A finish and two old finishes cut in pieces.

It was a lovely summer weekend. I was sitting with my sewing machine on the balcony and enjoyed the view. Especially when the sun goes down with the flood light!

I finished this weekend a second mini quilt with hyper quilting. It is a present for one of my oldest friend, who has her birthday this Wednesday.
Finally the binding is no problem anymore. Nice mitered corners, all four! Finished in 25 minutes. A personal record!
 

The mini quilt I finished this weekend

A present together with this one for a friend for more than forty years!

 I cut two wall ahngings in to pieces for place mats and mug rugs.

My SewCalGal fmq challenge #5  in pieces ......

and my 'Look1' wall hanging in pieces

Besides cutting the wall hangings into pieces, I had pull out the binding. I do not like binding quilts. But when you cut a quilt in pieces, the pieces need a lot more binding!

Thanks everybody for your kind words!

It is so nice of you for stopping by, I love to hear from everyone of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I will try and respond via e-mail. Please make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I wont be able to e-mail you back.

If you need to reach me feel free to e-mail me at marelizeries[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks so much for reading

Keep quilting!

Maartje Quilt
Amsterdam

The Albert Cuyp, the famous Amsterdam streetmarket (I)

At least once a week I like to go down town Amsterdam. So I did last Saturday, the day of the Gay Parade with boats in the canals.
I love the city, having a cup of coffee on a terrace (not in a coffee shop!) and just wandering around. Most of the times it means I go to the 'Albert Cuyp' too. It is the most famous street market in Amsterdam in a very trendy neighbourhood. Many tourists know to find it!
Most tourist do not know, that there are a lot of very special shops behind the stands of the market. Some shops have the same interior for many, many years but you can buy a lot of special products.
There are a few quilt shops in Amsterdam, but when I want to buy fabrics, thread or anything else for quilting, I always go first to the shops behind the stands. Next to the Albert Cuyp is the shop where I bought my sewing machine.

In this post, I will show you some stands on the Albert Cuyp, but I will show you some special shops behind the stands in future posts.

Of course flowers ........

And herring and pickles ......

Wooden shoes in all colors for the tourists to take home!

One of my favourit fabric shops.

And  more flowers ......

Enjoy a drink or a meal.

Very cheap big pieces of good quality cotton on sale. Excellent for samplers, place mats or table runners!

Bread ....

Fabrics on stands ........

...and even more in the shops!

Trendy furniture for your terrace or garden.

Beautiful fabricsin a shop with more expensive fabrics.

The 'Bazar' a trendy oriental restaurant in an old Church.

Herbs

Sweets.

All kinds of sugars........

Insence and essential oil. No pictures said the lady!

On my way home I saw a lot of boats waiting to join the Gay Parade.

The soccer boat on the Gay Parade

Bad timing to go down town! I had to walk with my bike! Many, many people!

Thanks everybody for your kind words!

It is so nice of you for stopping by, I love to hear from everyone of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I will try and respond via e-mail. Please make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I wont be able to e-mail you back.

If you need to reach me feel free to e-mail me at marelizeries[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks so much for reading

Keep quilting!

Maartje Quilt
Amsterdam

Time to enjoy a dinner at the waterfront!

After a few cooler days it is summer again in The Netherlands.
Yesterday night we had diner at the waterfront on a terrace of a very old cafe   'Het sluisje' (The little Lock). The cafe is more than 100 years old, next to a very old lock in a canal: one of the most beautiful places in Amsterdam. The street is on a very old, miles and miles long dike with many old, beautiful houses. It is a five minutes walk from our house to get there. When it is nice weather and we have dinner friends who like to walk, we go with them after a walk to this place for a drink.

The lock next to the café

The view we enjoyed on the terrace in the shadow of the trees.

Some houses on the dike next to 'Het sluisje' There are always a lot of tourists cycling over the dike.

I did not have much time to sew. So a only finished a giraffe doll quilt for my granddaughter Salijn, who is in the country again after holidays in France with her parents. I am always glad when my children return from their holidays! I did onbly stitching in the ditch, to keep the fleece back of the quilt soft.

The doll quilt is made with the same giraffe pattern as the giraffe quilt for the baby of my husbands sun and daughter in law. Next week both pattern are on my blog.

Another finish is a sampler with hyper quilting. Of course it will be used as a place mat.

This month I have a weekend with four friends from high school. We are four old ladies now. we all went to university, divorced after a long marriage, just retired and I am the only grandma! I like to give them a present so I have to sew eight samplers like this. So I can practice hyper and micro quilting a lot! I tried a new filler: double micro stippling with two colors. It looks nice, but I have to work on the pattern a little.






Thanks everybody for your kind words!

It is so nice of you for stopping by, I love to hear from everyone of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I will try and respond via e-mail. Please make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I wont be able to e-mail you back.

If you need to reach me feel free to e-mail me at marelizeries[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks so much for reading

Keep quilting!

Maartje Quilt
Amsterdam

Finishes and a challenge for this year: 26 fmq tutorials!

My challenge

Some quilting friends ask me to write tutorials for the gifts I make out of fmq samplers. I am a teacher and teachers like to share knowledge. So I like the tutorial idea. To share knowledge I must gather knowledge and practice to know what is worth sharing and what is not. I also like blogs with challenges. So I will combine a challenge with the request of my friends.
My challenge for this year: every two weeks a tutorial for a small project to practice your fmq skills with pictures of the finished project. So I had at least  to finish at least 26 fmq projects too!

Finishes

I have been busy this week with quilting and blogging and finished some  projects. It was very, very hot in The Nertherlands so the sewing machine and lap top were on my balcony the whole week!We will have dinner with friends to night on our balcony, so to day I am busy with cleaning the house, shopping and preparing dinner. Tomorrow  my sewing machine is back on the balcony again!

By the way an earlier finish:  Cacti mini quilt can you see on the website of Richard and Tanya quilts:

Finish #1

This week I finished two mug rugs with the same hyper quilted flowers of  place mats I sew two weeks ago for a dear friend. I made the mug rugs and place mats to practice hyper quilting and (micro) fillers. Of course also to practice my binding! The mug rugs have 7! very nice mitered corners and 1 a little bit less nice, but much better than the binding of the place mats two weeks ago. Next time binding had to be perfect!
I shoot pictures of my quilting and make sketches, so I have the first tutorial for my  challenge! As a bonus I posted the tutorial for the matching place mats.
Together it is #1

One of the place mats, same flowers as the flowers of the mug rugs

Finish #2

I do not like stippling, only micro stippling. To exercise another meandering filler, I made four samplers. And of course I made place mats out of them for friends. After binding the samplers, I googled pictures of their tableware and used the shapes on their plates, cups and saucers for the thread play on the place mats. I started this project three weeks ago when we had a barbecue in their garden, but I did not finish in time.
Next time we have dinner at their place will be after this summer, but I do not have to worry about the present this time!

The pattern of the quilting: for every double circle 2-3 small circles and 2-3 curves

 . 

The pattern is my own design but I am sure it is not unique and somewhere else designed by another quilter.

#3(Only seven finished yet!)

 I made some coasters of the pile with mini samplers of the free motion quilting projectof Leah Day. I used tricot bias from the market. Need to buy some more to finish them all.

Finish #4 Six postcards

Postcards out of sampler for my Look #2: At the beach, wall hanging
I collected a lot of pictures of shells and things you would find on the beach on Pinterest. I draw shells and mini shell fillers on paper and made a sampler to see which quilted patterns on which scale are strong enough to use for my wall hanging.
I made six postcards out of the sampler. Two with feathers just for fun.
First time my Husqvarna stitch a decent satin stitch! (Don tell it to anyone: I think I was the problem and not my Husqvarna.) Love the binding with the different colors of the thread.

Still there are WIP's and I found another UFO

1. some Posting the Giraffe pattern. (next week)
2. Look #2: At the beach(busy with samplers and drawing patterns)
3. A doll quilt for my granddaughter Salijn. (this weekend)
4. A dress for Sascha and Sarah (Next week, Sarah I want to finish it before tuesday)
5. I already pieced the top of two ladders and snakes play quilts for my granddaughters. I want to applique the snakes, ladders and numbers. Also two big dices. The play quilts must be ready before their birthdays in Augustus and September. (One finished first week of august (Salijn's birthday) and the other one first week of September (Sascha's birthday)
6. Two more red place mats for my daughter in law. So I can give it to her the next time we go to see them. (next week)
7. The fabrics for two more Balloon baby quilts are cut weeks ago. This week one finish. The one I will give to my youngest daughter when she finally can tell me she is pregnant. (finished within three months)
8. There is another UFO. I started piecing this quilt, a double wedding ring, before I discovered fmq. It is a picnic quilt for my eldest daughter. 

Thanks everybody for your kind words!

It is so nice of you for stopping by, I love to hear from everyone of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I will try and respond via e-mail. Please make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I wont be able to e-mail you back.

If you need to reach me feel free to e-mail me at marelizeries[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks so much for reading

 Keep quilting!

Maartje Quilt
Amsterdam

Gifts out of samplers #1 Coasters

Four months ago I decided to learn free motion quilting. Inspired by Laeh Day and her 365+ patterns of the Free motion quilting project, I made 6 inch square sandwiches with a lot of solid cottons and started with pattern #1 and made about 30 samplers before I decided to quilted the squares after piecing them in strokes of 45 squares.

Vier maanden terug maakte ik kennis met quilten uit de vrije hand, geinspireerd door Leah Day en haar project. Ik maakte 6 inch oefenlapjes en zag toen dat Leah een deken van haar oefenlappen had gemaakt. Ik had toen ongeveer 30 lapjes gequilt. Ik wilde ook zo'n deken maken, maar besloot niet een voor een de gequilte lapjes later aan elkaar te naaien, maar eerst stroken van 45 blokken te quilten.

I did not like the idea of making one big guilt of a lot of small squares, like Leah Day did. But I still had about 30 sampler squares! I hate to throw something away, so I decided to make coasters out of my squares.

Ik zat met 30 gequilte vierkantjes en gooi niet graag wat weg. 

To make coasters out of small square samplers you need a rotary cutter, a small saucer and tricot bias tape. Bias tape is elastic and that is handy to bind the small, round shape of the coasters.
I bought the tape in a store, where they have a lot of difficult colors.

Je hebt nodig een schaar of rolmes, passend schoteltje en tricot biasband. Dat is elastisch en handig voor de kleine cirkels. Ik koop het op de markt in vele kleuren.

- Lay a matching saucer on your square and mark a circle.  Cut the circle.
- Bind the coasters with the bias tape.

Seven done and a pile to go! 

- Markeer om een schotel een cirkel op je proeflapje en knip of snij de cirkel uit.
- Werk af met het biasband.

Ik heb er zeven gedaan. Nog een hele stapel te doen!

Tutorial placemats with hyperquilted flower.

Tutorial


Hyperquilting is fun to do en gives beautiful  effects like this hyper quilted flower in three colours.
Instead of sewing samplers I like to sew gifts for family and friends like place mats and mug jugs. I few days after sewing these place mats  a friend used them on her breakfast table. A present for her birthday.

Finished size: 13 inch x 19 inch inch

You need white cotton for top and back, batting or flannel, a fat quarter colored fabric for the binding and thread in matching colors. One or two green colors thread for some leaves around the flowers.
I use 40 wt polyester (Brildor) but rayon embroidery thread gives beautiful flowers to.

1. Cut the cotton and batting (14 inch x 20 inch) and make a sandwich with pins.

    (The sandwich is after quilting slightly smaller)

2. Cut 1,5 inch strips for the binding and find thread in matching colors.
3. Mark the places for the centers of the flowers.

4. Practice the pattern of the flower on paper.  Start in the center with a spiral and draw petals around the spiral. The size and form of petals may slighty differ. Do the same with each color and finish with filling the center spiral with yellow circles.

5. Stitch your flower in the same order as drawn in the picture.
When you do not have problems with the tension of your thread you can use white thread in the bobbin. Otherwise you need the match the color in the bobbin.
Snap your threads when you start and end with a color. Because of the heavy stitching in the center of the flower you can snap your threads without bury them with a knot.

6. Practice if necessary your leaves on paper. You can alter the scale if you want. Mark if necessary the places where you want to stitch your leaves and stitch the leaves in green. 
7. Free motion quilt around the flower a filler with a white thread.
When you have made the mug jugs you can stitch the same filler, but on a bigger scale.
If you  have no experience with the filler or the scale of the filler, practice the pattern in the desired scale on paper.


8. Sqaure the sandwich to 13 inch by 19 inch and finish it with the binding.

   A lovely gift with the mug rugs! See tutorial

Tutorial: Mug rugs and place mats with hyperquilted flower

Tutorial challenge #1: Hyper quilted mug jug



Hyperquilting is fun to do en gives beautifull  effects like this hyper quilted flower in three colours.
Instead of sewing samplers I like to sew gifts for family and friends like these place mats and mug jugs. I few days after sewing they were already on the breakfast table of a dear friend. A present for her birthday.
This tutotial featured in Quilt Gossip

 

( A lovely gift with these place mats. See additional tutorial)

Finished size: 5 inch square

You need scraps of white cotton, batting or flannel, scraps for the binding and thread in matching colors. I use 40 wt polyester (Brildor) but cotton or rayon embroidery thread gives beautiful flowers to.

1. Cut the cotton and batting.

It is easier to move a bigger square round the needle, so it is better to quilt your mug rugs in one piece. So I cut a 6 inch square for one,  a 12 inch x 6 inch piece for two and a 12 inch square for four mug jugs. slightly smaller.

 

2. Cut 1,5 inch strips for the binding and find thread in matching colors.

3. Make a sandwich with pins, mark 6 inch squares and the middle of each square.

4. Practice the pattern of the flower on paper.  Start in the center with a spiral and draw petals around the spiral. The size and form of petals may slighty differ. Do the same with each color and finish with filling the center spiral with yellow circles.

5. Stitch your flower in the same order as drawn in the picture.
When you do not have problems with the tension of your thread you can use white thread in the bobbin. Otherwise you need the match the color in the bobbin.
Snap your threads when you start and end with a color. Because of the heavy stitching in the center of the flower you can snap your threads without bury them with a knot.
6. Free motion quilt around the flower a filler with a white thread. For the mug jug you need micro quilting. I used for the two mug jugs two different fillers: pebbling and echoing of the flowers.
If you  have no experience with the filler, practice the pattern on paper.
Tip: Pebbling looks better if you stitch every circle twice or thrice

7. Cut the sandwich in 5 x 5 inch square mug jugs.

 8. Finish your mug rug with the binding.

A lovely gift with the place mats. See tutorial

Thanks everybody for your kind words!

It is so nice of you for stopping by, I love to hear from everyone of you, so please feel free to leave a comment.

If you have a question I will try and respond via e-mail. Please make sure your blogger profile is linked to your e-mail, otherwise I wont be able to e-mail you back.

If you need to reach me feel free to e-mail me at marelizeries[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks so much for reading

Keep quilting!

Maartje Quilt
Amsterdam