A finished curtain (ahem) quilt

In my previous post, I talked about how my colleague, who became a grandmother, asked me to make a quilt from some leftover curtain fabric for her granddaughters baby room. After making the quilttop, I was at first determined not to spend too much time on this quilt. After all, there is a small baby waiting for it and I don't really have the time to hand-quilt it.  Wouldn't it be easier to just machine-quilt straight lines through it? Stitch-stitch-stitch and stitch-stitch-stitch. Done. You see? I can actually finish a quilt in just two weeks!

Then I had another look at it. And I thought: naaaaah, not good enough. It needs something more. It needs hand quilting, no, it was actually screaming for some hand quilting. And so I obliged the screaming quilt.

I quilted around all the animals, the trees, the triangles and the leaves. And I liked it. But it took me three months extra, and baby is not a baby anymore but almost a toddler... Let's hope they haven't already changed the curtains in her room...

For the back, I chose a new Ikea print, very colourful and bold but the same style as the curtain fabric. It was a bit thicker though and that made it harder to hand quilt. The binding is made from a Denyse Schmidt fabric and also hand sewn.

Tomorrow, I'll take it to work and give it to my colleague. Let's hope she'll like it...

From curtain to baby quilt - Van gordijn naar baby quilt

A colleague of mine became a grandmother and asked me to transform some the leftover curtain fabric for the new baby room into a baby quilt. The fabrics are blue, gold and orange and have a modern design.

The two fabrics ont the top are the fabric curtain, the other fabrics are the ones I pulled to complement them.

As we have had some excellent weather lately, I brought my sewing machine down from the attic (where it was far too hot to work on a quilt) and worked in the garden. What a joy that was!

I chose strong, modern designs to go with the curtain leftovers, because the last thing I wanted was a quilt that looked as if there was an extra curtain lying on the bed or the floor, and simply added stripes of fabric.

This was a first selection of fabrics and layout.
 

And this is the final selection. I ended with using the border fabric to do just that: make a border around the quilt. This tied all the fabrics really nicely together. The size is abourt 120x160cm.

The wide stripes of fabric are the leftover curtain bits, as are the borders. The other fabrics are from Katie jump rope by Denyse Schmidt and from Echo, Lotta Jansdotters first collection. I like both of these collections so much that I always hesitate to use them, but they looked so great with the curtain fabric that I didn't think twice about it.

All I have to do now is wait for the temperatures to go down, so that I can baste the quilt without fainting.

Covering a cut in a sleeve - Een scheur in een bloes wegwerken

Last year, I bought a blouse online. The blouse was packed in a plastic bag and when I opened that bag with scissors, I cut right in the left sleeve of the new blouse. Ouch. 

As you can see, the cut is almost an inch long, so not really small. It's impossible to wear this blouse without fixing the cut.

After sulking for half a year and pondering about how to fix this, I opted for cutting right throught the sleeve and insert a lace strip. I chose between three options: the first is a simple cotton strip.

It was ok, but really white as opposed to the slight off-white of the blouse. Hmmm, not sure.
The next one is a small  lace strip that I really like, but it's quite stiff and I'm afraid it will scratch my arms every time I move. A definite no, this one.

The last one is a broader lace strip, and a lot softer than the second one. The colour is also exactly right.

No going back now...

 Doesn't look too bad...

And because I could not do only the left sleeve, because that would be really silly, here is a picture of the blouse with both sleeves altered.

 

And since I had some leftover lace, I decided to alter the bow bit.

 And so, one year after purchasing it, I'll finaly be able to wear this slightly altered blouse to work.

One border added - Eén boord toegevoegd

All the orange peels are finished and the four borders added to bee quilt. I'm quite happy with the result.

Alle blaadjes zijn afgewerkt en de vier boorden aan de quilt gestikt. Ik ben best tevreden met het resultaat.

As always, I did not really have a plan before adding the orange peels. No plan means no measurements. This resulted in not being able to  continue the orange peels around the corners, because to do that, I should have made a plan before sewing and as always, that was too much to ask.  I solved this by adding a flower in avery corner, using leftover flowers and leaves from my HST quilt. It is a scrap quilt after all.

Zoals gewoonlijk had ik geen plan gemaakt alvorens de blaadjes aan de quilt te naaien. Geen plan en dus geen afmetingen. Daardoor kon ik het patroon van de blaadjes niet laten laten doorlopen in de hoeken. Daarvoor had ik eerst moeten nadenken en dan naaien, maar dat bleek weeral eens te veel gevraagd. Ik loste het probleem op door in elke hoek een bloem te naaien,  waarvoor ik overschotjes gebruikte van mijn HST quilt. Het is en blijft immers een restjesquilt.

The quilt measures 130cm x 170 cm now, so I want to add a a second border. How that will look, is still a mystery to me. Ideas are welcome :-)

De quilt meet nu 130cm x 170cm, dus ik wil graag nog een tweede boord toevoegen. Hoe die eruit zal zien is ook voor mij nog een raadsel. Alle ideeën zijn welkom :-)

Working on my bee quilt - Werken aan mijn bee quilt

Remember this quilt?

Herinner je je deze quilt nog?

This quilt is the result of my participation in a quiltbee (you can read my previous posts on it by clicking on the tag "quiltbee"), but I haven't worked on it since 2014. I wanted to add borders, and decided to add a first border made of an orange peel pattern. I planned to appliqué all the orange peels on the border, but after spending some frustrating hours on six peels with equally frustrating results I adopted a different technique: I used Vliesofix to iron the peels on the fabric.

Deze quilt is het resultaat van mijn deelname aan een quiltbee (je kan de vorige posts lezen door te klikken op de tag "quiltbee"), maar ik heb er sinds 2014 niet meer aan gewerkt. Ik wou randen toevoegen, en besliste een eerste boord te maken met een patroon van blaadjes. Eerst zou ik alle blaadjes met de hand naaien op de achtergrondstof, maar na enkele frustrerende uren aan zes blaadjes besteed te hebben, met een even frustrerend resultaat, veranderde ik het geweer van schouder: ik gebruikte Vliesofix om de blaadjes op de stof te strijken.

Here you see the difference between the appliqué peels (lower row) and the Vliesofix ones (upper row).

Hier zie je het verschil tussen de opgenaaide blaadjes (onderste rij) en de Vliesofix blaadjes (bovenste rij). 

After ironing them on, I sewed all around them to be sure they won't come loose. This is how it looked before sewing around...

Nadat de blaadjes gestreken werden, stikte ik er voor alle zekerheid nog eens helemaal rond. Zo zag het eruit voor ik er rond stikte...

And this how it looks now.
En zo ziet het er nu uit.

And this is how the quilt looks now, with one side of the first border added.

En dit is de quilt in zijn huidige versie, met één zijde van de eerste boord erbij.

Many more orange peels to make, so I'll focus on this project the next weeks.

Er zijn nog veel blaadjes te maken, dus dit project zal me zeker de volgende weken bezighouden.

Barkcloth cushions- Kussens van barkcloth

After being absent for a while, I'm taking a slow start by making some cushions for the living room. Not being able to sew past the year hasn't prevented me from buying fabric and so I had the perfect fabric in stock: Jessica Jones' Time Warp collection.

Na een tijdje afwezig te zijn geweest, neem ik een rustige start door een paar kussens te maken voor de woonkamer. Het afgelopen jaar was ik misschien niet in staat om te stikken, maar stofjes kopen was geen probleem. Daardoor had ik de perfecte stof in huis: de Time Warp collectie van Jessica Jones.

Barkcloth was new to me, but I was very pleasently suprised. After prewashing the fabric, it became even softer while retaining a certain glow.

Barkcloth (naar het schijnt is de vertaling "neushoorndoek" maar dat lijkt me toch heel erg vreemd) was nieuw voor me, maar ik was aangenaam verrast. Alle stoffen werden voorgewassen en daardoor werden ze nog zachter maar toch behielden ze een zekere glans.

I wanted cushions with piping, and looked for a tutorial. This one, from Oon (in Dutch, but with pictures) is the one I used. And so, after first spending some time on buying zippers and making the piping, I was able to make the actual cushions.

Ik wou graag kussens met paspel en zocht rond voor een tutorial. Deze, van Oon, heb ik uiteindelijk gebruikt. En na wat tijd gespendeerd te hebben aan het kopen van ritsen en het maken van de paspel, kwamen uiteindelijk de kussens tot stand.

 

Putting the zipper in wasn't too difficult (although I did have to redo it once or twice) and I'm very pleased with how the zipper and the cushions turned out.

De rits in de kussens zetten was niet al te moeilijk (al moest ik wel een keer of twee herbeginnen soms) en ik ben erg tevreden met hoe de rits en de kussens eruitzien.

And here the cushions where they will live from now on. I used the interior from the orginal cushions, bought with the sofa and in the same grey fabric. The new fabric is a lot lighter and it really makes a difference in this north-orientated room.

Hier zijn de kussens in de zetel waar ze vanaf nu zullen gebruikt worden. Ik gebruikte de binnenkant van de originele kussens, gekocht samen met de zetel in dezelfde grijze stof. De nieuwe stof is veel lichter en dat maakt echt een verschil in deze noordelijk gelegen kamer. 

Now I have to have my sewing machine serviced, because I experienced some issues with it. Hopefully, it won't be too serious because I'm really looking forward to sewing and quilting again.

Nu moet ik mijn naaimachine binnenbrengen voor onderhoud, want ik heb een paar problemen ondervonden. Hopelijk is het niet te ernstig want ik kijk er naar uit weer te stikken en te quilten.