Playing with colour 3...

The third (and probably last) picture shows a tree we saw at a little village at a fjord in Norway. (Sorry, forgot the name of the place). We had been camping and hiking close there and as we moved on to another place we saw that the street out of town was lined with trees with knitted "clothes.
The colors are a great combination and I could only pick 8 for the contest. I think this combination could make a great gender-neutral children's quilt if you take little rectangles of all the coulours in the picture, make long stripes and piece them randomly on a background.

Colourful Fjord

Canary - Snow - Turquoise

Bahama Blue - Tomato

Bright Pink - Bubble Gum - Lime

Playing with colour 2...

This is a mosaic for Cindy - Fluffy Sheep Quilting's contest to find great Kona Cotton bundels.

I took this picture on our holiday in Namibia/Botswana. We were in The Okavango Delta, a great place were a gigantic river slowly fades into a desert. In the region we traveled there was still enough water all year round to grow a forest and on a thousand tiny islands the wildlife was free to go everywhere. We saw a lot of animals. One evening our local guides took us with tine wooden boats to a swimming spot and later on our way back to the camp we saw this fantastic sunset. And no... no editing took place. This picture is just as my camera took it. In reality it was even more intense.

Okavango Delta Sunset

School Bus - Orange - Papaya 

Tangerine - Hibiscus

 Corn Yellow - Dark Violet - Navy

Playing with colour... 1

When I read about the contest that Cindy - Fluffy Sheep Quilting is holding on her blog, I had the idea of illustrating some of my favorite holiday pictures with the Kona cotton fabrics.
So in the next three posts you see three pictures from different holidays where I've tried to pull 8 colors from it that would make great bundles, even when you don't have the picture at home.

I took this picture as we were walking along the beach at Prerow, at the Baltic Sea. At the end of the beach you come to a tiny harbour, which serves only as an emergency harbour and for 2 or 3 little local fisher boats, that keep up the tradition. I guess they use their red flagged sticks to mark their nets.

Summer Fishing

AZURE - PEACOCK  - TURQUOISE

JADE GREEN - TOMATO

LIME - ASH - BONE

Colour choices...

I've been working on this quilt since january. While I was studying in January/Febuary/March I designed, cut and pieced the quilt top in little breaks in-between. I studied for 20 minutes with a timer, sewed for 20 minutes, studied again... This way I could really concentrate on my reading because I knew in 20 minutes I'd be allowed to do something different again.

Then the top and back were stored away because I wasn't sure how to quilt them, and then we moved, I started something else and... You know what its like. Recently I thought a lot about a quilt design and yesterday afternoon I just started basting and quilting. Well... after some stitches (nearly a bobbin!) I noticed that I didn't like the design nor my performance of it. I set down in front of the TV and ripped it out. Then suddenly the inspiration hit me and I decided to just quilt circles, a little bit off-centred. And I just sat down and did it. Its absolutely not perfect, let's call it intentionally organic and wavy, ok?

And only 5 hous after I started basting I had a finished quilt, including time for dinner and seam ripping. And then I was stuck. I can't decide which binding to choose.

 The original plan was to use the light green one. It would fit great in our living room or the tiny library corner. But I think its a bit boring. I bought the stripes for another project, but I think they would look good here as well. And last (but not least) I have a beautiful red. I think it sets of the other colours nicely and ties them together.
But is it to bold? What do you think?

:-) C.

Zakka Style

After reading all the fantastic blog posts about the Zakka Style book and the Sew-along I couldn't resist and bought the book.
I've already done two projects from it and plan several more. The instructions are short and you should have some experience in sewing, but clear enough.

For the first project (Sewing Kit) I combined some Essex Linnen with a Joe Dewberry Bird scrap and some Hope Valley with some orange/sand coloured dots. I added a little bit of leather in the smaller compartment where I want to keep my scissors. They are pretty sharp and I was afraid they would wear out the thin linen pretty fast. I love the result and use it in the evening for my english paper piecing while watching TV, it fits perfectly over the armrest of our sofa.I made the pincushion smaller than in the book because I want to fit some fabric for paper piecing in the leftover space. I added two selvages for interest.

The second project I tried was the Orchad Path Tweed Pouch. I had to downsize it because I only had a small scrap of a very beautiful dark fabric that looks almost like tweed. I got it in a scrap pack I bought at the Victoria & Albert museum in London last year. The zipper was from there as well and because it sets the accent colour I chose some red leather to go at the corners. Sewing with (to thick) leather is kind of stupid, but I love the result. 

I had a scrap of a little red flower left from bag I did last month and cut it in a hexagon shape and just sewed it on. I think more hexagons would be too much on the small pouch.

I really messed up the zipper at on end, but I love the pouch. My templates and papers for the EPP live there now and I always have to smile when I use them.

I'm to late to link to the Zakka Style Sew-a-long, maybe next time.

Scrappy? Sew bee it!

Last month I found a new Quilting Bee on one of the (too) many blogs I'm reading and decided to join in. This was a first for me and for some of the members of our group. May is organizing it (her first) and we all have fun chatting on flickr.
We get each month a block design from the "queen bee" and use scraps from our fabric stash. The first two blocks are finished and send to their new home and I'm happy that I managed to complete them.

The first block was more challenging because of the million little seams but after some fun with the seam ripper it went together really nice. I love this pattern and I think this wasn't the last time for me.

The June block was a traditional log cabin, something I always anted to try in this size. I had a little difficulty finding different white fabrics, so that it wouldn't look to boring. The block is going to Sweden, so the yellow/blue/white combination is really fitting.

I can't wait until July, I'm sure we will do something fantastic again.

Fotomarathon 2012

On saturday I spend over 12 hours walking through Berlin and trying to take some great and creative pictures. At the end I was tired, my feet hurt and my brain was numb - I loved it! 

The "Fotomarathon" is a organized event with over 400 registered participants, either single or as a team. We were given a overall topic ("enjoy the moment") and 8 picture titles and the time and place of another meet-up in 4 hours. And then we got the next 8 and another meeting place. We had to take 24 pictures and the challenge was to take them in the order they are written down, no going back, the time on your camera is registered as well.

I wasn't registred, but my best friend was. And she was in a team with a school friend I haven't seen for ages, so I thought I join them in the fun. I have no idea how to operate a "real" camera nor 

do I know anything of light, exposure etc. So I mostly tried to be creative, sometimes modeled and took some funny pictures of the others taking the real picture.

In the beginning it was raining and we and all our equipment got wet. But later we had much nicer weather, even a bit of sunshine and no trouble taking pictures until sunset was getting nearer.

This was a shooting for the title "carefree", but finally we took another version.