Earlier this year I spent some days in Muenster, North Rhine Westfalia, Germany. I participated in a lovely watercolour workshop with Barbara Hirsekorn, a German watercolour artist. The topic of the three-day-class was ‘town-landscape-river’. So we learned about these three subjects and focussed on different techniques.
Muenster – Rainy Day near Lamberti Church
The second day we went plain air to study the subjects and colours. We finished the painting in the studio. The subject was ‘Haus Vögeding’, a moated castle which is idyllically located just outside Muenster. This mighty 14th-century castle complex is relatively unknown. Haus Vögeding is located on the 100 Castles Route around Muenster. Like its famous neighbors (House Rueschhaus and Hülshoff Castle) Haus Vögeding is also associated with the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.
Last subject was a simple landscape which was meant to be a cloud study.
I enjoyed these calm painting days very much. I have not much time to paint in daily life. So it was much appreciated to have three daysjust for painting.
I took other workshops of Barbara Hirsekorn before and really like her traditional approach on watercolour, her personality and teaching style.
2023 and 2024 I took her weekend classes in Lübeck, an old Hanseatic town in North of Germany. For several years I’m a member of her supporter program which she runs on Steady (German equivalent to Patreon). There she offers monthly live sessions for her members and she runs a youtube channel filled with insructionals. Here are some of my paintings I did following her tutorials:
Tim Wilmot, a British watercolour painter whom I hold in high esteem, offered a three-day workshop in Zutphen, Netherlands. And as we live very close to the Dutch border, I took the opportunity. Zutphen is a beautiful old Hanseatic town situated directly on the river IJssel.
Zutphen
I just went less than two hour by train… and never was there before. Such a lovely town! Luckily I arrived one day before the workshop started, so I still had time to explore the city.
St. Walburgis ChurchRemains of the old city wall can be found everywhere.Evening at the banks of river IJsselThe Walburgischurch is the town’s landmark.Inside WalburgiskerkOld Chain Library inside the Walburgis Church
Tim did two demonstrations every day. And I really was overwhelmed and was’t able to manage two full paintings a day. On the other hand I just took some time in between to have a closer look on some museums and sights.
First day started at the harbour. We were allowed to paint on a private property – the only possibility to combine the harbour view with the Walburgis Church in the background. That was such a complex scene with all the boats that I finished it after I came back home.
The demo in the afternoon was in the city centre. I did just a pencil sketch of a local building which I coloured afterwards.
The second day was no less challenging. When Tim said that we were painting on the IJssel in the morning, I just thought, please not the bridge. And then it was the bridge. I only finished the afternoon scene from the pretty city centre – the Wine House Tower (Wijnhuistoren) – when I got home.
painting plein airWijnhuistoren Zutphen
On the third day we painted the city panorama from the other side of the IJssel. Fortunately, we had a good shady spot under the big IJssel bridge.
The ScenerySubject painted on location.Subject finished at home.
The last afternoon was very special. We went to a local museum… the most special place I’ve seen: Boer Kip Museum (farmer Kip museum). It is the former farm and home of Herman Kip (1925 – 2006) in De Hoven, part of Zutphen. He was a sensitive child who was very early interested in drawing. But his mother thought this was a pointless activity. So he couldn’t develop his talent and worked alongside his brothers and father on the farm with cows and growing vegetables. Later in his life when the farm was in his hands he started painting on all surfaces he had in his house and household without stopping again. I didn’t paint the farm yard though… just enjoyed the place.
Tim Wilmot doing his demonstrationTim’s painting
It was a great workshop. Tim is such a good and sharing teacher. And all was so well organised by At Flierman – he, his wife, Tim’s wife and some helpers brought coffee, cookies, lunch packs to all our locations. Such great experiences and memories I took home.
At, who organised the workshop and Laurie, a friend from US, who I just knew from online meetings before.
As told in my previous post I made another quilt earlier this year.
We got an invitation to celebrate a 60th birthday. The invitation told us that in Japan (as well as in Korea or China) this birthay is not just a birthday, but is viewed as a rebirth. Because turning 60 means you have gone through the whole zodiac cycle and are now back to your original birth zodiac. It is Kanreki – 還暦.
Kanreki means ‘kan’ – return and ‘reki’ – calendar. So turning 60 is the chance to start over again… like a baby – ‘aka chan’ (little red one).
I immediatly felt I would make a quilt – a Kanreki quilt. Although the traditional Kanreki colour is red I decided I would use Japanese fabric in mainly indigo blue with red accents.
I decided to use fat quarters and a fat quarter friendly pattern for the front and yardage and scraps for the back. Because we are in the year of the rabbit I ordered a rabbit panel too and used some of the motifs.
The pattern is the Fourteen Squared by Sam Hunter which was perfect for the Japanese fat quarters and for the scrappy look with coincidentally spreaded red pieces I intended.
The quilt is made in blocks which are joined to larger pieces which are joined into the whole quilt in the end. But with a bit finesse given in the pattern an overall scrappy look is simulated and the single panels are not that obvious.
I used a puffy batting which made pin basting and quilting as hard as keeping the cat away while I was working on the quilt.
I finished with a simple scrappy binding which I did by hand, as always.
Last step was to add the label which I made with water proof markers and crayons. I have good experiences with crayons when you take your time to add several layers and iron them in between. The label shows the water rabbit because it is the constellation of 2023 as well as it was 60 years ago.
I finished the quilt with the ‘little red ones’ (aka-chan) which I made with red Sashiko threads.
Writing this the quilt is already given away and is loved by the celebrated jubilee. I just love this quilt!
frontback
In the back I included a water rabbit block from the rabbit panel I bought – we have the water rabbit year now. Finished size is 175×135 cm.
I tended to say it is Easter time and time for my yearly post… but I noticed I didn’t post anything last year. Although I read a lot blogposts, I’m always busy knitting, spinning, weaving or sketching or painting. I’m posting on social media or on ravelry platform. But my daily life wasn’t meant to have room for blogging. Oh, if days just could have more hours!
I finished two quilts. This is the first one.
I made a quilt for my mother’s 75th birthday in 2022. I used the lovely layer cake ‘Best of Morris’ by Barbara Brackman for Moda.
I wanted a cat quilt for my mother and decided for ‘Pins and Paws’ pattern by MSQC which is a perfect pattern for one layer cake.
I started and finished to join the blocks back in spring 2019…
The black cat with the blossom eyes was meant as a reminiscence pofmy mother’s beloved cat Susy. And then the cat died… and I couldn’t enlarge her grief with giving her this quilt. And that was why the quilt top was sitting in the closet for three years. Then I finished it for her 75th birthday in Febuary 2022.
For the back I chose a lovely Morris yardage: a red one – ‘Cray 1884’ and a dark one ‘Poppy 1880’ (both 2017 by Moda). I added a red border to the quilttop and decided to make a flanged binding for a higher contrast to the dark binding.
The finished quilt turned out to be 1.53×1.80m (60×70″).
At least my mother got her quilt for her birthday last year:
At least I finished a quilt again. It is meant to be a family heirloom… a wedding gift for a cousin of mine.
I was invited to the wedding. But due to Covid I decided not to go four hours by train. I planned to make a quilt and thought first over a quilt with love, wedding and travel themed blocks because the bridal couple ask for gift of money to travel Europe… I thought of a heart block, love letters, a ship, a cake, xoxo … I started in the middle of July for the wedding being celebrated at the end of August. But it always turns out different as you plan…
After having finished the first block I got sick. After my second vaccination I got shingles… followed by a medication allergy … maybe caused by my weak immune system which just was busy with producing antibodies against the virus… At least I lost nearly four weeks…
So I thought how I could save time sewing a big quilt which I could get finished not on point but not too long after the celebration… I came up with a bunch of ‚Scrappy Trip around the World‘ blocks from a worldwide Flickr blockswap back in 2015.
If you don’t know these blocks… they are phantastic especially to use left over jelly roll strips. They are sewn with a method by Bonny Hunter. They are made from six 2.5×16“ strips each which are sewn together, cut, ripped on different seams and sewn together again. You can find a tutorial here… but be warned. Making the blocks can be addictive.
Scrappy Trips block … sewn together the diagonals give a great secondary pattern
The name ‚scrappy trip around the world‘ and the fact the blocks came from around the world met perfectly the wish of the couple to travel the world… only problem: I just had 16 12“ blocks… not enough for a big quilt… In the end I decided to frame the blocks to make it bigger and give up the lovely secondary pattern.
I framed all blocks with white fabric to a size of 20“ and decided to add the heart block to the back
To be faster I‘ve chosen to quilt one block at a time and to join them as on the go with sashing. But how to quilt the blocks?
That’s the pattern I came up with… looks complicated, but in the end it is done with just two seams…
… always sketching it out…
That is what it is looking on the blocks…
I was very sceptical because all the corners were looking very different… some seams met the corners exactly, some ended beside… so having no time and no other blocks I sent a prayer to heaven hoping for the best 😁 In the end all came outvery well because the odd corners were trimmed and at last hidden by the sashing.
I found a travel themed fabric for the backside sashing and tried to use some fabrics matching the blocks on the front. There were some Tula Pink fabrics used for the blocks which I had in my stash too. For the backing I had bought some neutral. Another challenge was the width of the sashing. I always used 1“ for the back and 1.5“ for the front to end up with 0.5“ visible sashing. That seemed to be too thin for the huge blocks… In the end I took 2“ for the back and 3“ sashing for the front. Sewing with half an inch seam allowance made the handling of the big blocks very comfortable and let me get 1“ visible finished sashing.
I had just a small piece to cut the strips . And I figured out an order to join the blocks which let me avoid long seems. So the green strip in my schematic is the only real long one with 2 meter/80“ … in the end half of the work is maths, isn’t it?
The last – and my favourite part – was the binding. To keep it proportional to the sashing width I used the enormous width of 3.5“ folded in half and sewn with 0.5“ seam allowance …
8 m /315“ to go
Same fabric in my pincushion …
Because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to sew down the binding by hand I sewed the back on the machine. But it has always been my favourite part to finish a quilt with this last journey around the whole thing… by sewing the binding down by hand. And so I did.
It took me under three weeks to finish the quilt. *Doing that so fast let me think of the quilt we did together for Pat back in 2016 … if someone reads here who was involved…
Last part was to label the quilt… I did a machine stiched label. There was a little piece of denim fabric added to the wedding invitation card (to make clear which type of men‘s clothing was expected). I incorporated that piece of fabric into the label and added a little heart to it. I mentioned the whole little family in the label – including child and dog 😊
I had to add the label to the front to cover a little accident which happened when I quilted the very first block – I sewed the little flower shaped plastic head of a pin needle onto the quilt. As I tried to cut it off I cut a small hole in the fabric which I couldn’t hide in another way.
Now it is off in the mail travelling to the happy recipients… But of course I did a photo shooting first … on Sunday morning in our park, because I wasn‘t able to take proper pictures of the 76×76“/194x194cm quilt in my apartment…
Since the worldwide pandemic lockdowns started last year Canadian artist Charlotte Hamilton is giving a daily one hour live morning class via her Instagram IGTV @blueshineart . It is totally free for everybody who is interested in just watching or painting with her. It happens every morning at 8 a.m. EDT – that is 2 p.m. CEST. We have a prompt list every month which you can follow if you like to.
We did very different topics like landscapes, portraits of people and pets, buildings, birds, flowers, chefs and recipes, patterns, fruit… Here are some motifs I did in Charlotte‘s livestreams and classes. I really jumped over my shadow and drew motifs I never had imagined to draw…
We painted with crayons, markers, ink, watercolour, gouache, acrylic, mixed media… And we learned strategies and warm up exercises.
One of my favourites is a greenhouse, done with a special taping technique:
All greenhouse walls taped.
back middle and foreground done
tape removed
Details and finishing touches done
It is just bad I can’t do the live streams often. Because of the time difference and my full time job. But the streams are recorded and saved either on Instagram or if it was a zoom class sent by mail.
Charlotte offers classes, too. You can find her art classes via her website. There you can find her zoom classes to. Via her Patreon we have regularly zoom meetings … it is really great to meet, chat and draw together with other people from all over the world.
June is the month of flowers. I just did a few by now. One prompt was succulents:
Do you see the red signature stamp? I am a great admirer of Chinese brush paintings and love all the red seal stamps. I really thought about ordering a carved seal stone. On the other hand I don’t do Chinese brush work…
At least I came up with an idea…
I thought using a QR code in red is contemporary style but optically in colour and shape like a Chinese seal, it contains personal information – my name, my Instagram and a link to my blog… I‘m really interested to know what you think about my new signature stamp.
It is quite calm here since I have an Instagram account… which is so much faster – instant like promised by the Name.
But I’m still here. I don’t sew and quilt last months…. years… because I mostly don’t have enough power in my hands due to rheumatic desease. But I still do a lot of knitting (if my hands let me do). And I started sketching/drawing again just before the pandemic. That still is a life saver for me in this times.
I just got an ipad… and I’m still a kind of leghastenic using it. But I installed the WordPress app already. So I will try to get a blogging routine again… maybe one time a month as minimum?
The picture shows me in a vest I finished knitting recently. It is one of my favourites at the moment. I did it as a test knit for German knitting designer Isabell Kraemer [lilalu] at Ravelry…
Have to find out how I can tag/link to someone… and how I can switch my keyboard to English 😂
I became part of a group around British/Canadian artist Charlotte Hamilton @blueshineart during the last year. Charlotte is hosting a daily one hour live class at 8 a.m. EDT via her IGTV . I learned a lot from her the last year.
Yesterday evening we had our monthly Zoom meetup . While chatting I did a little sketch of our local theater – Grillo theatre in Essen, Germany where I live.
As I said I will try to post regularly again… But if you would like to visit me on Instagram meanwhile you can find my woolly content @knettycraft and my sketching @knetty.sketch
For this year’s Easter crafting I found a lovely little sewing project – a basket for four eggs. I found the free pattern on the German Blog ‘Naehmalwieder‘ . She offers variations for two, three, four or six eggs there. The instructions are given in German only. But I can show you how I did the basket for four eggs.
What you need ist very simple. You need 2 pieces of fabric – 11″ sqares and batting in the same size. The original pattern calls for two batting pieces. But I just took 1.
Next step is to sew the pieces together: fabrics right sides together.
Sew around the squares with a quarter inch seam allowance leaving an opening to turn inside out.
Clip the corners, turn inside out, press and stitch around the whole piece near the edge what will close the turn opening in the same step.
Mark the middle of the four sides with needles or a removable pen.
Connect two opposite sides with a short seam – I did a half inch seam with forth and back stitching. If your sewing machine isn’t able to work through all the layers you can sew it by Hand.
Connect now the other both opposite sides with an a half inch long seam. Afterwards it should look like the last picture shows.
You can now open the four corners and pull it apart. In that way you form the square base of the foldable basket. Manipulate the Corners as you like – leave them as they are or fold them over and put four Easter eggs in.
Maybe it is also possible to sew it out of circles to get a different look… or to add ribbons to connect the sides only temporarily?
I made the two baskets I have shown here as a pre Easter gift for friends – and both love it 🙂
After my cat’s surgery I took a week off from work to care for her. It was a very stressful week because our second cat Lilly didn’t recognize Fuzzy… maybe because of the tube she had to wear the whole week… but in the end after we took the tube off all went back to normal. Fuzzy seems to cope very good with now only one eye and I really hope our old 15 year old lady will have some other good years.
Being off from work last week gave me time to start another testknit for German knitwear designer Isabell Kramer – it is another raglan sweater. Its name is The Purlcode Sweater because there are purled lines added which also can be turned into a secret message or a quote.
I’m going to add a quote on the front …. I’ll tell more about it when I finished knitting.
Last Saturday I took a lovely workshop about button making. We learned how to wind different kinds of passament and thread buttons… and it was very addictive!
Unfortunately I had an appointment with my orthodontist one day before who had to extract one of my wisdom teeth… and I had a heavy aching cheek during the weekend.
So I spend the Sunday very calm and continued with a long term project I started… yes… two years ago. I added some blocks to my I spy quilt. It is a funny project. I don’t know yet to whom this little treasure will be given too when it is once finished… may be a future grandchild… (which is not in sight now… just to make it clear)
I really love choosing and combining the fabrics for the blocks. One block measures 6.5 inches.
After I finished the block assembling for the Pins and Paws quilt I decided to use fabrics with Morris motifs for framing and back too. The top measures now 54×63″.
Pins and Paws – free pattern by MSQC
I’m going to frame the top with white and red. For the back I bought a poppy themed fabric. Probably I will use it for the binding too.
I was busy knitting too with a testknit for German designer Isabell Kraemer. I tested the Mycroft sweater pattern which will be published on the occasion of Edinburgh Yarnfestival 2019, March 21. I loved knitting that simple but clever patterned raglan sweater. I used Lett Lopi, an airy and light but more rustic Islandic DK yarn (200m/100g) and I absolutely love the result. I used less than 600g for size XL. We have still very ugly dirty weather here… so I took some pics at work. The pattern will be available at ravelry.
After finishing Mycroft sweater I immediately started with another testknit … I will have much time to knit during the week but for a bad reason. Our 15 year old cat Fuzzy struggled with a cornea inflammation since late December. We were hoping to save her eye but it had to be removed last Friday. I took a week off to care for her…
What you need ist very simple. You need 2 pieces of fabric – 11″ sqares and batting in the same size. The original pattern calls for two batting pieces. But I just took 1.
knettycraft 