Tidal Lace and a giveaway!

 Hey Everybody, have you seen the new fabric collection by extra sweet and talented Kim Andersson of "I adore pattern"? It is called "Tidal Lace" and I was happy enough to have the chance of making something of it.

I met Kim through the "Quilt design a a day" group on facebook. There is such a fun and talented crowd of people in this group, Kim is just one of them.
But back to Tidal Lace. This fabric collection has such a summery feel to it, it make me want to go to the next beach ( about 200km far) right away, sit down in the sand and play with some shells.

When Kim asked me if I wanted to play with it and when I saw the fabrics, I was immediately drawn to the ombre print in the collection and I wanted to use this as the main fabric.
The  "coloured pavement" quilt pattern came into my mind, a pattern that I designed a few years back   ( it will be available in January as a PDF download right in time when Tidal Lace hits the stores)

As I am the last to write about Tidal Lace, I just can recommend to go back to all the blog hop stops from the last couple of days, there are so many wonderful projects to admire.
Before I forget, there is a giveaway, Windham is giving away a fatquarter bundle of Tidal Lace. Just leave a comment and the winner will be drawn soon!

Monday, September 15  -   Windham Fabrics / Kim Andersson - I Adore Pattern

Tuesday, September 16  -   Erin Harris - House on Hill Road / Amy Gunson - Badskirt  / Cath Mosley on Instagram

Wednesday, September 17 –  Anne Sullivan - Play Crafts / Stacey Day - Stacey In Stitches

Thursday September 18th –  Adrianne Ove - Little Bluebell / Terri Carpenter - The Quilted Fox

Friday September 19 - Pati Fried - See How We Sew / Amanda Hohnstreiter - My Sewcial Hour

Saturday September 20 - Ann Haley - Sew Messy / Madeleine Roberg - Domestic Strata

Sunday September 21 - Cal Patch - Hodge Podge Farm / Rebecca Ringquist - Drop Cloth

Monday September 22 - Alicia Wietholter - Swoon Patterns / Stacey Sharman - Peppermint Pinwheels

Tuesday September 23 - Jen Carlton Bailly - Bettycrockerass / Miriam Blaich - The Berlin Quilter

Bee Germany Quilt

Puh, the stressy time before the opening of my little shop seems to be gone at least before the christmas rush begins. Good for some quilting, isn´t it? 

I finished my Bee Germany Quilt this weekend, and today I found the time to take a good photo of it, so that you can have a look. I really like what all my lovely bees did, I like how it turned out, even though it has a quite odd shape, but I really didn´t know, where to cut, or what to add, so I thought well I take it as it is... 

I think of using it on the couch, or maybe with a wholecloth blanked underneath it on the bed... 

Dear Bees, thank you so much for helping me with this one, I know it wasn´t always easy. 

Shop Opening

I know time flies, its more than 6 weeks since my last post. Well there was a lot going on. I renovated and furnished the shop, went for holidays in spain with my family and finally last friday there was the shop opening.

 Of course I didn´t take proper photos, these are some I phone photos by a friend of mine. Maybe I can manage to take some nice and detailed pictures soon.

Right now it doesn´t look too impressive, but believe me it is a really nice shop. :-)

And there was spain, ahh spain my place to relax, to browse through fruit and nuts, my place where I calm down, because there is nothing I could worry about... (ecxept mothers sometimes, who doesn´t know that? ;-))
I spent my days fig drying, almond picking and of course I could squeeze in some stitching, too.

I put together the Bee Germany quilt top and I think it is going to be awesome.
The matching EPP pillow is in the making aswell.

So this is it for know, more to come soon. Have a fabulous week!

Summer Clothes/ Sommergarderobe

Der Sommer ist da ( jedenfalls manchmal). Was für ein guter Grund sich ein paar frische Tops und Kleider zu nähen. Obwohl es gestern wie aus Eimern geschüttet hat, war ich in sonniger Stimmung und habe mir ein neues Sommertop gezaubert.

 Dafür habe ich einen Cloud9 Stoff aus der Collection Shape of spring in der Farbe petal pink verwendet. Ich mag diese lachsfarbenen und gelben Töne sehr gerne. Für das Top habe ich meinen eigenen Schnitt verwendet. In letzter Zeit habe ich des öfteren Anfragen erhalten, ob ich meine Schnittmuster auch verkaufe.
Ich bewege diese Idee schon eine Weile in meinem Herzen, jedoch bin ich auf der Suche nach einem Schnittmusterprogramm für PDF Schnitte. Kennt da jemand etwas, das für mich als jemanden der nicht besonders versiert ist mit Computern, in Frage kommt und nicht allzu teuer ist? Ich bin jederzeit offen für Empfehlungen.

Aber zurück zur Sommergarderobe. In letzter Zeit habe ich viele sehr leichte Sommerkleidchen für meinen Shop genäht und diesmal habe ich ganz bewusst eines für mich genäht. Dafür habe ich wieder einen tollen Bio Baumwollstoff von Cloud9 verwendet. Der ist so super weich und sehr schön zu verarbeiten.

Übrigens habe ich diese schönen Stöffchen von Susanne , die Cloud 9 Stoffe und andere Schätze in ihrem online shop "Quilt it Out" verkauft.


Summer is here ( at least sometimes..). A good reason to sew some fresh dresses and tops. Yesterday it was raining cats and dogs, but I felt quite sunny while working on a fresh top made out of the cloud 9 fabric called "Shape of spring".

 I used the petal pink  fabric because I love these tangerine and yellow shades. I used my own pattern. As I got many questions recently if I sell my patterns as well, I wanted to ask if somebody has a recommendation on some pattern programms for making Pdf patterns. I am not very good with computers, so I would be very grateful if somebody knows an easy and affordable program?

But back to my summer wardrobe. I use to sew some very light summer dresses for my shop recently and took the chance to make something for me. Here I used the  Cloud9 La Venta Voile.It is so incredibly soft and I loved sewing with it. It worked like a charm.

By the way I got these lovely organic fabrics from Susanne who has these phantastic fabrics in her shop   "Quilt it out".

Now it just has to get warmer again, at least today the sun is shining and I can´t wait to wear my new top for the soccer game tonight. Hey US peeps, its you against us!!! :-) Any tips? My guess is a 3-1 for germany.

Fan quilt and some other things...

Its been such a long time, since I blogged, but, what can I say. Everything has already been said.
Here after all are two finished quilts.

One for me and one for a friend of mine from my gospel choir. It was a commission and I am so happy that it worked out and he loves his quilt.
He loves it so much, he even hides it from his cat when he is away. Please imagine that really, and I mean really big guy, covered in this quilt, sitting on his balkony in the evening, when the weather is bad... I find it just to cute.

Unfortunately I had to hurry to give it to him, so I just could make a few fast shots inside, I hope you can see the beauty. I quilted it at our sooo awesome Bee Germany quilt retreat in May. Ladies, once again I had a blast!
Here is a picture of the wonderful things we made.

At the retreat I also quilted this one, which I don´t know how to name, is this one a fancy fan quilt?? Yeah, why not- let me introduce you to "The Fancy Fan Quilt".

I am sleeping under this beauty for a few weeks now, except the nights, when temperature was over 27 degrees celsius at night, and it feels amazing.

This one is so fluffy and cosy. Makes me want to make another one. There are still two quilts waiting in line to be quilted. Sooner or later I am getting there.

At last I want to tell you about my lovely afternoon today. I went with a friend to her garden a bit outside of Berlin and we harvested some green walnuts. I climbed into the tree, and I really mean climbed. I so enjoyed it, as this is something I didn´t do for let us say 30 years?  It was such good fun. Now the walnuts all lay pricked in a water brine for the next days and in about two weeks I will pickle them with a malt vinegar/ herb mixture and at the end after a few months I will hopefully have these wonderfully delicious black walnuts, I once ate six years ago on my trip in Australia. I never had seen them before and was just so happy when I found a recipe and found out that my friend has a walnut tree in her garden.
Here is a link to a recipe, so that you know what I am talking about.
At the end of our nut picking afternoon we picked some wild flowers and this is the wonderful bouquet I brought home.
How such a short little trip, not to forget the stop at the lake where we ate some Solyanka, a soup which was often eaten in the GDR, how such  hours can make me feel like I was on holidays.
Thank you sunday!
I hope you had a good one, too!

Glam Clam Quilt

Just a quick post and a Hello from here, sunny Berlin.

 I totally forgot to show you the finished Glam Clam Quilt which I started in the fall at our Bee Germany meeting in Frankfurt.  The übertalented Quiltengineer Latifah Saafir has a wonderful pattern which she offers at Craftsy for free and this is what I used.

Here I can show you some pictures, also with the (somehow) matching pillows I made recently.

           
I wish you all a wonderful, sunny and happy week!!

Monday Makers

Well finally I managed to take part in the monday makers series by Aylin and Susanne. Here is just a quick little post, because I am in a hurry for my swing dance lessons. And as you know, tomorrow is not monday anymore---no monday makers. Tada. Here you go. I finished a lot today, but this is a quilt I had lying around for a while, I am very happy, that I managed to finish it finally. And I like how it turned out. Some boring 16patch blocks became this quite nice quilt. I guess I am giving this in the shop with some pillows, which I am going to show you another time. Happy Monday for you all.

- See more at: http://suleon.blogspot.de/#sthash.cyX3DeM6.dpuf

Cargo Duffle Bag

This morning I woke up at four, because of some party people passing my window screaming, laughing, singing. Good for them, that they had fun. I was awake! And I couldn´t fall asleep again. At six I decided I had to get up. At 7 I decided I had to make a cargo duffle. Now at nearly six in the evening I am done. The bag is finished. Nearly. Inside there is still a mess, but this will be solved tomorrow with the serger at work. It is a wonderful pattern by  noodlehead.

As I made a promise to myself not to start new projects, this was a bit of a compromise. I used the Anna Maria hexies, I had lying around for ages. I like the look they give the cargo duffle. Because I  didn´t want to cover all the hexies, I decided to just make one little pocket.

Unfortunately my "new" old sewing machine had some tension problems and the quilted area in the dark fabric doesn´t look so nice. But you know what I don´t care. I like the bag, I think I am going to use it quite often, is has the perfect size, maybe even for a everyday use...?
Here you go, the Cargo Duffle. And the little pocket still needs some snaps.

Quilting with a modern slant

Hi Everyone.

I don´t have to mention that I didn´t write for a while, you might have noticed. I said it before, the changes flickr made and the fact that I am using instagram now, made me writing blogposts very rarely. Unfortunately. I enjoyed blogging, well maybe I can find my mojo back sometimes.

Why am I writing today? 

I want to proudly announce my appearance in a phantastic quilt book that came out a few weeks ago. "Quilting with a modern slant" by Rachel May. This book arrived in the mail today and that really was a good day to arrive, as I am a bit lost today, figuring out how my little design business is going to go on without the shop. I realized that there is a whole new world in front of me, finding other ways to sell and finally dig into the world of social media for my business. A new facebook page for my fashion label already was made today, now I am just waiting for sunday where I am going to make some product photos...

But back to the book: Rachel was so nice to ask me if I wanted to be part of her book and of course I said yes. So here we go. I couldn´t show you this quilt earlier, allthough it has been finished for nearly two years. It is called sunny Berlin. This is what Berlin (and the rest of Germany) is thesedays. It is extremely sunny and warm, and I definitely love that!

If you want to do yourself a favour, buy this book it is packed with inspirational people, stories and quilts.

Wannsee

Today I took a day off! With all your lovely comments and advice (thanks a lot!!!) in mind I got up early, took the train and headed to the Wannsee. I walked for three hours and then took a historical bus back to the city.
I enjoyed this day extremely. Allthough I noticed how hard it was for me not to think about what is going to be with my business. I have no answer. But for now I take it as it is. I still have one month left in the shop, thats nearly four weeks. Weeks where so much unexpected can happen.
Until then I try to stay calm and relaxed and don´t stress myself about what should be, should happen or is going to come.

Lack of creativity

Happy new year to everyone!!!
I am doing fine, in case you wondered why I was absent for the past few months.
I have to say, I think I lost all my creativity. And this is not just in quilting. As some of you may know, I am a fashion designer, so being creative is my business. It is essential. Over the last months I worked extremely hard, preparing the christmas market season, which is very important for me as it brings a lot of money (if everything works out just fine). This year it was soso. Not terrible but not great either. After the sewing,sewing, doing markets, sewing and doing markets again, I got so extremely exhausted. I always told myself, when it is all over I will refresh myself and then do some exiting new things again. My partner in the shop and I decided to close our shop at the end of january. We both feel the need of more freedom. I had a shop for five years now and I think I need a break.
Now that I had some days off, I think I have to start thinking about all the new things I should start and organize and also be creative, quilt a little, think about new products and so on, but I have to say, I absolutely don´t have any ideas. And also no energy.
Well this answers it already, I guess I still need some more time off to regain energy, fun and maybe creativity will appear again (hopefully).
Does anybody of you have any tips how to regain creativity? I would be very thankful for every advice...