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.

About Creativity

I have been working on a new quilt in the last couple of days. And I am so pleased!!! It is a totally new style for me and I am planning on making it even more flowery, flirty, girly. My inspiration came from the book Material Obsession Two, which I purchased recently.

After I was, and partly still am, in such a sad mood, I noticed once again how much it helps to put my energy in the creative process of patchwork and quilting. I once heard, that creative people often have tendencies to depression, or is it the other way around? Is the creativity one way out of the depression. For me it definitely is.
But one question pops into my mind then, is this working on something another way to hide before the sadness? Is it the way to avoid "being sad"?
Well anyway, at the moment it is my way to go through this time and I think there are worse things I could do.
Yesterday evening there was a huge thunderstorm here in Berlin. I soooo enjoyed that. I sat on my window sill, watched the flash lights coming closer, I listened to the wind going through the trees in the back yard, I felt the first drops of rain on my heated skin, and in the backround I heard "hallelujah".It was amazing. In these minutes, before the heavy rain set in, I felt so great and yet so small watching and feeling this nature power, listening to music which is such an important thing in my life. And then I knew, sadness will go away and it will come back... and it will go away again. This is how my life is and ever was. And it is ok. This is who I am. For me it is about how to learn to love me anyway. In every mood, in every state in every moment. I am working on that.  And in the end... I am doing a good job with it.