Tuesday 28 July 2015

Monday Makers!#48 reporting from London!

Hiya all!
After spending a week in Berlin and four days in Thuringen, we are now in London, the last step of our holiday, visiting my husband's niece who is going to give birth very soon. We are here for five days and then it is home time. I miss my home.
Unfortunately, I missed last week's Monday Makers. It was our last day in Berlin and we were so busy with finishing sightseeing and preparing for the next day's trip to Thuringen. I missed the MM but I managed to catch up with Aylin of aylin-nilya who used to hold a linky party called Monday Makers too. She is a lovely lovely person (and a very talented quilter and pattern maker/writer) and we had a very nice lunch together. If you are following me on IG, hugabitquilts, you might have already seen our selfie there :)
Today, we left home early to do some fabric shopping and sightseeing as well-just got home. After visiting a few places for fabric-can't remember the name of the street and suburb; none of the shops were selling quilting fabric anyway- we ended up going to Liberty of London. I admired the fabric there; only admired tho, it was jaw droppingly expensive. However, I couldn't resist a fat quarter bundle which was 20 Pounds and a book on bag making whose details I will provide later (it is close to midnight now and I have to go to bed to wake up veeery early tomorrow morning).
Liberty of London
Now to Monday Makers!
You might remember that I took some fabric and one inch hexagons with me to do some EPP in the plane. Well, that worked out very well and I made seven EPP flowers.
This one was stitched together too.
I really like how they are coming together. Once I go home, I will share some helpful details/tips about how to stitch the hexies together.
Do you have any projects to share with me? The link is below. The link will be open until Thursday night since the Monday is almost over.
1.Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!
2. Grab the button from the side bar or put a link back to me in your Monday post.
3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas. 
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.
5. To link an Instagram photo, click the Instagram icon at the bottom of the link-up screen and use the URL of your IG feed as the link (for example, my URL is http://instagram.com/hugabitquilts) Please hashtag #MondayMakers!
6. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!
7. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?



Tuesday 14 July 2015

Monday Makers!#47

Hiya all!
We are leaving for Germany tomorrow. But let me tell you: procrastination is not good.at.all. I have left all the things I needed to do to today; gift shopping, Turkish delight shopping, shoe repairs, etc,  so I have been running around like headless chucks.
We had absolutely an amazing time here. The weather, the food, my family, friends, shopping...I spoilt myself so much! You can follow me on IG for some delicious food and beautiful nature photos.
I have a couple of small projects to show you but I haven't taken their photos; hopefully the next time. I am sure you guys have something to share with me. Come link up your projects!

Do you have anything to share with me? Come link up your projects!
1.Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!
2. Grab the button from the side bar or put a link back to me in your Monday post.
3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas. 
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.
5. To link an Instagram photo, click the Instagram icon at the bottom of the link-up screen and use the URL of your IG feed as the link (for example, my URL is http://instagram.com/hugabitquilts) Please hashtag #MondayMakers!
6. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!
7. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?


Tuesday 7 July 2015

Monday Makers!#46

Hi peeps!
Hope you had a great week/end.

After changing four planes and spending almost 20 hours in the air, seven hours wait at several airports and one and a half hours car ride, I arrived in my home town in Turkey last Saturday evening!!Thank God, it all went very smoothly but we are still suffering from jet lag.

It is absolutely fantastic to be home with my parents; waking up in the morning to a beautiful breakfast, mum is running after me to check if I need anything-it is great to feel like a little child again, my sis and bro and my nephews are here too and my son enjoys spending time with all them. Tonight, I will be catching up with my friends from high school; I am super excited. I am not even mentioning about the great food, OMG!!

Now to Monday Makers!
Below is 56 hexagons I have glue basted in the plane while my son was sleeping! It was so much fun and I am super excited about this little experiment project. I am planning to make a quilt for my baby on the way!
Do you have anything to share with me? Come link up your projects!
1.Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!
2. Grab the button from the side bar or put a link back to me in your Monday post.
3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas. 
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.
5. To link an Instagram photo, click the Instagram icon at the bottom of the link-up screen and use the URL of your IG feed as the link (for example, my URL is http://instagram.com/hugabitquilts) Please hashtag #MondayMakers!
6. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!
7. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?


Friday 3 July 2015

Off to Europe we go! (and some progress updates)

My friends, the time has come; me and my son are off to Turkey this evening!!! I am super excited and a little nervous too. You know that feeling; you think you forget something and keep searching for it in your mind even though you made checklists and ticked everything off the list! Yes, I have that feeling and cannot stop searching for that missing item. And probably won't stop until I arrive at my destination!
Before I leave, I want to show you some progress photos of the quilt I made for my son and a few bits and pieces I made to take with me as gifts. 
Let's start with the quilt. Here is where I am at at the moment.
My initial plan was to buy some nice flannel fabric from Turkey and start quilting it once I returned...uhmm..nope, I couldn't wait. I couldn't resist the itch. I bought some very cute flannel from Lincraft-normally I never buy fabric from Lincraft or Spotlight but this fabric was good quality-and just got on with it. I think I made a very good progress; given that I quilted that area only in two days. Then I had stop to prepare for our departure.
I chose to quilt it with this linear pattern as I thought it would compliment the stripes on the quilt (I have other plans for the stripy bits). It is so fun; goes very quickly and you can fill a large area in no time. I must admit that I am not very happy with my thread colour choice. It doesn't show clearly in the photo but it is variegated with some soft yellows, blues, greens and pinks. I thought they would pop on the grey background but instead , they blend in so well that they become almost invisible. The thread quality, however, is superb! It is Superior King Tut; nice and shiny, the weight is beautiful- I think it is NE 40 in Aurifil, and the most importantly it doesn't create lint balls in the bobbin case area, which is the only thing I don't like with Aurifil. 
So, to add some colour for the sake of visibility-if it is so!-, I also quilted with a lovely green Aurifil I found in my stash. I will at least quilt a few rows in this colour and then go back to the variegated one.
Well, even though the thread colour didn't go as planned, I am so proud of myself. I never thought I would be able to manage such a large quilt on my domestic machine but proved that it was possible. I made a very good progress; I will be very happy to find it almost half quilted when I return. Also, I love the texture that the quilting creates!

I did some gift shopping for my family and friends as well. Over the six years, I had three trips to Turkey and took lots of gifts that reflected Australia. This being the case, I struggled to find different and unique things for a few family members; so I decided to make pouches for them at the very last moment!!
I used a thick interfacing for the green bottomed one and regretted it so much. It was almost impossible to turn the pouch inside out. Because of the struggle, the fabric wrinkled and ironing it didn't help much. So, for the red bottomed one, I just used cotton batting without interfacing and it was just perfect too. (I now notice that I forgot to topstitch around the zipper. I might still have time for it LOL.) The tutorial for these pouches and two other sizes can be found at Noodle-head

And the last thing to show you is one of my bee blocks which I totally forgot about until the other night! 
It was around 11pm when I started cutting the fabrics for this. Luckily, I had every colour I needed. I finished making the second one early this morning as soon as I woke up and they have been sent to its recipient. Phew!
Oh, one more thing. I was given a lovely charm pack by a quilty friend a while ago. I didn't have any plans for it until I decided to entertain myself in the plane with EPP hexagons!! I quickly ordered the templates, which arrived yesterday. I brought everything I needed to cut the fabrics into four to the office this morning. In under ten minutes...voila! A nice pile of 2.5"x2.5" squares to be basted in the plane! (I must be kidding myself by the way. Someone remind me that I am travelling with a three year old!)
Well, I feel like I have achieved a lot in such a short time. This shows one more time that I work more efficiently under some stress and approaching deadlines!

I am super excited about seeing my family and friends again after two years. They last saw my son-except the regular Skype calls-when he was just one year old. I am so looking forward to their reaction!
I am also looking forward to the delicious Turkish food which I don't cook very often, street bazaars, fabrics shops, streets at nights full of people, and basically everything! We will be catching up with my hubby in Germany and spending a couple of weeks there as well. I have never been to Germany; so, this will be interesting too. As the last stop, we will hop to England to spend a few days with my husband's niece who is about to give birth. In early August, we will be heading home. 
I feel like this will be a fantastic trip which we will always remember. And some other adventures are waiting for me upon my return!

Well friends; thanks for your patience and reading this long post. I will try to keep blogging while overseas. You can always follow my fabric and food (and everything else) adventures on Instagram.

Stay safe, stay well, keep stitching!
Love,
Nurdan