To Market!

Today, the eve of my first craft fair, seems fitting for a revival of my little space here.

I have made many thins in the past years, and many I would have liked to share, but the longer I went without posting, the more difficult it felt go get back into it.

My mini quilts!

So tomorrow, from 10-16 I will join the "Koffermarkt", a craft fair where everyone presents their handmades in a suitcase. The initial motivation came from my stash - I had (and still have) a lot of great fabric that I once loved, but I just don't find exciting anymore. In order to free up space and still use this material, I made drawstring bags, mini quilts and zipper pouches over the last few months. Since the same goes for my yarn stash, I also made armwarmers and fingerless mitts for the market.

Fingerless Mittens! The black smudge is actually a pair of mitts, the same pattern as the pale green ones.

I'm so excited for tomorrow, to see if anyone is interested in my stuff, and also what the other people are selling! I have no doubt that some of the money I will (hopefully) earn will go right back into handmades.
And if I sell nothing, I will have christmas and birthday presents for the next few years, haha.

the suitcase, stuffed full of drawstring bags. I put in the green lining, and I looove it!

So, off to market I go!

Still with the small things

Me and my sewing machine get along much much better lately. So well actually, that I am planning clothesmaking again. But in order to not break the peace, I focused on small projects in the last weeks, First of all my first mug rug:

I Used an absolutely gorgeous mushroom print that I bought a while ago, having no idea what it would become. I still have a lot left, and it is really hard to cut into because the colors are so vibrant and beautiful.

After that, when I was playing around with some stuff while I actually shout have been organizing my sewing supplies, I found a baby pink zipper. Pink. I would have never bought that, it must have come from my grandmothers stuff - and I wanted to make something special out of it.

So a zippered pouch it became, after I dug around my fabric stash looking for a print that at least features pink. I think this was the only one (back then - I ordered a ton of fabric since). I love the polka dots on the inside, and it was fun to try a patchwork pattern for the outside without committing to a whole quilt. I like how the star turned out, but I am sure that there is a more efficient way to do this pattern, I just winged it. If I would do it again, I would look for a pattern first.

And of course, there have to be buttons. Big colorful ones.
The pouch has already found a home in my office, I keep all my girl stuff in there that one needs but does not want to have floating around in a drawer - like aspirin, hand lotion, tampons and such. Now they are stored away prettily, and I don't have to worry about accidentally spilling tampons everywhere.

My lack of blogging before Christmas has not been due to lack of crafting. I was working on a big present for my mom, and ouf course I could not show it here, I wanted it to be a surprise! But now that it has arrived at its new home, I am free to post the pictures (I took them seconds before wrapping the present, I almost forgot!).

We always had christmas placemats when I was little, but they eventually fell apart, and were never replaced. So, knowing how much I like to sew and make things for her, my mom asked for a new set. Se did not give me any guidelines besides „christmassy“, so I could play around with fabrics and different quilting patterns (without destroying a whole quilt top). I love that all the placemats are different, yet still belong together.

I think she loved them as much as I loved making them!

So with getting to know my way around my job last week, I didn't have much time to blog or craft or anything. I didn't even go for runs! I am used to doing sports at least every other day, but last week I only managed to go once... I guess it will take some time to fit all the parts of my life together now that I work in a new place. But its really interesting, I'm looking forward to tomorrow! 

In my time off however, I had tons of time to try new things, one of them quilting. So I bought some fabric:

Decided on a layout (this is actually about version 3 or 4... I just could not decide)

After putting together the quilt top, I kind of hit a wall. I never really quilted anything before, let alone such a huge thing, and it intimidated me to no end. So I decided to take a detour and practice on a couple of cushion covers:

After that I felt confident enough to work on the actual quilt, stippling the whole thing:

And now its only waiting for some binding. Which is perfect for doing in front of the TV, especially during such rainy days as today...

And it feels like this won't be my last quilting adventure, so instead of just referring to it as "the quilt", I named it by the sea. It looks like sand and a few waves to me...