Lupine's Second Birthday

Two years ago, on August 13, 2010, I opened my Lupine-studio.

I consider my "Lupine" a successful enterprise because it makes me happy on a daily basis! 

Thus I have happiness to share with everyone who comes to me and is interested in "bringing things and persons together" (that's what I wrote on my card)... bringing things and persons together so that they form a lovely pattern in life and in quilts, 

oh, I love that idea.

There are so many ways to achieve that in life... and this is my way. I consider myself lucky to have found it!

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."

 Buddha

- if you are interested: for more information about me and my work, please go to my profile here on your right hand  and click on "Lupine" at the top of this site.

Butterfly

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. 

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

http://www.quotegarden.com/butterflies.html

Butterfly, patchwork-quilt with heavy paper, a wooden clothes pin is fixed upon the back
(15x20 cm)

To find ideas for the right butterfly patchwork-design I was happy to use the book 

"501 Quilt Blocks" , Better Homes and Gardens, a very rich and lovely book! 

Honeycombs

This is my latest quilt: an old-fashioned, practical household quilt, showing a traditional patchwork pattern, the honeycomb. I love the pattern very much, I like how everything fits so easily! Also, I took whatever fabrics I had at hand and combined them freely within the strips, and well, as it happens so very often, I am surprised that they - for example blue stripes and egg-plant-colored flowers - go together ok! I think they are all making a good match...

The quilt is made with cotton and linen, the batting is light wool. (1,40 x 1,80 m,  55" x 71") For the first time I have sewn the top completely with my machine, so I was able to finish this quilt in a relatively short time. The quilting is still done by hand, because I so much love the look of hand-made stitches.

The button in the middle is a gift from my family, it was bought in the Normandy, France, in Cambremer, at a lovely mosaic shop called "Elle-Mosaique".

... and I always attach a label:

Imperfection

tablecloth, with African fabrics, 80x80 cm,

I worked on it carefully, and it turned out to be completely uneven, but I like things that way.

Imperfection, combined with care and some "good vibrations", makes me feel comfortable.

Dancers

A dear friend sent me the link to one of the loveliest videos I have ever seen, and here I share it with you, enjoy! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Pwe-pA6TaZk

ein gutes Buch

"Ein gutes Buch hat kein Ende", hat Robert Frost einmal gesagt. Das, was erzählt wird, folgt aber gewundenen Wegen... und das ist jetzt von mir. :-)

Nur mal so ein Gedanke.

Sorry, sometimes it is easier for me to say something in German: I said that according to Robert Frost a good book doesn't have an ending, and I added that I just think that its plot follows winding ways.

Lovely Book Cover

I do not know anything about this book, but I LOVE the cover!

Good Question

If what the heart approves 

conforms to proper patterns,

then even if one's desires are many,

what harm would they be to good order?

Xun Zi

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/heart_11.html

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."

Robert Brault

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/enjoy_the_little_things-for_one_day_you_may_look/224543.html

Little Quilts

A bunch of keys.

Before:

and after:

and it still holds the coin for the shopping cart:

Small quilts can make a small difference! :-)

Haiku-Quilt

This Quilt shows my Haiku:

ICH SCHRIEB EINEN BRIEF

EIN STURM TRUG DIE SEITEN FORT

ABER ETWAS BLEIBT

The blue fabric in the middle part is more than 25 years old and I know from experience it will fade in time, and I welcome it, because I know some lovely blue will remain, just like it's said in my Haiku:

 something will remain after a storm has carried away all pages of a letter I once wrote -

I hope this quilt will look nicer and nicer with time going by!

(96 patches, machine- and hand-sewing, hand-quilting, 1,45m + 1,02m)

More about Haikus on my site:
http://flugblatt.blogspot.de

post from Dec 7, 2011

newly re-discovered

This is one of the paintings I made, it  hangs in a corner of my room and - although it's not small - I hardly noticed it for a long time. But then, sometimes,  I look at things with new eyes! 

Jane Austen's Home

"Mr.Elliott was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped."

(Jane Austen, Persuasion)

How much I love these lines! (And many more.)

Here are pictures of Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, UK.  There she lived from 1809 to 1817, the year of her death, together with her sister Cassandra and her mother. It was there that she wrote her novels "Mansfield Park", "Emma" and "Persuasion". "Sense and Sensibility" was written earlier, but not published until 1811. "Pride and Prejudice" was published 1813. So at Chawton Jane Austen seemed to have had a a very productive and presumably happy time, receiving applause from her readers and also establishing some modest financial security.

Her home is now a lovely museum. (Jane Austen's House Museum)

The following pictures give us a glimpse of her home and her lovely quilt, which she made together with her sister and her mother.

In 1811 Jane Austen wrote in a letter to her sister Cassandra:

"... have you remembered to collect pieces for the Patchwork? -- we are now at a standstill."

http://www.jasa.net.au/quilt.htm

Her quilt delights me so much that I try to make a quilt which shows just the same pattern. I wrote about it in my earlier posts here.

These are my first patches:

And this is Jane Austen's wonderful quilt and home:

All Jane-Austen's-Home-pictures by Miller'sImageBank. THANK YOU!!! ♡

"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!"

Jane Austen, Persuasion, published 1818

and this is a lovely colored drawing by Lilian Snelling,

made the same year in which "Persuasion" was published, 

one year after Jane Austen's death:

from: Diary 2012, The Royal Horticultural Society

Work In Progress

There are three main projects I'm working on right now. I love them all.

♡

My Haiku-Quilt. I know some letters can't be read easiliy, I want it to be this way. I want me (and readers) to be interested and to look closely and to WANT to understand things, and  - I think -
THEN we know! :-)

My complete Haiku can be found on my site:

 http://flugblatt.blogspot.de

(post from December 7, 2011)

My coverlet with hand-appliquéd leaves.

And my Jane-Austen-quilt. 

By the way: If anyone is interested I can fax my templates for this quilt. Just send me an e-mail then with your fax-address (MARIASmail@t-online.de)

(if you are interested: click on the image of your choice for a closer view)

Oh, I'm happy that my "Jane-Austen-Quilt" seems to turn out allright. 

Centerpiece

Well, I made some mistakes and miscalculations, it's all not that easy, but somehow now I have constructed the centerpiece of my quilt which I call 

"Jane-Austen-Quilt".

Very delightful work!

Jane - Austen - Quilt

Jane Austen seemed to have had a very productive time as a writer in the beginning of the 19th century. She also was a very accomplished seamstress and during that period she, her beloved sister Cassandra and her mother worked on a wonderful quilt.

Somehow I am drawn to her. I love her novels, the story of her life, I loved to watch the movie "Becoming Jane" with Anne Hathaway, and I love her quilt.

So now I decided to make a Jane-Austen-quilt. It will show her arrangement of diamonds, it will be made of floral and black-and-white spotted cotton fabrics, it will have nearly the same dimensions (236 x 155 cm) and a lovely centerpiece, it will be made of about 3000 pieces and it will be completely handmade.

Since each and every individually made quilt is unique I can't and don't want to make a quilt which tries to look as much as hers as possible... it wouldn't turn out right. But I can try to muster the same determination and the love for details as Jane Austen and her sister and her mother did in such an adorable way.

So, I made a start. After some research on the internet about the specifics and doing the maths I now have my templates ready and I found and cut my centerpiece as well as some diamonds.... This project will give me satisfaction and happiness for months and months and months and years to come. I will work on lots of other things, too, but the collecting of suitable fabrics (Jane Austen used 64 different fabrics!) and the construction of this quilt will be some kind of a steady "background melody" from now on.

For everyone who is interested, here are some wonderful and very informative sites about Jane Austen's quilt:

http://www.jasa.net.au/quilt.htm

http://www.jasa.net.au/quiltclark.htm

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/jane-austens-quilt/

http://www.rosaleeclark.com.au/making-janes-coverlet/jane-austen-quilt-pattern/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alisabethpix/3464487483/

Butterfly

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore

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

G is for Giraffes

A is for the Apes who danced between trees,

B for the Bear, disturbing the bees;

C is for the Clown who stood on his hands,

D for the Dolphins from far away lands;

E is for the Elephant, mighty and strong,

F for the Flags in the wind all day long;

G is for Giraffes who've escaped from the zoo,

H is for Hares saying how-do-you-do?

I is for an Island far out in the sea,

J is for Jaguars looking at me;

K is for the Kangoroo, handsome and bold,

L for the Lions whose fur glows like gold;

M is for the Mice with their long tails,

N for the Nutcracker whose bite never fails;

O is for the Orange trees that stand on the hill,

P is for the Pelican with his long bill;

Q is for Quinces, so yellow and round,

R is for the Roses climbing up from the ground;

S is for Salamander, creeping so slow,

T for the Table and my toys down below;

U is for Underwear, dried in the sun,

V is for Volcano, spitting fire like a gun;

W is for the Weasels, on their hind feet,

X is for Xylophone, making music so sweet;

Y is for Yeti, who lives in the snow,

Z for the Zebras who don't know where to go.

from: An Address Book For Children, by Monika Beisner, 

1978 Eel Pie Publishing, England