Sunny Baby Quilt

The quilt is sunny but the weather here is not! Dutch summers where cancelled few years ago and now it looks like that we  lost the spring as well...

This baby quilt is finished and sent to the tiny sweet little girl it was made for. What a journey! It all started with a simple sketch and this is what became of it. I knew that it is much harder than you would think to give a random feel to a quilt top made of little pieces, but the orange made it even harder being such dark colour. Especially in the pictures it really pops up from the rest. I'm not sure I like it and if I would do this again I think pink would have been maybe a better choice. Or more soft yellowish orange.

I tried to mixed it up a bit by leaving in an irregularity that first was a mistake, and that one I like. What it comes to the two orange rows next to each other I can't remember was that intended or did I not notice? I'm not too thrilled about it, but I paid attention to it only when I had already sandwiched the quilt, so I left it. It can very well be that at one point I thought it to be a brilliant idea. 

The gingham fabric is a table cloth. It is 100 percent cotton but very different from quilting weight cotton and even though I did prewash it, it still made the quilt extra wrinkly. I think that is OK though. The binding was again a total nightmare. I tried to rush through it which was of course a mistake. Next time I really should see it as a mindfulness exercise and slowly work through it with help of some instructions videos or something.

My favourite part of the quilt is the quilting. I really like how it looks and adds texture to the quilt. It was also fast and easy to make. 

All troubles aside it felt very special to make this quilt to a baby whos mother I have known whole her life and most of mine. All the memories and thoughts of past present and future stitched into it. Quilting as it's best!

Books that I can Smell

My favourite childrens books are written and illustrated by Swedish writer Elsa Beskow. The nature that she illustrates is the same I grew up with. I know exactly how everthing in her books feels and smells, even taste like. I also love the idea of all the plants being little persons winking and waving at me when I pass by them.

So much memories come up when I look through these. I can remember walking in the lake among the yellow water-lilies when I was a child. Pure magic. 

Green and red goosberries!

This is my favourite picture. I can feel the exitment of playing by the brook when the snow has finally smelted. Good times! 

I really wanted my children to love these books as much as I do and almost spoiled the whole thing by starting to read these to them too early. They live in a very different kind of environment than I did (no forrest!). That makes me sometimes sad even though I know it is just different and they will have their own memories. Yesterday however they both wanted to read one of Beskow's books as a bedtime story, what a relief! 

The beautiful bag in the picture is what I got in our Double Dutch swap. I asked something to carry my knitting projects in. Betty van Os made this amazing bag for me. I could have never made something like this myself, thank you Betty! Now I just have to fill it with some projects.

Joining again with Yarn Along

Knitting and Reading

I have been following Plain and Joyful Living for a long time (I mention it here). One of my favourite features is knitting and reading taking part in Yarn Along hosted by Ginny. Even though I'm not very familiar with Ginny's blog I decided to join the fun today and take a better look at her blog. She has some really nice tutorials there!

Most of my knitting and reading happens in the evening so on the right you see a bad but truthful picture. Actually for me it seems to be one or the other. When I'm working on a knitting project I don't read and when I'm reading I don't knit. In that way they seem to be connected that I do them on the same time slot and state of mind.

At the moment I'm reading O Pioneers! by Willa Cather and really enjoying it. The time period is my favourite era and the background story of Swedish immigrants in America fascinating.

What it comes to knitting I tried to crochet something with the lovely merino wool shown on the picture, but since crocheting is not really working for me, I decided that I will knit some baby socks instead. But first I have to finish my book!

Makeup Roll... and some bloglovin

Oh Google, why did you have to leave me. As you probably know they will shut down google reader. Luckily there are a lot of other providers and I decided to move my bloglist to Bloglovin. You can Follow my blog with Bloglovin and of course with all the other providers. I just had to add the link to claim my blog.

Moving on to something more interesting. We had our second Double Dutch quilt group get-together, this time with a mystery swap! I have never taken part in any swap thinking that I would get way too stressed out and insecure about my sewing skills. But this time it was a lot of fun and it did of course help that I knew the person I was making the suprise for.

Eva-Marie from zusjeb wanted something she can use. I have been so happy with my Makeup roll and use it almost everyday, so that was an easy choice. You can buy Rachel's pattern here. I think (hope) Eva-Marie liked it. (I don't get paid for linking to the pattern, I just love my makeup roll!)

The inside upside down

Knitting

Lately I have been knitting and I hereby present you with a child like enthusiasm (look what I made!) my new wrist warmers and my new cowl:

Here you can find the pattern for the wrist warmers and here for the cowl (on the website of the honey cowl you see a picture of the longer version, I made the shorter one).

The wrist warmers are made of Lana Gorssa MEILENWEIT sock yarn. I love the colour but I'm not too crazy about the yarn itself. They where fun to make, kind of meditative since I really had to concentrate. Every time my mind started to wander I made a mistake. No watching TV while knitting these!

The cowl is made of cotton. I really like the texture of the honeycomb stitch and I was able to work on it without too much thinking. I stopped half away and made my own version of the cowl by adding two buttons. I love the combination of yellow and turquoise, a new discovery for me!

Before these master pieces there where two serious failures. The pink cowl was my first attempt of making the honey cowl. Does not quite look the same, does it? I somehow misunderstood the directions and started adding stitches. When I noticed my mistake I just tried to make something of it to only discover half way that I had managed to twist the whole thing.

This poor sock will never get a pair. I really liked knitting lace but combining it with making a sock with heels and such was a bit too much for me. I decided to forget about the sock and made something else instead, hence the wrist warmers.

Bad picture of a sock gone bad...

34

I turned 34 this month. On my birthday we went to Rotterdam and after visit to (the playground) of Maritiem Museum we had coffee at the Bijenkorf, a fancy Dutch department store. I do have a thing for fancy department stores, they remind me of my grandmother. There was however another reason to go there - Jean Paul Gaultier was celebrating the opening of his exhibition in Kunsthal by signing books there. I read about it a day before in a Dutch textile blog that usually talks about embroidery and history of textile, and since we were anyhow going to Rotterdam I thought why not. I did not stand in line to get a book signed but I did get a glance of him. It was fun.

On Tuesday I headed back to Rotterdam to see the exhibition. I do not follow fashion or read fashion magazines, but Jean-Paul Gaultier is one designer who definitely has influenced me. I was eleven when Madonna had the Blond Ambition tour and I think I still could dance the Vogue. Jean Paul Gaultier was of course the designer who designed those corsets. The movie Fifth Element  is one of my favourites, I think it is just entertaining. Jean Paul designed the costumes for it.

I notice that lot of the audience were women that would have been my age around the time of the Blond Ambition tour. I'm very curious about what their connection to Jean Paul is. Do they just follow fashion and art in general, or do they also have memories from the back in the day? And in 20 years, is there anything that would stick with me from this time? I have really hard time to think of anything, I have no particular interest to any of the popstars and celebrities that are IT now.

Some of the work reminded me of what I have seen in blogs and got me thinking what a revolution this is. In 1989 Madonna sent Jean Paul a letter describing what she wanted. In the 1990 we only could get our inspiration from TV and magazines and only from people who got their work on TV and magazines. Now everybody can express themselves and share it with the rest. How amazing and wonderful! So maybe I don't know the latest hits but I do follow the grassroots and love it.

Double Dutch

I have had really slow start of the year what it comes to sewing, expect for one very exiting news: I'm part of a real life sewing group! And I kind of started it as well, although I must say I just really took the first step by contacting lovely Muriël from Hopfaldera and after that it has been a complete team effort. The group is called Double Dutch and you can find us on Flickr. We have met once and are planning our second meeting. 

The night before our meeting I kind of panicked about what would I do and came up with design using yellow, orange and pink. I have noticed that I don't like to work with too detailed plans, so below is my "pattern"

And here are some blocks I made during our meeting. So easy and fun to make, now I just should keep on going with this. And finish my blanket and couple of other things. Oh well, I will get there. At least I finally got around to blog and that makes me always feel better!