The Fabric Diet That Went Out The Window

I am trying… I am really trying! But I don’t seem to succeed much! I just picked up another smallish package from the post office. It contained the fabrics (Delilah – Tanya Whelan) for my string quilt.

It also had three charm packs from the Buttercup (Moda) for S’s quilt.

 I looked through the squares and found the perfect border fabric.

What do you think?

Take care,

Me

And Some More Fabric!

I received another package from the Fat Quarter Shop. This time with a fat quarter bundle “Gallery in Red”.

My sister A has been asking for a red and black quilt for so long. But I haven’t had the time or want to hunt down the right red fabrics. So when I saw that fabric I preordered it right away. It finally came in and it is just as gorgeous as I suspected when I saw the picture. I have some black corduroy on hand.

So I think this quilt might go together quite fast. Well, maybe!? I am going to make this quilt one of the 8 for Christmas. 8 quilts in 8 months… totally doable LOL

Well, but the package didn’t just contain A’s fabric. No, P has requested a Peace quilt. She saw the Pottery Barn Peace Quilt. And she needs to have one right now. So what am I to do? No, I am not going to buy that one nor will I knock it off. But I have been playing with single block/square quilt ideas. I was able to get a peace sign in there, and P approves. She even found the perfect fabric!

So this  Peace fabric is going to be used for that. It is already cut up.

I just need a block of time to sew this one together…

Take care,

Me

Precious Family Photos

Family Photos

There have been quite a few sad changes to our family. Last year in the summer M’s dad passed away. And in January of this year, M’s grandmother died. It is especially hard because we are stationed in Europe and both losses are felt deeply in our family.

M doesn’t have very many pictures or other momentos from his childhood because everything got swept away in a couple of floods in the 80’s and 90’s. Yes, he is that old!!!

M’s cousin was kind enough to go through her photos and sent us a photo album filled with pictures of his parents and grandparents.

His grandmother was a lady through and through. She was lively, very kind, forgiving and always had a positive outlook on life. M loved to discuss politics with her!

I love this picture! 

These pictures are too precious to be left in the album. I decided to hang them in our living room and got a couple of frame sets from the store. It took a couple of nights to cut the mats from scrapbook paper and put it all together. But in the end it was well worth it!

Take care

Me

P.S. Jasmin, do you recognize that lamp? ;-)

Easter Breakfast

The promised sunshine did not materialize this morning. But we still had our Easter Breakfast outside on our patio. M made toasted German Bread and eggs and cut up some melon as well. Isn't our breakfast table super cute with my new table runner :-)

We stopped halfway through breakfast to search for the eggs that our Easter bunny M hid this morning. He did a great job of hiding those darn things. It took as quite a while to find all the eggs and the nests.  Jake helped too and found an egg which he promptly ate...

The bounty was plentyful and I loved my letters that I got from M and P. 

Oh, and as we were reading our letters to each other, Jake took the opportunity to race out of our yard and lay a couple of "eggs" in our neighbor's yard. Not good! Can you see how the guilt is written all over his face?

Take Care,

Me

Happy Easter

S gave me a pack of spring/easter fabrics a couple of years ago. I had grand plans for it. But somehow, during our last move, it got packed away and I forgot that I had those.

Aren’t those pretty!?

The fabric pieces were pretty small (6”x18”). So I was playing with a few ideas…

This translates into this:

My first table runner ever!

I still have a couple of scraps left over. I am thinking that I should whip up a couple placemats with them. But time is running out. So we shall see :-)

Take care,

Me

Peace Out!

P loves anything and everything that has a peace sign on it. In fact she likes it so much that she has a ton of clothes with it on it, a duvet cover, vinyl art, window decoration and much much more. She asked me not too long ago if I could embroider the peace sign for her.  Yes, I and and would love too... Oh no, why did I say yes?

I am not the creative type here. I need a pattern and if at all possible instructions! I have no pattern. So I sat at my computer trying to find a pattern of some kind on the internet when a thought struck me... could I use  a peace clip art, enlarge it and print it out. Would that work? Yes it did. So I searched all the available word clip art for peace signs. I printed the ones that I liked, cut around them and rearranged them on a peace of paper. I drew some kind of floral embellishment and copied it so I would have a neat "pattern".

P gave me her approval and told me which colors each symbol was to be embroidered in. It was finished a couple of nights later and framed the next day. And now it is hanging in P's new room. We both love it! Please excuse the glare :-)

So what's the moral of this story you ask? Well, I don't need a pattern to be creative ;-)

Take Care

Me

A trip to Weimar

For this year’s social studies project P’s teacher decided that each kid would have the opportunity to name a topic of their liking and to write an extensive report 8-10 pages plus a PowerPoint presentation. P decided on a rather heavy topic – “Children and Teenager in Concentration Camps”! I am torn in two… on one side, it is something that P is very interested in and we should encourage her, and on the other side, it is very heavy and gruesome! How can we work through this topic without her ending up getting nightmares from it?

Thinking about all this I had flashbacks of my visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp during 8th grade. It was one of the fieldtrips that would occupy my thoughts many years later. It had a large amount of children and teenagers from 1939 – 1945 but it was a labor camp and not a death camp.

I contacted the Buchenwald administration to find out what I had to do to book a private tour with them. I found out that they didn’t let children under the age of 15 participate in tours. In fact, if we would just show up for a tour it would be very likely that the tour guide would kick us off…

I explained to them that P had to do this project for the school and that I would appreciate any help in getting something arranged. Well, I didn’t hear from them for almost 3 weeks. But then I got an email stating that they had an exception and they would be happy to arrange a private tour if we would donate to the Memorial of Buchenwald.

With our written confirmation of the tour in hand, I booked a lovely hotel in the city of Weimar. I remembered the city from my visit 20 years a long time ago. :-) The houses were much neglected, paint was peeling, and everything was grey in grey. It didn’t have a welcoming atmosphere! I was very curious to how much the city changed…

Fast forward a few more weeks. Last Friday afternoon, we left to go on our little trip to Weimar. It took 5.5 hours. I drove all the way… yes, M took the opportunity to watch a few movies in the back with P and catch a nap or two :-)

The next day we took the opportunity to get a bit acquainted with the city since our tour didn’t start until 13.30. We stopped at a shopping facility to get some breakfast (which we really didn’t like much!), some items for snack/lunch/dinner and a couple of things that I forgot to pack like my deodorant. (I always seem to do that…!)

The city itself has changed so much! The only thing that I recognized was the Goethe house. Most of the houses are renovated and show of their beautiful architecture. There were parks everywhere that just invited you to stroll through them. Oh, we just wanted to get out of the car and walk around. But no can do!!! We had an appointment to make with our tour guide.

So, we plugged in the Buchenwald address in to our trusty TomTom and off we drove. The area is so beautiful. There is a long road (5k’s as we found out) named Blood Road from the gates of Buchenwald to the front of the memorial. There were several smaller houses that housed introductory exhibitions. We stopped at the second one and walked down to the first one. It was a big bell tower within a park. A huge bronzed sculpture of a group of men and a kid was right below the bell tower. Large steps led you down to three encased large excavated mass graves. The information tablet explained that over 10,000 patriots, resistance fighters and political prisoners from 18 nations were murdered and buried there. The atmosphere of this place was strangely very peaceful!

We walked around a bit more and then headed to the front of the actual camp. We met up with our tour guide Dr. Koch. He was very kind, sweet. He told us that he specifically researched our topic for our tour. We made him work really hard! Pasha had a few questions prepared for him to which she received not only answers but also a book that has been out of print since 1989! What a treasure…

M and I had one question that seemed to haunt us as we were driving through Weimar on our way to Buchenwald. How come the people of Weimar didn’t protest against the camp or at least helped the inmates? It’s not like they could claim that they didn’t know of the existence of the camp. It is clearly visible from the city. And can you imagine if you were a inmate there… you would be able to see the city from your prison… How horrible!

Dr. Koch explained that the citizens were huge followers of Hitler. In fact, Weimar was a favorite city of his. He visited the city 36 times! They were also told that these people were all criminals and deserved to be there. And the people who didn’t agree with the Nazis kept quiet because they didn’t want to end up there. As hard as it is I understand this yet I could never stand for it personally!

If you ever have the chance to see Weimar and Buchenwald do! It’s is definitely worth a visit…

Take care

Me

Finished!

I am never too sure what to do with left over fabrics and bits and pieces from my quilts.  I normally just throw it away but this time I knew I had to do something because I am just so in love with the Delilah fabric line. So I started to play with the half triangle squares and came up with different pattern options. I posted them a couple of days ago.

I decided to go with pattern option #4 thanks to everyone’s input. It went together rather quickly. I messed up a couple of times because I just went with it instead of planning it all out on paper and measuring everything. But it still looks good… thank goodness!

All I want to do is go to bed now :-)

Take Care

Me

A Quilt (or8?) for Christmas

Is it crazy that I started working on presents for Christmas 2011? We are leaving Germany next year. So this Christmas will be our last one to celebrate with my family for a while. I was thinking about how to show them that I love them and leave them with something from me that shows them how much I love them. It needs to be something that makes them feel comforted, special and reflects their personality. The only thing that comes to mind that would fulfill all those criterias is a quilt.

I would like to make one for each one of them – about 8 total! I don’t know if this will actually work but I figure if I start now I might have a decent chance of making this happen! So, the first quilt is for my little sister.

I came across this line of fabric called Buttercup by Fig Tree & Co. The colors are so soft and gentle. I knew right away that this fabric would be perfect for S’s quilt. But I can’t just order fabric when I don’t even know which quilt pattern to use. Not being able to decide on a few fabrics is even a bigger problem. So a charm pack it should be! A Charm pack gives me 5” squares of each fabric which means that I can play around with it and I don't have to make a decision on which fabric would be best. I ordered three packs today!

And I solved my dilemma of which quilt pattern to use too... The more I looked at the fabric the more I realized I wanted something simple to show of the pretty fabric. Here is a rough drawing of what I came up with.

The drawing is not to scale or in proportion. It’s just to remind me what I am kind of planning on. I still need to decide on the two border fabrics. But that will have to wait until those charm packs are in…

Take Care

Me 

What did you say?

Last night M came home from a quick walk with Jake complaining about his hands being cold and something else… as he went on talking about this and that, my mind just stopped processing his words. What did he say? So I asked him to repeat it! Yes, I did hear right… he said it was snowing outside! You’ve got to be kidding me. But lo and behold, I looked outside and there was snow falling!

Well, I didn’t think it would stick. So imagine my surprise this morning when I stepped outside at 05.00 a.m. this morning to see that not only was it still lightly snowing but it also stuck somewhat to the ground. Hmpf!!!!

I don’t think that the weather gods have gotten  the memo. It is supposed to be nice and sunny not cold and snowy. Where can I file my complaint?

Take Care,

Cold Me!!!

One-Yard Wonders - Not-Ugly Car Trash Bag

One Yard Wonder – Car Trash Bag

I love fabric. Sometimes I buy a bit of fabric just because I love the way it looks and not because it is meant for a project. This little habit of mine leaves me in a precarious position of too much fabric, no plans and no space. What hardship! LOL

So way back when the book “One Yard Wonder” came out, I had to get it in my hands. Maybe it would help me get inspired to use these “little” pieces of fabric. I bookmarked quite a few projects and placed it on my “soon-to-do” project bookshelf. Well, somehow I forgot about it. Well, that’s until I saw a few projects from this book on other blogs and I realized that I had that book somewhere…

Well, I looked at the projects that I bookmarked and realized that I just don’t want to make them at the moment. However, there was one project – the car trash bag – that I could use desperately. You see, I have this “problem” in my car. No, it’s not trash but it is accumulated mail. We don’t have a regular mailbox over here. We have a post office box on post from which we pick up our mail. Unfortunately that also means that I don’t toss or file our mail right away. It’s been known to live on in my car, get married and have lots of babies ;-)

This project is super fast. It took me about 20 minutes from start to finish. I didn’t have a parachute buckle on hand so I used Velcro which works just as well.

I am so hoping that this bag is going to help me stay organized…

Take care,

Me

P.S. P looked at the trash bag picture in the book and pointed out that they used our dog Jake as a prop. I never even noticed until she pointed it out!

Here is the picture in the book

And here is our 10 month old baby Jake...

Oh, what to do?!

Quilting is pretty therapeutic for me. It's just you, the quilt and the machine. Once I get into a rhythm my  mind just works through whatever is upsetting to me. I was pretty upset on Friday because I wasn't sure if I would be able to go to work on Monday due to the government budget crises. So I was able to get one huge 6 hour quilting session in this Friday evening. M and P just left me be and I quilted until my fingers bled... just kidding. But here it is...

Isn't it beautiful?! This quilt is going on the bed in the guest bedroom. 

I love this fabric line from Tanya Whelan. And I think I have the perfect excuse to order some more fabric from this line since I have two twin size beds in the guest room and I need a quilt for the other bed. I picked the pattern out last night but more on that later :-)

There is one more thing... I have lots of little half squares left over from this beauty. 

I would like to make a pillow cover. But I am not sure which pattern to pick. So I took photos from each one and I hope that by looking at them that way, one will jump out at me yelling "Pick me! Pick me!"

Which one would you pick?

Today is such a beautiful day. M and P worked together to put up the trampoline. It was wonderful to hear their teasing banter and almost no argument at all ;-)

I also made lots of pictures from the car on the way home from the commissary. 

Look, the tree blossoms are out. I love spring!

Take care,

Me

My Doodle Stitch Along

I was looking through the little deer track blog a couple months ago and saw a post about a doodle stitch along with a link to the Lark Craft's blog.

Look at that boy and girl! This is my stitched out version...

They reminded me of kids in traditional Bavarian costumes. So I had to join in this stich along. It didn’t take long to stitch up each motif and it kept me busy while watching TV :-)

But what to do with these little stitched up motifs? 

I was really happy that Aimee posted the idea of a little mini-quilt. I sandwiched batting between some muslin and started to play with placement of the little motifs on it. After I decided on where to put those I cut up some of my favorite fabric scraps and placed them all over this little mini-quilt.

I hand sewed each piece of fabric on it. My fingers still ache just thinking about it. But it was well worth it in the end!

But now I had another dilemma on my hands… where should I hang it? I don’t have many walls in our apartment that can be used to display things. So it ended up in the study. 

I love it!

Take care

Me