The Making of Baby Blanket II

I was inspired by the beauty of the spring season and wanted to catch some of that on fabric.

I used contact paper to make some stencils.

Getting ready for printing at my little "home studio" at our dining table.

Test prints on a piece of muslin

Work in progress on a white organic jersey

I hand quilted the blanket along the lines that you can already see on the previous picture if you look closely. The lines where drawn with a HB graphite pencil. I assembled the quilt  in such a way that no binding was needed.

I finished the quilt the night before my baby was born.

Here it is wrapped around my little boy this afternoon

Harvest Time

I have been a very lazy gardener this year but I still have some harvest news to share. 

The fig tree has been very active and is producing more fruit that I can handle. The fruits are gorgeous but since it has been raining here a lot this summer (and still is) they are very watery. So far I have cooked them a little and mixed with yoghurt. I will try that again soon using my own yoghurt and by adding some spices to the fig confiture. ( I bought a yoghurt-maker and we are now having fun trying out different yoghurt cultures.)

The below picture makes me a bit sad. I had these wonderful green tomatoes and I was looking forward to making this excellent jam of them. After picking the tomatoes I didn't get to the jam making on that same day. Two days later when I finally wanted to start the they were all covered with some nasty brown stains and I had to throw them away.  What a shame.

Luckily we are not even planning to make wine of the grapes. We eat them as they ripen and nothing gets waisted. They are very sweet and tasty this year, which surprises me since we have had so little sun.

We also planted some borage to improve the soil (no idea if it works). I really love the small blue flowers. 

They are especially beautiful in the evening light. Below an attempt to capture some of that magic. 

Diving in

Hurray, I'm a mother of three! For a month now - time goes so fast! My little boy is doing very well, sleeping eating and growing.

I'm so so relieved that I'm not pregnant anymore. When I'm pregnant it feels like half of my brain just shuts down or gets completely occupied with the little one living inside me. There seems to be so little space left for all the stuff that I normally like and enjoy doing. Almost instantly after the birth I feel like myself again. I'm back! And loving it.

Just few days before my little one was born I was sewing the below block for the do.Good charity bee (not the best picture and I did not take the time to iron either...). Rachel asked for ocean inspired block. I truly enjoyed making this block, it was something new and not too complicated (having my brain taken over by the pregnancy...)

The last weeks and days of pregnancy are so hard, you are just waiting and waiting for it to happen. The block was such a nice distraction. The ocean theme was also a perfect match. I had been reading about a birth technique called diving and as I was selecting the fabrics and arranging the bubbles I was thinking about water and ocean and waves - and about giving birth. I know, it is all a bit woo woo, but the diving technique really worked for me. At every contraction I imagined that I was diving in to a deep ocean and that got me through the pain. I couldn't find any information about the technique in English and I'm thinking I should try to change that.

I just love the idea that this block that became part of my birth story is sent out to the world having a life on its own!

Back to Sewing!

Being pregnant has effected my sewing and all other kind of doing much more I ever would like to admit. But the last month or so it feels like I'm back again! Really nice feeling, I must say. 

A fabric store near us is closing down and they are having huge sales. It is of course very sad that they have to close but I rarely find anything there that I like. Also lot of the fabric is synthetic, which I don't prefer. But I did managed to find this brownish fabric that I really like and I bought 6 meters of it! It was only € 2.50 per meter...

I made trousers to my little boy using the Quick Change Trousers -pattern from Handmade Beginnings by Anna Maria Horner

And a maternity version of the Smashing Smock from her first book Seams to Me.

I really do like the fabric and I like to sew with it. The only problem is that we will soon look like the von Trapp family, so I guess I will take a break from this one for awhile. 

First Rhubarb Pie of 2011

We had a amazing April and begin May in the Netherlands, like a mini-summer. We spent the time well enjoying our backyard and our home-grown rhubarb among other things. The first rose came up on mothers day, how sweet is that!

I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a pie. I made Finnish pulla with the children (sort of sweet bread) and used part of the dough for the pie. Making pulla is a state of art that I by no means master, so I don't feel confident to share any how to's.  Here is one recipe that is quite similar to the one I use.  When you have the dough you can make all kind of things of it, rhubarb pie being one of them. I just buttered the pie dish and filled it with rolled out dough. I cooked the rhubarb with little orange juice and some sugar and cinnamon. When it had softened (that happens in minutes) I removed it from the heat and added some potato flour. You can also use corn starch, although I'm not quite sure at which point you should add it. Then you just put the Rhubarb-compote on the top of the dough, brush the edge of the dough with beaten egg or milk for shines and bake it in 200 C for about 30 minutes. You can use a much thicker layer of rhubarb, this was just all that I had. Enjoy!

Project Selvage - Vote for your Favourite

I would have loved to write "please vote for me!", but I didn't make it to the semi-finals with my entry that you see above (not in repeat here). There are however 75 other talented designers hoping to be Michael Miller Fabrics next fabric designer. So head over to Spoonflower and vote for your favourite. I like this one. Katarina, the Serbian designer, also has a beautiful blog 

None of the more abstract designs where selected to the final 75 which I think is a shame. But I guess they picked up designs they think will sell. The voting ends April 6th. 

Colour Red

Yellow is my all time favourite colour but I do love this shade of red as well. Just perfect, don't you think? Recently I also bought some red fabrics. When my daughter saw the fabrics she demanded that I would make a skirt for her. That was not what I had in mind, but I thought I will give it a try. We chose the Bo Peep Skirt pattern from Anna Maria Horner's book Seams to Me. I wanted to make it big so that she wouldn't out grow it too fast. We decided together on the fabrics and how we would arrange them. 

I like it and don't like it. All the fabrics used where quilt weight cotton which I think is too thick for this pattern. I also don't like the elastic waist, I actually wanted to figure out a more complicated solutions which I guess is progress! I mean, me sewing clothes and hoping for a bigger challenge - yay! Not so long time ago a straight seam was a challenge :)

What I really love is the ribbon. It was my daughter's idea. I have never been too keen on ribbons. I could not really find any use for them. Now I really want to figure out something to use them for. Any ideas? 

All in all it was a fun project. The children are using the skirt as a dress up costume when playing and I think it is just perfect for that!