Tempus keeps fugitting!

Can't believe I haven't posted since 29th January. Time to catch up.

Stuart and I went to Aachen for a weekend - sunny and restful, lots of wonderful old buildings like this one:




Just look at those barley-twist carved pillars and the unusual window shutters! It is now a restaurant and although we didn't eat there as we had already booked somewhere else, on our next visit we shall certainly do so - I want to see the inside properly rather than a peer through the window. Yes, there was a table full of people looking back at me when I did so - when it is old glass in the windows, you can't see anything at first and then you see the faces...

One of the old houses has been turned into a museum and there is in the basement a Tile Room, all walls being completely tiled in different antique tiles. Quilt inspiration galore - really beautiful.




Our quilt group trip to Bremen was great fun and I managed to cut and sew on the borders of my new quilt, sandwich it and get the quilting started. Current progress below:





Have decided this quilt is going to be a surprise birthday present for my sister-in-law - I can post the photos because she doesn't know about my blog.

Next weekend six of us from the quilt group are travelling to the island of Sylt in the north of Germany. We will have an 8 hour train journey (three hours to Bremen and then Renate will join us for the next five hours!) and three nights and two days on the island and then the long journey back on Sunday. Our friend Gisela is married to the manager of the hotel where we are staying and it will be another lovely reunion as Bremen was an unbelievable eight weeks ago. If I don't take the quilt with me I shall take embroidery but have to take something crafty to do with my hands.

Tumblers!

After doing that very complicated Crescent and Star quilt for my youngest daughter, I really wanted to do something simple and relatively fast next (after that I shall probably want another complicated one). I always react against what I've just done. So, do you remember these delicious little jelly rolls I bought from a quilt stall at the Wiesbaden Craft Fair?

I bought them from two separate bins but they go together beautifully. First I did a lot of cutting:

Then some pinning:

And then some sewing:


Not sure exactly how big a quilt I can make from these strips. What I've decided to do is sew together three rows at a time and when I'm out of fabric I can see how large a quilt it is going to be if I just sew them all together. If it does not look big enough even with a border added, I think I will add some cream stripes between each set of three rows. I will either just add plain stripes or might make rows of cream tumblers. Lots of possibilities for stretching these pretty fabrics if I need to. What's really funny is that I didn't notice until I uploaded these photos that I've made a mistake in my sequencing - will I be relaxed and laid back about the mistake and leave it alone? Anyone who knows me would say no and that if I don't correct it I shall fret about it - they are absolutely right and I'm off to put it right immediately! I don't think I'll have this top finished ready for our quilt weekend in Bremen but you never know - it all depends how much real life seeps into the quilting life, doesn't it?

Mulling, not blogging

This is block #23 of the Nearly Insane quilt. Haven't done any of these for a while and am pleased to connect with it again. I've been mulling over which quilt to make next from the hundred-and-more 'must dos' on my list (you should see the number of quilts I've got bookmarked - I will either need to live to 300 or open a factory).

Since Renate brought me all the new fabrics I ordered from the US, I've felt a little overwhelmed by choice - not a good thing for me. I now have lots of the lovely Civil War reproduction fabrics but they are very much outside what I usually have and I have needed to stroke them and get to know them before deciding what to do with them. I've also got a lovely range of soft/warm solids which I want to use to make a quilt used by a character in 'Six Feet Under' - I would pause the dvd every time it appeared so I could copy a bit more of the design. It's one of those very simple quilts which look devastatingly good.

However, I've finally decided that it should be the Hartfield fabrics I should use first; I've had this 'Jane Austen' layer cake for a while now and it's time I stopped stroking and started sewing. What is it about these layer cakes that make you not want to disturb their pristine beauty? The thought of cutting them and having little cotton threads hanging from them seems an insult sometimes. Am I weird? Anyway, I've got one of those perpetual calendars with a quilt block a day and I spotted a nice one the other day which I think is simple enough to show off the fabrics well and yet has some applique leaves on each block which should give me a lovely bit of hand sewing too.

One of the reasons for the mulling is that some of us from the quilt group are going to visit Renate in Bremen for a long weekend at the beginning of February - our very own quilt retreat! This must seem odd to any Americans reading but we don't have opportunities for such things here in Germany unless you belong to a big group and our group is small. We are going by train so I shall want something to work on on the three and a half hour journey and also something to do while we are there. I think I shall take my Nearly Insane because everything I need is now in an easily carried box. If I can start the layer cake quilt and get quite a few blocks done, then I can pack those and do the applique leaves while I am there. We are all so excited!

Limbo

Yes, it's been like living in limbo since Christmas here, maybe because we 'staggered' our Christmas a bit. My youngest daughter arrived on the 21st and the three of us and dog went to friends for our Christmas Day meal. Then the older daughter and boyfriend arrived on the 27th and we had our own Christmas Day (presents, crackers and usual Christmas Day meal) on the 28th. Then, almost immediately, it seemed, it was New Year's Eve and we were entertaining guests, so lots of prep and cooking. I thought once this was out of the way I could relax with some sewing as I have been itching to sew. However, the metal tab on my jeans zip broke in half and I stupidly tried to pull up the zip with the broken bit and it punctured my thumb. It has now been seven days since I did this and I am amazed at how long it has taken to heal. Probably all the cooking and hand-washing has stopped the healing but there is no way I've wanted to hold a needle in my hand in case the puncture opened again - although small, it was very deep. The weather has been cold and the snow has only just begun to thaw, so we've played with the Wii, board games, computer games and read books, watched dvds and had some nice meals.

Eldest daughter and boyfriend return to England tomorrow evening and youngest is here until 7th Jan. Apart from having a good clear-up, packing away the decorations and chopping up the tree, this week is clear for some sewing before I go back to school on Monday. Time, too, to drastically lose the weight I've put on over Christmas. Luckily, I'm so sick of food after all the festive over-eating that it is a great time to repair the damage. Happy new year!

Daughter fun

Olivia and I made our gingerbread house this afternoon while the snow was flying thickly outside. It's a bit of a bodge job and if it were raining, I think the roof would leak... While we played with walls and icing, we listened to our 'Sing Mit' (singalong) cd of German Christmas carols sung by children. We have had this cd a long time and the carols are much loved, so singing along reminds us of all our past Christmases and good memories. Including this one: we used to live in a house with very high ceilings and each year we would have a very tall Christmas tree. One year, the tree we chose turned out to be a bit wonky but we supported it as best we could in its stand. We then listened to 'Sing Mit' and decorated the tree and it looked beautiful. I went to get some drinks and suddenly heard a series of tinkling, swishing sounds. Olivia had been fascinated with one particular ornament and had reached out to touch it - I think she was about four years old - and that was all it needed for the tree to fall. There was no big crash because what I had heard was all the ornaments and baubles as they hit the floor with the tips of the branches. I remember screaming because I thought that Olivia had been squashed under the tree but no, she had escaped but was a bit scared... Well, instead of sitting down together and watching 'Muppet Christmas Carol' (another tradition), I had to shut the girls and the cat out of the living room while we removed the remains of the broken ornaments and Stuart lifted the tree. I then swept up all the tiny shards of glass and hoovered, twice! Luckily, a lot of the glass things remained intact as they had been on the other side of the tree and we also had a lot that were not glass but it took a while before the tree was cut again at the bottom to balance it a bit better. Once stable, the tree was left until the next day - nobody felt like decorating that evening. It's one of those stories that every family has and one of the joys of Christmas is digging them out again and having a laugh. I'm intending to have lots of laughs with both daughters over the next few days. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Busy!

That's it - I'm busy. Back soon...

Finished and half-finished.

Well, I managed to finish this today in spite of having a rotten cold, sinus pain and no voice. I didn't go into work as I was feeling so bad when I got up but, as often happens, I got to lunchtime and felt a lot better. Now it's evening and feeling awful again! I'm really pleased with this little runner and am now going to make a few coasters to go with it. If I've time I think I'll make one of these for my mother - I'm not going to be in England with them at Christmas so am planning to send a box of German goodies and one of these runners would be a nice addition. I shall play around with coasters tomorrow if I'm feeling better.
And here's the progress on the cross-stitch, which also has to be finished (and framed) before Christmas for my pride's sake because I said it would be...

Off to do some steam inhalation, have a hot shower, a hot toddy and a hot mug of tea (see the temperature theme there?) and see if I can shift stuff in my head. Never had sinus problems in my past and this is a new and painful frustration. Snow outside and more to come. Hope everyone keeps safe in the wintry weather.

Oh, and a message for Nancy if you drop by: thanks for telling me that you upload photos first and then write afterwards - SO much easier. I feel like such an idiot for doing it the other way round, getting into a muddle and not being able to work out that the opposite method would be more sensible. Fixed ideas are a danger at my age!