Pink and orange

One would think that I got inspired by my new fabric when picking up the flowers but in fact it is just a coincident. The orange flowers where for the Dutch football (..soccer?)team playing on Saturday and the pink ones where chosen by my daughter. Beautiful nevertheless, the flowers and the fabric!

Fabric shopping

I just went click click click and bought myself some new fabrics! That is not easy for me, I'm so afraid that I make a wrong choice or buy too much - which is of course impossible because I will without a doubt use every piece of it at some point. So of course I end up buying too little. Well, it is a process and I'm working on it. One day I will trust that this sewing craziness is not just a phase. 


Other problem I encountered was that I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to order from the United States? It feels so outdated to have all these regulations between countries in this internet era, but I guess we won't be rid of them any time soon. 


Unrelated but very important! The roses are blooming! I was so happy and thought well, lets smell the roses - but these ones doesn't smell at all...had forgot about that. 

Rainbow blocks

Here are the two first blocks for the Rainbow project

This one turn out to be quite ok

This one looks a bit wrinkly , I don't know what happened.

Rainbow Around the Block

Rainbow around the block

I'm participating in Anna Maria Horner's quilting project for families in Middle Tennessee who lost their homes to flooding in May. So exited to be part of this! I have now finished two blocks and it has been so much fun. I will try to take some pictures tomorrow of the ready blocks. Here a small impression of the work in progress

Blog of the Month - True Up

So many nice blogs out there and I feel like sharing. It is time for blog of the month!


Do you like fabric? Then you will love Kim Kight's blog called True Up. It is all about fabric all the time. I see it as my higher education program for fabric and fabric design in particular. At first I got even a bit intimidated and overwhelmed by all the information. How can I ever learn all of this? The overall tone is however very positive and encouraging so don't be afraid.

Kim reviews all the most interesting new fabrics on the market but gives also attention to new upcoming designers. She is just so unbelievably generous! Every now and then she has designer interviews that I love to read. In her Textile Stew she gives the best links to what is going on in the blogging world. On Sundays you can check who is having fabric sales, international shops included. I love her international approach. There is no borders when it comes to love and fabric!

If you are looking for a fun but informative blog about fabrcis you need to look no further.

Beans

I have not (yet) found anyone who shares my enthusiasm over growing beans. Which makes me kind of a geek, i guess. I think it is the most amazing thing. You put the beans in the ground. Then for few weeks nothing happens. And then in just few days this comes up:

The magic doesn't end here. If everything goes well, one day you will find a very rewarding surprise under the leaves. 

The Baby Blanket

Here it is! The baby blanket is all done and ship to the little baby. It is made of soft cotton jersey, both the top and the backing and the batting is 100 % cotton. The most important principle for me was to make it as baby-friendly as it can be. It is soft, it can be washed in 60 degrees Celsius and the colors I used are high quality non-toxic textile colors (although I would not use anything else for any of my projects).

The Making of
The cotton jersey was quite challenging to work with because it stretches so much but totally worth it being so soft. I actually don’t believe I managed to make a real rectangle of it but close enough. I did not want to use interfacing since I was afraid that it would then loose some of the softness. I first printed the top fabric using a simple self made stencil.  For quilting I used two shades of embroidery thread and big stitches. The quilting part was really fun to do. The most challenging part by far was the binding. I decided to do the double fold French binding and it took me trial and error and three different sources, but I did finally got it and it was so worth it! Here are the sources I used:

 * SunShowerquilts

 * Heather Bailey

 * and Anna Maria Horner's book Seams to Me

For the next time I would like to remind myself to

 * mark very clearly the stitch line

 * by some proper stenciling tools 

All in all I'm very pleased with the quilt. It has a homemade-feel to it that I think makes it very cozy. If you like more professional clean cut looking quilt I think it would be hard to make it with the techniques I used so this might not be a project for you.

A Bonus Quilt
The little baby I made the quilt for has a 2 year old sister and of course I had to make something for her as well. I made little doll quilt using fabric scraps that I buy from here. I started and finished the project the evening before I sent the package and did not have time to take daylight pictures. The colors look much better in real life. It was lot of fun to work with this very colorful mini-quilt after working with only blue and white.

I did not add any batting to it. Inspired by the binding experience with the first quilt I tried to make bias cut binding for this one and I must say I still don't like cutting them. I thought I would not have time to hand sew the binding so I tried to topstitch it. It turned out that I'm still terrible at it. So it saved me no time and looks much worse than if I just hand blind stitched the backside. I hope the doll won't mind.