Balloon Flight

 

Every summer we have to take farewell from some colleagues who have to leave Prague after being four years in charge and who have to take the post in another part of the world. This summer we have to say goodbye to a very nice colleague, whom we will miss very badly. Since begin of the year I bothered my head about a gift for him. No matter what I did, the inspiration just didn´t come, until he expressed the wish to take a balloon flight. In no time, a collective voucher was organised by our enterprising colleague Moni, but we felt, it was somehow… only a paper. We needed to add something nice, something tangible.  

And that's when I remembered, there must have been a quilt fabric panel with vintage illustrations of various vehicles and also hot air balloons in my fabric stash. The very evening the balloons were found. 

We did a combat meeting with Moni and decided, a binder cover would be the right thing.

First I had to sew a background for the two nice balloons. I had a packet of 10 inch fabric squares from my beloved Jinny Beyer in the right colour scheme, from greens to blues and greys, which would create a feeling of green landscape, sky and clouds.

As the Czech landscape is mostly hilly, I decided for free-cut curves.

The outcome of my sewing was, eeeh, a bit wavier than I expected. 

I needed a thorough help of my iron and it was clear, that the quilting must be quite dense.

Here my choice of threads.

The outcome was quite nice.

The two balloons were fused to dark blue linen and appliquéd on the background. I used free motion quilting and two shades of thread.

Small pictures were fused and appliquéd on the back side too.

 

The last sewing evening was dedicated to what I call “technical sewing”, which means creating pockets, preparing lining, and sewing all parts together. 

No matter how often I measure and try on the cover, I´m always very nervous, if anything would be accurate enough. Fortunately, it worked out this time.

Dear Franz, I wish you from all my heart only happy flights!

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Michaela

She Sews Sea Shells

 

My favorite e-shop Šití nití („Sewing with thread“) is open again! The new start is rather slow, there are some new fabrics and also some older ones on sale but nevertheless, they are back! I´m very happy because the choice of fabrics and individual taste of the owner of this shop is very similar to mine. The most important thing: she orders fabrics by Janet Wecker Frisch, one of my favourite artists.

Janet’s illustrations and her fabric design inspire me immensely. I just love her visual humour and fabulous details. I´m not able to create just something simple from her fabric pictures, I´m always tempted to add a bit of myself to the creations. Last but not least, I love her Halloween collections, they are simply the best I have ever seen.

Now, to get to why I´m happy today. The website "Šití nití" offers some older collections and I was able to buy three amazing pieces from the collection „She Sews Sea Shells“. I knew for sure that the fabrics would be nice, but they are just beautiful in reality.

 I´m one of those quilters, who pre-wash everything. I did so this time too. The beauties hang in the garden now, I can´t stop looking at them, I love them!

I use illustrations by J.Wecker Frisch quite often (also on these bags), here for example a pocket wall hanging for my niece

Happy stitching!

Michaela 

 

Bag No.49

 Do you remember the multi-colored log cabin (made from fabric selvages) with the raven in the center? If you believe it or not, it´s been exactly a year since I wrote the post. Yes, the raven had to wait until May of this year to be finally finished.

When I started, my goal was to try out as many stitches as possible. The embroidery was about half done when I had to interrupt the work due to other more urgent projects.

Somehow I didn´t manage to come to it again until two weeks ago. I finished the embroidery, using finally only 11 different stitches.

As I love sewing bags, it was clear that the raven is going to become a bag.

 The bag became actually quite a big one, but as one of my friends says: "Why should anyone want a small bag?" 

I love it!

Happy stitching

Michaela 

Finishing Zipper Pouches

I spent many pleasant evenings embroidering the panels with small scraps of fabrics by Cori Dantini.They are for sale at the spring fair and the aim was to create nice little things investing not much time. As always, I was not able to stop embellishing and ended up with cute creations, which have grown to my heart… Today I finished the pouches, I love them! I will see if I will be able to put them up for sale. I still have a week to decide :)

Let´s start with my favourite one (i love birds):

And my second favourite with the cute fox on the front  and a hedgehog on the backside:

Other small pouches:

 

 

I made also two big zippered bags with a pocket inside and outside as well:

  

 

 

 

Finally, an UFO had been finished - a zipper pouch in a very different style, sewn from selvedges of William Morris fabrics.

 

  Let´s hope it will be nice weather next Saturday at the fair!

Michaela