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