Funny thing: when I was a kid my mum used to craft a lot, but mainly she did embroidery. I remember her sitting on the beach when we where in Italy on vacation, stitching while I probably complained that I don’t want to wear a t-shirt, and no mum the sun won’t hurt me. I always wondered how she could bring up the patience to stitch a whole blanket with flowers and leaves.

Well about 25 years later, I understand. It’s kind of relaxing, and busy hands… how does that saying go?

Anyway, I made this little cake for my boyfriend as a present for our 4th anniversary. I already framed it, and it now hangs on his kitchen wall. In case you are wondering why it says “the cake is a lie”: it’s from a computer game called Portal where you have to survive in test chambers while a crazy computer voice promises you cake and grief counseling if you survive - which is obviously a lie.

Yup, we’re geeks.

I just love piping, I think it gives every bag something special. I was browsing some blogs and found this great tutorial about piping over at U-Handbags.  The only question is, which bag should I try it on?I didn’t wanted to make something big, since I only wanted to try out the tutorial, so I came up with a little clutch pattern.

It was also the perfect project to try out my new Stitch-It Kit from Sublime Stitching. Since I used some classic pinstripe fabric I went for the skull to make it a little bit more interesting. The kit comes with 35 cute transfer pattern, but it’s not a really good starter kit in my opinion. It gives you some basic stitches but doesn’t give you any suggestion what kind of stitch you should use with which pattern. The yarn comes in basic very bright colors and the hoop is pretty unstable. So if you really like the pattern, then go for it, or buy some from the website and save yourself the money and buy some yarn you like and a good hoop

The piping was really easy to make, thanks to the great tutorial. I’m not really a fan of the clutch, somehow it turned out a bit wonky. I just can’t seem to find the perfect interfacing, sigh. This time I used Freudenberg 250 which is pretty stiff and some thin quilt batting, and even though the lining is home decor fabric, it still doesn’t feel right. I also added two inner pockets for my cigarettes (cough) and keys.

But anyway, mission accomplished: I now know how to make piping :)

Recently I bought Denyse Schmidt Quilts and when I first flipped through the book I was pretty underwhelmed. Somehow the projects weren’t what I expected. The main reason I bought this book was in the hope of finding tips & tricks on how to make quilts but it didn’t offer anything new from what I had learned from the web.

Two weeks later I cought a cold and had to stay at home, so I picked up the book again and somehow I felt the urge to do a project from it. Since I hadn’t the supplies for a quilt at home, let alone the energy, I decided to make a pillow. So I used her “Hits The Spot Pillow” as an inspiration, but I changed a few things. First I didn’t sew in the circles like she suggested but used Steam-a-Seam and then stitched them on. For every circle I used a different colored thread and a different stitch. I also did some free-hand machine stitching around each “bullseye”.

To give it a final touch I used a thread from the main fabric and hand stitched every inner circle with a different stitch: french knot, running stitch and split stitch.

I’m pretty happy how it turned out and spending some time with the book I found a few other projects I’ll definitely gonna try. Even thou the quilts still scare the crap out of me :)