This is the title of an exhibition by Mrs Channah Zwaaf. Her mother was a Dutch Jewess who made a mixed marriage. The title of the exhibition refers to the fact that little Channah discovered that her mother was a Jew when the German occupier obbliged her mother to wear the star. Her marriage saved her mother but the rest of her family never came back.
Mrs Zwaaf is an accomplished pianist. She started painting later in life.
These aquarels depict twelve Jewish feasts.
A week ago I ordered the complete series of Masterpiece-Superior threads from Barnyarns and they were delivered today. Seeing all those wonderful colours together and thinking aboutr all the things I will be able to do with them always makes me very happy. Before they arrived I had been wondering about how I would store them and hadn’t yet found a solution. Happy surprise: the threads came in two thread storage containers, courtesy of Barnyarns. Thank you!
The finished quilt, Butterflybaby! The photographs are hidden under the butterflies. My grandson Koen posed for the picture I used to make the silhouette of the baby.
Butterflybaby
As you can see on the babyquilts page of my site, I have started a tradition of making a quilt for every baby that is born into our family. I try to use the card the parents send to announce the birth as a source of inspiration and combine that with what I know about the colours in the baby’s room and pictures of the newborn, his/her family (including pets), funny presents, etc, to make a quilt. I originally intended them for the crib but they all hang the quilts on the wall. That’s an advantage because I can be a little more adventurous with the embellishments. The youngest addition to our family is my nephew Morris, he was born in May and is still waiting for his quilt (or rather, his parents are waiting, I don’t think Morris is at all bothered). He’s my youngest sister’s son and she made it really hard for me this time. The card was a completely different style and colour from the cards she sent for her daughters, I would never have guessed it was hers. The colour was different too, check out her bedquilt on the ‘other’ page and the babyquilts of Anna and Julia. I had been thinking in purples and greens before I got the card but that went out the window when I received it:
I did a lot of sampling, colours, sketches, babies, butterflies, then I had to look through something like a thousand pictures my sister had given me to find the ones I wanted to use. I also wanted to use my new free motion quilting skills (thanks to my wonderful new Janome Horizon sewing machine) on this quilt. Up to now I have mostly stitched straight lines of quilting, my old sewing machine did not take kindly to anything more challenging than that. This is the fabric I used:
And now the quilt is finished. I’ll show you in my next post…
It’s been a very busy week, hardly had any time to breathe, let alone write on my blog. So, a quick update.
Last Tuesday I went to talk to the owner of one of the local quilt-shops (De Witte Pimpernel)about starting a children’s course. While I was there we had a visit from a journalist from the local paper who wanted to write an article about quilt-shops. She was so enthusiastic about the idea for a children’s course that she wrote us a great article in Friday’s paper, including a photo of the shop with Ria (the owner of the shop) and yours truly. Getting free publicity is wonderful but we still had a course to put together in time for the Open Day at the shop on Saturday. Despite the fact that absolutely everything and everyone seemed to conspire against us (unexpected visits, the weather, you name it), we managed to finish everything just in time.
The Open Day was a great success. We had a lot of visitors interested in the various courses on offer. I had a wonderful time talking to all these people about the wonderful world of quilting. Some of the ladies were very interested in the children’s course. Not for their children though, they wanted to do it themselves! So now I have to write an adapted version of my course for adults. It looks like I have a busy autumn ahead!
There was also a lot of interest for my needle-felting work so I think I’ll be teaching a class with the embellisher (in Dutch: punchmachine) as well. Isn’t it great to be able to share what you love doing with others?
One of the great things about the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham is that there are so many great lectures, workshops and masterclasses to choose from. This year I went to four very interesting lectures and one Masterclass. It was Threadpainting with Pam Holland. Pam is a wonderful teacher who shares all the tips and tricks of her work with her students and I had a great time and learnt a lot.
The basis of a Threadpainting is a photograph printed on fabric. This is mine:
Iron fusible web to the fabric photo and then iron this onto the background fabric you want to use. Then make a quilt-sandwich. This is where the real work starts. With the sewingmachine and threads in the colours of your photograph you start ‘painting’ the elements in your picture. This is what mine looked like at the end of the masterclass:
The next picture is a close-up so you can see the threads:
You can also see it’s not finished yet but I’m working on it.
If you’d like to see what the other students did and/or work by Pam Holland, check out her weblog.
To be continued…
Last weekend I was in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts. If you’ve never been there, you’re really missing something. It’s a wonderful show with so many beautiful quilts. Four days are never enough for me to see it all and talk to all the friends you haven’t seen for a year. Oh, and don’t forget the shopping… If you’ve entered a quilt of your own, it’s even more fun, you can listen to what people are saying about it and maybe even win a prize, which is what happened to me this year. The quilt I had entered into the Quilter’s Guild challenge won a European Award.
As you can see if you’ve been here before, or guess if it’s your first visit, I am currently updating my website. This will take me a little while so be sure to come back often to see what’s happening!
