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Thursday 28 February 2013

Lago Maggiore Quilt - Afghanistan Inspiration

In my 13.08.2012 post I said that I would show what I've been up to in the year I stopped writing this blog. Recently my Lago Maggiore Quilt has come into my hands again and now I'll explain to you why. Here are some photos of my quilt:


The quilt was originally made in occasion of an exhibition called  "Afghanistan Inspiration" in 2011, a touring exhibition that stopped on Lake Maggiore too, thanks to Francesca Miglierina from Tessilesa's hard work. She in fact not only organised everything to make it possible for "Afghanistan Inspiration" to be exhibited in the Museo Internazionale Design Ceramico in Cerro di Laveno Mombello, she also had quilts on show in all the town's shop windows and asked her students to make quilts dedicated to the theme of water and the lake (Progetto Acqua e Lago). The quilts had to be 150 cm long, 15 cm wide.


My Lago Maggiore quilt uses different techniques such as "Shanghai" for the beach part with covered buttons applied as stones and Raku stones too. The central part of the quilt uses a cut-out technique to represent the waves on the Lake. In the top part of the quilt the mountains are made using the "tagliatelle" technique and the sun is a crazy log cabin that expands into the sky. Using a lot of Shantung fabric reproduces the effect of the sun's light reflected on Lake Maggiore's landscape.


The "Shanghai", "Tagliatelle" and cut-out techniques were all learnt during Roberta Sperandio's fantastic courses. The crazy log cabin I learnt from Aneela Hoey's "Crazy Scrappy quilt a long" (see the button on the right!). The Raku buttons were made (one was made by Rossella!) during  a laboratory organised the day of the opening of the exhibition at the Museo Internazione Design Ceramico by the energetic Atelier Capricorno. It was a great experience making pieces to add to our quilts using this ancient technique.


Thanks to Sabrina Colonna, Delegate for Quilt Italia in Lombardia, some of the quilts from the project Water and Lake were on show at Quilt Italia's stand at Bergamo Creattiva from the 15th to the 17th of February. There's some photos of the stand on Sabrina's interesting blog, well worth reading! 

I will post some photos of the "Afghanistan Inspiration" exhibition soon with works from all over Europe. Visit oneearthtextiles for more information.

Tuesday 26 February 2013

Feedback

I am very pleased to see that Fuxia from Firenze, I spoke about in my second post dedicated Bergamo Creattiva, named my blog in their Facebook page. I see they have come up with some other very interesting novelties for Spring/Summer, an explosion of flowers:

Foto: Il Piccolo Spillone e' tornato!!!

A very creative group!

Foto: Modello Estivo!!!

I have also received an interesting mail from Marsha at The Country Schoolhouse about their Twister templates, I spoke about in my pinwheels post. If you look on Google Images you'll find a lot of quilts made with these templates, with different effects. I'm looking forward to making my Pinwheel quilt! Marsha wrote to me that "the books that go along with it do help to answer some of the questions that come up and give you a lot more ideas on projects to do.  They go in a sequence where one book builds upon the skill of the previous one....so they increase in difficulty.  I did it that way so people could be more challenged as they go on if they want to be.  I also like to include ideas so people can work on doing their own patterns too."
Here's a photo of the template in case you've never seen one. It's very sturdy and... clever! They come in different sizes too. In my area Tessilesa sells them, even on-line.






Monday 25 February 2013

Lucy's play cube

As I was speaking about Aneela Hoey and how I love her fabric, I remembered that I made another special present for Lucy this time using "a walk in the woods" for Moda:


It's a play cube with some ribbon and trims from my stash. The "handmade with love" ribbon came as a gift with an issue of CrossStitcher and the pink polka dot ribbon is from Greengate. In a future post I will tell about this very special (and ever growing) stash I have!
Luckily Ella personally picked the fabric to use for each side of the play cube because there was so much choice I was having difficulty choosing. And this is the result: a very soft and pretty play cube that "lives" in Lucy's bed.






In case you're wondering, it's been snowing today!

Friday 22 February 2013

Baby Lucy

You have met Ella and here's Lucy! She is a year old now and in this photo she was just two days old! She's sleeping snugly under the baby quilt I managed to make for her just before her birth.


Here we were still in the hospital and you have no idea how much this quilt cheered me up. It was wonderful to wrap her up in it as we moved around the ward. This quilt makes me think about the joy of playing... 


When I'll get round to ironing it I'll show you what the other side looks like because there's a surprise!

The fabric, many will already know, is "Sherbet Pips" by Aneela Hoey for Moda. I fell in love with Aneela Hoey's fabric as soon as I first saw it and in the meantime have also fallen for "A walk in the woods" and "Sew Stitchy"... Now she's out with Posy and I really like "Story" and "Ditsy". I hope one day to buy a "Sew Stitchy" charm pack because I have this idea for making a sewing bag for patchwork blocks.

You must go and see Aneela Hoey's blog comfortstitching, I've been reading it for a while now and, even though I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her, it's as though she's let you become her friend and shown you inside her house.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Creattiva Bergamo and my favourite stands (Part 2)

Creattiva Bergamo is coming up in a few days time, so I better get a move on and tell you more about my favourite stands...

There's Fuxia di Morelli Pamela from Firenze (Pad. A n° 12, 14), who sell fantastic felties. The girls at the stand are really nice and they'll give you good ideas on how to use all the materials they sell. I fell in love with their lollipops and fairy cakes:


This is what I made with some of them: a Candy Mobile for my daughter Lucy to look at while I'm changing her nappy!


Filomania (Pad. A,Pad. B n° 69, 113, 115, 117, 119, 81, 83, 85, 87) are also extremely helpful, I had a lot of questions to ask them about laminated material and they took time to explain things to me even though there was a crowd at their stand. They even gave me for free a pattern for a bag they had on show there as an example and that I really liked. 






For kits I like To-do, they always have something interesting and easy to make. The Decoupatchwork kits are good and the patterns are original. Go and see their on-line catalogue. This is a felt kit - I adore a Matrioska (or Babushka)!



My latest find so far is DottyRose: don't miss them if you like Tilda, because they have a very wide selection of her fabric (new and old collections). 
They also have other fabric which at the moment I cannot find anywhere in my area such as Minky Dot Cuddle Dimple fabric. It's so soft you just want to cuddle it and make something for a baby out of it.



I hope I've given you some ideas and that now you really want to go and find your own favourite stands!

Thursday 7 February 2013

Creattiva Bergamo and my favourite stands (Part 1)

If you're going to Creattiva Bergamo for the first time (from the 15th to the 17th of February, see my previous post) or still haven't decided whether to go or not, then let me tell you about my favourite stands.

Let me see, where can I start? How about Savoir Faire "il salotto delle idee", which is also a shop in Bergamo (see this blog for some photos of the shop). A very nice and helpful group of people working there and I think it's a family run business. They stock Kaffe Fassett, which is really hard to find around here. In fact I still haven't found a shop selling this fabric and am always looking at what's on offer on Internet. Look at this lovely packet of fat quarters - Curio by Basic Grey for Moda - in a pretty little bundle...



You must not miss the fantastic stand of Manfred Gerhardt (from Germany - Pad. A n° 171, 173) with the most incredible selection of fancy trims and ribbons I have ever seen. His stand is self service (unbelievable!) which means you can hang around forever looking and looking again to your hearts content! Just remember not to get carried away!



I must mention Roberta de Marchi from Lecco (Pad. A n° 77, 79): the stand is beautiful to look at and the choice of linens is really good.


For good value in my continuous search for self cover buttons at a decent price I like Le Coccole di Maria Gio (Pad. B n° 186, 188). Well I won't show you a picture of those, we know what they look like. Instead I'll show you this:



You can make necklaces or bracelets with this jersey strip or... I haven't decided what yet but I'm sure one day I'll think of something and it will be just what I need!

2nd part of this post coming up soon!









Monday 4 February 2013

Coudre c'est facile and my Christmas decorations


I haven't shown you my Christmas decorations yet... I know it's a bit late, but anyway you might like to see them and they're not that "Christmassy"!


As you can see from the bunting, it's been a bit windy lately! The birds are not "flour of my sack" as you'd say in Italian, that is I didn't create them from scratch. They are from a pattern in the magazine Coudre c'est facile, issue n. 15 Novembre/Décembre 2012:


It's a really good French magazine with all sorts of projects from clothes to the brilliant "Le Carnet du Net" showing you some great creations to buy (or just look at!) on Internet. The explanations are really clear even for somebody like me who can't speak French. If I want to be sure I've understood everything right I ask my Mum if she can translate it for me!


Anyway, coming back to my birds, I used the pattern in Coudre to make them and some country style Christmas fabric and I'm quite pleased with the result. I would really like to make one with the wood stand but have to ask my Dad if he's got a branch of silver beech to cut for me! I wouldn't mind making some for Easter too, choosing a suitable fabric.


You really have to see the next issue of Coudre c'est facile because there are some very pretty Liberty purses I'm itching to make, I'll show you in a future post.



And, to finish off, who doesn't like Candy Sticks? A little bit of Washi tape saves me from drilling a hole in the front door! This masking tape is mt deco by Kamoi Kakoshi Co., Ltd (www.masking-tape.jp).