Plus Sign Baby Quilt

This quilt is a left-over scrap quilt.
I had bought the back ground fabric at Ikea, did not have quite enough, therefore I used another Ikea print for the center black fabric background cross. I had sewn a summer skirt for myself in July, well, I've sewn three. One with the black kitchen themed background and a skirt with a white Ikea fabric that I hand embellished. I will post pictures, but right now it is too cold...
I got the idea from this blog: https://weallsew.com/scrap-plus-quilt-along-week-1/

Good Fortune Mystery Quilt

These are my colors for the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt. Find all information here: http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/good-fortune-mystery.html
As I really loved the selected colors I chose to stay very close to her color choices, including the "tricky blue". I tried to replenish my stash of this color and in Joann's I found only 2 in the right shade. Of course there were many more blues there, just not quite the right shade. Before I had tried my luck in a quilt store, where I found another 2, lucky I had some in my stash.
The reds remind me of sealing lacquer and a  pendent a good Chinese friend had brought me from China. The greens look like different shades of Jade and the background fabric has cool undertones.
Right now I am sewing the orange strip sets using phone book pages. Not done yet, but so far I had all clues done by Thursday evening, neatly trimmed to the right size.

Here me sewing on my recently bought vintage Japanese Domestic sewing machine. I cut the background fabric into strips 1" bigger than the desired finished sized triangle square. Mark squares on the strip and zig-zag line diagonals.
Layer with a blue strip of fabric the same size. If the blue strip will not cover a whole square, cut the background fabric off at one of the squares and layer with another blue fabric. This is very efficient. After sewing on both sides of the diagonal drawn line, you will cut at all the drawn lines. Press triangles into squares, press toward the dark fabric. I used a bloc loc Triangle square ruler with a convenient grove to square up. Find more info here: http://blocloc.com/

Holiday baking

 After a day of Christmas Cookie baking.
Two girlfriends and I made cookies. We baked Spitzbuben, Zimtsterne, Brunsli, Mailänderli, Vanillekipferl, Gingebread Stars, and Lebkuchen.
Quite productive, but not enough, I later made some more and different kinds.

Birthday cake for my husband, a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.

And a Panettone for breakfast. It did look really good, but it had a big hole inside... I don't think I will bake another one really soon.

Graduations - and quilts to celebrate the occasion

Two special high schoolers that I know through very different channels, were graduating in 2018 from the same school.

I made two very different quilts for them:

One student had chosen the quilt "Icy Water" from the book Paper Pieced Modern by Amy Garro. The instructions were given for paper-piecing, but - I don't like traditional paper-piecing and used freezer paper to piece the quilt. That way instead of making all the those paper copies, I get by just drawing it out once, stacking 10 block sized freezer papers and using the untreaded sewing machine to copy the pattern.

The other quilt for my two year assistent at the German Saturday School. I chose a Bonnie Hunter quilt for him. My adaptation of "Virginia Bound" from her book "Scrap & Shirttails: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle. the Art of "Quilting Green"". I designed a different border using a newsprint fabric and his name and other words in the border. That block too was pieced with freezer paper and not traditionally paper-pieced.

Fair Isle Knitting

January I had to travel and see my daughter.
Over Christmas I had started a jacket in her favorite colors that I brought along to finish while helping her after surgery. It was finished and is one of the few pictures I have. The picture is taken outside when we went for lunch, she in her PJ's, as all other clothing would have pressed against her stitches.

 But I was also knitting something for myself:

I had started the Katherine of Aragon Jacket from Alice Starmore's book Tudor Roses. A lot of fun.
Both those projects were knitted using Knit Picks Palette yarn. It is soft and I love the fact that it comes in so many colors. The first picture shows the inside, after the steek is cut open, the second picture the start of the sleeve and the third me wearing it in San Francisco.

Sewing Machine Cover for Bernina 121

 This is my old Bernina 121. She used to be my grandmothers, though she didn't really sewing. She did mend, knit and I remember sewing with her on a hand-crank machine. My aunt and uncle found this machine at a flea market and bought it for her.
The 121 is a single hole free-arm machine with solid metal construction. You can drop the feed dogs. And the "gas" pedal is a knee pedal.
I love taking that machine to classes and decided to sew a nice cover for her. I also like to sew outside on the front porch area, watching the neighborhood....
The 121 wasn't made in big numbers because a very short time after the 125 came out, one of the first free-arm zick-zack machine. But for patchwork this single-hole machine is great.

 Here the cover placed over the machine. I didn't use batting, but the stuff intended to give bags more stability. I like that it has more body that way. Especially good for the thread "basket". A early version with batting was to flimsy to stay open and make it possible to deposit cut-off threads during sewing.

Isn't this a great California Spring sewing area?