Thursday, December 29, 2016

Pomarium launched

just before Christmas I started the Cloister Garden series from Chatelaine design, which are Pomarium (fruits), Herbularius (herbs), Tinctorium (dyes), and Rosarium (roses). I am not fully convinced I will do the roses, but the other 3 are beautiful, and since they are huge, they will occupy me for the upcoming years...
And antique white wins


Chatelaine: Pomarium
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

Monday, December 26, 2016

Pomarium trial run on tea dyed fabric - Pear

After finishing Knotgarden series I am into Cloister Gardens (fruits, dyes, herbs, roses), and i was thinking taking a new background and try tea dyeing. I made a trial run for Pomarium fabric, this is my own dying. Despite the fact that the dying itself went well, I cannot imagine stitching 3-4 years on this colour, so I reverted to good old antique white for the whole piece. It took me a week to finish the Pear

Chatelaine: Pomarium - Pear
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart tea dyed antique white 32 ct Belfast

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Bag is ready

The course for bag making is over, I learnt a lot, got exhausted, and I am very happy with my new bag. Actually it is my mother's new bag, I realised I will not use it because I prefer bigger ones, but my mother was over the moon. And now I know zipper, inside pocket, handle, and all the little secrets of bag making!
I do not have a photo of the final one but I will make one next time!

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Ready to start my first bag

I found a course where I can learn how to make a bag in 2 afternoon. It is a fairly complicated one, with zipped inner pocket, 3 sections, handle , frame and everything. I made the preliminary tasks of putting the parts into order, fix the vliesothingies all together, and I am eagerly waiting to Thursday to start.


Everything together, the dotted one is the lining


Front side and back of the front, this is the real color, not the previous one.


Inner separator and its back 
I was lazy to mark, so it was based on my estimation to be somewhere aligned!


Bottom, sides and its back

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Winter moved on

I have finished the 2nd quarter of Winter Watergarden. It is a really beautiful design a pleasure to stitch, but now I am moving back to Summer Knotgarden to start is 3rd quarter. 
I am thinking on start one of the Cloister Gardens (Herbularius, Pomarium or Tinctorium -even Rosarium is out) whenI am done to have something on the go while finishing these two. But maybe 3 big ones are too much - I will see. But in the summer I spent half a fortune on speciality threads, so the kits are ready.



Chatelaine: Winter Watergarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Winter Watergarden

I made a nice progress on Winter Watergarden, I really love to stitch this piece.

Chatelaine: Winter Watergarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Speeding up my blogging

It took me a couple of years, but today I arranged my apps and realised there is an app for blogging. So I have and this is my first post - hopefully not the last.
And a pic to try that as well - my skill builder bom with hand stitched hexies. Halfway done, definitely not my cup of tee, but I will finish just to say I did it as well.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Summer is coming

I have some progress on Summer Knotgarden. It is somehow strange among my knotgardens, because in the previous ones I had my favourite parts and those I did not liked that much, and is was quite stable opinion. With this somehow I feel like I do not want to stitch, then when I start I realise I really like each part - then comes the feeling that no, I do not like it - and when I start any of the parts I realise that I really do...
Anyway in the ladt couple of weeks I was working and reading quite a lot and stitching less, but I am almost halfway!

Chatelaine: Summer Knotgarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Back to Summer


Chatelaine: Summer Knotgarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

I turned back to continue Summer. I stitched the second green patch and the little roses next. There is a lot of green backstiching on the green leaves and branches - I wonder whether anyone sees them apart from me...

Monday, March 21, 2016

Wintery gate and a great progress

In the weekend I was working on the gate and a one-over-one birdie for Winter Watergarden. Originally the bird was cardinal which is not native in Europe, so I put a blue tit to the middle. This is identical to the one which is sitting in the corner, and for each side I will stitch the one which is shown there: one robin and 2 others whose name I do not know. The inside of the gate is really beautiful, but was a real hard work to stitch: I was frogging almost everything once because I misplaced the motives.
I also realised the Gloriana thread for the frame won't be enough - the floss is only 3yds instead 6. I suppose the long one was too pricey, but still... I have seen in the pattern it was originally 8yds, then I bought as 6 a few years ago, this year it was 4yds, and now on the website it is only 3yds. I buy it from casacenina, because I have quite a lot floss and I do not need the whole package, moreover, with the occassional 25-30% discount and without tax added it is much better priced, but I have never thought I should look the length of floss as well!




Friday, March 18, 2016

Quilt galore

My son is going to school next September, and I made some lapquilts as parting presents for the ladies in the nursery. I wanted to keep simple, so they are only squared ones in different colours. Each lady got her favourite combination - or at least I hope so. The blue was a little too simple, so I added some quilting to make it nicer. Oh, I just realised the center still missing, I need to finish it up! The red and brown are already popping, so I just made a very subtle quilting not to distract from the setup. There is a real good tutorial from quiltkisses how to make such quilts with the tube method - real easy and quick!

The last one is a practice piece, I thought in the beginning the brown will be ugly, so I quickly set up a new one, but when I added a border and binded the original, I realised it is not bad at all, so the additional piece stood as a free-motion sample. Each corner is done differently, I was experiencing with the motifs. And now we have a nice one to cuddle under when we are watching tv, so it is a real win-win situation! For the backing I used some old fabrics and I really like how they turned out. 

These pieces were really a confirmation for me, that we should not be discouraged if something seems to be not perfect during a project, and even the less attractive fabrics will look real good if they are finished. If there is not enough from a fabric, there is only some creativity needed and the result will be even better. If you check the third quilt, the dark green patches in the side are added because I did not have enough of the yellow - and it really adds an extra touch. The same applies for the backing on the last: I used the fabric I had on hand but it was not enough, so the missing part was taken from some neutral remaining from some previous project.

Click on to see the details! (And try not to notice how harsh was winter on our door's painting...)










Wednesday, March 16, 2016

A new start - Winter Watergarden

Chatelaine: Winter Watergarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC and many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast

I disappeared for a long time, but my hands were not idle. Paying tribute to the seasons I started Winter Watergarden. Having the Knotgarden series - almost - finished I moved to the Watergardens. Winter and Autumn definitely are on my list, but I am still hesitating on Spring. I do not like it that much, and there are so beautiful designs from Martina Weber (owner and designer of Chatelaine) that most probably I will skip that one. This design is so good to stitch, I can hardly stop. If you click on you can see how much difference some longstitch makes: the tree on the right is without, on the left is with branches - otherwise identical.

Summery butterflyies



Chatelaine: Summer Knotgarden
Fonal/Floss: DMC + many silks as suggested in the kit
Anyag/Fabric: Zweigart antique white 32 ct Belfast
I redid the clouds as Ineke advised, and she was right - much better this way. I really liked the little butterflies flying around. I thought Summer Knotgarden will be a bit boring, but far from it, it is really beautiful!

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

2016 - skill building BOM

I have found a very nice Skill Builder BOM (actually this is the name as well) at Pile o'Fabric, which was offered in 2013 for free. I downloaded the instructions minimum a year ago, but did not have the time to start - now I did. I really like my color scheme (in reality they are more fresh, especially the limegreen). The quilt is 20 blocks, both the piecing and the freemotion quilting is explained very well. 
I mostly follow the instructions, but I changed the background filler to a more organic one - I think it was a mistake, but since it is a skill builder I do not mind. And the batting is a superpuffy one (200), I bought it 2-3 years ago when I did not know which one is good, and I thought the bigger the better. Well, at least I am using all of it up, and it is going to be a warm winter quilt to watch tv in the lazy weekend mornings. I already pieced 6 and quilted 3.











Sunday, January 3, 2016

Christmas reloaded

House Warming Party II

I disapperared for a while, because I changed my position in my workplace and decided to pass an exam which helps me in my new one. So I studied quite a lot from end of September till 19th December, when I attended the last of the 4 rounds of the exam. I received the results on New Year's Eve and it was a perfect closing for 2015, because I received the pass for all the 4 rounds, so I am quite happy (the exam only goes like failed/passed, so pass means happiness).
And then my holidays began: Christmas preparations, family visits and such, but I managed to put together a new Christmas present for my mum: the copy of my Xmas quilt. Mine is still not quilted, but hers yes -  a very simple stitch in the ditch for the side ones and a starry wiggle for the middle. Not the most sophisticated, but the quilt quite busy, so I opted for simplicity. The colours are quite strange, in reality it is deep Xmas red and green. The design is called House Warming Party by Vicky Bellino by Bloom Creek.