Memorial quilt

Some years ago I read this blogpost on Barb's blog about the memorial quilt she made for her mother. Her mother died at the same age as my mother and also , like mine, of breast cancer.  Barb and I discussed in some emails how important such a quilt can be as a tribute to the beloved parent.

And then this year Marjo  offered me her already cut strips of Dutch traditional costume fabric in mourning colors.  The strips were too small for the purpose I had in mind so I said :no, I cannot use them.
Then there was another coincidence: I saw a picture of Jeanneke's quilt and immediately I knew: this will be the pattern for the memorial quilt for my parents.
So I mailed Marjo and asked for the strips and this is the result:

I used the strips in traditional mourning colors to make logcabins . My father was a nursery man and the small shed on his nursery was a very important place when I was young, it happened often that my mother, me and my brother went to my father's nursery to drink a cup of tea; We were sitting around the shed and we played around. Life was calm and peaceful..... there also were besides bushes a lot of flowers on his nursery. Both, my mother and my father loved to have some flowers on the table.

After his retirement my father had a vegetable and flowergarden till two years before his death.

I embroidered their names and for both of them  I added some important words which were the guiding motives in their lives .

For my mother those words were  'de heer is mijn herder' (the lord is my shepherd, psalm 23).

And for my father 'ik ben op weg naar de stad' (I am on my way to my lord).

Valentine's hearts

For you my blogfriends  some hearts with love and warmth. (This was my first doll quilt!).

And the winner is......

Thanks for all those lovely comments on my coin purses. It was very fun to be in a blog hop for the first time. I visited a lot of lovely blogs while hopping .....
The random generator choose number 6 as the winner of the traditional Dutch fabric. Number 6 is.......

                                                  ROSA from Spain.

Congratulations Rosa and i hope you enjoy the fabric, I think there is enough for a doll quilt.

I am so sorry but I will activate again the word verification, because of all the spam I received lately.

Annabelle is so cute....

When I saw her on Michelle's blog I immediately was in love with Annabelle!

 And I am not the only one. Michelle was asked several times for the different designs.This week she has set up a special blog for the designs  If you are interested in obtaining her Annabelle designs, send her an email that you want to be invited to the special blog....

I think of making a book with Annabelle's adventures, or some small quilts. What do you think?

The pictures are from Michele's blog.

More finished projects

Some months ago my French neighbor asked me if i would make a bag for her mother. She bought one of my bags about two years ago and she wants a new one. I hesitated because I don't want to make any orders for bags, I only want to make bags for ME. But at the end I said :yes, okay I will do it.  Finally this week I finished the bag,  my neighbors mother is very happy with the result.

In oktober last year, when I went to Paris by train, I started this small nine-patch quilt. From time to time I made some squares, when I was in Nantes again some squares, but all those small paper piecing squares stayed for months in a pouch. This week I finished the small quilt.

It's difficult to make a good picture.... 

I made this pouch with some squares  that I had left .

I started working on Quilt mystery block 3 from Yoko Saito, I love it..... 

A bit of this and a bit of that

I started this week to finish some UFO's. The house doll quilt was still waiting to be finished, I quilted the borders and here it is....

I made some more pictures of the  beautiful silk scarf that i made for Bette. I surely will make more scarfs, I ordered silk in blue, earth colors, blue/green and yellow/green.

And some gardenpictures. Two pillars with a lot of  clematisflowers...

The old French rose Ferdinand Pichard (1921)  is so gorgeous this year....

Happy crafting! More finished UFO's later this week!

I am working on too many projects.....

There are too many Ufo's laying around in my sewing room, I don't like that, it's not good for my concentration!
This nine-patck doll quilt i started half a year ago . I'll use  Denise Schmidt fabric and Kona solid.

Last week I started this small quilt. I bought the kit on Etsy. The mother of the person who sold the kit was in the nineteenth on a trip in Amsterdam and she bought the kit at den Haan en Wagemakers , they are well known for their Dutch reproduction fabrics. 

And there is waiting this Japanese logcabin quilt. I already started quilting.

Over a chair is hanging my reproduction poststampquilt but I think this one has to wait till cooler weather.

 I started a new appliquequilt, a Yoko Saito pattern, I finished three blocks, will show my creations soon. I saw the finished quilt in Nantes, beautiful, my fabric choice is more vibrant, I use alot of vintage kimono fabric. This is the finished quilt in Nantes.

And there is block 3 of the Yoko Saito mystery quilt waiting for me. But first I need to buy the background. Thursday I go to Holland for a weekend and I'll buy the background in Rotterdam. 

I go with my friend Lucy in her car. Do you remember who she is? She is the one who makes excellent  chocolates. At the moment she is experimenting with cake decoration.....

Th crown on top is made with chocolate...

INside was cream with amaretto , an Italien almond liqueur.

Did you notice what is going on in blogland?

I don't know if you noticed that a lot of bloggers are building houses.  You can see this house in their sidebar:

A Dutch woman is organizing a quilt-a-long, called 'building houses from scraps'. The participants   make each day of 2012 one tiny house , so at the end of the year they'll have a quilt with 365 houses.

Here you can find the blog, and here are some more houses, and here.

Inge made some houses with her grandsons, they had a lot of fun.

Her sister Erna is fond of animals, this are her houses.

I did not want to participate, but downloaded the pattern, because 'you never know'..... When i saw on all the blogs all those cute tiny houses, (they are only 3 inch square,) I realized that i also have alot of scraps, so why not make one or two.

But i can tell you, when you start to make them, you cannot stop, it's really addictive.

For the moment I have twelve houses , that  should be a nice doll quilt. I 'll show you the houses tomorrow, it's too dark now to make pictures. Here are my first pieces, I piece by hand in the English paper piecing way.

A finished doll quilt

This week I finished a doll quilt, all hand pieced and hand quilted.  I used Kaffe Fassett and aboriginal fabric and the yellow applique background is, of course, a Kona solid.

The pattern is from the book: Fat Quarter Quilting by Lori Smith.

Do you want to know my quilting projects for this new year?

There is one quilt which is already for months looking at me and calling me: buy me and make me........
Thanks to my blogfriend Lizzie I already am a member of the blog.

I am talking about  the Civil War Bride Quilt. Corliss Searcey of Threadbear in Australie made a pattern of the original quilt that is hanging in the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

This great quilt is only applique and because I do not have a  lot of experience in applique, I bought this small applique pattern by Lori Smith: songs of spring, to make first....;

And I started today an applique pattern by Yoko Saito.  

In the last number of Quiltmania was the first block of a Quilt Mystery. 

I asked her if she could make me a kit for this block. I have met her on the Craft fair in Rotterdam last year. She has an enormous variety of woven Japanese fabric. So she made me a beautiful kit. The next  block will be in the next Quiltmania in march.....

And of course I want to make a lot of doll/small quilts this year. there are two quilts that are waiting to be finished. I 'll show them this week with another , so cute, knitting project. 

keep in touch and happy crafting!

A new doll quilt

Last week I made this doll quilt, it's a pattern made by Kathleen Tracy, from her book American Doll Quilts.  I used a lot of Dutch folklore fabric that i bought two years ago in Staphorst. You can read more about this visit here.

I already started another kathleen Tracy pattern from her book Remembering Adelia. In this book you find quilts which are inspired by Amelia's diary. She was a 19-year-old woman who lived in northern Illinois in the beginning of the Civil War. In the book you can also read fragments of Amelia's diary!
 

This week I want to finish 3 quilts.... here is number 2

In number 58 of Quiltmania I saw a beautiful quilt. If you were in Tokyo in 2007 for the international quilt festival you could have seen this quilt....

The quilt is called : the Amish checkerboard baskets crib quilt, it's made in 1930 and it's from the Wooden collection in Ohio.

I made my version :

The colors are darker but with the sun shining it's not easy to get the right blue's.

The quilt is hand pieced and hand quilted. The fabric is Kona cotton. I LOVE the Kona solid colors, as a Christmas present I bought myself 2 FQ bundles of Kona cotton, one in reds and one in purples!!! 

I hope to finish the third quilt tomorrow........

More antique doll quilts

There is no time for crafting these days.  I want to visit all the blogs that participe in the Sew mama Sew giveaway. And there are more then 300!
 I already have so many comments on my blog....... just fabulous!
Next week I want to visit all your favorite blogs, there are so many I never heard about before.....

So in today's post no quilts made by me but three antique/vintage doll quilts that I bought recently.
The first one is a simple bow tie pattern , only two colors.

And a doll quilt wich is has on both sides a one patch pattern.

The third one is my favorite, it's a crazy quilt in lovely colors. Mostly crazy quilts have quite dark colors but this one is so vibrant. 

Happy crafting.

Antique doll quilts

Last weeks I bought some antique/vintage doll quilts. I did not want to pay the expensive so they are not perfect at all. But each of them had something that touched me, in someway or another.
They were all bought in the United States and came from estate sales.

I don't know how old this doll quilt is.... There is a backing but no binding, all done by hand. The pattern is something between a one-patch and a crazy quilt. I love the fabric choice and the primitive impression of the quilt. The fabric is coton, flanel and satin.

I bought this embroidery doll quilt because the embroidered images are a strange combinations, most embroidered quilts have one theme : nursery rhymes, animals or Suebonnet Sue's.

This one is a combination of several; two animals , two Suebonnet's and two images of traditional Dutch

people.

I was touched by this traditional Dutch farmer's wife with tulips in her hands. Someone in the States embroidered this. Did she have Dutch grandparents or was she Dutch herself?

To be continued....

My Suebonnet Sue quilt

This morning I finished this small quilt. Hand pieced and hand quilted. I love the bright colors.

I found the pattern in this book.

Suebonnet Sue, do you know here?

This picture and the information about Suebonnet Sue was found on this blog. 


Whether you know the pattern as the Sunbonnet Sue, or the Dutch doll, Bonnie Bonnet, or as the Sun Bonnet Babies....she's been made into quilts, painted on nursery walls, appliqued onto clothing and goes back to our grandmother's or even great-grandmother's time

Many of the illustrators of the late 1800's and the early 20th century drew playful children with big hats or bonnets, but only a few are recognized as being Sue's earliest illustrators. The first is Kate (Catherine)Greenaway (1846-1901) who as a British book editor who often drew pictures of children, especially sweet girls in bonnets on her greeting cards. Many of her designs were used on the patches of fine Victorian crazy quilts or appeared in early editions ofSmithsonian magazine. These were probably Sue's very first appearance in quilts.

 

But it is another illustrator, Bertha Corbett Melcher, who is officially regarded as the "Mother of Sunbonnet Babies." Bertha illustrated children's Primer books in the early 1900's and her books depicted girls with their faces hidden by their bonnets. Her drawings caught the eye of a Primer illustrator Eulalie Osgood Grover, and the two women began a collaboration what would last for many year, through many different Primer books.


Browsing on the web you can find so many fabulous Suebonnet's, there is even a Sunbonnet Sue blog!

You can find on the blog this pattern of crocheted Suebonnet Sue hankies.

And this pattern....

These paperdolls are free to download here.

Tomorrow i'll show you the Suebonnet Sue wall hanging that I made.