An Adventure in Crazy Quilting - part two - At Friday evening I attended a lecture with Betty Pilsbury. She showed us the most beautiful antique Crazy Quilts, I so much loved to see them. Here you see some close ups.Isn't this fan beautiful?
When I still was only a "sane" quilter I loved to make quilts with an antique touch, but I had never seen a real antique Crazy Quilt before and never expected them being so colorful and lively! This is one of the beautiful Crazy Quilts Betty made herself. On Saturday I had my class with her. She learned us how to make these beautiful satin flowers and the SRE daisies and forget-me-nots and gave the most handsome hints and tips on sewing and stitching. I so much enjoyed this class!This is the example for the class, unluckely I have no good picture of the whole quilt, but believe me, it is awesome! More next time!

CQ Block for SendaiToday I don't have much time to write, so I only want to show you the block I made for the Hearts and Hands for Sendai, hope I find some time to embellish it this weekend, since we have a wedding and a birthday to attend. When you click on the banner next to this picture you can read more about the Sendai project. I found the fabric with the Geisha in my stash and surrounded it with silks and Japanese fabrics (the reds and the yellow on the right). Will tell more about the Adventure next time as promised!

An Adventure in Crazy Quilting - part one -
On April 7th we drove from New York City to Glastonbury, Connecticut, where I was going to attend the Adventure in Crazy Quilting. For me it was the first time to attend a Crazy Quilting retreat and what an adventure it was indeed!! Big compliments go to Maureen Greeson and her help Susan Elliott for the perfect organisation.Two days before I left to the USA I managed to finish (well, think I am still going to add some more to this quilt....) my "Austrian" Crazy Quilt, because I wanted to participate in the Show and Tell. The first evening we had "Meet and Greet" and we even had some patchwork cake! I'm sorry but I forgot to take a picture of it, so excited I was to finally meet my friend Beth from NYC. She brought me a present to remember my trip to New York. I was really touched when I got this quilt from her, once again thanks Beth for this wonderful gift!

It was great to put faces to the names from Crazy Quilters I already swapped with or read about on the Internet and at last meeting my "Dutch" friend Ing. During meet and greet we saw beautiful quilts, I especially liked the "English Royalty" quilt, made by Irene Leizer from the Baltimore Constellation Chapter.My first class on Friday was with Sharon Boggon from Australia. I had done 2 of Sharon's classes before on the Internet (Encrusted Crazy Quilting and Studio Journals) and learned so much from her. It was great to hear her talk about CQ in Australia and to see her band sampler and quilts in close-up! Wish I would have taken more pictures!Here you see Sharon with her "I dropped the button box" quilt. On Sharon's website you can read all about this sampler and the "button" Crazy Quilt. More next time!

Today some more pictures of our trip to New York City, these were all taken from the 86th floor of the Empire State BuildingRight next to the black building you see the New Yorker hotel we stayed in. View on the Chrysler Building.
And a view on lower Manhatten.
We also went to the American Museum of Natural History, we loved to see the giant dinosaurs.
I liked the way they exhibited these animals! On monday we went to the Moma, but it was way to busy. Afterwards we heard that most of the musea in NYC except the Moma are closed on that day........Luckely I got a good look at Van Gogh's Starry Night ( sorry for the bad picture, but the batteries of my camera died over there!)and my all time favorite Waterlilies made by Monet.I could show you so much more pictures, since I took over 900....

This is the last one from NYC, Times Square by night.Next time I will show you pictures and tell about the Adventure in Crazy Quilting in Glastonbury, CT

BACK HOME FROM A WONDERFUL TRIP TO THE USA!
The first week we stayed at the New Yorker Hotel at 8th Avenue, this was the view from our room at the 32th floor! And this was our view by night...ain't it beautiful? To the left we looked at the Chrysler Building. We have seen a lot of NYC, we went by subway to Battery Park and took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty: Then walked to Wall Street and to the memorial site of the WTC, which was very moving.


Here you see the rebuilding.From there we went to see St. Paul's Chapel and walked on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Then we went to Chinatown and Little Italy and through the Garment District back to the hotel where we had dinner at the Tick Tock diner.
Next time I'll tell you more about our trip!

Hearts and hands for Sendai

When I heard about the earthquake in Japan I immediately thought about my Crazy Quiltfriends Hideko and Emiko. Luckely we heard from both of them after a few days and
they are both OK although very worried about their family and relatives.

I am participating in a project dedicated to helping those affected by the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.
This project is open to the quilting community at large, so if you are interested, have a look here at the blog of CQI (Crazy Quilting International).
Hideko is one of the listmoms of this quiltgroup.
You can see the blocks that are already made over here.
Please join if you can, our help is needed for our Japanese CQ sisters!

Spring has definitely come!! Yesterday twins are born in the meadow in front of our home, aren't they cute?The weather is getting better, it was 14 o C today, although it is still freezing at night. The birds
have started singing again early in the morning and the daffodils start to bloom, it is good to see the nature awake!

Austrian Crazy QuiltMaybe you remember I am working on this Crazy quilt made from mainly traditional fabrics, that I got for my birthday from Helen in Austria. She challenged me to make a little quilt of these fabrics and kept the other half of the fabrics to make one herself.
These are the blocks I made for it, they are 6"each.I am trying to get this quilt finished to take with me to the USA for Show and Tell. These are a few of the additions I did this week. I have not much spare time, have been to Germany this week to buy spring/summer cloths for our shop, doing the bookkeeping in the evening and of course I am also still working 24 hours a week at the vacation parc for disabled.
In a moment back to work again because our shop is opened from 12.00 - 17.00 on the first Sunday of the month. It will be busy because there is a carnival procession (hope this is the right word in English, think you will know what I mean) in town, luckely the weather is OK, sunny but cold, about 3 o C. Have a nice Sunday!

Another CQ block finished......

The American flag fabric I bought some years ago during a vacation in Orlando at Joann's. I added some red velvet, white satin and blue silk, I also picked the embellishments in these colours. Think this block will become a great memory when coming back from my trip to the Adventure in Crazy Quilting!

Some weeks ago I received a badge to decorate for the Adventure in CQ in april. To be honest I am not that fond of pastels, so I decorated it yesterday in "Dutch"colours and this is the result.Also I picked the threads and embellishments for my "Egyptian" Crazy Quiltblock. In my stash I found some Oya flowers (on the right on the picture) made by Rengin in Turkey, I think they will look great on the block!

For my lessons with Sharon Boggon in April I have to bring two 8 inch crazy quiltblocks. This is the first one I made this week.At first I didn't know what colours to choose, but then I saw the revolt against President Mubarak in Egypt on TV and I remembered a little piece of this "Egyptian" fabric in my stash.
I have added fabrics in gold, turquoise, middle and dark brown and dark red to it.
Tomorrow I am going to search for embellishments in this colours. It is bitter cold again here in Holland and even some snow is expected. Weather to stay inside on your free Sunday..........

The last fabric pages...
I was behind with making this fabric page for November for Lise in Denmark. Her theme is (as you can imagine....LOL) doors. It is called "a rainy day".
I sewed some iridescent beads to it for raindrops, it is hard to see on the picture. The next page is the february page for Claudia in Austria. She asked for a landscape and I made her Dutch tulip fields. Maybe you remember I made almost the same for Margreet. Now this serie of fabric pages is finished and I will receive the last page around the 15th also. Also I have to decide to make a fabricbook of them or not. The pages are hanging on the wall of my sewingroom and look so great together......
Also I like to show you my new teapot and mugs, just started collecting this "Pip"dinnerware
in my favorite turquoise color. I love it!

January fabric pages This is the December page I made for Wendy in Australia, I was already worrying that this one got lost also, but luckely it arrived after a travel of 6 weeks....I took the picture in the evening,
so it doesn't show the right colors of this Victorian fabric page.
I made this Chinese lantarn for Maureen in Australia, she asked for an Oriëntal theme. Luckely this page arrived within a week!

New fabric pages....
Maybe you remember that I sent out a fabric page to Ritva in Finland some months ago that got lost. This is the new page I made for her and luckely it arrived..... Her theme is art nouveau and I used a print from a card I bought in France long time ago for the middle and surrounded it with matching fabrics, old lace, a crocheted piece and some crazy stitching. The colors of the picture doesn't do it justice, but I had to make the picture in the evening with not much light. I received this week this beautiful felted fabric page from Marja in Holland, ain't it lovely?