Finished

This week I finished some UFO's. Last year at the craft market in Nantes I bought two lovely patterns with fabric , ribbons and thread at Cecilefacile's stand .  II started but never finished. I also started to follow her video's on her blog  but never finished.
This week weather is not so good, it's not cold but it's raining a bit, so no garden work, but craft time!!
Here are the results of the embroidery lessons on the video.

I think I'll make small purses with these panels, or do you have an other suggestion? 

I also bought the materials for this needle case:

I hope to finish this lovely purse within some days. The picture is from Cecile's blog, I bought the blue version.

Craft ideas for spring

Do you want some cute craft ideas for spring?
How do you find these little lamb pillows?

And this sparrow's nest with eggs....

And the fuzzy easter chicks are so cute...

You can find these patterns here.

There are 50 spring craft projects on the blog of the long thread.

Happy crafting!

So cute

My cat was sitting in the basket with walnuts, so cute.  I don't understand how she  did it, there was only 1 walnut on the ground!!!!
When she jumped out of the basket ..........The whole basket fell down.!

Blue in the garden

Today only pictures .....

A bit of this and a bit of that

Because of a problem with my eyes last week I could not do a lot of sewing. But I could knit with big needles and thick yarn. So i knitted some potholders with the , they say, the best potholder cotton:  the one and only.....Lily's Sugar'n Cream.

The flowers for my grandmother's garden quilt are finished. I made 82 flowers and 12 half flowers, that means that I paper pieced 82 x 7 hexagons  and 12 x 5 = 634 hexagons!!!!

I ordered the darker green fabric for the gardenpath.

I also started a new doll quilt with the 30s repro fabric that  I bought not long ago.

I am still working on it but here are already some pictures.

This is the front, the squaressides are 5 cm.

And the back.....

This week I need to make a backpack for Sylviane's daughter-in-law.

For Japan

MY grandmother's flowergarden

When I was with Dorien, she also showed me how to make a hexagon.  Back home I started immediately and could not stop...... On the web I saw so many beautiful grandmother's flowergardens, I had to make one myself!
I am a gardener myself and it's a very old pattern, for me two reasons to start making one. I have a, what you could call,  wild garden, many, many flowers in many colors.
Si I started to make hexagon flowers with all the fabric from my stash, except the recently bought red ones, the japanese fabric, the child fabric and the 30s repro fabric.
I already made 60 flowers..... but there are still about 30 to go, all hand pieced.

I used 7/8 inch hexagons, I found the templates here.

For the path between the flowers I have two options, the lighter or the darker green. Which one do you like most?

Spring is here

Weather is so beautiful here, in France. So the garden is calling me, there is a lot of work to do..... The about 70 roses are trimmed, trees and bushes are planted ..  My helleboris border is in full bloom.

Back to the garden......

Grandmother's flower garden 1

Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts bring to mind the Great Depression of the 1930's. We can imagine our own grandmothers busily sewing together one of these lovely quilts using scraps from her scrap basket. Such a quilt would be a cheerful reminder of colorful flower gardens; a much needed lift during hard times. This pattern had become very popular during the 1920s and continued to be a favorite for many years.

Hexagon quilt had roots in England as far back as the 18th century. Immigrants soon brought this pattern to America. Hexagon templates for these quilts have been found that were made around 1770. This leads historians to believe that the hexagon pattern might be one of the oldest pieced patterns.

The earliest known American made hexagon quilt is dated 1807 while an English hexagon quilt is dated even earlier. It's likely they were made for years before that time as quilts of this era were often not dated and few of the quilts made this early have survived to be enjoyed today.

In the 19th century hexagon quilts were known as Mosaic quilts, Honeycomb quilts or Six Sided Patchwork. Barbara Brackman tells us, "The design sustained its popularity across the decades, changing from chintz to silk to wool to calicoes, first in brown cottons, then grays and then pastels." 

Godey's Ladies Book, founded in 1830, published the hexagon pattern in 1835. It is thought to be the first pieced quilt pattern published in America. All things English were emulated by cultured American women during this period and making hexagon quilts was very popular in England. The article proclaimed, "Perhaps there is not patchwork that is prettier or more ingenious … than the hexagon or six sided: this is the 

way the hexagons were arranged changed over the years. In her book that was published in 1929 Ruth Finley stated, " 'The Honeycomb', also a one-patch quilt, was made of hexagon patches sewed together without any attempt at color arrangement. But these six-sided patches were too suggestive of design not to invite experiment at the hand of the color-loving women who worked with them. Even the oldest tattered remnants of hexagon quilts show attempts at sorting and arrangement of colors. In time various more or less elaborate 'mosaic' patterns resulted."

Collection of the Illinois State Museum, made in circa 1930

By the 20th century hexagon quilts were usually made in the Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern. These contained a center hexagon circled by six colorful printed or solid hexagons with another row of 12 hexagons around that. The centers were sometimes yellow to represent the flower's center. Between each flower was a row of colored solid hexagons to represent the background. A green background might have been the garden while white could have been a white picket fence.( read more about this quilt here)

A grandmother's flowergarden quilt made with dress silks, with silk borders, , dated 1847. This quilt was sold last year at Christie's .

Bag for Afra's sister

I made this bag for Afra's sister .  I used vintage Dutch folklore fabric. For the outside I used fabric from a folklore skirt, worn by a fisherman's wife in Katwijk.  . The inner site was an old feedsack, used in Staphors.

I forgot to take photos, so these are made by Afra. 

New quilt

Today I fished a new quilt, I call it the 'leaded lights', because it's like an old church window.
I made it by hand , not a single machine stitch!! It measures 63 x 84 cm.

This quilt is based on the bluestone walkway pattern. The fabric is  Fandango, designed by Kate Spain.