50 Hearts Jubilee

A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 50th birthday. Wow...when did that happen??? I certainly don't feel 50 but then what is 50? I loved Tammy's quilt for her 50th birthday so much that our quilt group made our own versions of her potholder quilt. But I knew I wanted to make my own jubilee quilt. So I thought about what block I would make. It has to work with 50 blocks and I did not want to make a large quilt. I want this to be a quilt I can hang and enjoy for years to come. So after having a Winnie the Pooh moment...think, think, think...I came up with hearts. 50 hearts...one for each year I have lived and loved.

Een paar weken geleden ben ik 50 geworden...hoe kan dat nou? Ik voel me geen 50 maar hoe moet dat nou voelen? Ik was helemaal gek op de jubileumquilt van Tammy. Deze quilt was zo leuk dat mijn quiltgroep een eigen versie van deze potholderquilt heeft gemaakt. Ik wilde ook mijn eigen jubileumquilt maken maar met welk patroon? Ik moest een patroon kiezen waarmee ik 50 blokken kon maken maar dat niet te groot zou worden om op te hangen.  

Vervolgens dacht ik aan 50 harten ...een voor elk jaar. 

I worked on it full swing while we were away for a few days over my birthday. I worked in the car, at the two B&Bs we stayed in, and later while away at Cranberry Cottage with a quilt friend. There were hearts showing up everywhere...even on a piece of cheesecake and on our coffee in a German cafe. *grins*

Ik heb hard gewerkt tijdens een paar dagen weg...in de auto, bij de B&Bs waar wij logeerden en later bij Cranberry Cottage toen ik een paar dagen ging quilten met een vriendin. Hartjes zijn overal te zien zelfs op een stukje kasekuchen en in de koffie bij een Duits cafe. :)

So far I have 15 hearts appliquéd and am loving making them. I keep a tray next to me on the couch to pick them up whenever I sit. 

Tot nu toe heb ik 15 hartjes geappliqueerd. Het is hartstikke leuk om te doen. Ik hou een dienblad  naast mij op de bank om steeds weer een paar steekjes te maken. 

Heidi

Moods 2014

While visiting Angie's lovely blog to look up her ripple pattern at the beginning of the year, I saw she started a fun new project. The crochet mood blanket was just right for the basket of yarn scraps that I intended to use up this year. Each day you crochet and add a square to the blanket using the color to describe your mood. I put aside my ripple project for now as I decided this would be too much fun to pass up. The ripple had to be put aside as I have been working on another blanket as a part of a CAL but more about that later.

Here is my mood blanket up to yesterday. Jos helped me using an Excel sheet to choose how long my rows would be. It would never come out just right with 365 blocks. I have 7 blocks left in the end. I am using them up in the blanket by making a larger block for my birthday, Jos' birthday and our anniversary. See the big block? It was for my birthday back on February 12th. 

This is the selection of yarn that I have left from previous blankets. First I created a list of colors and then gave a mood to each color. Funny but when I first came up with the list, my mother laughed and said "So you don't want to use the color" when I told her what mood some would be. I scraped the idea of bored since she was right about that. But so far I have not had any pink in my blanket either. *grins*

My Mood list:

Blue - sad

Pink - worried

Red - angry

Lilac - creative

Purple - lonely

Eggplant - very busy

Grey - tired or sick

Cream - balanced

Gold - inspired

Orange - blessed

Camel - uncertain

Beige - disconnected

Brown - happy or excited

Green - contented

Denim blue - connected

I have been asked when people see the blanket what brown is and why I picked it for being happy or excited. I love brown! It is a color that all colors work well with...it is the color of earth and all the beauty of trees and flowers that grow from it...it is the base from which our food grows...in short brown is a beautiful color to me. 

Thank you for still stopping by to visit when I was away for so long. I was happy to see comments from many of my old friends lately. We were very comforted by the many comments about Dagi crossing the rainbow bridge. He is so missed in our home. 

Heidi

An early Country Christmas.....

Spring is definately in the air here but still it an early Country Christmas as I finished my quilt at the beginning of February. Another UFO can be crossed off my list...woohoo!

Lente is in de lucht maar bij ons is het nog een klein beetje kerst. Begin februari heb ik mijn laatste steekje in mijn quilt gezet. Een affo voor mijn lijst!

This quilt was fun to do. I loved doing the quilting freehand to give it a country feeling. I did use a hera marker to be sure I got my lines in the outer borders from point to point. If you have never used one, I can highly recommend it. I even use them for tracing quilt stencils onto my quilts. 

Wat een leuke quilt project was dit! Ik heb het met de vrije hand gequilt. Echter heb ik een hera marker gebruikt om te zorgen dat ik goed in de hoek uitkwam voor de buitenste border maar verder alles gewoon gequilt zonder lijnen om een "landelijke sfeer" te houden in het quilten. 

I sometimes think I would like to quilt with only homespun fabrics. They give such a pretty country feel. 

Geweven stoffen zijn geweldig om te gebruiken...meteen een landelijk gevoel in de quilt. 

*** Dreaming of a Country Christmas *** 

Heidi

Saying goodbye to 2013.....

 

I am sorry that I have not been able to post the last installment of the Advent Quilt. My laptop has died and I have lost my latest information. I will be getting a new one later this week and hope to post the last patterns very soon after. 

One of the reasons I have not been online has been due to our dear cat Dagi who had to be put to sleep yesterday. He had just turned 16 and took a turn for the worse. We had to take him to the vet yesterday. He is now buried in our garden in a place my online friend calls Susan´s Corner. I am missing him terribly and Jos and I are heartbroken!

Master Mind´s Adagio 

Born December 21, 1997

Died December 30, 2013

Christmas bowl this year.....

Each season, I decorate my dough bowl. It is a great way to give an instant feeling of a season or holiday. This year, I put in springs of holly berries with pinecones around the collection of little pillows and pinkeeps. 

The quilt is one I made about 17 years ago. 

Heidi

Keeping those I love warm (part two).....

When I took Enny and Mary up to Cranberry Cottage in November, I realized that Enny had a hard time keeping warm even if it was not so cold outside. So when we got home I grabbed some tweedy, chunky yarn and made her some long wrist warmers to hopefully keep her warm. I wanted to make them in beige so she could use them with any color she was wearing. 

Then of course, I had to make some for Mary too. She wears black a great deal so I thought making the same wrist warmers in a finer yarn would be just right for her. How fun to see the exact same pattern influenced by which type of yarn you use. Both of them were very happy to have these to keep them warm. 

I myself have a number of pairs of wrist warmers and decided to make myself a blue pair to add to my collection of colors. I wanted a nice long top to fall well over my knuckles. I tried just making up a pattern as I went along. I was really pleased with how they turned out. 

Heidi

The Mystery of Christmas advent quilt - mini quilt hangers day 15 to 21

The third week of advent brings another 7 mini quilt hangers to add to your advent quilt. 

Here is another example of one of the advent quilts made in my quilt group. This is Wilma's quilt with all her numbers hanging and then her other side with all the patterns choose by the group. 

I just had to share one more photo she sent me as her sweet kitty decided he wanted to pose with her quilt. 

Here is Elly's quilt numbers...

...and her patterns on the other side. 

Heidi