My Travel Gear and Some Book Love

Oh boy, where did the May go? I try to blog twice a month and now I missed a whole month!

I was travelling for one week and here below you can see my travel gear. I feel like a real sewing queen for having self-made travel gear. On the left is a make-up roll and you can purchase the pattern from Rachel from Stitched in Color. I love it! I don't use a lot of make up, so everything I own fits in it. I made it as a gift to myself last summer and I just adore it. On the right is a cover that I made few weeks ago for my newly bought Kindle. I used a free tutorial by Whipstitch Fabrics. I was a bit sceptical would it work but it really does. I added a ruffle to cover the elastic. I'm may not be a ruffle kind of girl, but the elastic had a very ugly yellowish white colour.

I'm experiment using my phone with filckr app to take pictures. I usually use my husbands fancy camera, but when I tried to blog in May about these I managed to delete all the pictures from his memory card! Luckily he could get the pictures back, but I feel more comfortable sticking to my own equipments for now.

Curious about what I'm reading on my fancy new Kindle? Anne of Green Gables. It was my favourite book when growing up. I remember when I was around ten years old my teacher said she was reading it to see if she still likes it as an adult. I was completely devastated by the idea that I could grow up to be someone who does not like Anne of Green Gables! I thought to myself it is best that I never read it when I grow up so that I don't have to find out that I don't like it. But no worries - I love it! And I mean truly love it, not in a nostalgic way or anything like that. And now I get to read the original version and not a translation of it. Little story for those of you who know Anne - when I finally realised 12 years ago that my now husband is the one my exact thought was "he is my Gilbert!". His name is very similar to Gilbert as well, so it really is all meant to be:)

I wonder if I ever get to reading new books since after I have finished the Anne series I would like to read Kim by Kipling, also one of my old favourites. It is such a thrill to notice that I enjoy same books that I read when I was a child. At least my spirit is still young!

Quilt for My Oldest Son

I finished the quilt for my oldest son (I have to giggle a bit when ever I think he is my oldest son. He is only three years old, still a little baby in my mind). I love it! It is mostly made of  fabric that I got from family. I had so much fun making it! I didn't have a plan, I first made the four rectangles and continued from there. I don't even remember when did I start sewing it, maybe a year ago? I used "organic" straight lines to quilt it because I just could not bother to try to make them all straight.

I didn't have enough fabric to make the binding blue or the same colour as the back of the quilt, so I mixed those two. Looks a bit funny but that's OK. Otherwise binding went quick and easy so I guess I'm improving!

The fabric on the back is from Marimekko, Kanteleen Kutsu by Sanna Annukka. My son loves all the animals on it. All in all he was very pleased with his new quilt.

Stashing Thrifting and Decluttering - a Brain Dump

I just came from a fabric store and bought only what I needed - a large piece of fabric for the back of a quilt in navy. As I'm congratulating myself for not buying more than I need at the same time I can not stop thinking should I not have bought more when I had the opportunity to be fabric-shopping alone in a real shop.

I have trouble spending money on anything (exception being food and shoes for my children...) so fabric stashing does not feel like a natural thing to do for me. At the same time I would love to have all kind of fabric at hand so when ever I get an idea I could just start sewing. Also sometimes fabric starts to "speak to me" and in order to let that happen you really need to have it at home. So building a some kind of stash would be handy. I try to do that by buying some fat quarters and other small inexpensive pieces, but then I usually end up having too little fabric for the project I have in mind. So I'm constantly debating how much I should buy and what should I buy and is all this buying justified when at the same time our home and the whole world is drowning under stuff as it is... On top of that there is the debate in my head over designer fabric and the cheaper stuff found in "normal" fabric stores. And of course should I not only buy organic fabric... What it comes to designer fabrics some of them inspire me beyond limits so buying at least some feels justified. I also love the quality of it.

I have a small stash of fabric that was gifted to me, some of it is probably 30 years old and still looks perfect. I used that pile for my older son's quilt (will show it to you when I'm done with quilting) and it felt good to put the random pieces together as oppose to ordering some matching designer fabrics as I did for my daughter's quilt. It really felt that I was getting back to the roots of quilting that must have emerged from the need to use every little piece of fabric out of necessity.

More environmentally friendly and less expensive way of stashing could be buying more secondhand fabric. I'm just so very bad at thrifting! I don't like shopping and shopping in thrift-shops even less because you never know what they have. I will also be honest and admit that against all common sense buying used fabric (old curtains and such) makes me a bit itchy. I know when washed it is as good as any other fabric and that there is no logical reason for me not to buy it. (By the way I don't get the same itchy feeling at all when the fabric comes from someone I know).

Having three kids I'm constantly carrying big plastic bags full of clothes they have grown out of to the charity and sometimes I'm thinking this is fabric too. I should be creative enough to make some use of it. But saving it for later conflicts greatly with the other ideal of our times - decluttering. I definitively enjoy having less clutter in  my house but I also think there is a fine line between decluttering and throwawayism.

As you can see, I could go on and on, but I will stop here. Now you have a little glimpse of what is going on in my head. I sometimes think my slogan could be something like "if the answer is simple I can make it complicated!" :)

Pink Invasion

My little girl turned five yesterday and our home is covered with colour pink. She loves loves loves pink so that is what she gets. When I was little I was passionate about yellow and I can see that she feels the same way about pink.

As a child I was really sensitive to pick up the message that girly is stupid. Sewing girly fabrics in general and decorating for my daughters birthday in particular is clearly filling some girlishness deficit in me. I might have even gone little bit over the top with the birthday cake but I really enjoyed making it. Making the marzipan roses was like playing with play dough. They are all a bit different as are the leaves and yellow flowers as well, but isn't that how nature works. I just seem to have a great dislike for anything too repetitive.

I believe there are quite a few women out there who love it that after a day in office they can change the gray power suite to something more comfortable and start stitching Jennifer Paganelli. Isn't it great that we can have it all!

XO Kaffet Fassett Table Runner

I finished the table runner last Wednesday. For a moment I considered making it double sided, but that seemed like too much trouble.

I thought this was the perfect opportunity to practice free motion quilting. I decided to make curvy lines and I was very suprised how smoothly everything went. Not perfect, but pretty good for the first timer and I'm so glad that my machine can handle it so well! Sewing the binding was as frustrating as always. I was thinking the next time instead trying to rush through it I should make it a mindfulness practice.

My three -year-old found this rock outside our house and wanted to paint it blue. I love it and see how it matches the table runner!

Since I decided to get serious about my drawing practice I have tried to figure out clever practices to make it part of my day. Having my sketchbook and pen on the bar that separates the kitchen from the living room has worked quite well. In general I want the bar to be neat and tidy to have at least one place at home that is not cluttered, but I make an exception for the sketchbook. 

In February 2012

I got smitten with the colour combination blue and orange.

Maybe this birthday card I got from my mum (thanks mum!) won me over? I do like it a lot. Here is a link to the artist Anna-Liisa Hakkarainen.

I made the strip first for my son´s quilt that I´m working on, but it did not work with the rest of the quilt. I had to come up with a new use for it, and I finally got the table runner fever. I thought for the longest time that table runners are not my thing, but now the bar looks so dull without it! Have to finish that one soon.

I just love it how my daughters paintings on the chair sneaked into to picture :)

I have also been practicing drawing again (hard!) No matter how frustrating it sometimes is, I want to practice some more. Working with pen and watercolor is new for me and I really like it.

I went through all my seeds. I have enough for a little farm. Luckily for me I did not have any flower-seeds left, so I get to shop for those!

During the month February I have enjoyed having  flowers at home the whole month. I will continue with that. 

Lazy days - oh where are you...

It has been beautiful winter weather here in the Netherlands for a week now but  we have missed all the ice-skating fun because of a flu. I'm still not completely over it and I really would like to have one of those good old lazy days doing nothing, but I can't. I don't know if it is the motherhood, the crafting or the age, but I just can not sit still any more. Probably it is all three of them combined that is to blame. Obviously if I'm home alone with all my three children with ages 0, 3 and 4, I really can't. But even if I would be home alone or just with the baby, I still can not do it. It would feel like such a waist! There is always so much to do! Household chores obviously, but for two years now also loooong list of crafty projects waiting to be finished or started. Don't get me wrong, I do feel lazy all the time. It often feels that everyone else with zillion kids get so much more done (and someone always will, so why do I keep on comparing :). I just can not be lazy for one day and be OK with it.

I love crafting. I love it that I'm creating and doing when ever I can and bubbling with new ideas all the time. But I also would like to be little bit more balanced with it. Have little bit more zen into it.