Spakenburg, quilt exhibition

Yesterday I went to Spakenburg to the Traditional Costume and Fishery Museum. As a good dutch girl I used my bike (it's about 15 miles cycling from our summerhouse). The museum is very good, it's small, but they have a beautyfull collection of more than 120 dolls, wich gives an impression of the history of the traditional costume, childs clothes, christening dresses, mariages costumes and mourning clothes. For example, black clothes are for the widow, deep purple clothes are for the aunts, light purple for the nieces etc. depending how close you're related. (I got a private tour) . The quilt-exhibition is also special, most of the quilts are made of authentic-Spakenburg traditional costume fabrics. And of course there is a shop where you can buy fabrics. So if you're around it's certainly worth visiting. http://www.kenvmuseum.nl/

Dear Jane and Amish Circle Quilt

Last year I started with "Dear Jane", so I bought 7 yard of background fabrics. I thought making the Dear Jane would be great way to use some of my leftover fabrics. After finishing 9 blocks and another 4 blocks ready to sew, I lost courage. So the Dear Jane became a box on a shelve. Last week I bought the Amish Cirle Quilt Book at Evy. A perfect quilt to loose some leftovers. So now I decided to make a combination of Dear Jane and Amish Circle Quilt. So I feel really inspired to make this unique quilt. So I want to make at least 64 blocks and maximum 169 blocks. Let's see where it ends.

It's a small world

In the Netherlands we're still looking for the summer. It's 16C and raining, this picture shows the view from our summerhouse at 14.00, it's dark and cold outside. Time to have some fun with the computer. Last weekend Marne installed skype, and this weekend Jacqueline also bought a webcam and installed skype. Now, we can chat as long as we want, and can see each other. Marne gave me a tour through her camper. Can you believe it, she thousands of miles away, and it's like she on the other side of the room. Yesterday evening Marne, Jacqueline and I had a conference call, so the three of us all in different places could chat with each other. Maybe we can start a "digital" quiltbee ; ). If you're interested in free phonecalls http://www.skype.com/.

Unexpectely

Tonight Jacqueline decided to came along for a chat about "quilting". That was a good idea because I had taken some snowmen-fabric with me, Marne had sent me. And Jacqueline is a real snowman-addict. So she was very happy with the fabric. After some talk we decided to make a little scissor-holder. Tomorrow it will be finished. We made a totally mess of our summerhouse and ended with a snack and a glass of wine.

Unexpectely fun!!!

Tale

Tonight we had dinner at Tale. Tale is a good friend of us, he bought an appartement in Amsterdam-North, it needed complete renovation and now after six months it's finished. I made a little "lizard" quilt for his new house, because 'he's very interested in lizards, snakes and frogs. Coincidence he had a special guest to take care off for a few weeks. His name is Brutus.

The technique I used is from the Workshop from Dijanna Cevaal I followed at the Quilterspalet. This is my first quilt completely made with my sewing machine.

I really love quilting

Tonight we had our weekly quiltbee at Dieuwke. It was really fun, unfortunately Alexine couldn't join us. We admired each other work. Willemijn made a beautyfull quilt for her baby. Dieuwke is making a paperpiecing little sailboat quilt. Next time I'll make some pictures. I made a begin with my "matchbox"swap, I'm doing a stitchery.

Sunday we had a lovely day at Atelier Bep, see the pictures on my webalbum. I made this little "house" pincushion. In the weekend I worked on my "house quilt", the flying geese are ready, and now I'm going to make a border with flowers, in the end it will be 2m x 2m.

Tuesday felt like X-mas, Marne(USA) send me big parcel with magazines and fabrics. I'm going to visit her in september, but she thinks my suitcase is not big enough, so she send me already this big parcel. It's so lovely of her, because these American quiltmagazines are very good, we can't buy them here. I feel so spoilt.

Noah's Ark

I'm a big fan of Lynette Anderson, and now for all her fans she has a free Block of the Month Stitchery Noah's Ark. Yesterday she published the 5th block. It's really fun. I have made the kangaroos, and today I'll start with the cows. The only disadvantage is: you still have to wait 7 months before I can finish the quilt.

Meet our new friends!

They are just living outside our summerhouse, they like to walk, and are very interested in food.

There are a lot of wild hogs in the Netherlands and especially on the Veluwe (in the middle of the Netherlands). Most of the time they try to avoid people. Wild hogs are not really dangerous because most of the time when they see or hear people they run away, only in springtime when they having their babies they can be more agressive. As you can see those two are an exception on the rules.

Wendy Jo finally got her exchange gift ....

I'm in an exchange-group with people all over the world, it's really fun. You send little gifts to each other and receive little gifts. There are X-mas swaps, autumn swaps etc. On the 6th mai I received a lovely pinkeep from Wendy Jo, so that meant I had to send a little gift back in a month. So on the 6th of june I sent this little strawberries (because she likes the colour red) to the USA and finally they arrived, it took hem 5 weeks.

And the winner is.....

Congratulations Barbara, please send your adress to: photos339@gmail.com, and in three weeks I'll send you a little mini-quilt. I hope you like it.