Today I received 2 more lovely hearts.







This one is from Karen in Kentucky in wonderful soft tones, lace and little pearl seedbeads, Karen thank you for swapping with me!




The next one I swapped with Linda from NY. I just love the little butterflies, dragonfly and bee and the vivid colors. Linda, thanks so much!

Finished this Staphorst CQ block today, don't know what to add more at the moment.........
This block I received from the CQRR I was in and is pieced by Brigitte from Austria, have to embellish it by myself.

I received the lovely heart with birds I swapped with Ati in Norway,ain't it beautiful?

It is a pity that I don't have more time, otherwise I would love to have joined the 100 seamtreatments in 100 days..........
Yesterday I have done some stitching on another Staphorst block and came up with the left seamtreatment all on my one!

5 of my Staphorst hearts are swapped now.
nr. 1 is on it's way to Karen in the USA, nr. 2 to Linda in the USA, nr.4 goes far away to Maureen in Australia, nr. 5 goes to Candji in the USA and nr. 6 to Ati in Norway.
Nr. 8 I have sent out as a surprise for someone, so now I only have nr. 3 and 7 left to swap.

Here are the pictures of the hearts I finished last week, now the swapping can begin!

Back again from a short holiday at the beach, it was lovely but very hot, we had a heatwave here in Holland.
Managed to get 6 Crazy hearts done, still have to make some pictures, will show them later.
Here a picture from my garden, I just love dragonflies!

This week I joined the Chains of Hearts, an Australian based group, where International crazy patchworkers make and swap small hearts.
I already made and embellished these 2 hearts but want to make more to swap in the coming weeks, will keep you updated!











Looking back at my posts this week you can guess what my favorite color is! Next time I'll show you that I do also use other colors sometimes...

Today I've done some stitching on another Staphorst CQ block.
It is a seam treatment from An Encyclopedia of Crazy Quilt Stitches and Motifs from Linda Causee, nr. 81, Maidenhair Stitch with Lazy Daisy Stitch and French Knots.


And a picture of my doggie Daisy inbetween the daisies!

Back to CQ!

I am busy embellishing my Staphorst Crazy Quilt blocks. With this block I am at the point that I don't know what to add more. Think this
is difficult with CQ, knowing when to stop embellishing!


Maybe I can add some buttons later........

In December 2005 I joined a
5 Words Quilt Challenge.

It works like this: You send in 5 words just like all other participants.
Then the words get scrambled and you get back 5 other words, with
this words you have to make a quilt.

I received the next words:
BLUE, BUSH, COFFEE, FEVER and SPREAD

I can tell you that it wasn´t easy to combine these words!

Well, this is the final result...........

President BUSH lays in his bed under his BLUE and white SPREAD. He drank too much COFFEE that day and awoke with FEVER from a nightmare in which he was persuaded by screaming headlines............

You can see all 5 Words Quilts exhibited in July and August at Exquisity Patchwork in Vienna, Austria.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue


This are the first 2 blocks I made for the CBRR because I joined 2 rounds. In this blocks I used old fabrics from a Dutch town called Staphorst, where still a lot of people wear their traditional costumes. In a lot of my quilts I use Dutch traditional fabrics. For the size of the quilt I decided on 36 blocks, I will get 15 blocks back from the CBRR so I have to make and embellish 21 blocks myself. Here are some more blocks made by myself, will try to keep you updated with the embellishments I do.

For my birthday I got the "Beginner's guide to Silk Ribbon Embroidery" by Ann Cox. Here you see my first try on SRE. The block is from a blockswap on CQFor Newbies and made by Kathryn.

In february I decided to join a Crazy Block Round Robin. To get to know more about Crazy Quilting I joined a Yahoogroup called CQForNewbies and stepped into a whole new world.
Everyone was talking about BE, tatting, naked blocks, SRE, baggies and squishies, I had to learn a lot!
Now a few months later I just love to do Crazy Quilting, it is so much more creative than the sane quilting I did the last 15 years! My whole life has changed..............LOL, everywhere I am on the lookout for laces, buttons, trims, all kinds of threads, fancy fabrics etc. A bit difficult to find here in the Netherlands but luckely there is the Internet.
Some weeks ago I also made a trip to Canada and visited the Waterloo Quilt Festival, will show you some pictures next time, and during this trip my friends drove me to shops like Joanns and Mary Maxim in the USA. Here I have bought lots of beads and wonderful EdMar threads.

For the CBRR I have to embellish one block a month and sew one and then send it to the next participant. The theme I choose is Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. In a next post I´ll tell you more about it. Here some pictures of blocks I have embellished the last months, the themes are Night and day, Underwater, Summer and Grandmothers linencupboard.