The TDF pillow

Ok, first of all, TDF comes from To Die For :). I know, my inspiration in naming quilts is next to zero :)). Just so you know :)))

Now a little about the quilt.
I started with Malka's pillow in mind and began drawing. Squares, random squares, random colours. And, well...

This is the inspiration pic by Malka Dubrawsky

This is the quilt


And this is the pillow



I had to talk about the quilt first because, you see, this pillow is the quilt's pillow. They only come toghether. It's a little continuum concept in here :))) and, well, at least for a couple of yeas they'll only be seen together :))

As you might suspect, this post is for the Blogger's Pillow Party hosted by Rachel from Stiched in colour. See more about the Pillow Party under the button.

A little about the technique:
I used 1" gray kona strips, folded in half and sewn on the squares, to frame them. After the frame was sew, white/yellow borders were added to make the block. And I am saying this because I dreamt :D about other ways to make this frame happen and it didn't work. Yes, I actually dream about making quilts :D.

And I have no ideea how I felt like making one of the frame's strips in blue. It just came :). And I think it's even more TDF now :)))

The back is anvelope style, with Ikea's writing, just like the quilt's back.

Hope you like it, I looove it.

P.S. If it's a pillow party I am guessing it's all about pijamas. I'm wondering if I should post a pic with mine? :D

I'm on fire

After 11 celsius on the 2nd day of Christmas, yesterday started snowing. Big, fat and lazy snowflakes. This was a couple of hours later.

You'd say that much snow should inspire me to do something... hmm... snowish? (Is it a word? No, it doesn't really matter :)) ). Instead, I saw this pic on Flickr.

Well, what can I say more. Here they are, the Flamo family.

The kid

and his dad


oh, and their best friend, the wrap :D. This guy is much older but it matched really good.

Ok, just one more pic with the kids playing in the snow.


Aren't they incredibly sweet?

Oh, did you know the older brother, made a couple of weeks ago?


How about their second degree cousin?




I did say I'm on fire. Can you take any more orange?

I am going cutting something right now and I am soo curious: will I orange some more? :)))

Best birthday present

I should say that, in our family, presents are not really a surprise. First because I hate surprises, second because, well, my mom was never able to keep a secet and I always received presens days before the day :). Following fammily tadition :)) we got out that evening and I was suppose to buy something...anything that's making me want it :)

Just when I thought I might be to underground for the stores we visited...Yumi showed up.



It is such an inspirational book. I could only see quilts and crafty stuff after :)
And the costumes....TDF :)



The visual effect this book had on me...just wow!




Bonus, I found Daisy too. When I met Yumi, the first thing I wanted to do was open the book. I just knew it is perfect.
When i saw Daisy...well...the first thing I said was WTF? :))) Really, Mr Dark sneaking into a little girl's room? W.T.F?



Although I would not recommend this book for a kid, I think it is a beautifull book and the immages just make me wanna quilt :D






There' more on my Flickr.

Great things happen when you're out of white

I didin't feel the quilting love (ok, read obsession) until I bought my White Kona bolt. And this was only a couple of month ago. I felt so inspired by the white that I used it in almost every quilt I made (that's without the princess quilt when I had a tottaly different thing in mind).

You can visualise the panic when I realised I only have about 2 meters left. After one day of searching the best prince for white kona I decided I must be able to do something else.

I decided to make 3 quilts with the same simple square pattern, replacing the white with green, blue and pink, one for every quilt.

The chatreuse was really simple, cut and pieced like a dream, a couple of hour later was allready quilted.



I like very much these simple squares and I just love the straight line quilting.

I didn't think a lot before cutting, so I cut all the fabric in 4,5"squares, then I put them togheter two by two, one solid, one print. I found it very easy to piece without pinning, just ironed them very well after each time I sewed and the corners were very easy to match. I am such a fool for these kind of photos :)




I then decided to go for the pink one. It was impossible. Everyhing I tried was just too pink. The fact that I don't have a large enough stash might be a problem, 'cause almost all my printed fabrics have some pink in them. Put this next to a lot of pink squareas and...well... a little too sweet for me. Ok, way to sweet :)

So the pink went in the binding of the green quilt.



Rita's binding is getting better and better. I managed to do it without any spots left outside the sewing line.
Ah, and a great ideea for the corners! I hand sew them before so they won't move when I machine sew them and take the thread out after it's done. Perfect!


I noticed a strange green fabric in my stash, probably bought just like the dark grape in my princess quilt, just in case I get a great ideea. Well, I decided it worked perfect for another squared quilt and....ta-da! quilt no.2.




Next night I went to bed thinking about ways to use my pink and blue stash. Well...this is what I came up with :)))



Yeah, right, ask me where the pink and blue solids are :))). Same place: my closet. No, I was not able to use any of them. Ok, one square from a Kona charm. Doesn't really count, does it?


The it's a hoot charm pack arrived more than a week ago, and although I really like most of the prints and hoplessly love three of them (and could never use in this lifetime two of them :)) but that's another story :))) ) I was too stucked on a pic I saw on flickr and couldn't see them in another combo. What pic, you might be tempted to ask. Please don't ask, I allready spent an hour looking for it again and I have no ideea where it was. It did have a lot of gray, if that's helpfull in any way.

Until that night. When the grey was out of the question, simply because I have none left, and the brown came in. Mu-ha-ha!


One thing I think I should say about it's a hoot is that the fabrics are much thinner than I expected from moda. That thin that I had to use the seam ripper after I tried to piece the first two rows of squares. As much as I loved the egg print, it is very thin and I don't think it would be my first choice in a quilt again :(




So who needs white anyway?

(I do, I do, I do! I want white, a lot of white, bolts of white. Hei, Santa, could you bring me a bolt of white Kona? Pleeeeease?)

Oh, I so sew happy

My present for my birthday to come: Monaluna's Sew happy. I love it! It's the fabric I really thought it could make a quilt for me (oh, I'm so picky when it comes to me :D) The rest of the fabrics I was planning to use for my quilt are not here yet, but I decided I had enough to make a supermom quilt.

Really, who else has time to

• make coffee,
• breakfast,
• get a lot of supplies,
• sew
• and still feel like a modern Audrey Hepburn

while beeing a wotk at home mom?

Yes, supermoms!

A little bit of red, to really wake you up in the morning

A little more blue, to keep you calm and dreaming

With Rita's binding done perfect this time (ok, I admit, once I used 1/4 inch instead of 4-6mm things got a lot smoother), this is definitly my new favorite quilt. (Aren't they all? :D)

How to spend more time and money and think you got a bargain

h, yes, I am really good at this!

So we've gone to a really expensive store in the mall today, and while the kid was playing I spotted some nice notebooks. It might have been the price but I really didn't like any enough to buy. Ok, I kind of liked some, but they all had some playboy bunny, emo chick ot tanga (oh, yeah) on the cover. Or But I really needed one. So, well, I did it.

Bought the cheapest notebook, about 2$, horrible cover


spent 1/2 hour planning, cutting, sewing



some Ikea and some gorgeous Alexander Henry fabric



and now it's just waiting some inspiration for another quilt.




Hmm... now it looks like a bargain again :))))

Ah, don't be very impressed by my calculations, they were, well... wrong :D. Of course, one (bad) thing led to another (good thing), and my notebook has 2 different sides, so that I can easyly find the begining and end.

The front has more bubbles

The back has more sticks.

My first custom quilts

This was a huge challange for me. I am not very comfy with the ideea of making a custom... something...anything actually, for somebody I don't know. But this nice lady left everything up to me. Well, I couldn't say no.



The quilts came really quick, I think they took a day each, however the pillows took me more than 3 days. I wanted something different than the quilt, but still the same story.


The baby quilt has a simple pattern, but some of the squares have another layer of batting and I hope this will be more visible once the quilt is washed. The ones with more batting also miss a square in quilting, to really pop.



The back is from 2 of my 3 favorite Ikea fabrics, the houses are also hand sewn on the top of the quilt.




The quilt for the bigger sister was the most chalenging. I wanted something for a child, but also something she will love later, because the quilt is quite large, around 100 x 130 cm.



Again, the colours are far from reality, I think the green in the pillow is pear, far far away from the grass green in the photos. The back is my other Ikea favorite, the gray angels, and I just found out they will not make it anymore :( Just when I decided to buy a full bolt... Of course, they didn;t have any...

I am really happy how they both turned out but I'll still be nervous untill the kids actually see them. Wish me luck :)

A series of fortunate events

* Out of 221 colours I managed to buy the same exact colour twice. A colour that I don't actually use to often, I just liked it as in I-know-I-will-get-use-it. Eventually ... So I found myslef with 1,5 yard of a dark kona, when 90% of my quilts are sashed in white. And use kind of fresh colours.
(Now really, what are the odds? Ok, I know I'm not the smartest one around when I forgot I ordered a dark red the day before. Then again, the same dark red? Two different shops, both with quite a large selection of Kona? You know, that many many many Konas?)
And no, I don't know the name :))

*Surfing the net I found an incredible pic on Flickr. I just loved it and the next minute I already had the pattern in my head. Guess who just found a use of that grape Kona :D ( It seems I did not add it as a favorite after all and I have no ideea how to find it. But will try and add it here when I find it)
Ha, here it is:


*I managed to find Monaluna's Mingle in the right colour, the one I was in love with before I started quilting. It was even on sale. What could I have ask more? Oh, yes, I know, a very nice lady behind all this. Perfect!






* I found a great shop for all Amy Butler dots. It's closed right now, but they have lots and lots of dots. You know, the Love & Lotus dots? As in best dots ever? And best colours ever? Oh yes. And good prices too. Oh, and super fast shipping. And A+ customer service. And no, they don't pay me for this :)))





So, after all this and one small drawing just to be sure that what I have in my had can actually be done, not like the frames on the TDF quilt [do you see my eyes rolling here?], everything came up really quick. I already had all the small squares (5") and the larger ones were really easy to cut. After I decided on the size of the sashing. [Did you see the bold on the 'after'? Yes, I did cut a few rectangles a little to early]

The top was ready in no time and so was the rest of it. I was happy to see that dark sashing makes much more easier the thread cutting. As in I did not bother to cut all the threads on the back of the top, like I do when I use white sashing. What a relief!


So...Ta-da! The Princess quilt.





And here's a pic with a more accurate colour of the sashing.



When I saw that quilt with wavy lines I said well, this is one thing on saw on RPQ that I will not do. Ha! The back was just cring for some waves. So I took a deap breath and did it. I think it turned out really good but I doubt I will do it again.



If you didn't have enough pics, there's more on Flickr.

My new TDF quilt

It seems that almost every quilt I make is the one I like best at that time. Of course, unless I really hate it :))) Fortunatly, this one is TDF in my book.

I was so obssesed with this one that I actually dreamt about a way to make those frames. Of course that after I actually tried doing them like in my dream it turned out it wasn't possible so I ended up with twice as much work to fix them. Good thing I only started two blocks like this...

And a WIP pic with more real color of the background, quite greenish actually.

It's almost 40 x 50 " and I have added more photos, including a detail of the fame in my flickr quilts set

A hard to make quilt

It all started very very well. And it finished the same. But the process...ah, the process...almost dried me out.

I started putting favorite fabrics two but two, not knowing what I was going to make. Went to two colours pinwheel, aborted, then to print plus white pinwheels...



... moved them about one hunderd times, found the perfect spot for each, found the right amount of sashing, basted to death with hundred of pins and...

Well, that's pretty much all the fun part. 'cause at some point, my sewing machine decided to get stucked in a tiny thread caught somewhere under the bobin.



One night and 2 hours trip to Brother later, nobody was there to fx it.
Another night and another 2 hours trip to Brother later, the machine was cleaned.
Another night and half quilted quilt later, the machine started leaving black oil staines all over the quilt. And the fact that I decided to quilt around the squares, therefore move the quilt a lot, did not help at all. Nor the fact tha I somehow didn't see the first staines and things got only worse as I kept quilting.




Hours of crying later, the quilt was washed but still had one black point.



Then a nother fun part came along with a great ideea, to hand sew a little.




Despite my anti-washing-quilts-before-giving-policy, I really think that this quilt might just be able to leave my house at some point. But only after I am really sure I really really really don't need another quilt, because, well, I love it!