calendar quilt

No, Summer has not come yet in Switzerland 😉 far from it ! These pictures were taken last Spring when I almost finished the top of a quilt started one year earlier, in January 2009. It is a calendar quilt. Each month I sewed together 30 or 31 pieces of different materials – scraps from other quilts –  according to the Season or  to a particular day : a heart for Valentine’s Day in February, roses for June or  a bare trees pattern for November, for instance.

January, February, March

April, May, June

July, August, September

October, Novembre, December

The months being all sewed, I still had quite a few scraps left. Scraps of scraps…   Beautiful ones too. So, what to do ? Thankfully was inspired by another quilter’s work and decided to sew together all those real small left-over pieces. It was quite an adventure, one which created an incredible amount of threads and tiny fabric confetti that spread  (I spread involuntarily) all over the house.

“Why are you making this “Benedictine work”” asked my Dad one day as he was visiting us ? (a French expression meaning a painstaking task, “un travail de Bénédictin”). An expression that most certainly was related to the immense work these monks accomplished when they copied manuscripts of classical authors and so preserved valuable books that otherwise would have been lost. The Benedictine monks also kept records of the most striking events of their time and acted as chroniclers of the medieval history of the Middle Ages. So much for history and quilting 🙂

Which reminds me… I must bring you some day to an interesting museum in my town : The Gutenberg Museum.

Now, to go back to the calendar quilt, my idea was to border it with more beautiful scraps. Which I did.

Underneath are a few examples of these borders before I added them to the quilt.

And here is the end result, a quilt of about 1m50 x 2m20.  I am very happy to have given a sort of  “second life” to my scraps .  I feel like  using  more of them in the future and I certainly will. Many colourful scraps are waiting in various ancient tin boxes  to be part of another quilt.

Quilting and embroidering the  names of the months  still need to be made but this is probably my favourite part and I look forward to this. A very relaxing work where thoughts  and  stitches meander along the quilt.

Et pour Karma, http://karmardav.wordpress.com/

another picture in close-up of the three months, January, February, March.

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Winter colours

Back blogging after some busy time. Generally nothing has changed much… Winter is still here,  not really looking like leaving soon and giving way to Spring. Snow is falling almost every day with sometimes a ray of sunshine. Real happiness ! Mostly though the main shade you see all around is  grey and white and it makes you dream of colours.  Plenty of colours !“Let the Spring come in !”

A good time for staying inside and quilt, one of my favourite activities in every season.  Through Flickr I came across this blog I visited with great pleasure :

http://calendarquiltchallenge.blogspot.com/

It inspired me to look for my scraps of  bright and colourful fabrics. Soon I started sewing my own calendar quilt. Here are the three first months of this year, Winter colours I imagined for January, February and March.Thanks to everyone on Calendar quilt challenge for their wonderful blog and creativity.

One of my favourite colours is orange. Looking around for this warm shade that would brighten up  my Winter, I spotted a basket full of  oranges, so juicy and sweet, just begging to be put into jars… Which I did ! more colours, scents, the cardamon, cinamon and vanilla adding a touch of sunshineThose are the colours of my Winter, shades that look and taste good. Colours that  sooner or later will bring back Spring  !