Bag No.62 - In the Garden

In the early spring 2022, I worked on a small series of quilts for the PPM Quilt Show Brno called „Fields, Meadows and Gardens“. I started only in January and the time was really short as the PPM Quilt Show takes place traditionally in April. I counted days, even hours which I could spend on one quilt. Fortunately, I was able to stick to the time schedule and I worked even faster so I had plenty of time for the last quilt. It was the quilt I called „In the Garden“. I had no thorough plan, I just let my fingers work. The plants grew under my hands and got buds and flowers. I enjoyed the work enormously, I liked the outcome then and I still do.

After being shown at some exhibitions, the quilt came back home. Therefore I could fulfill my colleague's wish to make her daughter a bag from this quilt. I liked working with the quilt again and I especially love the fact that the quilt will be „exhibited“ every day when carrying the books to school.

 

Happy stitching!

Michaela 

Christmas Preparations 2023

 

I love Advent time. I love lighting up candles, meeting friends, filling advent calendars with sweets, preparing small gifts for friends and colleagues, and making greeting cards. (Yes, we are old-fashioned and still send handmade cards by post…). I love the house smelling like gingerbread. 

I happened to get some beautiful Christmas and winter panels by Anni Downs, Cori Dantini, and Anita Jeram. All of them are absolutely cute and inviting for adding patchwork, embroidery, quilting an embellishing. There is not surprising that I planned sewing wall hanging advent calendars with them. Nevertheless my planes were revealed far too optimistic and clashing with my work duties, therefore I decided to lay them aside for next year (I should definitely start much earlier than in October) and sew some advent bags only. I used motifs by Anni Downs and Dear Stella, appliquéd on linen. They turned out quite nicely. 

In November I took part in a nice project of Bohemia Patchwork Club. All members were asked to sew five Christmas ornaments in classical Christmas colours. Almost 300 ornaments were then sent to the exhibition ground Brno, where they decorated a Christmas tree with them. It is a kind of invitation to the international quilt exhibition PPM Quilt Show Brno. 

Here is my contribution:

I used the EPP Pattern "Kamener Geflecht" by Regina Grewe.

For our colleagues and friends, I made small cushions filled with wool fleece and spice – cinnamon and cloves. They are great to use as key fobs but they look nice on Christmas trees. They are great to use them as key fobs but they look nicely also on Christmas tree.

Happy advent time!

Michaela 

Baroque Monstrance

As I mentioned before, I´m a member of two clubs. One of them is the local „Ladies Club“, which unites women of different ages, who love sewing, quilting, embroidering, knitting, and simply any kind of handwork.

The other one, the "Bohemia Patchwork klub", seated in Prague, is a patchwork and quilting club consisting of the classical patchwork section and the section of contemporary quilting (don´t ask me please which one I do belong to, I´m somewhere in between…).

At the beginning of 2023, the Bohemia Patchwork klub came up with a challenge for its members called „Baroque“. The quilt collection made within this challenge is going to be exhibited in June in a baroque area near Prague. After long thinking about the topic I finally decided to join the challenge with a quilt called „Baroque Monstrance“, despite the fact that I never sew big wall hangings.

It took longer than expected, but I finished it in due time.

For the background and border I used linen, for the monstrance I used golden curtain fabric and synthetic organza. A silk scarf was sacrificed for making the decorations.

I quite like the result but I'm also really happy to get back to smaller projects. I just don't have enough patience for these big quilts:)

Happy stitching!

Michaela   

Bag No.57 - Raven

The Raven quilt was made in spring 2020 as a combination of machine and hand sewing on natural linen. The tree is made in reverse appliqué with machine quilted raw edges, the raven himself is a nice picture from a commercial cloth. I used fusible appliqué and the bird is machine and hand quilted. The quilt was originally a part of a series of small quilts with bird motifs to be exhibited on Prague Patchwork Meeting 2020. But covid pandemic changed everything and the raven and the other birds had to wait till April 2022, when they were finally shown in my small gallery on PPM Quilt Show Brno 2022. 

 

With my dear friend Hella in Brno, 2022

From all the bird creations I liked the raven the most. Therefore I decided to let him fly with me every day. He became a really nice big bag for my everyday use.

 

Happy stitching!

Michaela

Eleven bags

 

Some weeks ago, I visited my favorite Aja Votrubcová patchwork store in Prague. I was looking for a nice fabric for sewing advent bags. I wanted Quilters Shadow in holiday red and some thin linen. That was the plan, but I immediately noticed the newly arrived heavy linens, a great basic for my beloved shopping bags. I couldn´t resist. I went home with a hefty (and expensive) bag full of happiness.

At home, I prewashed the linen first and started calculating how many and how big the bags would be. In the end, there were eleven!

I worked in my favorite technique: first, I laid and quilted a collage background, then ironed a fusible appliqué on it and quilted it by machine. As a final touch, I added lace and buttons.

Eleven bags means 22 handles!

Here they are. Two of them with Cori Dantini fabrics:

With the other ones I used two beautiful panels, which I bought some time ago not knowing who the designer was: 

Some of my favorite details:

Yesterday evening, the last bag was finally completed. 

Suddenly I felt, they lacked something, I missed the icing on the cake. A badge!  I used some scraps for sewing the badges and embellished them with a Tim Holz token. I´m satisfied now.

The final inspection by Norioka:

Happy stitching!

Michaela