My crafty year in pictures

Here's to a Happy and crafty New Year! Best wishes to everyone and thanks for all your support and encouragements during this past year!
Cheers
Vreni xx

Merry Christmas

Christmas Market in Basel, Switzerland

With best wishes for a wonderful Christmas. 

Vreni

One more handmade gift

After making the small hoop Christmas ornaments, it occurred to me that I could make mum a bigger version of her childhood home, so she can hang it up all year round. This is a 8 inch hoop, compared with the 4 inch hoop I used before.

It's a bit more detailed than the small one, which I'm going to give to my favorite aunt who still lives on the family farm. 

Now no more dilly dallying in my sewing room as I have to start packing. We're going to spend Christmas in Switzerland this year and I can't tell you how much I look forward to some crisp winter air and with any luck, maybe even a white Christmas. It's funny really, after all these years of living abroad, Christmas time I long to be "home". Or in other words; there's no place like home for the Holidays. Don't you agree?

Cheers

Vreni 

Ticking off the list!

Maybe you remember, at the end of August I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish before the end of the year. Let's see how far I got:

1. Finish hand quilting Big Bloom Quilt: tick

I think this must be my very first quilt which is made entirely by hand; hand pieced and hand quilted. It feels very soft and I'm going to give it to my mum for Christmas. I hope she'll like it. 

2. Finish Winter Quilt: tick

3. Make eight blocks for my Camelot quilt: tick

Block 8

and the first eight blocks together. 

4. Make a few Christmas presents: tick, tick and tick!

5. Machine quilt one quilt top; sorry, that didn't happen. 

Well, all in all I'm quite pleased that I was able to do most of the tasks I set myself. The list has definitely helped to keep me on track. 

I leave you with a picture of a  little Christmas decoration I've made. I've seen something similar on Pinterest and tried to copy it. The stick is actually a long piece of cinnamon.

I hope you are enjoying the season!

Vreni x

Hasenbach Challenge

My Winter quilt I sewed as part of the Hasenbach challenge is finished. I encounter a small problem when I sprayed the quilt with water to remove the marking pen lines and the red sashing started to bleed all over the quilt. I bundled  the quilt, without the binding, into the washing machine with a couple of color catches and I was relieved to see that it came out perfect. Pew!!!!

Click here to see more finished quilts, tops and new blocks.

Have a happy weekend.

Vreni xx

Felting Workshop

It's always interesting to try something new. This week I had the opportunity to try my hand on felting. Actually, it started a couple of weeks ago, when we made the actual felt as well as the little felt balls and yesterday we used them to make this Santa. Not as easy as I thought and quite time consuming . Everything is sewn by hand and the trims on Santa's coat are needle felted as well as the beard. The material is pure merino wool, very soft and lovely to work with.

 It starts to look like Christmas!

Cheers
Vreni x

Finally, some Christmas crafting!

In case you've been wondering what I've been up to these last couple of weeks, I will tell you. I've made some Christmas ornaments, stitched in felt and then put into small (3 or 4 inch) embroidery hoops.

This one is for mum as I tried to copy her childhood home. 

I hope she can see what it's meant to be. My husband and my son recognised it instantly, so that was a relief ;)!

I wanted to make some more, but unfortunately the shop I got the little hoops from had run out of stock and if I order them over the Internet, the chances are that it's too late by the time they arrive. Oh well, something to plan for next year. 

As I had the felt out, I've made this miniature pin cushion, which has been on my to do list ever I've seen it here, 

 Isn't it cute? I'm going to make a whole lot more of them. 

A small selection of the Christmas cards I've made so far.

I love making the "10-minutes table runners" although they take me a fair bit longer than 10 minutes. 

 Christmas box to give away Christmas cookies. 

A tea box for a friend,

I still need to buy the tea bags to go inside

and last but not least, my seventh Camelot block. Silly my, I've put the middle part together the wrong way, but at the moment, I can't be bothered to take it apart. 

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.
Cheers
Vreni x

Lacking inspiration

Usually, at this time of the year I'm already "knee deep" in Christmas crafting and sewing. This year it seem inspiration is eluding me, although I've been looking through books, magazines and trawling the Internet and in particular Pinterest. Nothing really takes my fancy.

So instead I've been rearranging my fabric stash. And not just rearranging, no I've folded each piece of fabric (only those bigger than 1/2 yard/meter) over Comic Backing boards as they are just the perfect size. Now they look like mini bolts and are so much easier to see and take out. I've bought 1'000 pieces of boards and so far I've used up 500. I can't believe how much fabric I've got. It really was a bit of a wake up call to STOP buying fabric!!!

This is how far I got when I ran out of steam. I still have to do the lowest shelf (mostly Japanese fabrics), not to mention all the fabrics I've stowed away in various other places. I will leave my fat quarters for the moment as they are more or less organized in my sock drawers. Here's just a small selection. Doesn't it look nice? Sometimes I catch myself not wanting to use these fabrics, as then it wouldn't looks so nice anymore. Go figure!!!

My big pieces of fabric (more than 3 yards/meters) for borders and backings I will probably fold over some longer card board pieces which I will cut myself, like I did for my linens (see middle shelf).

I also did a little bit of sewing. Here's my sixth Camelot block.

And here they are all together. I haven't decided on a background yet, but somehow I quite like the Aubergine which is actually my foot stool on the balcony. Well, I have time to decide on that as I have 10 more blocks to make first.

As always, thanks for stopping by!
Cheers
Vreni xx

Quilters' Show & Tell

I have submitted a quilt at this week's  Quilter's Show & Tell The theme is Modern Geometric Quilts and I've entered my "Outside the box" quilt. Click here if you want to see all the quilts entered and vote (you can vote for up to four quilts). There's also a give away if you leave a comment answering “What’s your favourite kind of pie?” (on the Quilter's Gallery Blog). 

Enjoy your weekend.

Vreni x

Winter is coming....

and no, not to Singapore, but to my sewing room! You see, I've made some progress on my winter quilt. After adding a few more filler blocks, plus the pine tree on the right, I was able to put it all together.  Only the borders are left to do and then I will have to quilt it of course. As usual, I didn't stick to the pattern too closely (there's a picture of the original on my side bar, if you want to compare).

Go here to see everybody's progress this month.

Cheers
Vreni x

Camelot blocks 3, 4 & 5

I can't believe how much I'm enjoying piecing these blocks. I always thought I couldn't hand piece, but I think I was wrong. I just needed to learn how to do it the right way. Now on to the next block.

Have a lovely week ahead.

Vreni xx

Regrouping

With all the comings and going recently of various visitors, I haven't spent much time in my sewing room and I feel I need to make a new start (another one). I've set myself a few goals for the rest of this year! Yikes! And maybe if I list them here I will get them done.  I'm keeping the list fairly short so it should be doable.

1. Finish hand quilting "big bloom" quilt
2. Make more blocks, put together and quilt winter quilt
3. Make at least 6 more blocks for Camelot quilt (that way I am at the half way mark)
4. Make a few Christmas presents
5. Machine quilt one quilt top (which one to be decided later)

Now it's written in stone, or as good as!!!

I did manage to make my second Camelot block:

and a few more "measly" filler blocks for my winter quilt.

Maybe you've noticed that I've installed a new Pinterest feature on my blog. I followed a terrific tutorial here. Whenever your hover over a photo with your mouse a small "pin it" button pops up and by clicking it, you are taken automatically to the Pinterest window where you can then choose to pin it to one of your boards. Makes the whole process so much easier.

And last but not lease; look what I found in the latest edition of  "Down Under Quilts" magazine:

I had absolutely no idea and wouldn't have known as I can't often find that particular magazine here in Singapore. Luckily a friend of a friend spotted it and alerted me.


Till later
Vreni x