I got tagged...and trade?

Hi,

I got tagged some time ago, but I didn't know what it really was about, but now I know...So here I go.

20 years ago...
This is really funny...you girls make me feel really young. Well I was seven and still att school, looking at my mom sew, since she was a seamstress. I had my own little sewingmachine, you know the toy ones that do not have a bobbin and you have to turn the wheel to get it to sew. It was red and I loved it! I even have a skirt left of those days that is absolutly sweet to look at. It even has a lace hem. We were still living in Holland.

10 years ago
I was getting out of highschool. And had big plans. We had been living in Sweden for 4 years by then and I was moving back to Holland on my own. I was leaving my mom, dad and little brother in Sweden.

5 years ago
I was having the year of my life. I had been stuck in a very bad abusive relationship and I left and got out. That year I was feeling so proud of myself, free to do whatever I wanted and I did. The summer seemed endless and full of parties, new friends and loads of fun.

1 year ago (and 2 weeks)
I got married to my Swedish husband Håkan. I met him 4 years ago, one year after the other breakupp on a vaction to Sweden with my friend Karin. The funny thing was that I was never planning to move back to Sweden, and since my brother had turned 19 and moved back to Holland, so did my parents that year, just a few months before I met my husband. So we kinda crossed eachother. They were now living in Holland and I was back in Sweden.












1 month ago
I was thinking hard about this one.. I think it is safe to say I was quilting something...*lol*

Yesterday
I been working a bit on some blocks for a raffle quilt for our quiltguild. It rained all day. The forecast said it would be sunny, so I waited for that all day and at the end of the day it came. So I moved out into the sun in my new hammock that I got a few days ago, and finnally got to try out. It is called a hammock, but it is a bench were you can sit, that swings, like a rocking chair, perfect for sewing. There I put some rows of diamonds together.

Today
It is a holliday in Sweden today. So I am going to quilt my guildblocks now at 06.12 (couldn't sleep). Then I am going move into the garden again and work on the diamonds. Later this evening I am going to Weronica and we are going to have some celebration dinner...

So now it is time for me to tage someone. I tag cathi

Wanna trade?

I made a misstake in my Dear Jane. I made D10 and D11 in the same colour. Not the same fabric, but same colour red.



So I am putting D11 upp for adoption or trade. I am making my blocks in rose/flower fabrics. Is there anybody who would want to trade me my D11 for another D11 in any colours than red, sent me an email...

Bye!

Pictures, pictures, pictures

Hi,

My friend Weronica was here a couple of days ago and was nice enough to make some pictures of my stuff, so I could post them and show them to you, since mine is broken:-(


Here is another picture of my Diamonds quilt. The last pictures I posted were old ones. When I started to put the blocks onto my "design wall" a couple of days ago I was amazed by the fact that I already had so many blocks done. I always thought I would just make a lappquilt out of the fabric. But there is so much fabric left.
After this picture was taken I made more blocks. So the quilt is now as big as the green wall.

I also placed them in rows instead of the hexagon formation before. I think it looks better now.

Today I am going to make the half diamonds that I will need to make the quilt square. I already have the borderfabric done.
It will be 64 x 76 inches finished



Here are the pillows I told you about for the applique class. I made very classic ones. One is made using machine applique and the other handapplique so they could see the difference.The girls made some in purple and others the same colors as I did.


This is a quilt I made using the Marti Michell ruler for logcabins. It is really great to work with. I just had a limited amount of fabric. The cat is behaving just as a cat does, they always want to be in the middle of what you are working on or taking pictures of in this case. They have a Swedish saying (haven't heard it anywhere else) Dogs have owners, cats have servants...:-)

Something I haven't shared with you before: My husband is a mathwiz! He helps me a lott since I can hardly ad 1+1 and then with inches you got my head spinning.
So he makes the calculations about how much fabric I need and stuff. He sometimes gets really into it.
He makes great calculations. I wanted to make the logcabin and I just wanted to start cutting. I would have ended up with 16 blocks, but dh did something don't ask me what. But a way to cut from one strip the smallest piece and largest piece, so I could make 32 blocks. (if you cut the pieces starting with piece 1 and go round and round in order, you won't be able to cut out the largest parts last..since you just have scraps left..)

Well yesterday night he had a lightbolb moment again. He was looking at my diamonds I made and just placed out at random and saw that I wasn't distributing all the different kinds of diamonds over the whole quilt equally. (as you can see on the picture above) So he counted all the different kinds of diamonds, made some calculation from it. And then knew that, for instance, I needed 2 plain diamonds in each row, but only one with a hexagon in each row. It got my head spinning..But we took everything of my wall...divided all the blocks into categories...and now it looks great...I haven't got a picture of it...sorry

I am trying to get him interested in cutting..but no luck jet :-)))) But EQ5 has gotten his attention ..*s*

Well enough for today! have a great weekend!

Barbara

More about the Diamonds quilt

Hi!

I have been getting some questions about my Diamonds quilt. So here are all the details.

I first saw a quilt made by Kristel Salgarollo. In the magazine Quiltmania they have a section there they visit quilters homes and you can see there quilts and things. I saw this picture off a quilt on her sofa


I fell in love with the quilt, but in this segment of the magazine there are no patterns. The homes are just for inspiration.

So what to do.... I made a template on cardboard of one big diamond. Traced it on several pieces of freezerpaper. Then I started drawing different kinds of diamonds, triangles and hexagons inside it. So that I would have the same shape of the big diamond, but divided into smaller shapes. I cut the diamonds apart and started tracing it on fabric, adding seamallowance on each part. Then cutting it out and piecing it. When I piece it, it becomes the same diamond again as I made out of cardboard. So that is my refference shape.

The fabric I used is from Moda and is called Wuthering Heights and is from 3 sisters.
I bought a package of FQ and shared half with my friend Weronica. So I have 50 fat eights. The thought is to continue until I am out of fabric or I am too bored with it. Since I am making it totally by hand I am going to keep it myself..

Any more questions please let me know...

Please visit : www.quiltmania.com and kristel on: www.salgarollo.be

bye for now!

it was great!

Hi,

I have been back for a while now from the cottage and had a really great time. We had wonderful weather! We did some yardwork during the day, but the most of the day was spend sewing. I was even trying to stitch until the last sunlight until there was not enough light anymore! We had a great bench that we could put in the sun out of the wind..and just sit there in a t-shirt! I even got a bit of a tan in my face!

I have been trying to keep this vacation feeling alive here at home. But I have been quite busy. On Friday I had a stitchingday with the girls. We started to prepare freezerpaper templates for a applique wallhanging called Drying in the breeze you can see picture here
http://www.quiltmania.com/patchwork/magazine/quilt/article/Drying-in-the-Breeze/87/976/976.htm
I am sorry, you'll have to copie the link and paste it into your browser, I can't get the links to work...


Saturday I had my applique class. I had so much fun. I had a small group, 3 people. Normally the limit is 5, so they thought I was going to cancel and were so happy that I didn't that we had lot of fun! The all did good. They even started buying things for there next projects, like books and stuff.

Yesterday evening I had a Dear Jane meeting. It was a bit short but I STARTED MAKING BLOCK 50! I am so happy, I am finally feeling that I am getting somewhere. I am having a lot of fun with the blocks again.

Today I am going to a bee at the LQS. I think I am going to work on my Diamonds Quilt like you see on the picture at the top of the page.

I have also been reading blogs and there has been a lot of activity. I have been keeping my eye on Lucy's page. She has been waiting for her friend Bonnie to arrive. And Cathi has been piecing her Dear Jane together. That has really been a inspiration to start piecing my Dear Jane again.

Well that is all for today!

Barbara

Can't wait to get in front of the fireplace

Well, I am really bussy here getting everything in order for our vacation. We are going to our cottage for 5 whole days. I can hardley wait. Here is a picture of one of the fireplaces in one of the smaller rooms. I totally love the way it is painted. The house was build in 1800, but the farm seems to have been there for a long time. It is even listed on one of the earliest maps. Beside the whole house runs a fast runing stream that in the spring runs really fast because of the melting snow. So you can wake upp and hear the birds in the appletrees right outside the window and hear the stream running as it has for centuries. It is a magical place for me.

It has been empty since last autumm, so I hope everything is fine. One winter we had a lot of mice in the cottage and they ate all the mattrasses and carpets and stuff, so there was a lot of cleaning to do. I am hoping that that is not the case this year!

I have prepared a lot of Dear Jane blocks now. Since the cottage has no electricity, there is no tv, radio, and internet to distract me from sewing..*s*

There are also some great old sitting chairs in the cottage that have been left there ages ago, and were even there before the last owner sold the cottage to us. So I was thinking of test sitting them and then pick the best one to follow home with us and I will paint it and put some new fabric on.
One of the most nice things I found in the barns besides all the old funiture was a sewingmachine...a really old iron one...still working with needles and everything, just the leather straps were to be replaced



I also finished the preparations for my applique class. I used a pattern from Blackbird design as inspiration. I am sorry, my digicam is broken so I don't have pictures only of the original. I made 2 pillows one handapplique and one machine applique. I made them with a beige background and red and greens. A bit of a baltimore album look.

here are some pictures of my quilting classes:







Oh, some answers to some questions I got:
The link I gave you to becca didn't work. The right adress is: www.willowhillquilts.net
The weather here is starting get springlike!¨The snow melted last week so I can see the green grass now. We still may get some snow..but it feels like spring.

happy Easter!

Hmmmm

Well, As you might have guessed I am having some blogger problems..*s*

I wrote this note about my cat, together with some other things last weekend and tried to upload it. Blogger didn't really want too and I got a : "can't find server" message all the time. So I was a bit surprised when I started getting email from people telling me that they hopped the cat would get home soon. .-) I thought there might be some paranormal activity going on. But now I saw that blogger did upload, but no photo's. I also read on some other bloggs that people were having problems to uppload...pictures mostly...but let see how it works today..

So since it has been a while it is going to be a long post today:

Good news! I found the cat Sunday evening when I was walking back from a birthdayparty and was calling for him on my way home. I snatched him and ran home, because he didn't really want too. He was out with his friends having fun..*s* So I had him inside all day yesterday. He was making so much noise I used some headphones and my mp3 player to keep from going insane! Last night we took him to the vet and she castrated him, so I hope he will be more inclined to stay home. My husband was with me to the vet, but couldn't really look, he had what he called sympathy pains..

I have been working on my Dear Jane again. I have been looking at Cathi's quilt and also saw a finished one from Hanne from Norway. It got me inspired again. So I made 3 blocks last weekend. I also uploaded a lot of blocks on my webshots again..

At the moment I am preparing for my applique classes next week. It is going to be a more traditional block. They will be making the block twice. Once on the machine and once by hand. They will make it into 2 pillows. It is a bit baltimore Album style.
So I am now making the blocks and writing instructions and so on...




I am also thinking about what I am going to take with me next weekend as we are going to go to our cottage for 5 days. I hope to get some sewing done there...but what project to take.. I might prepare some DJ blocks at home if I have time!

Well a hasty update...hope that blogger allows me to update soon again..

Barbara

btw.. I sometimes use the spellingcheck on blogger... Did you know that the blogger spellingcheck doesn't recognise the word: Blog or Blogger...strange huh?

Were is my cat?

Hi,

I am a bit scared today, because my little cat has been out since last evening and we have no idea were he is. Normally is comes in before it gets dark, and when we call him it takes him only 5 seconds to come. But not last night. And even if we let him out first thing in the morning he would never miss breakfast. So my mind is going in all directions wondering were he can be. We have been looking outside, even took a look at the roadside a bit away from here to be sure he hadn't been run over... This really sucks!