Little peek

I think I have the best job ever. I'm my own boss ,can have a coffee break whenever I want and can work on my own projects when it is quite in the shop. I have my sewing machine here and this is a little peek of my work.

I'm already started making thing out of the fabric that I bought last week, show you the end results soon.

And Yes we are making a garden room/glass house with the old windows that bought on Trade me (second hand trading , like Ebay). I can't wait the plan is already in my head but we still have to make it. When I close my eyes I can see the tomatoes en grapes growing. I keep you updated.

Have a great weekend!

Quilt tree.

Today I went to my quilt class and the teacher ask me if I was interested in a quilt tree. I love the idea to get pieces of material from all over the world to make a great quilt.
You have to send the first person in the row 2 pieces (6" each) of material. It have to be PURPLE and 100% cotton. Then you make 4 copies of the letter and send them to 4 friends who quilt, along with two 6" squares of your purple fabric.
There is no money involved. It should be a lot of fun for those of us who like to quilt.

I can send it to 4 random friend but I really like to send it to people who are interested so no one breaks the chain. All together you should receive 72 squares in return. That should be enough to make a quilt. It will be fun to see where the squares come from, and what they will look like when you put them together.

If you like the idea and like to receive a letter with two 6" squares leave a comment or e-mail me. I'll send the first 4 the quilt tree info and the squares.
I already have to send my first one from the list to Ireland. So it will be very international. Great fun!

Warm feet.

I'm back home from work, had already one of my lovely bowls of coffee and have a great weekend feeling. No work for two days.
That doesn't mean there is nothing to do. I have a lot of things on my to do list for this weekend. First of all garage sailing tomorrow morning. I'm always a bit up sad if there isn't one. But we already looked in the news paper and we are lucky. One of the girls is in a ballet show for 2 days so that means a lot of driving in mums taxi. Up and down and up and down the theater. The weather forecast is rainy so I planed to do a lot of painting. The girls bathroom needs a lot of white paint and I bought a chair on a garage sale that needs a bit of white paint as well and a new cover. So lots to do for me.
I finished my bathmat and like to show you. When the weather is cooler now it is really nice to put your feet on a great warm bathmat.

Here a sneak peek, my garage sale chair that is waiting for a make over.

Have a great creative weekend all !!!

Just a quick post before I have to pick up one of the girls form school. This is on my table today. I'm making another bath mat from scraps. This are all left overs from a previous quilt.

I use an and old towel as backing like I did with the other bath mat. You can wash them over and over again.

Have a great day !!!

Sneak peek.

What should have been a great day ended in a nightmare for all the people who celebrated the queens birthday in The Netherlands. Why are people doing this? It makes me really angry!

I told you in a previous post that I like the hand sewing and quilting. It is very relaxing and you can keep going and going. I'm making a old fashioned hexagon quilt at the moment.
Here a little sneak peek.

So this will keep me busy for the winter.

The End.

After weeks of work I'm at the end. My quilt is finished!!
I loved doing all the hand sewing ,I must say that I miss it a bit now so I started a new hand sewing project but I tell you all about that in a later post.

This quilt I made for one of my girls was great fun to make. The colours are bright and overall it is a very happy quilt with all the flowers and love hearts. Is was easy but a lot of work.
And look at her bright orange wall on her room don't you think it suits perfect. She loves it as well and made me a wonder full thank you card . How sweet is that!!!

Have a great weekend!!!

Scraps.

I don't have a lot of scraps because I always try to use every bit. But I had some scraps from the bunting that I made. I turned them into a bathmat for the girls bathroom. I used an old towel as backing so it is easy to wash. The quilting is done on the machine and as you can see I have to practise to make smooth rounding. It's not that easy.

But overall it is a nice bathmat.

Material Obsession

Months ago I wrote a blog about the pile of fabric that I bought for my daughters quilt.The one that I found in the great book Material Obsession. Now I can show you that I've been quite busy over the summer, the quilt is almost finished. There was a lot of work involved because all the parts are done by hand. Now I'm piecing it all together by machine and again I like to do the top quilting by hand. The evenings are getting shorter and colder over here so it is nice to snuggle under it while you do the hand quilting.

I made daisies, daffodils, sunflowers, hearts, gerberas, tulips, four-patches and pinwheels so unfortunately it wasn't a boring job at all. Everything in bright colours with a lot of white, what makes it a quite nice quilt.

Here just a little peek of what I been doing and I'll show you soon the end result. First I have to hand quilt!

What a weekend !!

The Quilts that I made were not for sale , just for display

Our little cat was the best visitor, she was around the whole weekend and loved all the attention she got.

My daughter Elle who did all the bead work and me

The veranda was our stall.

Some of the bead work

Bit more of the veranda.

A little corner.

We had the Arts Trail this weekend and we can say it was a big success! The weather was top, the sun was out the whole weekend , we had lots of visitors and sold heaps. It was great!
For us it started on Friday evening with organizing and putting everything where we want it. It was all in my head so we did it quite fast. Saturday morning at 10 am the Arts Trail went of and our first visitors came soon. We didn't have proper time for lunch and after 4 pm there where still a lot of people. I loved it to have a talk with everybody and everybody was happy because of the great weather. We got a lot of compliments about the garden and our little kitchen garden. We made liters of coffee and tea and served more than 100 home made muffins.
It ended on Sunday afternoon 4 pm but around 5 pm we had still some people coming.

I have to make one quilt for a lady and I sold a lot of things to a shop. (hopefully I'm in business). I'm running out of stock, so for the coming school fair (in 10 days time) I have to make a lot more. Today I was busy making more roll-up pencil cases for the school fair, but a friend who came over for a cup of tea bought them all already. The where still warm from the iron.
I was planning to stock up my Etsy shop with all the leftovers from the Arts Trail but we need it all for the school fair so later on I will stock-up my Etsy shop.

It was great and I hope to do it again next year!

Material Obsession

I'm started with a new quilt. My daughter like to have one for on her bed. She has a orange wall and we bought a lot of bright coloured fabric. I'm making a quilt out of my new book; Material Obsession and it's named Annie's Garden. It has a lot of flowers and love hearts. This is a easy applique quilt, but with a lot of work involved. The result is worth the effort.

It is a good quilt to make in the summer, you can sit outside in the sun and make a new flower.

But first I have to prepare all the bits and pieces so it will take a little while before I can sit and make a flower.

If I look at all the fabric and the colours, I start smiling. They make me happy!

Great books.

I bought 2 great books in Nelson on our last holiday. One craft book and one family book. The crafty one is a quilt book ; Material obsession , by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke. It is a fantastic book with lots of inspiration. The two girls are the owners of a popular patchwork shop in Australia. Have a look on http://www.materialobsession.com/ and you will get lots of inspiration.The second book is a Pippi Longstocking book, our Hero. We love that little girl. We've been to Sweden ones and saw "her" in real life. I try to collect everything from her. In Holland one of the girls had a real Pippi room. The book is illustrated by Lauren Child a great illustrator.

I like to introduce you all to a new blogger.

Her name is Lyndele and you can find her on http://www.creativeliving-lyndele.blogspot.com/ . It would be great if you visit her once.

A new Quilt is born.

My quilt is finished,and I'm happy with it. First I thought it was a bit too light but then I made purple love hearts all over the quilt and now it looks much better. It is now ready to go in the guest room. I machine quilted it and make some circles in the purple pinwheels.

Everyday I spot new blogs and I'm still surprised that there are heaps of nice crafty blogs.

Today I visited http://www.sewtakeahike.typepad.com/ and she is organizing a great give away. It's a great blog, so go and have a look.

Yesterday I have been with one of my girls to Cinderella on Ice. It was super!! So if you are in the Wellington (NZ) area, you have to see it. It is so great !!

Last but not least, I had my first sale on Etsy this week. I was very exiting and it gave me a lot of courage to go on with making things, for my little shop.

My quilting pile is growing

I'm just a started quilter and I'm very happy to see my quilting pile growing.
I love fabrics and have worked my whole life with it. As a small girl I was always busy with little bits and pieces. In the Netherlands I worked in a nice shop where they sold fabrics and all you need to be creative. I spend more money there than I earned. But it was great fun.
And now in New-Zealand I joined a quilting group. It is nice to meet new people and I still love working with fabrics.
So my first quilt is made over here. It is the creme and purple one. I made a log cabin quilt because we are living in a log cabin house, That one is not on the picture, I send it to my mum in The Netherlands for Christmas. And of course she loves it too!
Then I made a pink quilt out off old sheets and pillow cases from the op-shop. More than 2000 squares. It's addictive, the whole quilting bee in looking in op-shops now for the best bargains.
The last quilt I made is in Cath Kidston style. Bright pink and red and a lot off off-white. I love that quilt and I like to snuggle under it when we are watching a movie. ( by the way, yesterday we watched "the Holiday" with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet in it, I loved it).

And now I'm still working on the quilt for the guestroom. I'll show you when it's finished.
My next project is already finished in my head. I like to make a family quilt with pictures from the girls in it. Like in the movie Stepmom (also a great movie).

You see I'm never bored.
We are having a Art Trail in November and I'm making bags, bags, bags and more bags to show and sell. I'm thinking of having an on-line shop so I can sell them to everybody who likes them.

Wednesday, Quilting day !

Wednesday is my quilting day.
I'm making a quilt in natural colours for the guestroom. We are very busy rebuilding this room before the first guest arrive.The colours in the room are natural with one wall in the colour lavender. I love this colour ( and the plant with great smell).
It is so warm and romantic.
After our quilt class we went out for a great bowl of cappuccino, in a local cafe.
Life can be so beautiful !