Green, so green

The baby of one of my friends is going to be one year this week. So I made a little cardigan for her.
And then I made it again, because the first one was too small.

The pattern is called Jubilee Cardigan and it's from one of the Interweave Knits magazine (Christmas 2010, I think). As yarn I used Unisono from Zitron. I just had enough, with less than one metre left over.

I also have to show you two pairs of socks I've finished a while ago. First is the Hagrid Motocycle socks (free pattern) in Drachenwolle Sock Yarn. The socks are more green than blue, though the photo insists on making them look blue.

 Finally, a pair of starry socks. The pattern is called 'Sternenhimmel' and is from the book 'Jeans! Socken!' The yarn is cheapy Aldi yarn

X and O

I've got the fabric for this tablerunner last year at the Kreativ-Messe in Frankfurt, but for the longest time I couldn't decide on what to do with it. Eventually I decided on a fairly simple trip around the world pattern, gradiating the x's and the o's from one side to the other.

For the back I tried some free form cutting and sewing.

 The quilting was also fairly simple, just some wavey lines using my walking foot.

I'm also making progress on the Tula Pink City Sampler. A few weeks ago I've already finished the section on rectangulars.

 And today I finished the section on triangles

I've now got 55 out of 100 blocks.

Settlers of Catan

The game 'Settlers of Catan' is a bit of a dividing line in my gaming group. Some love it, some hate it. The friend I've made this pillow for does love it (else it would make little sense to make it for her birthday ...)

 

I started out with sewing (by hand) 18 hexagons for the water and 19 hexies for the land using the quilt-as-you-go technique. I then used my machine to sew them to a darker blue background using a blanket stitch. The number markers, the roads and the houses are felt I cut to size. For the numbers I used a permament marker.

 For the pillow case I sewed a zipper to the back center, so taking out the inlet is easy. I used a normal, square 50x50cm pillow inlet and just stuffed it into the corners to give the pillow it's form.

Sew Together No2

I've heard it's impossible to sew just one Sew Together Bag.
So here's no.2 in blue.

I used 2 inch squares to make the outside, making the bag a little wider than the pattern asks for.

For the inside I used lighter blues for the large pockets and darker blue for the zippered pockets.

Hmmm, what to do for no.3?

Cutting Mat Bag

When sewing a project I sometimes have a block or two left. Sometimes because that block doesn't fit the overall look of a given project, or sometimes because I've made too many blocks (like with the 'Oh My Stars!' quilt, where I decided the quilt top was simply too big and removed a couple of rows before I made the sandwich)
Or sometimes I try something out, not so much because I need it, but because I want to see how it works.
Which means I always have a couple of blocks or patchworked stuff I don't really have a home for.
I call those lonely blocks 'Orphans'.
A while back I stitched a couple of them together in two pieces 70 x 55 cm, planning to eventually make a bag for my cutting mat and maybe with a couple of extra pockets for various rulers.
I didn't have a pattern (I did look at quite a few bags on the 'net but didn't find anything I really liked) so in the end I made something up that works for me.
This is the front containing blocks from an abondond drunkard path project, a test patch from my light house wall hanging (ticker tape), some 'Oh My Stars!' blocks and one of the blocks I did two years ago on the quilting cruise (Nordic Star).

 The other front has the other half of the drunkard path project, a New York City Beauty block (again from the cruise), more stars, some weaving I did and a bit from a scrappy strings quilt, that never got past four blocks or so.

 The bag is plenty big to hold my cutting mat and has four additional pockets on the other side for rulers or other stuff. I put in two zippers so the bag closes in the top center (with a tiny gap)

The handles are long enough to carry the bag comfortable over my shoulder.
Maybe it's not the most profesional bag in the world, but for the purpose it's intended for it's perfect.
And I found a good home for at least some of my poor orphans blocks.

Sew Together

Sometimes there are patterns too strong for me to resist.
Case in point: the Sew Together Bag by Sew Demented.
I've seen the bag all over the internet and eventually I caved in and bought the pattern.

For the outside I've used black and white scraps with a dash of red (using the scrap vortex quilt tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts)

Inside I made the inner pockets bright and colorful (with matching zippers)

It's a bit fiddly to do in places and the sew along by the Quilt Barn was invaluable.

I'm super happy with the outcome. 

The color selection for bag number two is already in progress. And maybe for bag number three ...

And then there's another project that's all the rage on the 'net (well, at least it was last year - I'm a bit behind with things like this). 

The Tula Pink City Sampler. I've bought the book a couple of months ago and I'm using blue and green solids (I've got a FQ pack last year in the US) plus my blue and green batics. 

Those are the first 15 (out of 100) blocks: I'm now done with the crosses and will start next with rectangles.

I'm going to link to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.

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.

Five Countries in Seven Days

Sorry, it's been a while. I've been away on vacation, cruising through the Baltic Sea on the Serenade of the Seas with my sister and my nephew.

We started out in Stockholm (Sweden) after staying there for two nights on a ship / hostel located smack in the center of the city. This is pretty much what we saw first thing in the morning when we got off the ship.

 We went onboard of the Serenade on a Sunday, and already got to Helsinki (Finland) by the next morning.

 We stayed for two days in Saint Petersburg (Russia), where we had a privat guide for our trip to the Cathrin Palace with the famous Amber Room.

 Next we travelled to Tallinn (Estonia), a lovely town with a great medieval flair (the old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site)

 And the final stop before returning to Stockholm was Riga (Latvia). I wasn't sure what to expect of this town, but I was very pleasently surprised and I liked it a lot (thunderstorm and hail nonewithstanding)

So, that's a quick summary of my vacation and the five countries I visited within seven days.

Merry Christmas (in July)

Yes, I know, I'm a little bit ahead with the whole Christmas thing.
But I just finished this xmasy tablerunner, and I wanted to share.

I saw a very similar table runner on the Quiltmanufaktur blog and fell in love, only to discover that the store is in fact in Frankfurt and thus not far away. At the next opertunity I went to visit (love the place) and snatched up a set of the red xmas fabrics used. I used only two squares of each fabric (I had three) and added a couple of my own fabrics to the mix, then I started sewing.

Very easy, very fast, very fun project.

Macro

One thing I was missing for my photo equipment was a good lens for macro photography.
One way to go is to simple buy a special lens for that, but this will limit you in your options. Or you buy a good fixed focal length lens with a set of addapter rings for different focal lens ratios.
I decided on a 60mm/2.8G ED lens and set of three distant rings.

To get a feeling for the new toys I shot this quick series.

First picture is the lens without any of the distant rings.

 Second picture with the lens and the 12mm ring.

 Third picture the lens and the 20mm ring.

 And the last picture is the lens with the 36mm ring.

 All pictures were taken with the smallest possible aperture using a tripod to get the most depth of focus possible.

Avengers Assemble - A Quilt

To those who know me it's not a big surprice that I'm a big Avengers fan. I love the movies to pieces, Iron Man being my favorite, but I'm also quite fond of Captain America, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo version), Hawkeye, Black Widow and, not to forget, Thor.
I'm not alone with this.
So, when I got that crazy idea into my head to make an Avengers Quilt, I immediately knew where it would go to. And last Wednesday I finally could hand the quilt over.

 The quilt consists of 145 blue 4 inch patches in various shades of blues. They frame the symbols for the six Avengers (as of the first Avengers movie), plus the Avengers logo itself.

 I worked each of the Avengers as a seperate unit with a different blue background. For the symbols I used different techniques. Some applique (Averngers logo), some paper piecing (Thor's hammer), some reverse applique (Ironman and Hulk), ...

 I quilted the units by first tracing the symbols, then writing the names and the 'secret' identities of each of the characters (i.e. Captain America aka Steve Rogers). I then quited the background with a free motion swirly pattern

 On this background pic of Thor's hammer you can see the tracing I did and the names (though in reverse) and the rest of the quilting.

I had a lot of fun designing this quilt, working out the hows and whats, and sewing it.
It is an unique quilt, and I learned quite a bit making it.
I know it's now at its new home where it will  be loved and appreciated (and hopefully been ued to snuggle up in to watch an Avengers marathon once in a while ...)

Round

Currently, a couple of larger project are coming to fruitation. After the scrappy sockyarn blanket from last week, here's a table cloth I've made for my mom.

The diameter is roughly 180cm and about 3000m of cotton were used to knit it (Magic No. 8 by Zettl). In the end I had 2345 stitches on the needle, which made for very long rows.

I really enjoy knitting lace, but normally don't have much use for it. Luckily my mom has a nice round bistro table and with a neutral table cloth unterneath, I think it will look great.

I did steam press the edges. It didn't go perfect, a few of the wedges got a bit brown spots (I don't think I singed it, but I'm not sure what else it could be), Maybe turn that side to the wall ...

Scrappy Knitting

After about half a year I finally finished my scrappy ZigZag sockyarn blanket/afghan.It ended up 180 x 150 cm and it extremely warm and heavy.

I knitted it with leftover and recycled sock yarn, holding two strands together and every couple of rows I switched out one of the two colors.

 After knitting eight stripes I crocheted them together and then made a border all around.

Primary colors were blue and green, with the occasional other color thrown in.I haven't weighted it yet, but I'd guess 2,5 kilos may have ended in there.