New Arrivals .. of a crafty nature!

Not one, but two new arrivals in my sewing room, and its annexe, the living room, this week.

Firstly some fun fur yarn from Lee Anna .

She had lost interest in knitting it and was looking for a new home for it. Now I often wear black or dark green and enjoy bright accessories and this is right up my street. I was really surprised when I found I'd won the giveaway. I've never knitted anything fluffier than mohair so this is going to be a new experience. I can't wait to get the needles clicking! I'll shortly be dazzling everyone around me, literally. I can't get over how generous the quilting community is, so big thanks again to Lee Anna.

Secondly a Q Frame quilting frame, which is small, but still too big for my sewing room.

This I bought about a month ago, but only put together yesterday evening. The whole thing went together surprisingly easily (compared to IKEA furniture); you can see the clamps next to it. They are off at the moment because I took a break from pinning to go shopping and to take a photo. I also bought an extension set to increase the length of the back legs to make quilting more comfortable. I'm using it in the horizontal position to sandwich Allietare!; it's about time I did something with that top that was finished almost a year ago! I shan't be hand quilting it but once it's ready for quilting on my domestic machine I shall load my appliquéd circles quilt, because that I am going to quilt by hand. Crawling round on all fours to sandwich a quilt had been becoming very difficult over the last couple of years and, even after my hip operation, is still a trial. The only crawling  done yesterday was to cut the wadding to size and even then my husband had to help me stand up afterwards.

I'd like to wish you all a prosperous and healthy 2017. May the new year be full of interest, and friendly faces; may we all face the challenges with optimism. I am ever grateful that I have control of my own life and am not dictated to by anyone. Not everyone in the world can say that; may 2017 bring more freedom to the oppressed.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Quilting Goals for 2017.

Yvonne at Quilting Jet Girl is holding a link up for 2017 goals. Click on the button for the link.

At the eleventh hour I'm posting my quilting goals for 2017.

1. Tidy my sewing room (aka guest bedroom), so that next year it might even be possible to see the guest beds!

   

   this was one year ago, and now it's even worse!

   And hopefully use them. And secondly (more importantly) possible to know what I have in my stash and where it is, in order to avoid spending an hour looking for "that dark purple with owls and spiders" which never did turn up! The current mess is thwarting creativity.
2. Make a planner. I have an old filoFax, from the pre-digital planner days, I'm going to chuck out the remaining pages and repurpose it for a quilting journal and planner, with my own page layout.
3. Continue trying my hand at improv.

   

   copyright infringement? - a view of a corner and it's been boxed

   
   

   

   Finished: Crossways QAL Instagram: #crosscutquiltalong 

   
   

   

   Score #1 from Sherri Lynn Wood's The Improv Handbook for modern quilters: "so far, so good!"

   This year I started three projects; one is finished, one is on-going, but the first one I started was shelved following an unsettling article in the Dutch Quilt Guild magazine about copyright law infringement. I hadn't realised that taking inspiration from a work in one medium could constitute copyright infringement. I shall finish it, but won't be publishing until I know it's safe to do so.
4. Decide which of my WIPs are really UFOs, and make, or join in, a system for resurrecting  UFOs.
5. Linked to no. 4 above: try harder to resist the temptation to start something new!!
6. Try to find other, preferably "modern", quilters locally (area of The Hague, Netherlands) who would like to sew together with me on a regular basis. At the moment the world wide web is my quilting community, and much as I love you all, some face-to-face contact would be welcome.

I've been reading other posts on this link up, and some contributors have such detailed lists; they are already far more organised than I am. My list is a start and I'll be filling in the details in my new planner as I consider the items above more deeply.

Have a good Hogmanay everyone, and may 2017 bring everything you wish for.

Happy sewing

Marly.

En Provence part 5

Friday's clue in the Quiltville 2016 mystery quilt was 64 HSTs. As I'm only making half, here are my 32:

32 x 3.5"square HSTs in purple and neutral

I found the last one on the floor this morning, unpressed and untrimmed. It was nearly too late for the photo shoot!

I have visitors arriving soon, so that's all for today.

Later today I shall be linking up to:

where lots more HSTs in purple and other colours are waiting for your viewing.

Happy sewing

Marly.

En Provence part 4

For the forth clue in the En Provence Mystery Quilt, Bonnie Hunter posted another triangle in a square block, again with a neutral large triangle, but this time with mixed dark purple "wings". As I'm only making half the number of units as are in the original, my total for this week is 40. Here are the first 21 units.

When I've made 10 units I pin them together to make counting easier. That didn't work here though, somehow an extra 3" square got into one of my bundles! The other nineteen units are cut and waiting to go next to the sewing machine.

I'm looking forward to using yellow and green; so far my units are a rather dull and dreary lot - to match the weather of the last few days. I'd like to move away from lavender, much as I love that plant, and move on to bright sunflowers! It's time for a bit of sunshine!

I'm linking up to

where lots more quilters are displaying their purple (and other) triangle in a square units.

Happy sewing

Marly.

En Provence part 3

The third clue of En Provence, Bonnie Hunter's 2016 Quiltville mystery, was posted last Friday. I started cutting on Saturday and sewed 32 purple 4-patches on Sunday morning.

32 purple 4-patches

Some of these squares look blue (even my white design wall looks blue!) in this photo. In reality they really do look blue, seen against the other purples, but lay them alongside blue, and they look purple! I need to make approximately 50 more to have half of the original number, which is what I'm going for at present.
Last week I managed to make my full quota of triangle in a square units, so the next 50 4-patches shouldn't pose too much of a problem.

I'm linking up to

 

on Monday afternoon (Central European Time), so click on the picture to see more purple 4-patches.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Poinsettia wall hanging

January 2015 I started this Poinsettia Quilt following the instructions given by Anne Deister (SpringLeafStudio) The idea was to make a Christmas quilt, but as I don't have any use for bed quilts I decided to make a smaller version - four blocks instead of Anne's nine.

Finally finished! It's not big; it wasn't difficult, but sometime in May, I decided to hand quilt it! That was not really so slow, I just kept putting it off.

Hand quilting: big stitch in red and green 12 wt cotton on the leaves and petals; regular hand quilting in Yli 001 Natural in the background and border

The photos are all of the same quilt; the first two in artificial light indoors, where the quilt hangs in the corridor which doesn't lend itself to getting a good angle for photos, but the weather has been grey and dark all week. All week until this afternoon, that is, when the sun just popped out to say hello before setting at about 4 o'clock.

Statistics: 36" x 36"
Fabric: from FQs from stash, from various fabric designers and manufacturers
Piecing thread: Aurifil 40 wt.
quilting thread: Aurifil 12 wt. 2260 (red) and Venne 12 wt.7-5002 (green) and Yli colour 001 Neutral
Wadding: cotton

I'm linking to 

 

where you'll find more of this week's finishes

Happy sewing

Marly.

En Provence Mystery - clues 1 & 2

It's that time of year again; Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville mystery month! Somehow I just couldn't resist!
I couldn't post last week because I was away from home, and hadn't even been able to get started, but this is my progress so far.

unlikely but possible layout!,

I'm only making half the units and at present have some 40 neutral 4-patches (clue number 1) and 30 triangle point squares (clue no.2). The remaining pieces for the 50 triangle points are ready and waiting, along with some 6x2" strips for the 4-patches which I'm in the process of joining as leaders and enders. I'm going to need many more of them!

Finished units on the left, waiting pieces on the right.

I've finally gone wild with the concept of "neutral" being anything which is at least 50% neutral, so there are elephants and moose in there as well as flowers and leaves and the odd text. I'm enjoying the result of so much variation in neutral! My photos don't do justice to the lush dark pink batik I'm using for the triangle points. This was the only fabric in the whole shop that approximated to the shade of Bonnie's fabric. Had any other customer wanted the bolt of Bella solids "magenta" that afternoon she would have had to fight me for it, as I lugged it from shelf to shelf tying to find a low volume print a few tones darker! We do have paint chips here, but in a different language the colours have other names! So Moda's colour chart came to the rescue. Normally batik wouldn't have been my choice to mix with ordinary cotton print, but scrappy is scrappy, after all.

I'm linking to the Quiltville linky party.

 

Hop over there to see more Southern French inspired delights.

Happy sewing

Marly.