Dutch Tulips

I have admired Lucy's tulip quilt for some time, and recently started working on it.   I love the repro style and quirkiness of it, but I have to say I had a problem with the school bus orange.  Not my color at all, and yet I realized that the orange was the key to the whole quilt.  So I got out of my comfort zone, and gave it a try.  I am so glad I did !  I finished the top this afternoon, all the blocks were made from stash - except the school bus orange :-)   Lucy crazy pieced all her tulips, I made just a few, and used different blues for the others, the red fabric used for the center  has blue and orange swirls on it.  Pattern was from Quiltmania, although I drafted the center tulip pattern myself since it didn't appear to be on the pattern sheet.

Pochettes

It's raining here today, and has been all day - the perfect time to get out the sewing machine and have fun indoors !  Last week I posted about the house class we are doing, and the ladies teaching had made nice little gifts for the participants.  I decided it would be fun to bring something to share at the next meeting, so I made these little bags.  They were a lot of fun to make - and thanks go to Madame Plume de Lin for the great tutorial.  She has a couple of others too, with interesting and fun projects.  Natural linen, lining made of French General fabric, and trimmed with antique lace and mother of pearl buttons.
Es regnet hier schon den ganzen Tag, ideal also fuer einen Naehtag.  Ich habe diese kleinen Taschen als Mitbringsel fuer die naechste Haus-Klasse gemacht, da die Damen alles so nett eingerichtet hatten.
Schritt fuer Schritt wird das auf dem Blog von Plume de Lin erklaert.
Alors il pleut et pleut, et je suis restee a la maison - je voulais coudre ces jolies pochettes (tuto Plume de Lin) pour offrir aux copines du stage Maisons.

House Quilt

Who can resist a house quilt ?  Yesterday I took a class to make the cover quilt from the book Friendship Strips and Scraps by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket quilts.  It was in my favorite quilt shop in Clearwater, Country Quilts and Bears, and will be a 6 month project.  We had a great time, it is such a pleasure to be among friends doing something we all love to do. 

Here is Roni, our teacher, showing how she put her strips together.  It is so much fun choosing how to lay these out, and seeing how nice they look together.  It is hard for me to mix different types of prints, but in these blocks it makes them more interesting.  As always, Roni was well prepared for class and we were given cute little charms and needle cases.  It felt like getting presents when we opened our block and applique kits too !  Janet is in the background working on her doors and windows.

Roni even had a batik with window frames already in the print !

Here are my first two houses - the applique doors and windows are just laid out, they will be positioned properly and stitched down next.  We have lovely fabrics for our applique blocks, and will be swapping some too.  I think I will need to make two of these quilts !
Hope everyone is getting some stitching time today !