Wabi Sabi Threads

I missed this month of Softies again.

I have been postponing sewing a cat for A month of Softies, and having to do real life work last weekend made me miss the deadline again.

I really liked this month's theme. I had some sketches that I made while I was in Holland that I tought that could be useful for this months. I love cats and have tons of ideas, but...

This morning after making the real life deadline I could spend some time surfing the web, and seeing the wonderfuls Cats that everybody have done only made things worse.

I'm madly in love with Wee's Buttercup and Sunshine, in awe with Loobylu's Cat Factory, impressed by Mimi's knitted cats and inspired by Ervilha's Softie. I really love them. I think that I'm going to start collecting Cats.

And this is only the tip of the Iceberg, I can't wait to see the Gallery of the Project.

Knitted Flowers

Mimi was wondering if I was overwhelmed at having to put all the blocks together, well the answer to that question is that I’m just trying to ignore that the enormous task have to be done. But I have it on the back on my mind and tonight while the alarm clock was buzzing (I’m working this weekend) I have a wonderful idea about mounting the quilt. So as soon as I get some spare time (I’m working this weekend, did I tell you?) I can start sewing them.

To all of you that have written offering help and I have not answered back please be patient. Help is needed but I need to organize ressources.

Life is really interferring in dollmaking or craftmaking, I’m missing my dollmaking badly.

The only thing that I manage to do is some knitting, at lunch time, conmuting, before going to work. I can  pick my knitting for fve minutes, knit a few rows and just drop it. I can’t do that with dollmaking or any other craft I need tons of stuff, supplies, fabrics and beads just to pick the simpler colour scheme, so in five minutes I only get to open all the boxes, and get an untidy room.

Alice Azul’s block inspired my search of knitted flowers, so far I have only been able  to find a couple of patterns. Two flower patterns at  On my mind, a rounded petal flower at Frogpond and some roses at Knitty (scroll the page until you arrive to the flowers). Most flowers are crocheted, I don’t have nothing against it, but I don’t know how to crochet and right now I just can’t handle learning a new craft.

Paper Pieced Quilt

Via Sharon B. I found Becka's Tsunami Block. She made it using the paper pieced technique. In her words:

"paper piecing is a way of making intricate or complicated designs easy to stitch"

So I have to found more about this unknown technique:

At her site there is a link to  paperpanache.com a commercial site that also shares lots of free patterns for this technique. Please take a look, my favourites are Heart, summer sherbert, support ribbon and Postcards

To try Paper piecing: "How to Paper Piece - Step by Step" .pdf and "Cutting the fabric for size and angles" .pdf from quiltseeds.com. You can also find some free patterns here, check her licorice pattern.

Wow I'm learning a lot!!!

Crazy quilting

At  http://www.flickr.com/groups/tsunamiquilt there are some fine samples of embellished Crazy quilting.

For those of you that may be interested in this but don't have a clue of where to start I have collected some links.

Crazy quilting began at victorian times. Read some historical facts here

First step it's to construct the pieced block: Here is a one page lesson on building the block. If you want a more extensive block building tutorial check this step by step tutorial (full of links)

Second step embellishment: Now you'll have to choose from a large amount of different techniques from the classic embroidery to the most technologhical Image transfering.

For embroidery I'll recommend Sharon B.'s extensive Stitch Collection. You can see very good quality pictures of each technique explained, and there are some stitch combinations for Crazy Quilting. Of course check her galleries for some eye candy (1, 2, 3 and 4), and her exhaustive blog for everything textil related. And of course you can see her contribution to the Tsunami Quilt here

... these links are only the tip of the iceberg, there are loads of information on the web, just try a search at google.com

They are here...

 

Mail has some surprises for me today. You can see them at http://www.flickr.com/groups/tsunamiquilt/

More blocks...

You can see more pics of blocks here. If you have a pick of your block and want to add it to the group but don't like to register send it to me.

A Flickr Group

We are having a lots of mails dealing with the Quilt and I hope to get some blocks soon.

I have created a flickr Group to share pics of the quilt. It's not needed to be a member but I have tought that it's an easy way to share pics.

If you don't want to become a flickr member but would like to share your creation email a picture and I'll post it

Christmas gifts

I forgot that I never showed pics of the throws that I made as Christmas Gifts.

The reason is that the pictures that I have don't show the gorgeous silk and velvet fabrics, and the ensemble looks fluffy and seems uneven.

But I wanted to show the whole piece, and made some pics from the other side of the street.

The brownish stripes are velvet and the rectangles are silk, embroidered, striped or plain fabric. The blue-brown thrown is much prettier in real life that the reddish one, but the reddish one is more photogenic .

I have to take pics of them and the velma bag

It's working!!!

Well...the quilt is growing in the net as well as in real life.

In real life Esther and myself have joined efforts, now she is the writer, PR and strength of the group.

You will not believe the amount of things she is doing to make this bigger and bigger.

We will be updating the site over the weekend.

And around the web you can already see some blocks:

1. Mimi Kirchner's
2. Tania's
3. Sharon Boggon's

I have also been receiving a lot of mail about it, and some blocks are on the mail NOW, this is so exciting...I hope that we can build a wonderful quilt together.

So please give it a try. Don't let the deadline worry you. We will work it out. Just let me know that you are making a block.

Are you lacking inspiration? I have found a quilt block that I think that could be inspiring. It's on the last page of this .pdf It will help you get out of the squareness os the square block. It's from Threads Magazine and there are also some nice articles about embellishments. I'm sure that you'll like to try some of these techniques:

• Stenciling Workshop
• Lush, Embossed Velvet
• Creative Surface Design: Stamping
• Dyeing with Bleach
• Knotted Fabric Buttons and Beads

All these techniques could be used on your block, but I'm sure that you can use them in many, many other places.

Knitting Meetup

Yesterday we hold an extra knitting meetup. I come back home really late and a bit dizzy. It's amazing the amount of things that I ignore about knitting. I finally found out the differences among fair isle and intarsia and got to meet another knitter in Madrid.

As a group project we are trying to develop a blog about knitting in Spanish. I had to add my Moebius Scarf Step by Step Tutorial... and of course a lot of work needs to be done regarding the Tsunami Quilt!!!