A weekend in London

I look forward to seeing other bloggers and learning about quilting in and out of the classes this summer at the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London!
Yeay, I've got a ticket!!

My husband told me to buy one as soon as was possible and I immediately obeyed his orders.

Want one too? Then go here
I'd love to see you, get to know you (better).

Our hotel from last time was very noisy with walls made of cardboard or was is just those Polish girls having a ball? Anyway, for the same amount as a hotelroom for a few nights, we now have an apartment just around the corner!
If that's what you want too, go to AIRBNB. This link takes you to BNBs in London.

I will have to take enough pills, what! I'll take them just before I leave so all I can do in London is

E N J O Y

The End of my Hibernation

It's about time I woke up from my hibernation, which was great!
There was a lot of relaxing time over Christmas with children after we celebrated Sinterklaas (wiki info) of course.
So now the new year has started and again I have so much going on in my head; it's like total chaos quilting patterns and ideas. I'm sure you'll recognize this.
I read somewhere in a blog that the writer hadn't made any New Year's resolutions, but just one word for the whole year. For me that word is

not a picture to look at for a long time if you're migraine prone ...

I did not finished one quilt last year, which is absolutely abominable; fortunately it's easily solved by finishing the ones which are nearly done anyway! So you'll see them soon enough.

The good news for this year is that I have already bought my ticket for the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London in July this year. I'm very pleased with that!

One of the things that has kept me busy during my hibernation was buying old Singer sewing machines. I thought only crazy people did that, but it turns out I'm one of them now.
I'll show you more in the future.

And if you're still here, I do appreciate you reading this!
Comment if you like.
And I still feel flattered when people want to read what I write.
So please forgive the breaks I take ...
My aim for this year is at least one post a week (starting from now)

Have a great time sewing or otherwise!

Danger: song (that stays in your head)

Perhaps you've seen videos of people trying to outrun a train by ignoring all the signs and sounds at railway crossings. There are a number of campaign about that all over the world.

This video I had to share with you is from Metro in Melbourne, Australia and it's so silly!
And the song stays with you all day (if you play it a lot like me)

I hope you liked it as much as I do.

Don't do anything stupid!

A finish (about time, too!)

Yes, I'm a slow quilter, sewer. Yes, I'm easily distracted.
But when it's finished I'm so happy!

As I have no helpers in the house the pictures are less than perfect. 

Now on to the quilting which will be in straight (or organic ...) lines.
pattern = strips and bricks by Malka Dubrawski

On to the next project: I've already cut the fabric for the St. Louis quilt along, to which I finally succumbed.

But I don't know which one to start first:
St. Louis (this one)

or Maureen Cracknell's Herringbone (with easy tutorial)

A gift from Leila's sponsors

I haven't entered as much giveaways as when I first started blogging; I must be getting picky ...
On reading Leila's blog on the final stop on the Zakka Sew Along I thought I'd give it a go.
And I won the biggest prize of them all!!

Beautiful fabric (I love green) and super crazy stickers!!! All from Form & Fabric.
And Aurifil thread: all the different kinds they've got in beautiful colors.

I've already got a great weekend; hope you'll have that too!

Open European Quilt Championships 2013

Last weekend I went to Veldhoven to see many many beautiful quilts at the Open European Quilting Championships 2013. Lots of inspiration to be had and lots of stuff you can buy. 

There was even a Norwegian lady selling a (stunning!!) long arm quilting machine: ahhhhhh.

I shot some pictures, but not nearly as many as last year ...

There were a lot with a Berlin theme.

The funny thing was about the quilt at bottom right: I could only see the letters standing from a distance (or when I saw the quilt in the catalogue)

This was my favourite, front and back:

(a bear is in the coat of arms of the city)

Here is a quilt with a few detail pictures; it's made of old damask table cloths and crocheted/knitted pieces that look like a lace doily (yes, I looked that one up).

I'm sure you all know this man, but have you ever seen the back of him?

Ineke Poort made this art quilt which is called "Transparant" and is made of polyester tea bags.

I love it!

It looks like a big origami wrap.

I'm not the only one blogging about this (duh) : Esther at ipatchandquilt posted about it twice: 

part one and part two with beautiful photographs.

And you can see all quilts here on Flickr: 

make yourself a cup of coffee or tea first if you want to see all 522 pictures.

have fun!

More temptation!

With Ingrid I went to a lecture on colour by a (in some parts) well known Dutch quilter: Lies Bos.

She designs and makes her own quilts of which some are really stunning (have a look at her site here and click on the Union Jack).

87 ladies had gathered to hear her speak, all enthusiastic.

One of the first things she said was: 

"Light is electromagnetic radiation"

And all energy seemed to drain away from the group ...

True, but we didn't come to hear her speak about technicalities.

Maybe it was because the sound system with microphone was not what it should have been.

Or maybe it was just me ...

stuck on a card, this is my result

After 20 minutes of technicalities about sunlight, colour blindness and brains that make their own interpretation, we moved on to more interesting things. 

We learned (more) about hues when we all could do something. 

We'd all done our homework: bring 10 bits of 2 x 2 cm 

(= 0.75 ") in different hues (10 light, 10 medium light, 10 medium, 10 medium dark, 10 dark). These were collected when we entered the building. Each table got a handful and we had to put 49 pieces in 7 rows: no system, just put them down orderly.

Then you'd have to pick the lightest and put it above them all.

Then pick the next lightest, and so on.

Until you'd done them all and put them in an orderly fashion again. 

Lies told us she'd made a quilt like this from 11,000 pieces of fabric!

I really like this proces and you can use anything you want for it: ugly and unwanted pieces too.

At home I made more with 2.5"pieces.

Left: starting with ordered chaos.

Centre: top left is the lightest, then I made rows and all rows begin on the left.

Right: picture in black and white so you can see all hues. I was pleased

For a moment I was afraie I couldn't stop ...

What can you do with these blocks?

Make a quilt of course; that might look something like this

I might try this!

Tempting

Perhaps this could even be a HAND made quilt: 49 bits to tag along. 

(it might be wise to number each square then)

What do you think?