Last week I shared a pattern that looked like people doing the wave, and this week second pattern depicts wild and crazy ocean waves. Strong currents, wild winds and smashing waves were the inspiration for this dense pattern. After all it is Maritime Day today!

This pattern is great as a background filler and that is why I chose a thread that blended with the fabric more. I don’t want to thread to stand out much with a filler, it is supposed to flatten the background so other elements stand out more. The wave design also adds a lot ...

Making a runner

How do you like your coffee? Strong or with a lot of milk, with an extra added flavor or just plain?

I am not much of a coffee drinker myself, but most of my family members LOVE their coffee in the morning. Shiny appliances with lots of buttons on the counter tops, speciality roasted beans and unique cups to drink it from. Making coffee is turned into an art form!

Can you add a specialty flavor to your quilting?

Yes you can! Add some more depth to your design bij using a slightly darker thread. Some areas of the Coffee ...

One arm up, two arms up… WOOHOO!

Tomorrow our high school students will visit an amusement park. I will not join them this time as a chaperone, but I can imagine their cheerful screams in the many rollercoasters. Some of them even dare to hold their arms up into the air while riding the coaster. Personally I don’t mind the speed of that type of ride, but the height is an issue… and let’s not even talk about the vertigo it causes me. So I normally will admire their joy from the ground.

This week’s pattern is ...

Do you have exotic plants in your garden? 

In my street a lot of neighbors have lovely Japanse maple trees and bushes in their gardens. The maples really stand out beautifully against the white painted modern houses. There are even a few neighbors who have a type of bamboo that doesn’t spread. 

Today, September 18th, bamboo is celebrated on a global level to spread awareness on its conservation. Let’s enjoy this gorgeous plant in our weird and wonderful quilting corner of the internet too.

This Bamboo pattern is pretty easy to stitch out. The bamboo design can be ...

Hot tip: read all the way to the end!

How do you like your chocolate? As a chocolate bar that you can share (or not), as a hot cocoa with whipped creme on top or a as brownie that you can nibble on?

My personal favorite ways to eat chocolate is as sprinkles on icecream, as a chocolate bar with nuts, or like my fellow Dutchies as hagelslag on a peanut butter sandwich.

This week’s free motion quilting design is called Chocolate, as you have guessed already. This pattern is a grid-based design. I stitched it out on a ...

Scrappy Yellow Placemat

This September you can create your own quilting retreat at home, for FREE!

Two exciting online quilting events are taking place back to back. You can spend a whole week creating projects and then learning how to quilt them. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Yes, yes, yes, the classes in these events are all FREE! You will have free access for a certain time period, and you could even buy the classes if you want to keep them for longer.

I was asked to create free motion quilting classes for both these events and I have been sitting on this ...

Have you ever heard of a Kelp forest? It is the name of an underwater area that is densely populated by kelp. It covers most of our oceans’ coastlines. Mysterious, beautiful and also very important for the Earth’s ecosystem.

And kelp makes a great inspiration for Free Motion Quilting designs. Flowy and bendy so you can cover an entire area, soft and curvy for fabulous texture, and just two different design elements to worry about.

Start with a curvy (gentle serpentine) vertical line. That line curves back down with a series of feather / teardrop shapes. The next piece of ...

Halloween Season has started here on my blog!

And with this season’s opening and the first day of school for me, it also the start of a new series of Free Motion Quilting patterns. I loved creating new and original designs and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Today August 30th, is Frankenstein Day where we celebrate the author Mary Shelley’s birthday.
Have you ever read her book Frankenstein? In my day job as a high school art teacher I have done lessons on the book and the films but I have never applied Frankenstein ...

Cutwork and Broderie Anglaise