A prize! - Een prijs!

About a month ago, I participated in the Bloggers Quilt festival and to my surpise and delight, I was the lucky random winner of one of the prizes: two fat quarter packs of Eiko and Fort Firefly from Fabric Worm. For the first time in my life, I actually won something!

Ongeveer een maand geleden nam ik deel aan het Bloggers Quilt Festival en tot mijn stomme verbazing was ik de gelukkige toevallige winnaar van één van de prijzen: een fat quarter bundel van Eiko en Fort Firefly van Fabric Worm. Voor de eerste keer in mijn leven won ik waarachtig een prijs!

Just as with an normal order with Fabricworm, the package was swiftly posted and some days ago the fabric arrived here. Both lines are organic fabrics from Birch Fabrics Organic and have a wonderful soft feel.

Net zoals bij een gewone bestelling bij Fabricworm, werd het pakje prompt opgestuurd en enkele dagen geleden viel het hier in de bus. Beide stoffenreeksen zijn ecologische stoffen van Birch Fabric Organic en ze voelen heerlijk zacht aan.

The first line, Eiko, has a Japanese feel to it.  Beautiful colours, lots of fish and waves. I had already bought some of the prints a couple of weeks ago.

De eerste reeks, Eiko, is Japans geïnspireerd. Hele mooie kleuren, veel vissen en golven. Ik had een paar weken geleden al enkele van de prints gekocht.

The second line, Fort Firefly, has a different colour scheme, more earthy and wonderful naive drawings. Ideal for a babyquilt.

De tweede reeks, Fort Firefly, heeft een ander kleurenpalet. meer aardse kleuren en mooie, naïeve tekeningen. Ideaal voor een babyquilt.

Since I've been lucky in winning this prize, and have bought way to much fabric on our recent trip to NYC, I am planning my very first giveaway with some of the Denyse Schmidt fabrics that are impossible to get here in Europe. I'm taking all the pictures this weekend and hope to be able to blog about it in the coming days. Here's already one picture to give you an idea of the fabrics I'm talking about.

Omdat ik het geluk gehad heb deze prijs te winnen, en omdat ik natuurlijk veel te veel stof gekocht heb tijdens onze recente reis naar NYC, plan ik mijn eerste giveaway met enkele van de Denyse Schmidt stoffen die hier in Europa onmogelijk te krijgen zijn. Momenteel breng ik alles in orde met de foto's en ik hoop er één van de volgende dag over te kunnen bloggen. Hier is alvast één foto om een idee te geven van de stoffen waarover het gaat.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013

The quilt I'm entering in the throw category was finished only a week ago, just in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I call it the new vintage quilt.

I have previously written about this quilt here.

I loved making the top because I had to make my own template, based on the picture of the original vintage quilt. Working out the pattern took my mathematically challenged brain some time, but it was very rewarding to finally figure it out.

The pattern is not simple or straightforward, as it involves not only many curves but also many Y-seams. Every block was machine-pieced. If I remember correctly (it has been almost 2 years since I made the top), making the blocks and piecing the top took me a whole week.

When piecing the top together, it turned out to be nearly impossible to make all the seams match. I simply gave up after a while and concentrated on making only the white strips match, thinking these were the most important ones.

The top was handquilted with perle cotton. I love doing that because it adds a wonderful softness to a quilt. It finished at about 150 cm x 180 cm (59" x 71").

 

Thank you Amy for hosting this festival once again and thank you all for stopping by!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012

It's the time of the year again when Amy hosts the Bloggers Quilt festival! If you came here through her site, welcome! I'm Anne, I've been quilting for a couple of years now, I buy way too much fabric, have way too many unfinished quilts but luckily, once in a while I actually manage to finish one!

I hesitated between two quilts, but finally decided to enter my Winnie-the Pooh quilt because of the story behind it and the hand quilting.

It all started with a colleague of mine who brought me an old pj of her daughter. A Winnie-the-Pooh pj that had been her daughters favorite for years and years. That same daughter had now graduated, had started working and had just bought a house. We decided to use the pj's as the starting point for a quilt that my colleague would give to her daughter when she would move into her new house, which gave me about six months to finish it. And so I started.

First I fussy cut all the different Winnie-the-Pooh drawings. They were in a soft greyish-green colour that coordinated really well, in my opinion, with blues, greens and purples from my stash. I used lots of solids because I didn't want to drown poor Winnie in busy prints.

There were 8 different scenes in all: Winnie up in a tree, Winnie trying to get in a tree, Winnie looking at something, all of them really cute. So I made 8 blocks, all roughly the same size and bound them in Kona snow. This was the finished quilt top:

But I wanted to do something more, somethin extra. After all, this was a special quilt. So I decided to hand quilt it with perle cotton. I love hand quilting with perle cotton. If you haven't tried it yet, you should! I adds a modern and at the same time a very soft touch to the quilt. I used several hues of green, blue and purple to make it interesting and decided on big circles as the quilting pattern.

 
For the back, I chose the same colours, while the binding is one of the solid blues I used in the log cabin blocks.

Now for the stats:

Finished quilt measures : 140cm x 170 cm (55″x 67″)

Special techniques used : fussy cutting

Quilted by : me

Best Category : Hand-quilted quilt, Throw quilt , Scrap quilt (too bad there isn't a pyjama quilt category...)

Thanks for visiting and have a lovely day!

Bloggers Quilt Festival 2012

Every year, Amy at Amy's creative side hosts a festival: the Bloggers quilt Festival.

If you came here through Amy's site, welcome! I'm Anne. I started this blog just a week ago, but have been quilting for almost 2 years now, am largely self-taught, and am immensely enjoying all the blogs and quilts on the internet. In fact, I spend way too much time behind my computer instead of behind my sewing machine, which is one of the reasons I have plenty of WIP's.

The quilt I chose is this one:

I made it in september last year for a colleague of mine, who gave birth to a little boy. Because it is a baby quilt, I didn' t want to use too much white, thinking it needed to be practical in the first place.  It's the first cross quilt I've made, and I chose blue, grey and orange (boyish colours to my mind). I used some animal prints, without them being the focal point of the quilt.

As you can see, it was quilted with simple straight lines in grey. I didn't like FMQ for this one, the pattern was already busy enough so the quilting needed to be simple.
This is the back:

Thanks for visiting and have a lovely day!
Anne