I looooooove flickr peeps

I started my flickr acount in april 2006.

Back then I was 24 years old.

I just started my first real job after getting my degree as social education worker and I bought my first sewing machine.

I started taking photos with a sony cyber shot. It was a really big diggy cam which took horrible pics.

One of my first pictures on flickr was our office canary.

In the past years I changed my cam as well as my interests.

I started taking pictures of handmade human clothes I did by myself,  made toys and patchwork bags, changed to dolly world and made tons clothes for them and since a year I'm back to roots.

My love for everything patchwork is back and I'm spending lots of time reading patchwork blogs, looking for instructions or practise on my sewing machine.

In all these years Flickr was always a great place to meet awesome people who share my interessts since I life in a country where crafty people are still rare.

Due to that reason it's always hard to find high quality fabrics and other sewing stuff for a good price.

I'm always buying online and sometimes it's really frustrating especially when you have to wait 1 1/2 month for fabric orders (thanks postal service).

The people at Flickr were always helpfull when I was looking for stuff that is hard to get in germany.

They offered help & helped me to get all the stuff I need.

Especially in the past few weeks (when I discovered my love for patchwork again) people spoilt me with awesome patchwork stuff.

Johanna is one of these lovely flickr friends. Johanna does makes the cuttest dolls ever. They are so cool and unique and I'm hoping to own one of them in the future.

In one of my old posts I was talking about quilt rulers and the fact that I only own one ruler in cm and really needed one with inch scale.

Johanna told me that she has two spare inch quilt rulers which she would like to sent me. FOR FREE.

Doe is another lovely flickr friend. She makes awesome quilts and her work always blows me away. She is the queen of fabrics and always find the coolest stuff.

Doe offered me a spare Kona colour card when I asked for help to find out about the colour of my Kona fat quarter set.

She sent me her spare Kona colour card FOR FREE.

Rebecca and Jo are two other very helpful & lovely flickr friends. When I was searching for the Denyse Schmidt collection that was only sold in the USA and Singapore they went to the fabric shops in their town to pick up tons of fabrics for me.

And there is Amy. I met her at flickr too.

Amy is so creative. Her work is always inspiring and her fabric taste is terrific.

Amy was hosting a give away and I couldn't resist to enter this time.

Normally I'm not on the lucky side when I enter give aways but this time I WON.

Amy made a super adorable house shaped placemat which is to pretty to put a plate on it so I'm putting it on my wall.

But the placemat was not the only thing in the package. Amy filled a cute pink suitcase with lots of love and handmade things.

She made a super adorable strawberry pincushion. How did you know Amy that my pin cushion is old and not in best shape ?! The strawbery pincushion comes with cutest pins I've ever saw.

And there are three wooden spools with thread and cute ribbon & wooden alphabet tags

The package contains a big bundle of fabrics which make me swoon.

Amy totally knows my taste for fabrics and sends a super big bundle of the moooooost adorable fabrics ever.

I will have a really hard times to cut in them. I think I will spent a few weeks just admiring them for a while.

I'm very lucky that I "met" (sadly most of them not in real life yet) all these lovely ladies on flickr.

There pics always inspire me and brighten up my day.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart !

33. international evangelic church day in Dresden

Before this month is over it's time to write a little bit about my june vacations.

June was a month of traveling and sadly sickness for me.

I started my trip on june 2th to meet up with my dad & sis at my grandpa's house.

Gladly my grandpa lives near Dresden. It's a wonderfull city in eastern germany.

Dresden was nearly destroyed during the second world war. All the beautiful buildings were gone but in the past 65 years they did an amazing job on rebuilding everything.

I visited Dresden very often in the past years (every year when I was on holidays at my grandparents home) but this year was definetly a special experience.

Every 2 years there is a evangelic church day in germany. Gladly this year it was Dresden's turn.

The church day started on the 1st of june till the june 5th.

(me with my church day scarf)

I have to admit that I wasn't raised religious. Me and my family rarely went to church only for christmas or for wedding. I wasn't even christened but seeing all these people celebrating together was amazing.

I've never been to such a great event where so many different people seemed so happy.

("free high five" seems to be the new "free hug")

They came from all over the world to celebrate , seeing concerts or just chat about god.

Even when you are not religious you could feel the fantastic vibe especially when you bought the special church scarf ;)

(my sis and her scarf...and yes she walked around in her bikini ^___^)

The scarfs were sold only by scouts . When my sis and I arrived in Dresden the first thing we did was searching for some scouts to buy our church day scarf. We found out that the scouts sell church day scarfs every time at the international church days in germany. Every church day has a different colour and this year it was a bright green.

As soon as you put the scarf around your neck (or any other place on your body) you felt connected.

(me in front of the church with the famous church day scarf)

But the scarf was not only a way to feel connected to all the other visitors it was great fashion accessory as well.

There were tons of different ways to wear the it.

Some people wear it around their wrist...

(guy with church day scarf)

...some in their hair

(another way to wear the scarf)

(girls with scarfs)

... or you just use it to keep your head  from sunburns since it was extremly hot that day.

(guy trying to hide under his scraf from the sun)

The weather was really amazing that day and it was one of the hottest days this year.

My sis and I spent 5 hours walking around and just enjoying the weather and the people around us.

There were many different groups performing on the street.

(guy from "twelve tribes community")

(twelve tribes guy)

Most of them performed religious songs and stuff like the  Twelve Tribes community but some of them had modern stuff too.

(little boys performing...they were amazing)

While my sis and I enjoyed the free concerts we were lucky to find a place to cool our feet.

Of course there were dozens of people who had the same idea.

(cooling my feet)

At the end of the day my feet burned and I was completly exhausted.
But it was a great experience and I would definetly go to another chrurch day again.



Hong Kong vacation 2010

I always wanted to sort and post my pictures from my Hong & Singapore trip last year.

But for the first weeks I wasn't able to put my hands on the pics and later I comnpletly forgot.
Since I'm going to Hong Kong again this year it's time to show some of the photos.

But I really want to share my experiences and adventures.

I met lots of lovely people while I was in Hong Kong & Singapore. All of them took there time to show me around or entertain me every day.

It really makes traveling alone easier when you have friends waiting for you on the other side of the world.

I started my vacation on the 21. november 2011. I took the plane in Berlin via Helsinki till Hong Kong.

I arrived on 22. november around 3 pm in Hong Kong where Wendy picked me up.

I spent some awesome days in Hong untill Wendy and I took the flight to Singapore where *S was waiting for us. But I will tell more about it later.

 

You will be able to see most of the vacation pics on my flickr travel set .

preparing my sewing kit for vacation

preparing my sewing kit for vacation, originally uploaded by crafting with loove.

I'm spending the last fays with preparing different little sewing kits for my vacation.
Each sewing kit fits in a small box and is easy to carry around.

This box contains paper piecing stars made from my fave collection from Lecien.

Doll Plus Quilt

Doll Plus Quilt, originally uploaded by crafting with loove.

This is the tiny version of my plus quilt.
I'm still cutting fabrics for the big sized (and I'm waiting for some solids) so I thought it would be nice to practice the Plus Quilt pattern with some small scraps.
 

The doll quilt will be around 45 x 57 cm.

Plus Quilt - the start

I started sewing when I was very little.  It were mostly little things sewing by hand.

One day (I was around 9 or 10) I saw a super cute dog in a kids TV show made from fabric scraps.

I begged my mum to help me making such a dog. We searched in her fabric stash and I started sewing.

My part was sewing all the parts together and pick the the buttons for the face.

The rest of the work belonged to my mum.

She had to fill him and put all the parts together to one dog.

I remember that we sat together making this dog since very late that evening because I wanted to take the dog with me to school next day.

When I went to bed he wasn't finished so my mum had to do this without me.

When I woke up the next morning and I was really upset because he wasn't looking like the dog from the TV show .

(doggy with doll)

But I was so proud and took him with me to school. I wear dungarees that day and carried him in my front pocket the whole day. My friends really loved him and I started to love him as well.

He is now 20 years old and I still adore him <3.

I made a lot of soft toys on my own after this. I made minature teddy bears when I was 17. I made lots for my friends and my family.

I made bags from my old jeans. 

I crochet hats.

I did embroidery.

I made necklaces.

I made friendship bracelets.

I was always crafty and I tryed lots of different things untill I got my first sewing machine in march 2006.

Since that day I never stopped crafting.

I had phases were I didn't do any crafty stuff when I had some downs or when I was ill.

Since a few months I'm spending a lot of time reading patchwork and quilt blogs .

I'm looking for the best materials, patchwork patterns and some instructions (I love youtube).

I have a super long list of quilts I really want to try and I ordered lots of solid fabrics to get started . Can you believe that I hardly own any solid fabrics yet ?!

So I'm waiting since april for my fabric order to arrive. I always order from the US because german fabric shops are too expensive.

Everything costs in germany nearly double price than in the US !!!

The best example is the Yli quilt thread. I spend hours looking for a good price in a german online shop.

Finally I ordered from the US which saved me around 4 USD. Can you believe that shipping the yarn from the US to germany is cheaper than shipping the yarn in germany .

Unbelievable !!

But back to my topic. Since I'm waiting for nearly 1 1/2 month for my solids to arrive (which is sadly normal recently for bigger orders from US) I gave up.

I made the decission so start with a very easy quilt. I always loved Jeni's plus quilt  so I had to give it a try.

Jeni was so kind to write a tutorial which makes it pretty easy for me.

(solids and vintage sheets)

I used all my vintage sheets and some solid which I bought from a local fabric shop or got from my dad's school friend. The solids are not quilting quality but they look really nice.



(fabric choice so far)



Choosing the Plus Quilt was the best idea ever. The quilt is made from squares only so I can practise cutting with my rotary cutter. I'm still not a pro but I'm getting better and better.

 

 



(step 1)



 

(step 2)

 

(step 3)

I still can't believe that I made my first baby blanket with using my scissors only last year.

I really start to love my cutter and I bought a book how to use my ruler and cutter.

 

I cutted the first 211 fabric yesterday. I have no idea how long I spend cutting the squares but believe me I had lots of fun.

 

 

(Hoppel the fabric guard)

 

I had to change the square size a bit because I'm not having a a ruler with inch. I own only a cm ruler but I want to buy one after getting my next salary at the end of this month.

My squares are around 10 cm but they will be smaller after I put them all together because I forgot to add the seam allowence (stupid me).

 

 

(211 freshly cut fabrics)

Now I'm waiting for my next order of vintage sheets to cut more squares. YEAH!

cutting fabrics

129/ 365 cutting fabrics, originally uploaded by crafting with loove.

I'm cutting fabrics since 7 hours now (with small breaks for snacks).

Since my solid colours didn't arrive yesterday I started a quilt out of the vintage sheets from Jeni and some solids I still have around.
I'm getting better and better with the cutter.

I decided to try the plus quilt first.
It's a very easy quilt with cutting squares only (which is a great training for a beginner like me).