Christmas Impressions

This year, we did something totally different for Christmas:  we traveled as a family to Germany to spend the time there, a big change from our usual Florida Christmases.  You may think this was an odd choice - leaving here where the weather is lovely this time of year, for a cold and wet climate. 

We had a special reason too - we now have a small family house for our vacations, and I was anxious that the kids should be able to visit it with us and help us get organized - which they did, and we are especially grateful to our son who did a lot of work outside clearing bushes and even cutting down a tree (no small problem, the tree was hanging over our garden from the edge of the forest)

We did take some time off too, as you can see - these photos are from Kaysersberg in Alsace, the birthplace of Albert Schweitzer.  Kaysersberg has a beautiful and famous Christmas market, spread throughout the small town.  Although it was a cold and wet day, we still enjoyed walking around.

The house decorations are lovely and understated.  Interesting arrangements of natural things and a few touches of color with ribbons are more usual than the flashing multicolored lights seen in the US.

This was especially beautiful as it started to get dark, the nativity in the square in front of the church.  There is a concert in the church each Sunday afternoon of Advent, but it gets very crowded and was full before we got there.

Our daughter got her wish for some snow, here is the church in our new village.  The village is a very nice and lively community, with a living Advent calendar in the days leading up to Christmas Eve.  We were invited to attend and really enjoyed the warm welcome and conversations with our new neighbors.

I took this picture because it reminded me of strength and resilience in the face of adversity - something I should think about more often.

This in front of the church.

And this is a small glimpse of our house and barn.  The house was built in 1898. 

A view of the village from the mountain behind our house.

The chapel on the mountain directly above our house (well, maybe not directly, a half hour steep climb !)

No tree this year for us, we were working on getting the basics set up, but we had to have a little Christmas atmosphere.

You may remember this quilt ? 

So here is our living room in candlelight.

Our first gift for our new house from Lou thank you so much, it is beautiful and just right - there is a niche in the wall and we put this lovely cross stitch in there.

The view from my bedroom window.  I love the church tower.  The bells chime each quarter hour, and count out the number of hours on each full hour after chiming all four quarters.  I woke up at night a lot at first, but then I got used to it and found it comforting. 

Happy New Year Bonne Annee Prosit Neujahr !

Happy New Year to all.  I know I am a day late, but we have only just arrived back from our trip to Germany.  More about that later today with some pictures.
For now, I am thinking about 2012 and what it may bring.  My wish to all of you is for Peace, Health and Happiness in the coming year. 

Christmas Mystery at Country Quilts 2011

Some of you must be quite familiar with my favorite quilt shop now, since I have posted about it several times over the past few years.  The Christmas Mystery has been going on now for 10 years, and I have done them all except one, and so have a fair collection of Christmas quilts (in various stages of completion LOL).  Yesterday we started at the usual time, and the ladies really outdid themselves with the packaging of the kits this year, presented very nicely in a pizza box in the order needed to use them.  I forgot to take a picture, but all was tied up with a ribbon and label, it looked so pretty.
I did finish my top during the class, thanks to our teacher (she is very competitive - yes Susan I mean you !) and I really like the colors, unusual for Christmas, very fresh and pretty.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves !

Pizza box kits

Ready to sew !

Have to shop too ;-)

Hard at work

Visiting and sewing

Eleanor working on her featherweight

The big reveal

 The photos do not do justice to the colors of the quilt - there is ice blue, royal blue, dark prussian blue, the sashing of blocks is dark green and the inner border is LIME green - the quilt is fresh and pretty, but the colors don't show well in the shop light.

Beautiful machine quilting

Wishing you a quiet and peaceful 2nd Advent

First of Advent

  Wishing everyone a very peaceful and pleasant first of Advent

I managed to complete a quilt top for a gift for my sister-in-law.  She doesn't read blogs so I am safe showing it to you ! I got it done just in time to send to the quilter for it to be back before our trip.

It is a fun pattern to make but a lot of stitching. This one is a good-sized lap quilt.  I am hoping that the many colors will fit in with her decor.

Next up will be working on the house applique some more.  That has been such a delight, I am enjoying the class and the friendship so much.
I also have a couple of Christmas quilts "not quite" finished, really silly not to have completed those by now.  One is a completed top, another has a small amount of applique still to do.  I am thinking about them again because next week is already the Christmas project day for this year.  I will post about that next week, it is my Christmas treat to myself each year.

Happy Thanksgiving !

Wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving

Antique Petassouns

Just recently I was able to add to my collection of petassouns.  These two are very firmly stuffed, finished with a bias, and have the traditional design elements.  I always wonder when I see an old piece about the person who made it, whether for their own child, or as a gift, where they lived and what their lives were like.  For things like this to survive so long, through two world wars and many generations, they must have been treasured.
I am still hoping to find a beautiful big "vane" one day.  However, I enjoy looking at how these were made, what the stitching is like, how they were finished.  There is as much variation in the old ones as we have today in terms of quality of stitching, etc. 
J'ai trouve ces deux petassouns pour ajouter a ma petite collection.  Ils sont tres bourres, avec une finition bias, aux motifs traditionaux.  Toujours quand je regarde ces ouvrages anciens je pense a la boutisseuse, si elle l'a fait pour son enfant, ou comme cadeau, ou elle habitait et les circonstances de sa vie.  On les a garde bien, pendant deux guerres mondiales et plusieurs generations. 
J'ai encore l'espoir que je trouverais une vane.  J'aime bien les regarder, apprendre comme on l'a fait, les finitions et la qualite du travail, comme aujourd'hui il y a beaucoup de variation.
Un bon dimanche a toutes

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 !

Two Quilts Finished !

I have had these two done for a few weeks, but the weather has been so bad here recently that I couldn't take pictures outside.  I have shown them before as tops, but now they have been quilted by Marlene at Lucky Sew and Sew, and I bound them right away.  It is a great feeling to have a few things finished !  It always takes me so long to make anything, usually because of handstitching.  However, this year I have actually started and finished a few things.  Photos aren't great, I was hoping so show some of the nice quilting.

Sewing Pouches

I love making these little sewing pouches, I have made quite a few over the last few years.  You can make them a little bigger to use as toilet bags as well, great because they wash beautifully.  I have two more to finish in these fabrics - I love them for boutis because they are just the right size to fit the long ball of yarn used for stuffing (not to mention my long needle !)

Petasson Finished !

For a while I have been working on a new petasson.  On my last trip to France, I was able to purchase a very old, very damaged petasson.  When I got back I used the old one to reproduce the design, adding some changes here and there.  The center had to be re-interpreted because of the damage, it was very hard to see exactly how the original motif was drawn.  I have just finished it, here are a few pictures.  I am really pleased that I was able to save the pattern, since the original was simply beyond any kind of repair.  It has worn through in so many places. 
I am also in the process of binding a couple of quilts I finished recently, and will post those when they're done.  I am so pleased to be finishing a few things !!  I already have a list of the next projects, of course !