Merry Christmas!

Patterns in the Snow by Simon Beck

Here is a special treat: 

These patterns are created by the British snow artist Simon Beck. He does it all with his snow boots... he makes all the exact calculations and then walks and walks for 10 hours and more and thus draws fantastic patterns on the the surface of a frozen lake for example, 

it's wonderful.

Here is more about him and his wonderful art:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0soQJxq6dKY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLbYCaGSN2o (with a comment in German)

This is his very interesting facebook site, where these snow pictures are from:

https://de-de.facebook.com/snowart8848

He uses quilt patterns, too! :-) The pattern above is a tumbling-block-pattern, and I love it!

Weimar Castle

I always love to find traditional quilt patterns in some other context, and here I found this lovely inlaid work in Weimar on the creaking wooden floor of the historic Castle: 

six pointed stars!

And this is the view of the lovely city, photographed  from a window in the Castle. My camera isn't always doing things the way I want them to be, so this image here didn't come out as a real clear picture, but to my delight it looks a bit like a historic postcard,  just right for this season?

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_christmas.html

Christmas Tree for Animals

Isn't that a lovely idea? To choose a tree outside, on the street, in the garden or in a park or in the woods, and to turn it into a Christmas tree by decorating it with fruits and nuts, to give animals outside in the cold a special treat??

                                          " 'Sylvia,' he said suddenly, beckoning to her. 'Come take a look at this.'

She went to him and looked out the window. Just beyond the elms on the other side of the creek, she saw Agnes's Christmas tree, simply but beautifully adorned. As she watched, she detected movement, and suddenly a doe and fawn emerged from the woods and carefully picked their way through the crust that had formed on top of the snow. They approached the Christmas tree, and the doe stretched out her head to nibble a popcorn garland. Her fawn cautiously bit into an apple.

Sylvia's smile broadened as a flurry of motion heralded the arrival of a flock of chickadees. Soon other birds joined in the feast, and squirrels as well, busily harvesting the popcorn, fruits and nuts from the Christmas tree."

These lines are from the WONDERFUL book by Jennifer Chiaverini, "The Christmas Quilt", Simon & Schuster 2005

Happy Christmas Time!

Wearable Small Quilts

These are "real quilts": they consist of three layers of fabric, it's all cotton, handpieced and -quilted.

The "twig" has two little selfmade buttons and is 13 x 4 cm, 5,1" x 1,5",

the "flower" is 8 x 8 cm,  3,1" x 3,1"

They are fixed from inside with a special pin.

Windmill Quilt

I just finished this quilt. It is 1,38 x 2.04 m (1,5 x 2,2 yards), handmade, the batting is a warm 70%cotton-30%polyester-fleece and the back is a soft lavender cotton piece.

I think in a room it is really a point of energy, it's just what a windmill does, it is continually taking up the winds and is creating power and warmth with them, and the winds blow from all directions here... :-)

Maya Angelou

http://mayaangelou.com

Maya Angelou receives the American National Book Award today. 

What a wonderful lady she is!!

She delivered this fabulous poem in June 1995, at the 50th anniversary commemoration of the United Nations.

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it. 

Maya Angelou

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-brave-and-startling-truth

Night and Day

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

Steve Martin

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sunshine.html

Simplicity

Recently I had been talking to a lovely person who at one point said to me: " I like your quilted things very much, but it seems to be so difficult,  even if I could muster the time and patience - I could never make anything like that!!"  But NO!!! EVERYONE who is able to use his or her hands freely and who feels attracted to quilting and patchwork and is willing to invest some time and patience is able to produce a quilt or a smaller patchwork object!! 
So this is for her (and everyone else who is interested): 
All you need is simple everyday- material: fabrics, yarn, pins, an iron, a needle and (triangle) ruler and scissors, and for tracing templates: a pen (a dark one, and a white pencil for dark fabrics, also: the pen should not leave nasty stains on the top of the fabrics, especially when it comes to washing) , and off we go!! Everything else is optional!! Things can be so simple and therefore they often possess a very special charm!!

Here is the picture of a template for a simple square. The loveliest things can be produced with a pattern of assembled squares!! For the template you can use a simple piece of cardboard. However, when I know I will use the template often I use laminated paper, it's more durable.

The template is traced on the wrong sides of the pieces of fabric I wish to use (some seam allowance is necessary),  I secure the ends of every line I need to sew with pins, and now I just go along the marked lines, using a simple needle, strong enough yarn and a straight-forward stitch, or the machine, then I iron the seams  ...

... and a lovely piece of patchwork is produced!!

For example now: make a lovely down-to earth-cushion! There is not even any quilting required! Just assemble as many patches as you need, fold the piece, sew together along the edges - right side turned inwards -, leave a gap, then turn it, iron it, fill the form with anything you have at hand, I often use scraps or a woolen blanket which is no longer needed, close the gap: and here is a sweet little pillow! Or even a larger one!!

If you used the machine and narrow stitches you can cut freely through the assembled patches and probably you wish to form a cat-pillow like this one below. Tip: cut into the seam allowance along the curved parts of the seam several times (not too close to the seam itself), so that the fabric lies more smoothly when the form is turned to the right side.

I also love such simple placemats or wallhangings. For them you can go like this: you back the patchwork-piece with another piece of fabric, you sew them together along the sidelines - again: wrong side up -, leave a gap, turn the form, iron it, fill it with a made-to-measure thin piece of fabric, close the gap, and apply some simple quilting stitches to put the three layers of fabric firmly together.

This is important, too, I think: Do not worry overmuch about accuracy!  It's lovely when all the corners meet, but you will see that although you worked carefully, they sometimes just don't, and they don't always HAVE to! Again: I think a lot of charm lies in the individually crafted things, sometimes even more so when they are not perfectly manufactured.

"Simplicity in character, in manners, in style; in all things the supreme excellence is simplicity."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

http://www. brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/simplicity.html

For this wallhanging I modified the "Modified Spool"-pattern even further by cutting the spools in halves. It's all hand sewing and -quilting, dimensions are about 100 x 100 cm, 39" x 39".

I said it so often here and I can only repeat it again: I really love this fine and rare, traditional pattern, its combination of straight and curved lines, of right angles and twisted mirror images, of structure and spontaneity! 

"You must plan to be spontaneous."

David Hockney

  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/spontaneous.html

Spools

I'm very fascinated by this pattern. I did some research and didn't find many references to it. I only know now that it is a traditional pattern, I found a picture of a lovely quilt from 1880 showing this pattern in Jinny Beyer's wonderful book "Tessellation - Quilts entwerfen", she calls this pattern "Modified Spool" (and thankfully gives some instructions how to design the template), but mentions that it was also called "Applecore" or "Indian Hatchet". It also resembles the "Clamshell"- pattern, but it is always only a similarity, all these patterns mentioned above originally look more or less different. So, what becomes clear (and I searched the internet and all my Quilt-books, but still, I might be wrong here) is that this pattern was and is not widely used, and no wonder: it's for hand-sewing only, I find it impossible to use the machine here, even with larger pieces, all the curves don't fit when I try to assemble them with my machine - but then again, I'm not that good at machine-sewing in the first place. But all that makes it probably understandable why this pattern isn't that popular and even doesn't seem to have a proper name yet... I'll continue to call it "Spools", plus I will continue to use it for more projects, wallhangings, tablemats, quilts. As I said: I'm very fascinated by this pattern, I like that it's traditional and fine, that it is apparently rare, I like all these curves and small edges, I love the time and care it takes to put the pieces together and above all: I love when one curve meets the other and it all fits so nicely.

The detail above is from this tablemat:

Elizabeth Gilbert on "Creativity"

I love each of her sentences here, I think she is VERY right:

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Her latest book, "The Signature of All Things", is the first book I started to read all over again right after I have finished reading it for the first time. I find it absolutely fantastic.

And of course I love sentences in this book like:

"... she sewed up the rents in the fabric of her life quite as well as she could, and carried on."

"Spool"- Bookmarks

I so much love a good bookmark. I think and feel that it adds to the pleasure of reading a book in a profound way: it accompanies me during the entire process, it reminds me gently of the page where I stopped reading, it greets me beautifully when I get back to my book again after a break, it assumes the scent of the pages, I can hold and wring it when living through the most thrilling and heart-stopping passages... and it still looks good afterwards (hopefully)!

The book I'm currently reading and which is shown here with my new bookmarks is "The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm only halfway through but I can only say that it's been a long time that I had been so absolutely fascinated by a book. Since "Moby Dick" and "Cloud Atlas" I haven't had a book in my hands which I really don't want to go away from for a single minute. It is so excellently and expertly written, the story is so touching and timeless. The authoress takes my hands and leads me to worlds unknown and yet so familiar that reading this book is both an adventure and a homecoming.

 Also: this book is adorned with wonderful illustrations!

These bookmarks here came into being after I made the spool-flowers which can be seen in my post  below here. This is the same pattern, it's only used twice. My bookmarks consist of three layers of fabric like in a real quilt, they are sewn and quilted by hand (the machine would be completely useless here since it's all bows and tiny edges, it's a bit tricky to get that all done evenly).

Dimensions are 15 x 7,5 cm/ 6" x 3"

"Spool"- Flowers

As I'm always searching for and experimenting with different forms and shapes to make quilts which show a flower or a tree, I'm glad I found this pattern here to make flower-quilts: it came to me after I studied the book about Tessellation Quilts by Jinny Beyer (I talked about that book on September 7 here). The pattern is a tessellation and a variation of a "Spool"-pattern.

I love to make these flowers now in different sizes. 

I often fix the smaller ones loosely on cards so that  I can use them to make greeting cards then, but the flowers can be removed easily and then used everywhere, on a coat or a cushion or a bag.

Aachen Cathedral, Germany

I'm always very delighted to find lovely mosaics, they remind me of my beloved traditional quilt patterns, they all come from the same source! I took a trip to Aachen to see the Cathedral, and the mosaics there are absolutely stunning, they had been made between 1880 and 1913 by Venetian masters (and other artists from all over Europe). They decorate not only the floor in a gorgeous way, but also the walls and ceilings. I took lots and lots of pictures, here are some of them: