Bloggers Quilt Festival - Stairway to Heaven

 It´s time for the Bloggers Quilt Festival again over at Amy´s Creative Side. Hundreds of beautiful quilts were already added, so take some time and visit all the lovely blogs.

 My entry this time is "Stairway to Heaven". It´s not new, but I think I haven´t shown it yet. I made it around 12 years ago and it was so fun and quick to sew. It is machine pieced and hand quilted. One more time I used my favorite 30s repro fabrics together with muslin, but this quilt would look great in modern fabrics, too.

The prairie points are fun, too. I made a lot of them from charm squares.

 

 The photos were taken in front of my parents´ garden shed wall that my mom and I painted a few years ago.

 

 I made a second version of this pattern as a Christmas gift for my sister in 2000. She likes amish colors and the quilt looks completely different in solids and with a dark background.

(Sorry for the bad picture, I had to scan a paper pic.)

Exciting News!

I am very excited! The medaillon quilt I designed and made last year will be featured in the July issue of the german magazine "Patchworkideen". 

I don´t want to show the whole quilt before the magazine is out, so here is only the middle part of it. A lovely older Kaffe Fassett fabric I found in a little shop in Denmark, quilted with perle cotton. The whole quilt is quite light and pastel, so I named it "the Dream Quilt".

a Special Fabric

 Recently I bought half a yard of this cute fabric. It is one of those japanese fabrics that are a bit more expensive than the normal stuff. But I think once in a while it is ok to spend a bit more if I really like a fabric.

 I think it is very funny to buy a japanese fabric with german words on it at an american online store. :-)

 I´m not quite sure what to do with it, but I think that a notebook/sketchbook cover would be nice. Or a case for letters and stamps?

The selvage is cool, too.

Swapped Fabrics

During the last weeks a few yummy parcels arrived at my door - the farics that I swapped during Lucy´s Fugly Fabric Party.

 These beauties came from Jessie who got a package of novelty 30s fabrics in return.

 These beautiful Aunt Grace fabrics are from Cathy who asked me if I had a special scotty dog fabric she was searching for. I had it in my stash and was happy to swap with her.

 And this blue and pink goodness comes from Rachel who wanted my turtle fabrics that I offered on my blog.

Thank you, Jessie, Cathy and Rachel, I am so happy with my fabrics and I hope you are, too! :-)

 Earlier this week I was at the fabric shop and bought these hooks and rings for my netbook cover.

 I attached the rings to the cover and made a string out of a yellow and a grey strip of fabric.

 Now I can use the cover as a bag when I go out and want to carry the netbook with me. At home I can simply remove the string.

Have a nice weekend! It´s hard to believe that tomorrow is already April. The last three months went away so quickly. But I am happy that the winter is gone. We had a few very beautiful and warm days and went outside whenever we could.

a beautiful Morning

What a nice day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and it feels a lot like spring!

It´s also my mum´s birthday today. 

The house smells like marzipan and vanilla because I´m baking a cake for her.

 And this is her birthday block this year. From time to time we make each other blocks and collect them.

This one is quite small, 6 3/4" without the border. It was fun to sew.

_______________

A few weeks ago, when I was ill with a cold, my dear hubby bought a wonderful gift for me. It is a little netbook that I can use in the living room or even in bed. So I don´t have to go upstairs where the computer stands (it´s pretty cold there in winter because the room has no heating).

Look at it, isn´t it pretty? It´s yellow and white and I LOVE it.

 Now I made a case for it. I used grey and yellow scraps for the flap and a grey text fabric from the Sunkissed line.

 I added a little bit of hand quilting to the flap with yellow perle cotton.

I plan to attach two D-rings to the case and make a strap with two hooks so that I can turn the case into a bag when I want to carry the netbook with me. But I need to buy the rings and hooks first.

Granny Squares

Have you seen the Granny Squares patchwork blocks that are growing on a lot of blogs these days? I´m sure you have. It all started here, I think.

Isn´t it funny how sometimes two people in different parts of the world have a similar idea? I made these blocks last September, and I also had "granny squares" in my mind. But I chose a black background because I wanted to create something that would look like Roseanne´s sofa blanket.

I saw Jolene´s blog Blue Elephant Stitches only last week when I saw the granny squares on several blogs. Before that I had no idea that I wasn´t the only one sewing these blocks. :-)

(I even googled "granny squares quilt" last summer and found nothing.)

My mother has a theory that creative ideas fly through the air and can be caught by more than one person - I think she´s right.

Thimble Talk

Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville has a Linky Party this week, and it is all about thimbles.

So I want to show you my favorite.

This one from Clover I like best. It is adjustable and leaves room for a longer nail.

I bought it in size M and it was a little bit too big. It also "painted" my finger green when I quilted a little longer. So I lined it with a scrap of very thin suede, and now it´s perfect.

 This one is also from Clover, the leather thimble with the metal "coin". I used it before I got the metal thimble, but it was not perfect because I tend to push the needle a bit sideways and not with the middle of the coin. You can see that the leather is worn on one side.

But I still love it for thread basting. For some reason basting is the only thing that I cannot do with the metal thimble.

Hop over to Quiltville for a lot of interesting thimble stories!

FMQ Tablerunner

 Do you remember the one pink block?

I made a few more for this tablerunner. I wanted something light that fits my sideboard and matches my selvage stars quilt. The selvages are only from my reproduction 30s fabrics, so I choose these for the runner, too.

 One block in green, one in pink, one in blue and one in purple, all combined with yellow.

 It is my first attempt to free-motion-quilt a piece bigger than a mug rug. And although it is far from perfect, it was great fun and the result is ok for me. (But I don´t show you a close up...)

FMQ seems to be a matter of training, so hopefully the next try will come out better.

The wooden pieces are made by my dad, who is a very skillful woodturner and woodworker.

Giveaway Winners!

Here are the winners of the three novelty fabric bundles!!!

I am at my sister-in-law´s old laptop at the moment because our computer don´t want to work yet.

So everything is a bit slow, but I am thankful to be online at all.

I drew the three winners with the random number generator, but I don´t know how to put the images here...so you just have to trust me. :-)

Ok, drumroll please:

# 18, Gill

#25, Jessica @ Plum Patchwork

#108, Lisa Cox

Congratulations to you three! I´ll send you an email soon! :-)

Thank you for all your lovely comments - I wish I had a bundle of fabrics for everyone of you!

Help...Fabric Search

Dear blogging friends! 

I am searching for this fabric and I hope that somebody can help me.

It is from the "Aunt Grace through the Year" line (Marcus Brothers) and a few years old. I think this was the March design (St. Patricks Day). I only have a little bit of it and I would LOVE to get more. I would happily pay for it or trade for another fabric from my big 30s reproduction collection. Maybe you are searching for a special fabric, too?

Please leave me a comment if you can help me. I would be so happy!

If you want to take part in my giveawy please see this post.

And if you are interested in more giveaways and fabric swaps, visit Lucys Fugly Fabric Party - so much fun there!

Fabric Swap anyone?

Edit:

only the Galaxy fabric is still available for swap.The turtles and planes will go to Kathy soon!

In addition to my giveaway below I also have some more fabrics that need a new home.
Would you like to swap? :-)

The fabrics below I would like to trade. These are quite different to my usual taste.

I bought them some years ago and planned to sew something for my former boyfriend. But then we broke up and I forgot the fabrics for a while.

As you can see, he liked turtles and everything space related. So maybe you have a son, husband, friend etc who would like a quilt, a pillow or a bag for his sportswear...or YOU love turtles and want to make a quilt for yourself. My plan was to collect as much different turtle fabrics as I could find. I bought these four before we separated...

 this was one yard but I cutted out one 17" x 17" piece for a pillow

 1/4 yard piece

 17" x 26" piece

 1/2 yard piece

Galaxy fabric with glitter:

 1/2 yard piece

different aeroplanes etc:

 this was one yard but I cutted out one 17" x 17" piece for a pillow

If you would like one or more of them, please leave me a comment. I don´t want the same amount of fabric for them, just something nice and small. I like bright modern fabrics and could use a bit more in yellow, orange, purple, dark blue or green,

or 1930s repros (would prefer florals here, see my last post).

I also love scraps if they are big enough, so just make me an offer. I would be happy if these fabrics would come to a good use at last. I happily send these beauties worldwide, but keep in mind that I live in Germany. Depending on your location your shipping costs for the swap fabric could be a bit higher.

Please visit my last post with the GIVEAWAY too and leave me a comment for a chance to win one of three fabric packs!

Giveaway!

 

  I am taking part in Lucy´s Fugly Fabric Party today and here is what I want to offer to you in a giveaway:

 If you are already a reader of my blog, you know that I love my 1930s reproduction fabrics. But over the years I found out that I like the floral and geometric patterns much more that the novelty prints.

So these funny children´s fabrics are lying around in my cupboard and I don´t do anything with them.

So I assembled these three packs for you.

Each pack includes six fabrics. These are mostly fat quarters, a few are a bit smaller because I cutted one strip or piece from them.

I hope that somebody will like them and make something beautiful out of them.

Edit: I closed the comments now and will draw three winners as soon as I can. I have some severe computer problems at the moment and hope they can be fixed tomorrow.

 
If you want to win one of the three packs just leave me a comment on this post.

Leave a second comment if you are a follower of my blog for another chance to win.

I am prepared to send the fabrics worldwide, so everybody is welcome to take part.

Just make sure that you are not a no-reply-blogger or leave me an e-mail adress so that I can get in touch with you.

The giveaway is open till Saturday evening (german time) and I´ll draw three winners on Sunday.

Good luck! :-)

(Please see my next post, too, where I offer some fabrics for trade.)