Stitches and Thrills

When the Breien! (Knitting!) exhibit at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden opened I immediately wanted to jump on a train to the far north. But..hold it... They announced there would be a competition for knitted animal hats! Entries before February 29th 2016, and a selection will be on display for 2 months from April. So I will go later this year, when the hats are in the museum, hoping mine will be among them. :-) (Dutch readers: so you can still enter the Beestenboel competition!) In 2003, when I got back into knitting after decades of non-knitting it all started by making kitty hats as Miss Minoes on Etsy to raise money for the Stevenshage animal shelter in Leiden. Some other animals have popped up in that parade: a bunny , a donkey, a mouse and even a cow. So, having made so many hats with ears already, I really wanted to approach this from another angle. I made a secret Pinterest board (now public) to find the elements I wanted in my design. Follow Ama's...

Final part: I have been making the Vivienne Westwood Drape Shirt via a free pattern on the Worlds End Shop Blog. Look here for part 1 & part 2 . Once I had posted on Facebook some friends said they also wanted to make it, thus it became a sew-a-long. After post 2 I did the buttons, button holes and pocket. But when the shirt was finished it was not yet quite what I had hoped for. To tell the truth: when I put it on I felt like the missing 6th member of Duran Duran in the Seventh & the Ragged Tiger years. (...and I should know, but you will never see THAT photo until I might have an unfortunate drunkblogging mishap... ) It took a few days to figure out what was missing. I needed some unbalance added to the design. If you use a stripe or plaid that effect comes from the print of the fabric. With this small houndstooth it was kind of dull and more like the wrong side of the 1980s. So made a second pocket using the selvage side to place angled over the or...

Continuing from part 1 . While I am making the Drape Shirt from the World's End Blog, some friends started to join in. :-) So this is officially a sew-a-long. This second post continues with the sleeves. As I have not sewn that many garments before (I am more of a small accessories sewer) this was the first time I'd have to gather a sleeve ! Luckily I had just read about this in my Tilly & the Buttons book . And actually: it is pretty easy. You stitch from 12 to 13 in the pattern in a very long stitch (4 instead of 2-2 1/2). Using a contrasting colour makes it easier. Make 2 rows. Then softly pull the thread from either side until gathered as required. Then came another first. The pattern called for a French seam along the long edge of the sleeves. This had been a Great British Sewing Bee learning moment for me last season. For a French seam you first sew the fabric wrong side to wrong side with a small seam. Then turn the fabric around to sew it right side to righ...

As European enamelware goes the Cathrineholm factory in Norway is very famous. But The Netherlands has it's own legendary enamel and cast iron producers : DRU (Diepenbrock en Reigers te Ulft). You might know them from the DRU Holland pastel coloured enamelware with the tulip logo, but my favourite series is this one:   When I started going to flee markets about 25 years ago it must have been one of the first items I picked up: a battered black enamel bowl with tiny yellow and red dots. There just was something so adorable about it. In the years following more of these bowls did pop up on my thrift store trips every now and then, and I was always drawn to them. Mostly they were as battered as the first one I picked up, but I started to be more selective: occasionally there was a bowl and lid in very good condition! Research learned that these enamel bowls were actually a Dutch design classic. The Confetti series was designed by Willem Gilles in 1953/1954 for DRU (Diepe...

A must see this summer are the 3 exhibitions at the Textielmuseum in Tilburg. It's where I spend this lovely Sunday afternoon! A major attraction is the overview of 20th-century textile designs from famous artists like Miro, Picasso, Warhol. The historic background is very interesting, the textile designs by painters and other artists were often created to make art more accessible ("Art by the yard"). But the real stars of the exhibit are of course the fabrics themselves. It is a good thing they put a lot of notes around saying: Don't touch! because some fabrics look so inviting.  (3:Estelle Laverne | 4:Nevill Johnson | 5:Eduardo Poalozzi | 6:Steinberg | 7:Andy Warhol) ARTIST TEXTILES, Picasso to Warhol (- till September 14, 2014) - - - x x x - - - On the first floor of the museum I felt like stepping into wonderland. There are 2 intriguing and surprising exhibits. The first one is the 8 fascinating tapestries based on the subconscious hallucin...

The Nordic Island Hat: Inspired by the wind, the dune, the colours and the atmosphere at the Wad&Design festival on Schiermonnikoog, at which I was a part of an Etsy Pop Up shop last September. I designed The Nordic Island Hat on Schiermonnikoog and i knitted the first hats there from Drops Eskimo wool. Cute and cosy on the couch in the Etsy cottage where we stayed with fellow Etsians Babette, Margriet, Nynke en Barbara. De Nordic Island Hat shall be available in my Etsy-shop next week. I'm also working on writing out the pattern.      

Last week I was on Schiermonnikoog, a small Dutch island in the Waddensea. It is a beautiful island and with beautiful sea views and walks in the dunes . I was on Schiermonnikoog as part of an Etsy Pop-Up Shop during the Wad&Design Festival. One of the participants of the design festival was the designer duo Soepboer&Stooker . They gave a new take on cross stitch samplers by enlarging the design. You could also participate in the project in a short workshop. In the city hall there was an exhibition of old cross stitch samplers to illustrate the traditional background.   Coincidently a couple of days after I got back two family heirlooms came back together: my aunt showed 2 cross stitch samplers my great-aunt had made when she was 10 yrs old. This great-aunt had later tragically died at the age of 19. Then my father said he had saved her box of needle work which had been at my great-uncles mill house. We all decided these items should be kept together f...