Trientalis europaea

I have been struggling with some crazy log cabin flower blocks lately. It took a while to get my head around the concept - starting with an uneven triangle and stitching wedges and uneven strips around it in a haphazard log cabin fashion, having to discard a lot of offcuts, seemed to go very much against the grain (pardon the pun!) of my early lessons in quilting where following the grain of the fabric, cutting precisely and making good use of even the tiniest scrap of fabric has been the most important rules of all. After a while I got into the spirit of it all and it became a lot easier and more fun along the way, so here they are, my three flowers stitched together to form a table-runner.
It started out as a christmassy thing with the flowers being white poinsettias, but I couldn't resist adding some blues and teals, and in my mind the flowers have now become Arctic starflowers, making the runner suitable for all year usage. Never mind that the real ones have six petals and mine only have four - I'm allowed some artistic freedom, right? ;-)

I was going to crop the picture, but why not leave some hints around the edges of what is going around outside my quilting realm. A bit of laundry waiting to be dealt with, some wine wanting to be drunk (although some of the bottles are empty already...) and my craft box of paints and brushes waiting under the table for when inspiration strikes. A wider angle would have revealed a lot more mess, but I'm slowly, slowly bringing my home into some semblance of order - throwing out stuff I never use and pairing down to get more room for the things I really want to spend time on. I have some great projects in mind that will bring that box up on the table soon, but first I'llhave to deal with some of this domestic mess that seems to accumulate out of nowhere... I am going to spend some time quilting my flowers first, though. I have added some french knots to the centers, but it looks like it needs something more, maybe some beads? I'll

do the quilting first, and see what it tells me.

Kaffe knits again

-and so do I! I have been inspired by Kaffe Fassett since I came across his first knitting book and always loved his way with colours. Here at last was somone who didn't frown at using all kinds of bright colours together - the more the merrier. My sense of colour has never been of the subdued "tasteful" variety, and it was a relief to find someone who said it was OK to use bold colour and even said so In A Book! (And we all know that if a book says so, it's true, right?) Not only did the guy knit, but he alsa made the most wonderful tapestries. My bookshelves have gradually been filled with new books by this wonderful designer over the years. My interest in knitting waned for a while after I got a new passion: quilting. These days I consider myself a quilter more than anything else, but slowly, slowly knitting has been sneaking up on me again. Inspired by numerous blogs I decided to try my hand at a pair of toe-up socks with short row heels. I'm always up for a challenge, and this way of going about it just had to be tested. I found the perfect yarn for it - Regia self striping in a colourway designed by none other than Kaffe Fassett - who could resist it?

I tried several patterns and the toe was knitted and unravelled three times before I got a shape I liked. This formula at Knitty helped a great deal. My knitting doesn't seem as even as it used to be, but I suppose practise will make better, if not perfect. It took a while to get the heel right, but I think I have mastered it at last, and my first sock is almost done. I will make an effort to finish the other one as well ;-)

Today's arrival may slow me down a bit, though - this exciting book arrived today, and I'm looking forward to spending some time curled up under a quilt with it.

Within sight of this lovely cushion - it's far too new and precious to be used

yet! I bought the kit at Ehrman's in London years ago. It's designed by Elian McGrady who apparently worked with mr. Fassett before she started making her own designs. You can see the influence, but she creates lovely work in her own right. The kit had been languishing on my shelf for ages before my mother came to the rescue a year ago, and last week she had finished it! It looks just wonderful, doesn't it? Thank you mum!

To the Lighthouse

No, sorry, this is not a post about Virginia Wolf. I have just finished her novel "Mrs. Dalloway" after Cherry suggested we do a book club sort of thing. To my relief I wasn't the only one who found it heavy going, but I did finish it eventually, stubborn being my middle name. "To the Lighthouse" would have been more in keeping with my latest quilt, although it's much more lighthearted than poor Ms. Wolf ever was. Not fair to drag her into this blog post at all, I suppose, but there you go... This quilt was a BOM (Block of the Month) at my local quilt shop, and I decided to go for it because it was funny and quirky, but remind me not to do that sort of thing again! I find it harder and harder to stick to a pattern, and as this came with fabric too, all the choices were made for me. Much to boring! I was fed up with the thing before I was halfway through, but I'm proud to say that I persevered, and finally it is done!
I made some changes, of course - where would the fun have been otherwise? Some of the pieces were simplified and some fabric replaced. The kit had purple and green fabric for the borders, but that wasn't P's thing at all, so they had to go. I'm much happier with the sand and sea substitutes. P is my three best friends' father and he and his wife have always been there for me when I have needed help - he has painted, laid flooring, moved my stuff more times than I can remember and it was about time he got his own quilt. His wife and daughters and grandchildren all have got theirs, so for his 70th birthday it was time to do something special for him as well.The family have a holiday cottage on a small island and he loves nothing more than pottering about in his boat and with his cronies on the dock there, so the maritime feel of this quilt seem right. The way he beamed when he received it told me that I had made the right choice, and made the whole thing worthwhile.

My next project is not made from a pattern, though.

I is for inspiration

The last few weeks have been hell.
No, don't worry - there's nothing serious going on - nobody died, I've still got my home, my job and whatever. But there has been so much to do that I haven't had any time to be creative (and hence, I've had nothing to blog about) and that is too frustrating.
To a non-crafting person my feelings would be difficult to understand, I suppose, but we crafters are a different species, aren't we? The crafts that I do are very important to me - I relieve tension and gain lots of positive energy from them.
I have, however, found time to read about and listen to the reactions to Jane at Yarnstorm's new book "The Gentle Art of Domesticity" and I have come to realize that there are a lot of people out there that just don't get it. Spending time doing crafts is something I do because I want to and because it gives me something important – the fulfilment of creating beautiful things for myself and my loved ones is so meaningful to me that I really can’t see how it should be a threat towards feminism. I am a feminist and I have a demanding job, but I also need time to myself, and crafting gives me just that.
Enough said, I’ll get down from that soap-box and share some new acquisitions that have given me lots of inspiration lately. There is a pile of new books waiting for me to find time for them – Jane’s book is one of them, then there is a lovely Japanese craft book and some eye candy in the form of photos from India and Italy. I’m really looking forward to things slowing down next week so that I might get some time to make something - not because I have to, but because I want to.
If only it would stop raining so that I could take some decent photos!
Rain doesn't have to be all bad though: I have an inspirational folder on my computer, and browsing through it I found these lovely drawings from a Japanese book of copy-free patterns (with accompanying CD) I borrowed from the library. There might be some quilts in my future inspired by these…

H is for houses

house (http://www.dictionary.com/)
–noun
a building in which people live; residence for human beings.

–verb (used with object)
to give shelter to; harbor; lodge
to remove from exposure; put in a safe place.

—Idioms
keep house, to maintain a home; manage a household.

"Dreams relating to a house often refer to various aspects of the Self. When trying to analyse the house in your dream, consider also how the house is kept and the condition of it. The rooms in the house relates to facets of your personality". (http://www.dreammoods.com/)

I have always had a thing about houses. I don’t know what it is about them that attract me so. A house is not just a place to live. There’s the general design of the thing; walls, windows, roof, all the different styles and colours houses can be. The idea of having a house of my own where I can do whatever I like has always been attractive to me. Ever since I was in my early teens I have been buying home decorating magazines, and even magazines with blueprints for building houses, and I have spent hours studying the floor plans and mulling over what I would have done differently, how I would have decorated them and so on. I have always had an idea that I could be an interior decorator, and sometimes I have even dared think I might be an architect, but I have never taken it further than sewing houses.

I’m always attracted to quilting and embroidery patterns with houses in them, and I keep collecting houses in different shapes and forms.

These tins for tea and spaghetti, for instance, and

this cookie jar are among my favourite things. I have lots of little house tins for tea and spices and the like. Then there’s a little village from Latvia meant for candles. And once the Christmas decorations come out there will be several more. I seem to get an underwater quality to all my pictures today, so I'll have to wait for a clearer day to take more pictures.

Then there is this recent acquisition of a tin house. I don't know where to put it yet, and what to do with it (put a houseplant in it, a candle, display something...), but I just had to have it! I'll find a nice spot on a wall somwhere and think about it some more.

Recently I bought this picture by Michael Powell of a lovely Welsh village. He seems to have a thing about houses too - and they are such lovely colourful quirky ones! I might have to do a wee bit of shopping at that site soon...

Among my work there’s this cross-stitch,

my little night time village,

my red and white schoolhouses,

this 3D one, and

this more stylised rendition. Two houses for what I have intended to make into an entire town are hanging on my notice board and I have at least three more quilts planned that will contain houses, in some shape or form…

Sorting threads

It's amazing how a few days away and getting out of the habit of doing something can make you stray off path completely. I was really getting into this alphabet thing, and had even prepared a post to be posted when I was away to keep it going, and then all sorts of other things interfered with my plans. It started with trying to take some pictures for my next post, but because it has been raining heavily for what seems like weeks, I couldn't get any photos worth posting - I get the feeling of being under water lately what with the constant sound of the rain and the gloomy light. Quite cosy if you want to stay indoors and create, but not the best light for taking pictures.

I've been sorting and tidying all my "stuff" these last couple of weeks - the redecorating of my living room (pictures will follow...) brought a lot of clutter to the surface that need to be sorted - in heaps of "for keeps", "pending" and "going out". There seems to be a lot of this going on in blogs lately - maybe it's something to do with getting our "nests" ready for winter hibernation ;-) I also sorted through some of my threads, and since Alicia posted the question of how we deal with those tangle-prone cottons, I thought I'd show what I do with mine, even if my photos have that sub aqua-feel... Since I have a lots of DMC cotton floss - I have been doing cross-stitch for years and I'm for ever adding to my stash - I have made some plain cardboard strips with punched holes along one side. I cut the skeins in same size lengths and loop them through the holes in numerical order. If I use only two strands of a length, I can loop the remaining strands into the same hole and have them ready for the next project.

I keep all the cards in a tin box so that the threads are coiled underneath and all the cards rest upright on top - quite the archivist, oh yes I am! :-D Because I started this system years ago, and it has been growing little by little, adding to it doesn't take a lot of effort, but I doubt I would do it this way if I suddenly found myself with hundreds of skeins that needed sorting - I'm not tidy enough to keep it up for that long!
I also have some special threads, like perle cotton, this beautiful silk noil, some linen etc., and have been doing what Alicia did - pulling out one length at a time from the skein and getting them into a terrible tangle. A friend of mine showed me a trick that works perfectly for these, and I am sorting through them in front of the TV these last couple of evenings. What you do is to open the skein, which is kind of twisted around itself so you have one big loop of thread. Then you cut through it all at one point (preferably where the ends are) so you end up with a bunch of single threads. Loop the bunch around the index finger of the hand you don't work with (I'm left-handed, so I use the finger on my right hand) bringing all the ends together at the opposite end. Split the bunch into three smaller bunches and start braiding them from your index finger. After braiding a few times, you can lift it off your finger and continue braiding with both hands. I just braid as far as I can and leave it like it is. If you feel the need for a very neat finish you could tie a piece of thread or something around the end, I suppose, but I find that it isn't really necessarry - the thread stays braided well enough. If you need to keep the label, you can fasten it throug the loop end of the braid. When a length of thread is needed, just pull it out from the loop end. You'll find that you can easily do this while keeping the braid intact. Works beautifully!

G is for Grafton

I have been away for a couple of days, but I'm back with another entry in my Encyclopedia. There will be more quilting related stuff soon, but I have been busy with other things lately, so there hasn't been much sewing. I'll work on the binding of my stack'n'wack tonight, so I should be done with that one within the next couple of days. I also have two others I'll share, so don't give up on me ;-)

G then. I was going to say G is for Ginger Bliss, Amy Butler's fabric line, but I have done that so many times already here, here and here that I won't bore you with that! A look at my bookshelves, which have been refilled today, provided a theme for this post, though. Anther alphabetic list was lined up - Sue Grafton's mysteries featuring female PI Kinsey Millhone. Ms Grafton knew what she was doing when she started a series with a book for each letter of the alphabet - get the reader hooked and they will come back for more, and if she keeps it up - 25 times more... She has hooked me, and I have them all, from A is for Alibi to S is for Silence.

So what is it about these books that I like? Well, in so many books in this genre, the Private Eye is a hard boiled character who has seen it all, and lets nothing surprise him. He has a liquor bottle in his desk drawer and he allows himself to be seduced by a pretty face and gets drawn into a case, solves the mystery and ends up back where he started. Kinsey Millhone is also a private eye who is having problems coping with life, but her lot improves ever so slightly through the series and there is some hope that she will end up in a better place. Grafton also shows that detective work isn't as glamorous as one could think, but that a lot of it involves going through public records and paperwork and that is to be expected from this kind of job. When her heroine finds herself in potentially dangerous situations she is terrified and not afraid to say so - she seem very human, a person one can identify with. That she manages to solve all the cases she takes on doesn't hurt either. The next book is due in December - I know what I want for Christmas !

F is for Flossie, Faye, Flora and Fernanda

It all started so innocently with Flora the Gardener. I found the pattern somewhere and liked her prim little face and felt watering can - such a practical feature, don't you think?
No sooner had she got her hat on, than she announced that she wanted a friend. A quilting friend. After a little think, Flossie the Quilter was born, complete with half finished quilt (what is a quilter without a UFO?) and paper tape measure from IKEA.
With a gardener and a quilter in the house there was reason to believe that there wouldn't be much housework done, so another friend with a broom was next. She, however, evolved into Fernanda the Witch, who was no more interested in sweeping than the rest of them, so to finish the quartet, Faye the Fairy with her magical wand designed to bless my rooms and make them dust free arrived. Sadly I have to report that there is some kind of malfunctioning where that wand is concerned. Matters will have to be looked into....

E is for EFL

Or English as a Foreign Language.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to try to use my language skills, such as they are. Way back in 1981 I went to London and worked as a domestic slave (also known as an "au-pair") for a year, while attending Hammersmith and West London College studying EFL. It was a very interesting year in which I learned a lot, not least about myself.
I realized quite soon that my domestic skills weren't all one had hoped for - I failed to see the importance of dusting and hoovering every single day of the week, and this is unfortunately something I still haven't managed to get my head around... Still, the job was only my means of getting to stay for a year, and I knew what I was getting myself in for, so no worries there. Through attending college I gained lots of friends, some of which I still keep in touch with. Some were English and some from other countries - I didn't seem to lack destinations to travel to for years after that. In my class there were people from most European countries and some from Japan and Hong Kong as well. We all came from different backgrounds, but through a shared experience we became great friends.
In the blogosphere it is a bit like that too - people from all parts of the world and all different backgrounds meet to share parts of our lives, what we do and what we think about. Friendships are made and visits, real or virtual, are arranged. Simmy, for instance has just returned to England from a holiday in the US visiting blogfriends and their families and had a wonderful time, it seems. Lolly is taking us with her to visit Peru, and shared a story full of suspense of how she and her husband were separated and managed to find each other again during the recent earthquake - I was not the only one who smiled through tears when she came to that point of her story! We get to share Amanda's proud and happy rendition of her little daughter's first sentence, and after so many posts about Alicia's lovely dog Audrey, more than a thousand comments on the post announcing the dear doggy's death shows that craft bloggers are a compassionate lot. I'm happy to be a part of this community and feel that I get more insight into how the rest of the world lives, what people feel and think, only to discover that we are not so different after all.

D is for Decorating

I had another word lined up for today, but it suddenly dawned on me that the letter D fitted in perfectly with what I'm actually doing. There has been very little crafting to show and tell about lately, and here you see the reason for that. I have been spending a lot of time climbing that stepladder and wielding a paintbrush lately.
When space is at a premium (isn't that a posh way of saying that I live in a tiny flat? ) it isn't all that easy to do what they do on those decorating shows, that I incidently love watching, where they remove everything before they start - It must be so much easier to have an empty shell of a room to decorate! Instead I have been doing my living room wall by wall - moving furniture out of the way, painting, waiting for the paint to dry and moving everything back, before tackling another wall.
The area I have been dreading the most, and which is why it has taken me ages to actually start this project, is the one I'm doing today - look at those empty shelves! It took me all morning just to empty them, and as a result the rest of the room looks something like this: I have tons of books. I'm sure of it. My back tells me this is so. I did some serious purging of my collection last summer in preparation for this task, but I still have plenty of reading matter! Which brings me to what today's post was really going to be about. I thought it was too obvious to use B for Books, as so many have done that already, so I thought I'd share some of my favourite writers along the way instead. So today's post is really:

D is for Dewar, Isla.
I love her books, and have in fact just ordered a few more from Amazon. This one is sitting in one of those piles on my floor though, and is really great. Isla Dewar's books are set in Scotland, and she writes about everyday life and people in a way that really makes you care. Her heroines often find themselves in difficult situations, but manage to rise above them in a way which gives hope, yet seems realistic. She doesn't beautify the dilemmas they face, whether it's the loss of a child, giving up one's job to start a new life in the countryside or coping with a mentally ill parent. In spite of all the potentially problematic situations she writes about, the stories are told with a lot of humour of the laughing aloud kind. Great stuff! And with the beginning of the post in mind: you didn't think I chose this particular book at random, did you? ;-)

C is for Cross-stitch

I can't remember when I made my first cross-stitched picture. It's something I seem to have been doing for ever. Come to think of it, I have no idea how it ever entered my mind that this was something I would try either. My mother used to make tapestries where the picture was painted on the canvas and my grandmother embroidered fancy stitches on tablecloths, but I can't remember ever seeing any of them doing counted cross-stitch. I'm a more thorough and fastidious type, however, so the more "scientific" approach of following a pattern of blocks and converting it into a picture that would end up just the way you had planned, appealed to me, I suppose. The bigger the picture and the greater the challenge, the better!
This one titled "London 1616" is quite large, about 15 x 20" and stitched on evenweave. I started this when I was about 14 and it took me a few years, but I did finish it!

I have come to appreciate the quick fix of stitching a smaller image however, and once I realized that they didn't all have to be pretty teddies and fancy flowers, but that you could actually add some humour, there was nothing stopping me!


I love these "Listen Honey... " designs and have several of the charts. In fact I have oodles of charts of all sorts that I'll probably never get around to stitching, and that is just as well, I suppose, because where would I hang the ****things?

I always have something on the go, and right now I'm in a "Witchy" state of mind I think, working on this design. The one above is one I did a year or so ago, from Lizzie*Kate .

I once read an interview with a cross-stitch designer whose five year old daughter told everybody that her mother "made pictures from little kisses". There must be something to be said for that ;-)


I've just realized that I ought to take new photos of these old things, they are way too blurry. Sorry about that!

B is for Bath

I thought I might use this meme as an opportunity to show some of the stuff I've made before I started this Blog - my "Quilting History" so to speak. It is supposed to be all about Me anyway, isn't it, and quilting is an important part of my life!

This is a quilt I made some years back featuring my cousin's twin boys - sweet little things they were way back then - they are big tough guys now, starting school next week- enough to make this old "auntie" feel very old, I can tell you!

I had lots of fun with this little quilt. I started out with a photo of the boys in the tub but I wanted to do more with it than just creating a fabric frame and including it in a quiltblock or something, the way I've seen it done (and often with great success) by others. I converted the photo to a line-drawing and printed it on paper first. I extended some lines and drew an old-fashioned bath tub of sorts -a compact version I suppose you can say ;-) and then I added whatever I thought the bathroom should have - tongue-and-groove panelling, a picture on the wall, a puddle on the floor, towels, shower curtain etc. I used my drawing as a pattern for the pieces and appliqued them on to the muslin background, adding the photo transfer last. After layering with batting and backing I quilted the panelling and added details like the shower and taps with copper thread, the surface of the water with holographic thread and as a final touch two little ducky buttons.


I had originally thought I'd present the quilt to the boys' parents when I finished it, but I can't bear to part with it, so I have told them that they'll just have to come here whenever they want to see it. That's one way of keeping in touch with one's family, I suppose ;-)

A is for art supplies

OK - I decided to play this game too. Started by Bella Dia on August 1st, but I figure people haven't come so far that it is too late to join in.
I came across a photo of pencils in all sorts of colours in Flickr and felt a tingle right there and then - oh, I want some! Let's face it - art supplies: I can't resist them!
I buy all sorts of things to have "just in case" - I really neeeeded those Derwent colouring pencils some years back, and of course I needed all 72 colours at once... That I can't really draw very well is beside the point: having those pencils might just give me more reason to draw, and then I wil become better at it, right?
And that pretty paper? I might make some cards if I have them and that should save me some money in the long run... Yarn, embroidery floss, ribbons, paint - you name it - stocking up is so much fun I can't help it! And of course, fabric - that goes under the heading of art supplies too, doesn't it? And while you can mix paint to create the colours you need, that's not an option with fabric, so I really need some in each and every colour to have a complete palette to work from... That's my excuse anyway, and I have a stash to prove it!

Experimental spirit

Last summer my sister made a raspberry liqueur that by Christmas was so lovely you would almost swallow your tongue to get every bit of that summery berry taste. I'm not really that into liqueurs, but because of the tartness of the raspberries this wasn't too sweet, so this summer I thought I'd have a go. The recipe is quite simple: fill a jar with raspberries until it is completely full. Add sugar until it is completely full- the sugar runs down between the berries so the jar isn't completely full after all. I used a kilo of berries (just over two pounds), and half a kilo of sugar.
Add spirit. I used vodka because that doesn't have a distinct taste of it's own, and chose the prettiest bottle I could find - that's how much I know about vodka... Again, fill the jar.
Close the lid firmly - this canning jar has a rubber seal to make it completely tight - and shake gently to dissolve the sugar. The idea now is to keep turning the jar about once a week until Christmas, letting all the berry juice add flavour to the vodka/sugar mix and produce a ruby red liqueur. Apparently the berries lose their colour during the process. The contents of the jar has to be filtered, of course, to separate the berries from the liqueur.
After filling my jar I had vodka left and started looking around for something else to experiment with. I watched Nigella (on TV, not in real life...) searching her pantry the other day and she pointed to a bottle of lemon liqueur she had brought home from Italy. Hm, I wondered - could I get good results witht he same method using lemons...?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I decided to have a go. I used a smaller jar, this being an experiment and all... filled it with slices of lemon, sugar and the remaining third of the vodka. We'll see. I might have ruined some perfectly good vodka, but as I rarely touch the stuff (I prefer a good whisky), I would just have had it sitting in my cupboard for ever, so never mind. Now the deed is done and the big question is: will I be able to wait until Christmas to sample these...

Primary colours

More about this later.

Old quilt

I mentioned the other day that I had made a quilt for my uncle years ago, and that it ended up on the wall instead of in his armchair. I just scanned some old photos of it, not the best quality, but I thought I'd show and tell anyway.

My uncle is one of those people who hoards everything "just in case". He is an electrician (semi-retired, but he'll probably never stop tinkering with those wires...) and has always been repairing things for other people. Ever since he bought his first used car he has always been repairing cars as well and gathering spare parts to use for future repairs. He lives in a flat in town with little spare room, so it's the little house in the country, where my gran grew up, which has to hold all these objects he holds on to. Or rather the old smithy/outhouse/barn next to it.

My uncle loves the place, and when I was planning the quilt for him I knew I wanted to incorporate it. I also wanted to comment on his hoarding instinct, so I made the smithy with an extra layer of batting and walls that curved outwards. There are car parts, a washing machine, tires and I don't know what spilling out of the doors. I made the garden in a riot of green floral fabric - my gran used to plant flowers, trees and bushes everywhere (it used to be a nightmare to cut the grass - you'd alway worry about being yelled at for cutting down a sapling or something...).
I was thinking about adding some kind trailing vine or something like that, but ended up adding trailing electrical extension cords and some of the tools of his trade: a screwdriver, a pair of pliers and a torchlight instead. Fishing has always been a favourite hobby of his, so I also added a border with appliqued fish (cod, haddock and salmon drawn from photos in one of my mother's cookery books), making this a very personal quilt.
My uncle loved the quilt from the moment he set eyes on it - exclaiming that it couldn't have been made for anyone else but him, and he burst out laughing when he noticed the bulging walls of the smithy - my little joke at his expense. The quilt has pride of place on the wall of the living room in the little white house it portrays and he always shows it proudly to anyone who visits, commenting on every detail. He still phones from time to time exclaiming about little details he has noticed, telling me how he loves it. You have to love a guy like that!
This is one of the quilts I feel most proud of having made as well - I loved the whole process of coming up with ideas of elements to incorporate in it. This all came back to me when I was working on the Grandmother's garden quilt last week, I really need to spend more time developing my own quilt ideas, it is so much fun!