Festival of Quilts (I)

I have decided to upload several posts to the blog as I can't possibly fit everything into one, I just have too many pictures and the iPhone app crashed several times as I tried to put this together. ARGH.

SO this first one is all about Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler and the amazing quilts I finally saw in person after admiring them in Kaffe's books.

Here are a few from "Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts":

And this one, the "Mexican Party Quilt", is from his new book "Quilts en Provence" which he sold and signed yesterday as well.

Amy Butler was lovely by the way, very friendly and approachable. She put a personalised signature in every book too. And in the background you can see some of her beautiful quilts.

And here is Kaffe Fassett. I managed to catch him while he was signing his books and asked him to sign mine as well. I believe he was only there for an hour in the morning and one in the afternoon, so yay, lucky me.

And these are the books I took home, signed copies by Amy and Kaffe. Hurrah.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

... blockcrazy

Ok, a little sneak peek at a few more of my scrappy log cabin blocks as first mentioned on this blogpost. Am sewing these constantly despite having pledged to finish the other quilts. OOops.

I am planning to try the Quilt-as-you-go method on these using the same block design on front and back. No idea what I'm doing but I'll figure it out somehow.and will keep you posted once I do.

Nadine

Spots of Color

One quilt down, about 5 more projects to go.

I am slowly working my way through all the things that aren't finished and then I can move on to the beautiful new fabrics that have magically appeared in my flat over the last 2 - 3 months.

Hope you'll like this one. It is a rather small quilt, maybe more like a baby quilt. I can't decide which one is the top and which is the back of the quilt. Please also note the wonky hand quilting, actually the wonky everything. Was hoping I could maybe sell this one in my Etsy shop once I have one, but now I don't think I could. It just isn't neat enough.

close up



But I still love it.

Perfection is just not that appealing. (my wisdom for the day. :)

Love,
Nadine

the back (or front?)

Things to come

Just a little sneak peek at something I am working on.

Yes, I know, I KNOW (*blushes*), I should really finish the other projects first, but the basting and quilting takes me forever by hand and I absolutely prefer cutting the fabric and piecing the blocks.

This is one of the log cabin blocks of Kaffe Fassett and Martha Negley prints for a fairly large quilt.

Actually, I might as well tell you, lay it all out on the table as it were. I recently reorganized my (ever growing) fabric stash into plastic drawers and as I have been buying quite a lot of fabric lately (see the La Dolce Vita post) I had to be careful that all my fabric fits into the drawers. The Kaffe Fassett fabric didn't and I decided to cut 2,5" strips off so it fits. Am now making log cabin blocks out of those strips.

I will show you more of those later on.

Hope you like it.

Love, Nadine

Fassett Bridges (the back)

... and here is the back to Amy's Bridges. I used the same pattern (I started doing that a while ago to make sure the quilting doesn't look too weird on the back).



But the fabric is a selection of Kaffe Fassett prints, some gray sashing (I only had fat quarters and had to sew two pieces together, very 'unschön') and I used white linen as well.



Now on to the part I don't really like, the basting, binding and then the quilting.

This may take a while.

Hope you like this one.
Love

Nadine

Details

Salsa Quilt (the back of Candy quilt)

... and now on to part 2. Here you see the back of the Candy Quilt from last week. The design is fairly similar bus uses different stronger colors and fabrics.

I used a lot of Kaffe Fassett fabric again and tried to make sure the front and back are not too different.

One reason to follow the design used on the quilt top is to make sure the quilting (handquilting that is) does not ruin the back and is fairly consistent with the lines on the back.

I haven't decided on the quilting yet, I don't want to make it too obvious so the fabrics still look vibrant and clear.

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details

Candy Quilt

.... a tease. ...... Today I will only show you one half of a fully reversible quilt.

I'll show you the top of the quilt and will post about the other side in the next blogpost.

This quilt was a test actually. I wanted to see how quickly I can make a two-sided quilt and it only took me about 6 weeks to make (a few hours every day). By hand of course. Still don't have a functioning sewing machine. It is not quilted yet though, which will probably take another few weeks of a few hours a day.

I love doing everything by hand and since I do this for fun it shouldn't matter how long it takes to make a quilt, but I do get impatient with it and at some point I just want to finish them and move on to the next project.

Maybe I should get myself a sewing machine after all? Or fix the old machine I have been given as a present, though that alone will cost me a lot of money and there is no guarantee that it will last much longer. I have a really hard time deciding whether I want to give in to the dark side and start making quilts with the machine, turning them out a lot faster and then not knowing what to do with them. At the same time I am not sure whether I can really handle a machine.

I had a small £20 machine that was given to me once and used it until it broke, but I found myself getting every impatient with it and fiddling around with the threading (a nightmare) all the time or having to fix it because the thread was too tight or not tight enough annoyed me big time. I am not sure I want to actually invest money into a machine when I will probably end up going back to sewing by hand just because the fiddling around takes just as much time as sewing by hand would.

Any quilters out there have some advice? Let me know.

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Most of the fabric in this quilt is from Kaffe Fassett, one of my favorite designers. His fabrics are so vibrant and quirky, they brighten up every room.

details

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close-ups

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... and watch out for the next post where I will show you the other side of the quilt.

Tumbling Down

A two-sided wallhanging. (I love working with visual illusions and 3D effects.)

The front:

... and the back is a charm quilt (including a close up)

I haven't finished quilting it yet, and it keeps collecting wrinkles sitting folded up in the quilt storage box, but one day I'll get around to finishing it properly.

Scrappy Cushions

Scrappy cushions, not crappy ones, mind you. I recently moved into a new beautiful flat and wanted to put my stamp on it. So I used some leftovers of my favorite fabrics (including loads of Kaffe Fassett) and made 2 cushion covers with altogether 4 different patterns.

The one you see here is my favorite.

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I love how the colors go together. I have a lot of clothes in these colors as well. Those of you who get to see me and my blindingly bright clothes (an attempt to distract from the bits I don't want you to see) on a daily basis know this. There is lots of turquoise and chartreuse in my wardrobe.

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... and this is the back of that cushion. The colors come out a lot nicer if contrasted with some plain grays or cream colored fabrics. Something I first noticed on Elizabeth's "oh, fransson" Blog (http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/)

Elizabeth really has an eye for color and like me she prefers simple and modern designs. Check out her site, it's amazing.

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This is the next cushion. again I only used scraps I had left over.

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... and the back.

Note: all of these photos were taken on the iPhone and aren't as good as they could be. and all my quilts are done by hand. I don't own a sewing machine and frankly, I'm not sure I'd have the patience for one.

More to come later. Maybe the next post will be a new painting. Keep your fingers crossed.

Nadine