A long term project

This is about a quilt top I finished yesterday evening. For me it is a long term project. Allthough... sometimes I read about quilts that have been lying around for many years. That didn´t happen to me yet... But there are some bits and pieces in the depth of my drawer...:-)
But back to this quilt top.
I really love it.

A few months ago I bought "Material Obsession" by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke. This quilt pattern is not one of the books but I was very inspired by the way they put fabric and pattern together. So lets say I was hardly inspired!

So the first thing I had to do this morning, as soon as the light was right ( the sun just had climbed over Berlins city roofs) I went into my backyard and took some pictures.

Quilting it might take some more time, as I am really busy with work until christmas...and there are two other tops waiting.
But this op waited so long to be finsihed, it can wait a little longer to become a proper quilt.
Take Care and have a sunny day!

Blogger´s Quilt Festival

It is this time of the year again. Amy at "Amy´s creative Side" hosts the Blogger´s Quilt Festival. At this festival the most wonderful and creative quilters and quilts come together to inspire and be inspired.
This year I will participate with the babyquilt I made recently and blogged about it here.

It is a traditional double wedding ring pattern and I used some of my beloved selvages for it.  For the backround I used some vintage inspired fabric prints by Denyse Schmidt and Jenn Ski.
It is a baby quilt but at the moment it hangs on my bedroom wall and enlightens my mornings when I wake up.

For the photo shoot I went to one of my favorite spots in my city Berlin. It is a little island in the river Spree. I spent hours there, every spot seemed to be the perfect setting, but at the end I had to decide. These are the photos I loved best.

I enter this quilt and the photos of it to the category "Quilt Photographer".

Swappen- A german speaking pillow swap

Yesterday I finished my pillow for the "Swappen" swap hosted by Aylin.
My partner has a more subtle modern sense of style, so I had to go a little bit out of my comfort zone. At the end I quite like what I did and I hope my partner does,too. These where the fabric I chose, some solids, some "collage" and some "wordplay" one of my favorite fabric lines forever!

This is what I came up with. I quilted some parts with a red/orange pearlcotton thread.

I just have to say, this swap is amazing, the work that the participants do, is awesome and very special. Thank you Aylin for bringing this wonderful group of people together... again!

The Double Wedding Ring Selvage Baby Quilt

A few weeks ago I sat in my "studio" wondering what to sew next. I saw my selvages and somehow came up with the idea of using them in a double wedding ring quilt pattern. I enjoyed the making and the result so much, that I went on and finished four blocks of it, the perfect size for a babyquilt.

Today I have my day of, and so I took my good camera and the cute quilt and drove to a  special sight at the edge of Berlin to the "Insel der Jugend" ("The isle of youth"). This little island surrounded by the River Spree is very special to me, as I went there every day a few years ago, when I was in the middle of a heavily depressed time. The calm, the sun and the water helped me to recover and because of the nice landscape I came back later for fashion- and now even for quilt-shootings. As I did today.

Unfortunately it was very windy and I forgot to bring all the tools which could have fixed the quilt to trees, railings, bushes etc.
Because of that I was quite afraid a few times and already imagined me jumping into the icecold and dirty water to get my lovely quilt out. Luckily me and the quilt arrived safely back home. With some nice pictures on the camera.

Here you can see them, be aware, there are many of them!

By the way, the pattern I used is from Aneela Hoeys Pickledish Quiltalong from 2010. Back then I made my first Queen sized quilt with this pattern.
As some recommended I will enter this quilt in the DWR Callenge hosted by the NYC MOD Quilt Guild. Who knows... :-)

Stupid Instagram and New Flickr

It is really a shame and a pity. Instagraming made me a very lazy blogger. And also I don´t feel as inspired by browsing flickr as I used to. And this is definitively not because the work shown is less amazing, but spending time on flickr is not as much fun as it was before they changed everything. I can`t even explain, what it is, I just don´t like it anymore.

And then today when I posted a work in progress picture of a quilt I am working on instagram, I noticed that it really made me sad that you couldn´t see the nice colours that these fabrics have and  so I decided to get out my good camera and for a day not to use the crappy phone camera.
The light outside is quite dark anyway, its fall here now.

One more reason to stay inside, making quilts and music. This is what I do on my free day, today.
So, long story short, here you go, see some pictures of my latest work in progress quilt. This is the first time I wanted to make a fall quilt. I chose a lot of greens and browns and some aquas and I think the result will definitively have a autumn feel to it.

By the way I am using my Singer featherweight for it, as my very fast other vintage singer machine had a break down a few weeks ago. Gotta go to the sewing machine doctor soon.
Yesterday I cleaned and oiled the featherweight and at first I didn´t have the feeling that it run better, but now I am quite satisfied.
This is it for today.
I wish you all a calm and peaceful week!

Tumbling Blocks Quilt

Over this early summer I collected scrappy tumbling blocks from the lovely Bees of the Bee Germany and the Bee Europa.

In my quite excessive  production mood recently I worked on some projects and also on this quilt.

It is finished now (when I took this photo a few moments ago, it was still damp from the washing machine). But this is it. I like it a lot. It reminds  me a lot of the scrappy trips quilt I made earlier this year. It might be because of the colours I have in my stash and I tend to use.

So, but I have to admit, that I am done with y-seams for a while now. The quilts I made recently is this  one, this and now this, gace me enough of them!

You can call me the Queen of Y-Seams, just do it! And I am going to straight lines.
Have a wonderful sunday everybody.

Stats:
Size: 45" x 62"
Backed with a lovely IKEA print
Bound with Mod Century by Jenn Ski - Leaves on grey

A new project

Hi there,
who has visited me here for a little while knows, that I write about my mental state from time to time.
I have been looking for a possibility to incooperate my feelings and my personal and emotional characteristics into a quilty project.
After I had the improv quilting class with Lu Summers at the Fat Quarterly retreat ( Which was awesome by the way!!!) two weeks ago, I knew how to start. Next thing I did, I ordered some more solids from stoff und stil a not so pricey online fabric shop based in Denmark.

And here is the thing:
I wrote down some emotions/characteristics, which I deal with more or less often.
For every one of them I closed my eyes, thought about that emotion and waited what forms and colours would appear in my inner eyes. Then I scribbled these forms down and wrote down the colours.

For every emotion I want to make a 12" block, using several improv sewing techniques (some of them I learned at Lu´s class). If it is going to be a quilt later or a instalation of quilted squares, I don´t know yet.

I just found the idea of dealing with emotions from another approach quite interesting.
My first block was made yesterday evening and I would be interested if you can guess which emotion I had in mind.
Please leave a comment if you have and idea!

Hot Stuff!

Hey Folks,
I wasn´t here for a longer time, I won´t apologize, but wanted to let you know that I joined instagram recently (as @berlinquilter ) and I have to admit, this keeps me away from blogging more regularly.
I´ll see what happens in the future. But for today I can show you a little something I finished this morning, right in time before I went off to the lake. We had the hottest day today and this was the only place where I could stay today. Tonight the weather forecast says we will have a huge thunderstorm, I can´t wait for this!!!
But back to quilting things.
I had asked the lovely bees from the Bee Germany and the Bee Europa for scrappy tumbling blocks. As they kept and still keep coming, I had enough for a generous sized couch quilt. I added a border of tumbling blocks all made from the same fabric combinations and think I like the outcome of it.

When there wouldn´t be a little problem with my sewing machine I would like to quilt it right away, to have my first finish (for me) in months.  But as I said there is a sewing machine problem. When I quilted this commission quilt recently the machine started to sew slower and faster and slower as it wanted. And sometimes, and THAT was spooky it even sew when I wasn´t even touching it. I already brought it to the sewing machine repair and had to order a new footpedal. So now freemotion quilting for me until its there.

Far Quarterly Linky Party

In less then two weeks there is the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London. I am looking forward to participate since Christmas when I gave myself the ticket as a present. I couldn´t make it last year and was extremely envious seeing all the wonderful things that had been done and reading all the stories and blogposts about it.  This time I am in. And I mean in!
This is me, Miriam the berlinquilter. My lovely sister took this picture back in may when we where on vacation in turkey.

I participate in the sample swap and made these three totes for that.

 Susan aka Canadianabroad made this lovely name tag for me. Isn´t it amazing?

In London I will be in the EEP sewing curves class, do the improv workshop and the handquilting with Lu Summers, and will learn something about photography on saturday.
I am so looking forward to learn a lot, chat a lot, meet many lovely people and have tons of fun.
See you in ten days!

Progress

Ok, not just that I am in a much better mood for almost two weeks now, I also finished the commission  quilt top this morning. This is my plan. I want to baste the quilt tomorrow and then start quilting. This is the part I am most scared of. I will quilt a stitch in the ditch allover pattern and already bought the special sewingmachinefoot for that. So please cross your fingers for me, that everything works out fine.

Summer finally arrived here in Berlin, so I guess it is going to be a hot mess, with this huge quilt allover me, but I gave myself ten days to finish, I guess that´s possible.
I have to say I really like the outcome of the chosen fabrics for this pattern. It is quite retro, but somehow nice. I might try the huge grandmother flowers soon with my more colourful fabrics.
But I think for now I am a little Y-Seems overdosed, there might be another project in betweeen.
Can´t hink of that now.
I still have to decide if I sit myself on my scooter and head of to the lake (30 minutes drive), for a dip in the cool water, or if I rather sit on my balcony and later take a cold shower. Because of the fact that I already spend a few hours cycling through the city, I guess balcony is the winner.

I hope you have a phantastic summery sunday, too. Take care you all, and don´t forget sunscreen!!!

A huge Commissioned Quilt

Look what I am doing. This absolutely is not my style. But it is a commission quilt. And I will get good money for it. :-)

A few weeks ago a production designer contacted me. He was looking for a quilt to borrow for a commercial. He came by and looked at my quilts and soon found one . I told him the price I would want to have if I gave it away for some days (I worked in the movie industry for ten years and I now how people treat things while shooting). So the price might have been rather high but I didn´t want to risk anything.

The deal didn´t work out in the end, because my quilt was too white for the camera, but the production designer told me that they soon are going to film a cinema movie and that they need a special quilt for that. I told him, that I would be interested in making it, if he brought the fabric and if the price is right.
I absolutely didn´t want to work for not enough money, so again I told him my price and there as no discussion at all.
When I still worked for the movies in the costume departement, it was always said, "we don´t have enough money", but everybody knew, they had. And here I see it again, there is enough. Very sad that they rather spent it on the props then on the people working there. (I still remember exhausting days, when I worked 16 hours and didn´t get paid any extra hours.)
This is one reason I left the business.

Well but back to the quilt. Somehow I like the overall look of it, especially when I imagine the set it will be in. Imagine an old farmhouse with a lot of wood and robust walls... All a bit dusty and oldfashioned...

This Quilt is going to be huge. About 100"square. I am a bit scared of the quilting, but I hope it will work out. I have to finish it before I go to the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London. So 17 Days. That is doable. I hope.
What are you working on?
Do you do commission work?
And how do you handle it?

About the day I spend making a bag

Last sunday I met with Tacha and Aylin for a sewing day. We all wanted to test the new Camp Stitchalot Bag pattern by Sewsweetness. It is a perfect bag for carrying all your sewing stuff around every ruler, a cutting mat, patterns and fabric etc, everything fits into this practical bag. It is not just so handy, no it is so damned cute. We all chose wonderful fabrics for it, at the end of this post you can see a photo of all our versions. 

But back to sunday:

We met early. We wanted to make this bag (The Camp Stichalot Bag) within this day. And we did. Finally. And I have to say, it took a long time (or was it the chatting, the Pizza and Cake eating???)

BUT EVERY CUT, EVERY SWEARWORD, EVERY MINUTE AND EVERY EFFORT WAS WORTH IT!!!

This bag is not just so practical, with all its pockets, see these see through pockets, they are so incredibly handy, its not just so big to put all your rulers, cutting mats and of course your projects in it; No it also is so damned pretty. I so love the three versions of it that we made, but I adore (!!!) mine, made from Denyse Schmidts Greenfield Hill fabrics. I had these lying around for a while now, and when I read the fabric requirements for the bag, one day before we wanted to meet, I thought "oh well I don´t have these large pieces of fabric". So I decided to make it even more patchworky.

 I had a charmpack from the line, so I whipped one piece together, for the outer pocket and for the rest I used the different fabrics which match so perfect together.

All of us three decided on some changes here and there. For example I didn´t want to have so many plastic pockets, so I reduced from four to two.

And there is still enough room for everything.

So have a look and absolutely enjoy what you are seeing. You can make one yourself. Sarah is going to release the Camp Stitchalot Bag Pattern today or tomorrow. I absolutely can recommend it.See Aylins pretty version here.