Es wurde gepoltert

Tonight our quilt group was invited to a Polterabend, celebrating the upcoming marriage of Marion and Luidger. Deb and I were able to go, along with several others from the group, and it was amazing!

For a good 2 and a half hours, Marion and Luidger had the privilege of cleaning up after their guests. The purpose was to bring them luck in their marriage by teaching them to work in harmony with each other. Thanks to the many guests, they worked hard!

We all brought dishes for the happy couple. Not dishes like in food to share with others, but empty dishes we didn't need any more. Out in the middle of the party area, we broke the dishes. Smashed them to smithereens. Small dishes, big dishes, hundreds of dishes. Even the occasional toilet and sink.

Here a couple of photos. They had to keep their hands on the brooms and lock up the shovel, otherwise someone would have hidden them, making the work even harder.

Our quilt group prepared a basket with quilt blocks, one sewn by each of us. We wrapped each block individually, and it made a gorgeous gift. I don't know who thought to do it this way, but it was a brilliant idea.

Finished - Liebe Pillow

In my one-seam flying geese haze, I dreamed up a simple pillow that uses 9 flying geese. Three geese make a heart shape, and the other 6 accent it.
Add to that an adorable woven ribbon which says "Mein Engel - Dir gehört mein Herz" or "my angel, my heart belongs to you" and a little kitschy quilting of hearts and the word Liebe, and there you have it - and easy and fast project. Ribbon is from Acufactum.
I'll post a pattern as soon as I've cleaned up my design notes.

Trying to applique

Applique is new to me. Months ago Judy demo'ed needle turn applique to our guild, and  I started it, but never progressed.
So I decided to learn more systematically. Here are hearts cut out for the purpose of learning 4 techniques:

• needle turn (the dark red heart that's already started
• back-basted applique
• freezer paper (the one showing the paper and the turned edge)
• foundation (sew to a foundation like interfacing or dryer sheet, etc)

However, I'm barely getting a start. After deciding to learn these techniques, I got sick, and now I'm involved in a long-distance land sale, which requires more time than I prefer, and work is heating up between now and mid-December. So much for planned free, relaxing time. Anyway, it's still on my active list, and I expect to make some progress. I'll keep you posted.

2471 Geese - that's a large flock (or skein, apparently)

So our guild finished the flying geese challenge with 2471 geese - just like I expected, more than 2000 geese. Awesome!

So what do you call that many geese? On the ground, like the geese they are growing for German Christmas dinners, it's a gaggle of geese.
In the air, it's your choice of

• flock of geese
• skein of geese

Why English uses the same word for a group of flying geese that it uses for a ball of yarn is beyond me.

Shop Hop a success

We had our first regional shop hop last weekend and it was a success. With Saturday normally being a short shopping day, we knew that no single group could get to very many shops, so we created a north loop and a south loop, both centered around Stuttgart, Germany.
In an amazing stroke of luck, there were special events on this Saturday in both loops.
The South loop had a quilt show going on at a local castle (see Quilt-Art in Holzgerlingen), and one of our shopkeepers was going to be there, so we just made her quilt show book the last store.
The North loop had an art fair in Bad Cannstatt, so the nearby store was going to be open late, and that made travel time easier for the north loopers.
On Sunday we sewed, and talked about all the new stash we bought and the stores we enjoyed. Great fun, and I hope we do it again next year.
The shops we visited were:
Patchcom in Schönaich
Sue's Quilt Shop in Gäufelden
Zweigart in Sindelfingen
Nadel und Faden in Bad Cannstatt
Atelier Monika Dobler in Schorndorf
Quilt Kompass in Backnang

I heartily recommend all of these stores.

4415 New Things to Do

Some days are Christmas, and some days feel like Christmas. Today was one of those second types. Walking back to work after lunch, I got an SMS - DHL was telling me my package had arrived at the Packstation.
My long-awaited, deeply-desired package had arrived!!!
Buecher.de is one of my favorite online stores. It's much easier to use than Amazon, and doesn't have nearly the crap that Amazon puts on its pages. It's far more pleasant to shop there, and I watch the prices carefully to make sure I'm getting the best deal possible.
This time I got lucky. I was looking for a couple of quilty things, and ended up finding the quilt book of my dreams - Jinny Beyer's The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns: More Than 4050 Pieced Blocks for Quilters

Additionally, I had already ordered Nancy Martin's 365 Quilt Blocks a Day perpetual calendar.
Both of these packages came today, and I'm in quilt block heaven.
Jinny has 4050 blocks, and Nancy has 365. Do the math and I now have 4415 wonderful new blocks to play with.The nice thing about these resources is I now have thousands of public domain quilt patterns (not Jinny's or Nancy's own designs, of course) at my fingertips.
Here are some pictures of my lovelies. I showed Feb 3 in the calendar, because that's my birthday. Heehee.

What do 1600 Flying geese look like?

More or less like this:

Our guild has been collecting geese as a block swap for three months, and this month we will distribute to all of the participants. It's a "you take as many as you bring" project. We'll be sorting the geese by pattern type, and the participants have a limited ability to request which geese they get.
The guild has been buying the Benartex Preview Packs, but some members have had a hard time cutting into these charm squares, so this project was designed to give them a motivation to do so.
For the exchange, a person can select either a specific Benartex line, or just any Benartex, or scrappy. If we don't have enough geese to fill the specific requests, the person gets the rest in scrappy geese.
I can't wait - just one more week. I've put in about 150 geese, and I have plans for these little birdies. I've got a scrappy quilt just waiting to have geese as sashing.

Love this tool!

The great big handle for the larger quilt rules seems too awkward for me, so I never bought one.
However, when I saw this one for the smaller rulers, I decided to try it.
I use small square rules often, both metric and inch, and use my 6 1/2 inch by 12 inch ruler just as often.
This handle can be used for all of them and makes it much easier to move them around.
And, by the way, I use the non-skid plastic on all of my Omnigrid rulers, and it really helps. 

There will be no TV watching tonight, only quilt admiration

Done, done, done, done, done, done, DONE!!!!!

Now I'm in that manic-depressive state of

YAY!! It's done and I'm so proud of it!!! 

 and

OMG, how could I have made so many mistakes? How will I ever show it to anyone?

 
I'm constantly pushing my thoughts to the Yay side, but the dark side keeps coming up. How do you all deal with that?
My choice for today is to love my quilt, be proud of my finished product, and give myself some consolation by going to my sewing room and sewing some small squares to prove to myself that I can actually sew straight.
For my label, I took some really old Tshirt transfer paper, created a label in PowerPoint, and ironed it to a piece of muslin. Don't like the feel of the transfer on the muslin, but I have yet to try printing directly to fabric. Don't even know what I should apply to the printed fabric to make the ink permanent. Lots to learn and try.
But mostly, it's love love love my new quilt. It will hang on a wall, either in the foyer (German: Windfang - love that word), or on the staircase. I love the quilting pattern - I put three lines through each square, and none on the seams. It reminds me of the real subway, with the two normal rails, and that dangerous electrified "third rail."

Daylight Lamp in action

Here are a couple of pictures of my cheap daylight lamp. First one is both the lamp's light and the nearby bulb light mixed together, and the second one is just the daylight lamp alone. Of course, my camera adjusted the exposure based on the amount of available light, so the contrast is essentially meaningless. Anyway, here it is.
Cheap, works, 27 watts. DH looked it up and a replacement bulb is €5. Socket is GX10Q and color temp is 6500 K.
Done is better than perfect.

Zweigart Open House was Fun!

I went to the Zweigart open house early on Saturday, and was rewarded by a crowd of people - rare for my visits to the factory outlet.
They had games for the kids, coffee and cake, a piece of the factory where you could "tour" and a Schnäppchen-markt as well as the reglar factory outlet open.
The tour was actually free access to a room in which many commercial embroidery machines were working, (no photos allowed - ask me how I found out). They had both long machines with a 10-20 needles that could embroider huge strips of cloth, and they had many individual machines to embroider smaller quantities.
In the Snäppchen room I scored some pillowcases/comforter covers for 9 Euro the set, and a roll of woven tape for just 2 Euro.
In the regular outlet, I bought this and that. Didn't want to pass up buy some needles since everything was 10% off.
Well worth the visit. I even saw people I knew - what fun!

Tokyo Subway Basted and Quilted

One step after the other. Now the quilt is basted and quilted. I followed Oh Fransson's plan and put 3 rows of quilting through every column. Nice and straightforward, even though I notice I'm not particularly interested in perfectly parallel rows. Na ja. Done is better than perfect. Still to come are label and sleeve and binding.

Save this quilt for me KThanxBai?

There's a great show coming up 17 October in Holzgerlingen at the Burg Kalteneck. Among other activities, there will be a drawing for the quilt pictured in the brochure.
I am kindly hereby informing you that I intend to win this quilt. If by any accident, someone else should accidentally win it, please just send it on over to me. I will be very grateful. Kthanxbai.
And if for any reason you can't quite get over to beautiful Holzgerlingen, you can always buy a paper piecing pattern of the castle from Ulla Lenz. Available at Patchcom. (Birgit, the owner, speaks perfect English)

Daylight lamp for sale at Lidl

For those of you who haven't used a daylight lamp with your creative work, it's great. You can really see the colors, even when real daylight isn't there.
They can get expensive, but yesterday, Lidl put them on sale at € 17,99 each. The color temperature is about 6500 K, which should be pretty good. I believe most daylight lamps range from 5000 K to 6500 K.
Thanks to Elvira, who tipped me and the other Quilt-Sterne off. I ran right out and got one. Our Lidl in Ehningen still had a dozen or so, so they're not likely to sell out quickly, but I wouldn't wait if you're in the market.
Link to Lidl Lamp
I also heard the tip for the first time to just bend a daylight lamp under your plexiglas quilt table, and presto! you have a light table. Clever, what quilters know.

Tokyo Subway Suburb top, ironed

'Nuff said. Looks much better ironed. This weekend I hope to start quilting, with the same channels Oh Fransson! used.