Dresden Sunflowers

Another quilting technique I always wanted to try are the so-called Dresden Plates. With Dresden plates you cut wedges from you fabrics, sew them into a circle and applique the plate then on some background fabric. The number of wedges you use depend on the angle of your wedges, i.e. if you cut at an 20deg angle, you get 18 wedges.
 The first two plates I just used to play aound with the technique (i.e. how big do they turn out? How much to I need to / can remove from the center? ...)
Then I made two plates in white and yellow.

I appliqued them on a green background and added a brown circle for the center.

Some flower stems and a couple of leave.

Tata! Dresden Sunflowers (and doesn't the name give me a little giggle fit every single time, as I do spend so much time in Dresden)

Clam Shells

It's currently way too hot for quilting. It's not the sewing itself that's the issue, it's the thought of going near a hot iron that's soooo not appealing.

Still, last weekend I pulled a late night (aka hey, look it's finally less than 30deg C in my appartment) ironing session to shape the clam shells, and the rest of the sewing is blessedly ironing free (or nearly so), so putting the pillow together was an option. 

The pillow is 50 x 50 cm (20 inches). I did some spiral quilting (which was super fun to do.  I see more of that in my future)

Not sure if I want to do the clam shell technique again (don't see a whole quilt of that, that's sure), but at least I did it once, so for now it's out of the system.

Blue Wonder

Those pictures are back from June, when I spent a weekend in Dresden.
One famous landmark in Dresden is the Blue Wonder (the commonly used name for the Loschwitz Bridge, which is the first bridge up river from the Waldschlösschen Bridge)

The bridge was open in 1893 and is a pretty impressive piece of engineering for it's time. I particularly like the steelwork construction.

 Close to the bridge are two small railways - one a funicular railway going up to the Weisse Hirch (one of Dresden's many districts). The second one is a suspension monorail (one of the oldest in the world)

I took a trip on both and it was great fun.