Saturday 26 March 2016

RSC 16 Still March: more purple!

Each month Angela at Soscrappy posts a colour and many quilters use their scraps of that colour throughout the month. This year March's colour is purple. Angela also posts patterns for a sampler, but, after two years of Rainbow Samplers, I'm taking a year off the sampler, and making my own rainbow quilt of bear paw blocks.

I made two more purple blocks this last week,
 


to add to the ones I made the week before.

Furthermore, I've been struggling with paper piecing one of the blocks in the 1930's Farmer's Wife, which I'm making along with a group of other (much better!) quilters at my LQS, QuiltersPalet in The Hague. I've wasted so much fabric trying to keep the outside edges of the block straight on the fabric grain. I wonder if it's really necessary when I'm stitching to paper anyway. What do you think? Keep the edges on the straight of grain at all costs, or not?

I've also managed to appliqué a circle each day for the Quilty 365 project. It's becoming difficult to find fabrics I haven't used already. I'll be posting more about this project next Friday.


This weekend I'll be linking up to

RSC16  and to  Quilting is more fun than Housework

For more scrappy fun click the buttons above on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Saturday 19 March 2016

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2016; March is purple.

Each month Angela at Soscrappy gives a rainbow colour of the month, and this month's colour is purple. She also gives instructions for sampler blocks, but this year I have decided not to make the sampler, but to make at least one pair of bear paw blocks in each colour.

two purple bear paws in among the bamboo - must be pandas!
More purple this month, and with a hint of  orange and some yellow!


To see much more creative purpleness click on the button

RSC16 

Happy sewing

Marly.

Friday 4 March 2016

Wandering camera: February Collection

Soma at Whims and Fancies is holding a photo link up: The Wandering Camera. The idea is to take a photo each day and to share the photos once a month. I love the idea, but even in the shortest month of the year I didn't manage my photo-a-day.

I'm afraid my camera didn't wander very much in February. No valid reasons.

I missed last month's link up because I was away for a long weekend in Maastricht, in the south of The Netherlands. In Maastricht I had my only opportunity to use my good camera; the weather was so dull that all the photos there are at ISO 400, except the two indoor which are at 800.

But first some photos around my flat:
5 February
1. Two Delft blue "commemoration" dishes: 
- the top is the real thing - hand-painted - presented to my father-in-law 
by his employer on his 25th anniversary at the company,
- below is kitsch, a transfer-ware imitation, for tourists!
2.  Planter in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in my living room
3.  jars of tea lined up on top of the fridge


In Maastricht where we stayed in a hotel which was formally a manor house

6 February
 1.  a patchwork of tiles in the main hall
2.  the main hall (who chose those lamps to match the room?!!)
3.  The main railway line crosses the end of the hotel/manor house drive
4.  a stand of trees in the park

7 February
1.  black fungus on a fallen tree trunk
2.  the host tree trunk, also hosting moss, ivy, lichens and small creatures
3.  fungus growing near the base of a living tree
4.  possibly the same variety of fungus but growing about 5ft. from the ground on another tree. I loved the colour of the lichens also hosted by this tree.


All the fungus was growing well because of the unusually high temperatures that weekend (10 deg Celsius) and the high humidity (it was raining most of the time). My last photo is of unusually early flowers:

7 February


I took more photos with the camera in my phone.

6 February
Clockwise from top left
1.  part of Carnival procession
2.  City Hall with the carnival flags
3.  Street art
4. More street art: market vendor adorned for carnival
5.  Shop in the old city centre
6.   Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the Church of the same name

Back home!


Local photos from left to right:

16 February: the route homewards at lunchtime
17 February: Tree in bloom near another tram stop
 25 February: SNOW! but it didn't come to anything!

I made these collages with PicMonkey free photo software. I'm still discovering how to use it, but you may have noticed some progression. I just have to work out how to make the watermark less intrusive.

I'm linking to

Camera And Photo Linky Party

click on the image to see more photos taken in February.

Happy snapping

Marly.