Monthly Archives: June 2016

Sewing project from two years ago

Two years ago I sewed a quilt that I gave away as a present to a couple on their wedding day.

The design is very heavily inspired by The Tempest Quilt by Cherri House of Cherry House Quilts fame.

The squares are all made from Kona Cotton solids by Robert Kaufman in ash, black, charcoal, coal, graphite, iron, med. grey, pepper, pewter, shadow, silver, sky, slate, steel, blue and indigo and match the couple’s living-room couch. For the small inset rectangles I used some print and some solid fabrics in the bride’s favorite color range. The solids are Kona Cotton in berry and cerise.

For the back in Kona ash I pieced a patchwork heart from the accent fabrics.

I quilted it with horizontal free-form wavy lines. For the binding I used Muslin Mates Bubbles in black by Moda, except for the lower left corner, which is made from one of the accent fabrics.

The quilt looked nice as a present even without wrapping paper!

Mass Shooting in Orlando

As usual, the MetaFilter community does a better job a finding links to relevant information and good background articles, so I’ll just link to their thread:

MetaFilter: Police: 50 killed in Florida nightclub terror attack.

Also, on Vox: Why “thoughts and prayers” aren’t enough after a mass shooting.

Read it and spend the seven minutes to watch “America’s gun problem, explained in 18 charts”. I will never understand why “the right to bear arms” trumps huge numbers of gun deaths – most of them suicides, but crime-related deaths and mass shootings as well.

As President Obama said in his statement on June 12, 2016:

“Today marks the most deadly shooting in American history. The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.“

(My emphasis.)

Unexpected Compliments

Today I went to visit Nadelwelt, a fair for all things needlecraft. My main interest is, of course, quilting, and I always enjoy looking at new fabric and especially the lovely quilts most booths have on display. Of course every sewist likes to wear something they’ve sewn themselves, so I brought this handbag I sewed three years ago:

While I was walking along one aisle, a lady stopped me to compliment me on my lovely handbag. I said thanks, and she replied with: “Well, I designed the fabric, I spotted it right away!” – “Oh – you are Brigitte Heitland! And she was! I told her I was a huge fan of her fabric collections. I noticed that she wore a tote bag made from her Barcelona line and mentioned that I’ve had a fat quarter bundle of Barcelona at home for a year and had not yet found the courage to cut into it.

She then went on to the workshop she taught that afternoon, and I went on browsing the booths, soon coming to the one of her company, Zen Chic, where the attendant promptly complimented me on my bag and told me the fabric was a line of their’s. I told her that I’d just heard the same from Brigitte Heitland herself. :-D

Later I went and looked at the quilt exhibition that’s part of the fair, and they had some of Brigitte Heitland’s quilts there, among them one called Shine through (scroll all the way down) made with the Barcelona fabrics I’ve got. I think I might attempt something similar and turn it into a wall hanging for our living-room.