Braided Baby Quilt

The baby is in due in August, but I couldn't wait so long.

 I've used a half jelly roll with batic fabrics for the stripes, leaving out the purple ones. Green and blue went in one direction, yellow, orange, and red into the other.

Every stripe is quilted with a different free motion pattern. I fought quite a bit with my sewing machine over tention with this. Some stripes are more or less perfect, but on others you can see either the background color or the front color peek through at the other side. On one of the stripes I actually pulled everything out and did it again. Now I wonder if my choice of sewing thread is at least partially to blame for this (I just took any which sewing thread I had in my stash for this and didn't buy special quilting thread)
Well, it's too late to change now.
For the back I found this great print with dots, which matches color wise almost perfect with the front. Binding is a simple blue stripe.
Now only the baby in question needs to make an appearance, so I can make a label with the critical statistical data. But no hurry.

London - Street Art

On our last day in London we had a pretty cool tour on the local street art in Shoreditch.

 One of my favorites is by 'Invader' who's using tiles and puts them up on the most inaccessible locations

 No idea who this artist is, but I really likes this one.

 And another one I really liked. This one more simple, but really, really expressive.

 This one is by an artist who goes by the name of Stik. Also really simple (he always only ever does those stick figures), but they do hold quite a punch, I think.

It's really amazing what you can find in this corner of London. Whereas all form of graffiti and street art is totally illegal in the rest of London, this little corner kinda tolerates it. Of course, you still get a lot of crap this way, but also a lot of really cool and amazing stuff.

London - The Harry Potter Experience

I'm a big Harry Potter Fan for quite a while now, so when Warner Brothers opened 'The Making of Harry Potter' a couple of years back, I naturally wanted to go and see it. My nephew was willing to go with me (always good to have a kid with you, so you don't look too weird).
After a short introduction movie, the doors open to the great hall. Set tables are on either side and behind the teachers' tables are the glasses for the house points.

 Among floating candles, Dumbledore is welcoming the muggle tourists.

The next big room is full with costumes and some of the smaller sets, like the boys dormitory, Hagrid's hut, Dumbledore's office, the Weasley's kitchen (including self cleaning pots and pans, and the magical knitting blanket).

Behind that room is platform 9 3/4 with the waiting Hogwarts Express.



There's an open to the sky set with Number 4 Privet Drive, Knight Bus and a cover bridge (which is were we enjoyed a cone with Butterbeer Icecream)
The last three rooms are for Diagonal Alley, the special effect / creature shop, and finally a huge model of Hogwarts.
Sadly (or maybe luckily) we ran out of time, and I hadn't much chance to look at everything in the souvenir shop.
The visit and the tickets are not exactly cheap, but I enjoyed it still a lot, and could have done another hour at least (we had about three).

London Calling

Last week I've went on a short trip (five days) to London. We (that is my sister, my nephew, and I) went to see a couple of shows ('Mrs. Henderson Presents', 'The Book of Mormon', 'Lion King', and 'The Play That Goes Wrong')

Of course, we also did the touristy stuff.

The London Eye: 

 Tower Bridge:

 Changing of the Guard:

 Leadenhall Market:

We also went to 'The Making of Harry Potter' at the WB studios. More of that next time.