sewing a {love} letter

Anyone seeing how this work title came to mind? Or is it just me? Anyway, this is the scrap quilt I was working on lately and finished yesterday. It started innocently enough with sewing most of my scraps together some month ago (yes, these are most of my scraps) and eventually adding some grey sashing. My first ideas were for a small quilt - up to lap size. However, everything looked to cramped and needed more space ... and then it kept growing and growing ... never made anything that big.

It looks gorgeous to have a pile of bright, pieced fabric. Still don't know how to quilt this little monster. May normal batting is a mid volume and I am not sure, if this sandwich bulk would fit under my sewing machine.

Sewing in such a liberate way takes much longer than expected but it was fun :) I will have to work on my techniques and the design process (e.g. I should have placed the grey and white differently). The seam allowance looks a bit ugly as I often used a scissor for roughly fitting my blocks, have to work on this as well. The big plan is to finish it before we move. Hope I can make it.

• 1 night piecing the back
• 1 night ironing and squaring front and back
• 1 night sandwiching
• about 3 nights for quilting plus 1 for pondering how to do
• about 2 nights making and attaching binding
• 2-3 nights stitching the binding down

Oh, what a project. You should have stopped me! Really!

The quilt is also a love letter on a less literal way. This year I rediscovered the love to my fabric stash. I felt so down sometimes last year that I sometimes forgot about it. And crafting just for its own sake without deadlines, bigger plans and so on. Love it! This big quilt will be so *squeeeeak*

new pillow for hubby

Hubby likes colors. Sadly as it is, our couch is more of a charcoal one for practical reasons. Two toddlers (which btw claim all nice colorful pillows theirs) require compromises like this. A while ago, musing what to do with my scraps, I started to cut them in triangles, adding more aqua, orange and bits of similar colors along the way. It took me some time to decide on the layout ... and to sew it together. Did I tell you that I am a rather slow girl. Forgetting all the time when crafting.

umm, where were we? ah yes, the pillow. We had an inlet of 30 x 60 cm, for which the layout was designed. For my first triangles the points match quite well despite the minimal squaring up(Didn't thought about it beforehand *blush*). The cover got a snuggly, orange nicky for the back as well as an envelope closure. The edges where finished with some Amy Butler dots.

Hubby loves it and defends it well :) But oh the shame, I totally forgot to quilt it as planned (nobody cares but me). Now I know why it was somehow finished faster than expected.

oh, the chaos

I started working again after a year staying home with my kids. Still have to get used to work full time. Big kiddie started kindergarten this week. He is one of the youngest among a lot of other kids. So far he has been really tough. I enjoy working and I have a well paid, secure job. Nevertheless, I will trade safety for new challenge and go to a small company working again as fire safety engineer. As a consequence we all have to move town - 150 km from Munich to Ulm. Three month for finding a new place to live in Ulm, move everything, repaint (in Germany you have to leave your rents freshly painted in neutral colors, which normally translates to white) and clean our old flat, get money for the built-in-kitchen, get a new kitchen in the new flat (long delivery times!) .....

Heads smoking, panic starting and all that.

breaking my fabric diet

Currently I am trying not to buy any fabric except for swaps or to finish some WIPs at least until the end of February. This would give me some time to organize my stash. Big plan being to minimize the whole stash to an - still ambitious - amount I might use within one year (plus some basics and favorites). Of course the stash itself should not grow again. A girl has to dream, right?

It's all the fault of this one! Plus proof that a bigger design wall is needed - will still have to wait a bit.

So, to make a long story short. I continued to play around with some scraps as started last year. Kona Ash might or might not play a role in this project and the experiment might or might not become at least a good sized lap quilt. For which the grey will not be enough and most of my other solids will not fit to my vision of this quilt. My LQS didn't have it. Several online shops run out as well and when I finally found some I was frustrated enough to buy a lot more fabrics than intended (I had an eye on them already for a long time, so it isn't technically an impulsive purchase, or?) Curious, what everybody does with MY grey.

Aren't my new treasures pretty?