC programme

Guerilla knitting

Decoration all kind of every day objects in cities? OK I like that.
But here? In my own village?

In the background you can see part of the old people's home; I'm sure the ladies there can knit a few metres! And there's always somebody willing to climb a tree!

Friday Finish

A small quilt 37" x 46" for a great charity.
They'd sent out a cry for help as they were running low on quilts

Sent today.
Will have a new owner next week?

This one was taken before washing it

And this one right after it came out of the dryer; it's hard to see the (few) quilted hearts now.

 

I'll try and link up today at Amanda Jean's and Amy's.

 

Pfaff machine at FQCR

During the FQCR in London we could use Pfaff machines.
They sewed really well, considering it's not your machine:
Where is the lever to get the needle down!
You know, just the simplest things and you might think : what a lousy machine this is!.
But it's not: it's just not the machine you're used to.

Even though I only worked with it one whole afternoon, I think it's a good, solid machine.
The electronics went funny at some time (overload), but that was perhaps due to the many different hand operating the machine? Switching it off and on again and everything was ok again!

Here's a picture from this website

My own Janome 6600 always gives me a different 0.25" seam.
It looked very much like the Pfaff always gave the exact same result sewing with the 0.25" feet: my seams were perfect!

OK near perfect ...

Liberty of London

What a glorious name!
My mom used to wear blouses from Liberty and I loved the tiny prints, Yes I grew up in the seventies (was born in the 60's).
I had three main goals in London: meeting bloggers and others !!! + Liberty, the shop + V&A.
The meeting was over and me and the Mister went early on our way as the walls in our hotel were made of rice paper ...
We went to Oxford Circus where nearly all the shops open at 10, so we had to wait a bit.
We strolled along to Regent Street where the shop should be.
After a while we turned to the left to Great Marlborough Street where we saw this impressive building:

Very impressive indeed!
The cab was a nice extra (for this foreigner).
And it was open!
More info on the shop on this site, but I have to show you this from the Wiki site:
"The Tudor revival building was built so that trading could continue while renovations were being completed on the other premises and in 1924 this store was constructed from the timbers of two ships: HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan. The frontage on Great Marlborough Street is the same length as the Hindustan. It is a Grade II* listed building."
So it was built in 1924!! Who would've guessed!

This was in the furniture department, special exhibition of Art & Crafts furniture. It's all new but you really cannot see that! Sorry about the blurry picture but it does give you an impression of the beauty of the shop

We first strolled through the cards and stationary department, we both like pens, nice paper, beautiful cards. But then we quickly went up to the 3rd floor: FABRIC. We came out of the elevator (a word which is hardly used in London) and nearly bumped into a lady pointing out the beautiful fabrics she had on offer: Kaffe Fasset's. I said: we've come for the real thing, sorry.
And oh, there are so many 'real things' there:

This is just a part of the fabrics they have on display.

These (above) are packets with 50 pieces of hexagons, ready to go. You could make something like what you see on the right (top)

Here's a close up (above)

Here's the lovely lady that helped us: Niamh Mccartney (from Ireland), sorry about the flash.
If you're in the shop and you want excellent service: go see Niamh!! Or phone them!
Everything is shipped internationally.

There are special packets (above) with strips of fabric.
number of strips: 13
size of the strips: 10 cm x 136 cm  =  3,9" x 53,5"
size of the quilt you could make with these: 134 cm x 104 cm (45,5" x 53") ish?

And they have bias binding too.

The fabric is soooooo soft, it feels like voile! I cannot wait to get stuck in my pile.

Expensive, yes, but so beautiful. And if you have a Mister like mine (a very good friend or relative would do too) it won't cost you anything!

Here's what I (he) treated me to:

I really didn't unpack till I got home and my personal choice were the classic ones:

I'd like to make a simple quilt, perhaps just strips, so you can see the beauty of these fabrics.

Unless you have another suggestion?