Anarchistelfliege 2

This is Nr. 50 - "Autograph".
The yellow and white fabric is new, I bought it at the quilt shop yesterday on my trip with the bike.
I had looked for this white fabric (it's actually cream with white print, but the colour didn't turn out right on the picture) online, and it's really hard to judge white on white prints in an internet shop. So I had to go to the real brick and mortar store :)

Actually, it's colour matches the unbleached muslin I'm also using as a background fabric very very well! And I think mixing different "Off-white" fabrics in the background will look very good in the finished quilt.

Well, a little bit quilty.. I wanted to visit my favourite quilt shop in town. But getting there means sitting on the underground train for at least 45 minutes. And I hate the underdround train. It's slow and it stinks. I love individual transport, and since I don't even have a driving license, that means I'll be riding my bike.

This is the route - well actually I went a longer route because I didn't go there very straight. This was only 18 km - but even though I ride my bike to work and back every day, I was pretty tired when I came home again. (Ok, I didn't count the ride back, 36 km in total!)


Image: (c) Google Maps (Screenshot)

Great Weather:




Somewhere in Prenzlberg


Taking a break at the "Schaefersee".


This doesn't really look very metropolitan here... it looks rather like a small town..


I passed a stone.



Really autumn now!


This sticker was at the traffic lights at "Bonnies Ranch". That's how the psychiatric clinic named after some Mr. Bonhoeffer (Bonnie) is called here. The "Werner Fuß Zentrum" is a house where victims of psychiatry get together to fight for their rights and discover alternative ways of recovery.


In the same area: The prison


And a prison shop..


the factory (not longer in use, I think, but it was a very famous big factory some time ago)


Soldier graves





planespotting

And the ruins of an old factory. The funny thing was, one window was completely new and one room seemed to be in use, while the rest of the building was full of rubbish and rubble and all windows were partly broken.





Now I'm going to wash my new fabric from the quilt shop!
I prewash everything... especially red fabrics.

(Sorry to all whose Feedreaders send this twice, I had to edit it because I had gotten Linda Franz' surname wrong.)

Lately I went to the website of Linda Franz: Quilted Diamonds. I've seen a video about handpiecing where she was the guest, and I really like the look of hand pieced quilt blocks. I'm using her tips for my Midget Sampler Quilt.
I've made myself a pouch for my sewing stuff last year, I'll put up a picture of that soon, I think... because now with hand piecing, it's really handy.

Here are some pics of handpiecing on my balcony, today - it is sunny and warm outside :)




The finished Block, not yet pressed.

And here's another picture of my new apple computer!

Wow! I've got a brand new apple computer, a mac mini!
As I'm usually not keen on having to learn everything from the beginning on a new operating system, this is really a big event in my life. After years of using windows, I bought this mac.
And I'm loving it, yes!

It's small. It looks good. It's silent. It is totally easy to use!
I haven't read any manual and I've set up the internet connection, got myself programs for chat, browser, feedreader, mail, graphics, ftp uploading and so on!
I still have to find a nice, free HTML text editor. Or buy one.

I think I'll never go back to windows!

This one was hard, because I didn't understand how I should close the last seam if I did the whole thing in foundation paper piecing technique.
With help from other "Week by Week" quilters, I finally got it done :)
Nr. 22 - Kaleidoscope:



The "Hour Glass" block was easier:



And this one is called "circular saw" and it was a real challenge to me to make it:



I really came to like hand applique!

I've tried to look up what marzipan would be in english, and my dictionary told me it's also called marzipan.
Ok. So, yesterday my man came home with two packages of "Marzipan Rohmasse" (Marzipan base.. I don't know the word in english) and we decided to make marzipan potatoes. They are called potatoes because they look like very small potatoes, there is no potato content ;-)

I couldn't take a photo, because the next morning when there would have been enough light there was nothing left of them!

The recipe:

400 g (that would be 0,88 pounds) of the stuff you make marzipan from. Here it's called "Marzipan - Rohmasse" but no dictionary would tell me what it was in english. So, it's like marzipan, but you have to add powdered sugar to it.
If you already have marzipan you don't have to add any powdered sugar.

200 g powdered sugar

2 tablespoons rose water

cocoa powder (no instant drink)

mix the stuff you make marzipan from with powdered sugar and rose water, and knead it with your hands until it's smooth. Or, if you are using marzipan, just knead in the rose water.
Make little balls the size of hazelnuts, well, a little bit bigger. Like the bigger glass marbles children use to play with.
Throw them into the cocoa powder, until they are covered with it, shake them in a sieve to remove excess cocoa and you're done.
These are very delicious and they are sold here in germany every year when fall and winter are coming.

If you don't find marzipan in your shop, here's a recipe to make marzipan at home. I haven't tried it, though.
And I don't know what "cream of tartar" is.

I'm back at work, and I've got sore muscles.
Three weeks of being at home sewing and enjoying a quiet time got me out of training. But I love my work. I love it to make 200 loafs of bread by hand! Yes!

Today was a very good day :)
I baked bread rolls and worked at the mill to get all the flour for the next night and I feel like being in the center of the world, where grains are, nourishment and everything.

I've made an applique block, one of the Midget Sampler blocks and I think after reading the tutorials my applique has really improved. I got all the notches in the hearts right.



This one is the "Arrowhead Star", which I sewed by hand:



And I've made myself a new design wall:
The Midget Sampler wall

I noticed, when making the midget blocks for the Week by Week Sampler, that I really like needleturn applique. It's a very relaxing thing to do.
However, when I did more and more of applique blocks, I noticed that my results got worse instead of better. I'm not sure why, but this is a little bit frustrating.

I appliqued four tiny hearts and the first two were okay, but the last two were wonky and a mess. So I decided to read some tutorials to find out if I maybe can find some tricks that I don't know.

These are some I found and really liked:

Needleturn Applique Tutorial by Joanna of Applique today.
There are many pictures in this one. And there's even a video showing how to turn under the seam allowance in concave curves. She shows the technique using a star as an example, with points outside and inside.

Here's a tutorial for "back basting" by Kay on her site all about applique.
I first found a tutorial about this on the blog "thee handworks" but it seems to be offline now. So I found this one. She does that very well, obviously. The curves between the fingers are very hard to do, I think - there is hardly any seam allowance to turn under there. Since the tutorial is only about back basting, there is no explanation how she does it.
I like the back basting method very much and use it all the time. I've bought myself some freezer paper, but it keeps coming off when I stitch the applique piece. Additionally, I don't want to pin the stuff to the background fabric, because my thread always gets caught in the pins.

Here's another one about back basting.

Kay also wrote something on clipping on inside curves and notches (my usual problem!)
Clipping.
She's also saying that you should leave less margin to turn under to avoid edges forming and poking out of the shape on outside curves. That's also a problem I'm having when doing those little blocks.

Some things I find useful:
I use a very thin needle. I've got gold eye applique needles by clover, which are so small that a regular sewing thread doesn't fit through the eye. And I have Prym size 11 needles, which are pretty much the same as the clover needles but a regular thread will fit through the eye.
I'm using a silk thread, which is very thin, by YLI - the advantage is that the thread is so thin that it fits through the eye of the Clover needles and it's nearly invisible, no matter what colours of fabric I'm using. I don't have to change the thread to match the applique piece. The silk thread is white and I use it on everything - it just disappears into the fabric.
Then I've bought myself a desk needle threader - also by Clover. This is very cool! Just pressing a button and the needle is threaded.

One problem I also have with my favourite back basting method is that you use the holes left by the basting needle in the fabric as your guide. There are no pencil drawn lines you follow,
and on some fabrics the holes don't show up well enough. They show perfectly on poplin and batiks, which are mostly dyed poplin fabric. But some quilting fabric doesn't work as well. Maybe I'll use a very light pencil line in addition so that I can follow that line if I don't see the holes made by the basting stitches.

If you know of a great tutorial on needleturn applique, please leave the link in the comments!