....and I'm back

After being in Switzerland for almost three month now, we are starting to find our feet again. It was rather strange at the beginning and somehow I couldn't quite believe that we were here to stay. We unpacked two containers and most boxes are empty, although not everything has found its place yet. It was truly a mammoth job!  At the moment I'm in the process of "fine tuning"  my sewing room and once again I'm overwhelmed with all the fabrics I have collected over the years. I have almost sleepless nights wondering what to do with my stash, especially those fabrics I've fallen "out of love" with. Luckily I just heard that a group at church get together to make quilts for charity and I have now sorted out two big basket to give to them. I'm so happy to have made room in my cupboards but also in my head, if you know what I mean.

I miss Singapore and ''my old life" but what I miss most are my friends and my quilting groups.  Of course we miss our lovely view from our old home too, although our new view isn't to be sniffed at either, especially on a beautiful Spring day like this: 

So many things to readjust to. After many years of having helpers in the house I struggle to keep on top of my chores. I don't mind cooking, but cleaning floors and bathroom, not to mention ironing!! Blimey, how do people do it??  I find it a real challenge, so getting a cleaning lady was of the highest priority. Otherwise how would I ever find time to quilt???

Talking about quilting, I have hardly touched any sewing since we arrived as frankly, I neither had the time nor was I in the mood for it.  But I jumped  at the chance to do a two day workshop with Sue Spargo a few weeks ago. The class had been booked out a year in advance but somehow there was suddenly a space available. 

We learned how to appliqué with wool and how to embellish with different embroidery stitches and I really enjoyed Sue's class but also the company of local quilters. This is the sewing kit we worked on; the finished one is Sue's and on the right is the beginning of mine.

 And some close ups of my first embroidery attempts:

 Now I just have to remember all the different stitches so I can finish it. In any case, I bought Sue's great little book "Creative Stitching" with lots of diagrams and photos of 50 different stitches.

Of course I also had to buy a few pieces of wool and some wool thread so I can practice some more. Aren't these colours just glowing? The wool fabrics are hand dyed by Sue and her family. 

I'll be back soon with hopefully some news of actual sewing.

Enjoy the rest of this week.

Vreni xx

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