Karen is making reversible strip quilts as gifts for her grandchildren. The fabrics feature some of their hobbies/passions. This one has music on the front and sports on the back for her grandson. The quilted music notes are a pantograph called “Music #2”.

This floral quilt was made by Loraine from a kit she bought a long time ago. We looked at floral patterns for quilting at first but then decided that there was already so much going on in the quilt that a neutral pattern would work better. With “Overlapping Crop Circles” we picked up the circular design of the background and backing fabrics, it creates beautiful texture. (Yes, there are circles in these fabrics even though it looks like the backing is just stripes… you might have to take a look at the full size picture 🙂 )

Ciska made this quilt using fabrics by Canadian designer Shania Sunga. (She also designed the Canadian Mystery Quilt and Homecoming, the most beautiful interpretation of the Canadian Flag. If you are not familiar with her work, be sure to check it out.) Ciska lived in Australia for a while and fell in love with the Koala quilt when she saw it. The quilting design is called “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”, the backing is cuddly Fireside.

Mrs Buckingham moved in with me right before Christmas. She wasn’t exactly a Christmas gift, I just happened to find her at this time of the year. Mrs Buckingham – in case you are wondering – is a beautiful vintage Singer treadle machine, a Model 15. All my vintage machines have names, just my modern computerized Pfaff machine is just “my sewing machine”. For some reason I could never think of a good name for her.

Mrs Buckingham gave me a bit of a headache too when I tried to find a name for her. It wasn’t until I opened the drawers and found the original manual in one of them. In neat handwriting it was marked “Mrs Buckingham”. I am assuming that this was the name of the original owner, and it only seemed fitting to choose this name for the machine.

Before I started my quilting business I used to write a personal sewing blog, and I posted pictures of all my machines when I acquired them but I have never written about my collection here. For anyone interested, here is a quick overview. Most of these machines came without a manual, and I did some research to figure out the model numbers. I am fairly confident they are correct but I am not an expert, so please don’t yell at me if you find a mistake 😉

My first vintage Singer was this black Featherweight, her name is Noelle, and I have pieced quite a few quilt tops with her. She was my travel machine back in Germany and accompanied me to retreats and other sewing events.

When we moved to Canada and our boxes hadn’t arrived yet, a friend gave me her mother’s Singer machine from the early 60s… meet Sweet Caroline, a Singer Slant-O-Matic 403 special. I was able to get a darning foot and even used her for free-motion quilting.

This is Hope, the first machine we purchased in Canada, a Singer 201. My husband found her on Craigslist, the owners were moving and wanted to get rid of her. The power cord was missing, and we decided to risk it and purchased her anyway. We were able to use Sweet Caroline’s power cord for Hope, and she was in great shape, just needed to be cleaned and oiled.

Then my husband discovered that he liked working on vintage machines and started looking for them on Craigslist and at garage sales. This is how Heather moved in with us, a Singer 128 vibrating shuttle 3/4-size machine.

At a garage sale, we found Cleo, a Singer 127. She is closely related to Heather, the only difference is that Cleo is a full size machine. My husband was still pretending, by the way, that he was buying these machines for me…

This is the one machine that I really wanted, and we searched for quite a while before we found my little “Sugar Fairy”. Noelle, my black Featherweight is a European machine, and because of the different voltage I couldn’t just plug her in after we moved to Canada. So instead of getting a voltage converter, I started looking for a white Featherweight with North American voltage. Makes sense, right?? These white machines are much less common than the black ones and more expensive but we finally managed to find one in good shape and for a good price.

I haven’t bought a vintage machine since 2015 but all my other machines are electric, and when Mrs Buckingham crossed my path, I figured that I really needed to add a treadle machine to the collection 🙂

I am back! And I chose the right day to fly back, there was snow here last Friday, and it snowed again yesterday but when I landed in Vancouver on Saturday, the roads (and runways) were clear. We are currently under an Artic Outflow Warning, schools are closed today, and traffic is a mess. It was a bit too warm yesterday before the artic air moved in, and there is a layer of ice underneath the snow which makes driving a nightmare. The highway is in really bad shape, lots of cars in the ditch, and there are still people driving like maniacs. Do they think winter tires alone make them invincible?

With temperatures around -12°C (approx. 11F) the weather is perfect for staying inside, drinking hot tea and sewing. Or writing patterns. I finally uploaded the full Tuxedo Cat pattern, both in English/Imperial and German/Metric and also updated all the direct links in the previous posts. I am not really happy with the picture of the quilt since it isn’t straight at all but there is no way I am going outside to take another one. Finished is better than perfect (says the perfectionist without really believing it… ), I will fix it when the weather cooperates. For those who missed most or all of the blocks and have been waiting to purchase the full pattern, it will be available with a discount until January 20, 2020. Enter the code TC2020 during checkout for 10% off.

I would also like to thank all of you for your comments of comfort and sympathy. I usually try to reply to every comment individually but in this case I just didn’t have the time. The internet can be such an ugly place sometimes, even the quilting community can be quite nasty once in a while, which makes me appreciate the kindness and thoughtfulness of those who left a comment on the passing of my Dad even more. 

Click to purchase Tuxedo Cats Pattern (English/Imperial)

(Kauf)Anleitung Tuxedo Cats (Deutsch/Metrisch)

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” And life happened again, and I had to readjust. I was planning on doing a Christmas post last weekend and then take some time off over the holidays. Then my dad passed away last Saturday. He had been sick for years, it started with a stroke in 2007 and went downhill ever since. He spent the last two years in a care home, fell asleep on Friday night and never woke up again. It was as peaceful as possible, and I am especially grateful that he wasn’t hooked up to any machines and that there was no effort to resuscitate him. Naturally I spent a lot of time going back and forth with my mom, trying to work out the arrangements, book a flight to Germany etc. I will be gone until mid-January. Boy, am I glad that I decided not to start another BOM at the beginning of the year.

We had most of it sorted out on Christmas Eve and were able to have a nice, quiet Christmas with our son, enjoyed good food and each other’s company. I hope all of you enjoyed the holidays as well. Here is a picture of this year’s handmade Christmas cards that I made in a last minute frenzy one weekend in November. I always purchase the fabrics right after Christmas, when the holiday fabrics go on sale, so I have a design and material ready for next year but of course I never find the time to actually make them before I absolutely have to. My Scan N Cut simplified the process a lot this year, it would have been almost impossible to cut out the shapes by hand.

Thank you to all of you who keep visiting and reading and commenting, have a wonderful happy and healthy New Year 2020!

Darlene used up scraps for this quilt, stitching lots and lots of squares together around the centre panel. When I saw the cozy flannel backing she chose, I knew right away that this project needed to be quilted with the “Deer in the Woods” pattern that has trees, deer, moose and bears.

“Sunnyside Up” is the third and last of Elaine’s three Christmas gift quilts for her granddaughters and also the name of the Moda fabric line she used for this project. The cheerful colours and floral fabrics asked for another flower pattern, and “Wandering Daisies” was my choice for this quilt.

This quilt is the second of the three Christmas gifts for Elaine’s granddaughters. The quilting design is called “Ginger Flower”, the floral fabrics called for something flowery. All three quilts have cuddly Fireside on the back.

Elaine got an early start on her Christmas gifts this year. This is the first of three quilts for her granddaughters that she dropped off for quilting back in July. “The Treehouse Club” is the name of the Moda fabric line she used for this project. The quilting design is called “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”, I purchased it a while ago, and it is quickly becoming one of my favourites.

Wasn’t that a great Virtual Cookie Exchange Blog Hop last week? So many delicious recipes and inspiring projects, many thanks again to Carol who organizes this event every year. And thank you to all of you who visited my blog and took the time to leave a comment. I always enjoy reading them, and I try to reply to every single one. This was the first time I ran a giveaway with Rafflecopter that I set up myself. I have had a few for the annual Row Along events but in these cases I just added the code I was given to the blog post and had nothing to do with the setup and drawing of the winners, so I wasn’t at all sure how any of this works. It turns out it is super easy and straightforward and not difficult at all. The winners have been drawn this morning, and the patterns were emailed to them. If you are a winner and didn’t receive an email, please check your spam folder. If you still can’t find the pattern, please let me know. Congratulations to

If you didn’t win but would still like a copy of the pattern, it is now available for purchase in the store section. And again I wrote a German version although I said I wouldn’t. Because as soon as I said I wouldn’t offer German/metric patterns anymore, people started buying them. Some kind of reverse Murphy’s Law? I don’t know but I am certainly not going to question it LOL. In any case, if I have time and the project is small I might still add a German version but as a general rule I am going to focus on English/Imperial patterns.

Click to purchase O Christmas Tree Mug Rugs pattern (English/Imperial)

(Kauf)Anleitung O Tannenbaum Mug Rugs (Deutsch/Metrisch)

Thank you so much, Carol, for hosting the Virtual Cookie Exchange once again. I have collected so many interesting cookie recipes during this blog hop, I will be busy for years trying them all out! I have only been living in North America since 2013, and German Christmas baking is very different from North American Christmas baking. And while I enjoy trying new recipes, our Christmas baking is still mostly German, and I will be sharing another of my favourite German recipes.

Today’s recipe is called “Haselnussblüten” which literally translates to “Hazelnut Blossoms”. They do not look like real hazelnut blossoms though, just flower shaped cookies with ground hazelnuts in the dough. Ground hazelnuts and almonds are staples in German Christmas baking, and while I can get ground almonds at the grocery store here, I have trouble finding ground hazelnuts for my baking. There is a store in Vancouver that carries them but it took a while to get used to having to drive 100 km for some ground hazelnuts. The recipe calls for ground cinnamon and cloves, just a pinch of each. I usually add more. It really depends on what you like, and I love the taste of cinnamon. (I also double the amount of spices I put into my pumpkin pie, not just cinnamon but also ginger and cloves.) Feel free to add more or less, depending on what you like. The original recipe also calls for some hazelnut glaze that you can buy at German grocery stores. I have never seen anything similar here, not even at the German deli, and we substitute semi-sweet chocolate for it which works just fine. My husband is usually the one who decorates the cookies, and he has developed his own system of how to use the liquid chocolate to glue the hazelnut to the cookie which always makes me laugh.

A Christmas tradition that I very much appreciate is baking cookies together with my son. I started getting him involved as soon as he could stand, guiding his little fingers with the cookie cutters, and we made cookies together every year. He turned 20 this year and is in his third year at the University of British Columbia. He will be coming home next week, and I really enjoy that he still wants to bake cookies with me… and not just eat them 🙂

A few words of caution/disclaimer: This is a German recipe. Germans measure only liquids by volume, solid ingredients are measured by weight. And everything is metric, of course. With the help of the internet I have provided the imperial measurements but there is no guarantee these are correct… it’s the internet after all. So if a number looks suspicious to you, please double check the math. Another difference are North American ranges. Having to choose between “bake” and “broil” doesn’t really translate to German full convection ovens. So please keep an eye on the cookies and decide for yourself if they need longer or are done faster in your oven than required by the recipe.

Click to download German Hazelnut Cookies recipe

Being a longarm quilter, this is my busy season, so I haven’t had a lot of time for working on my own projects. But I came up with a little mug rug design that I call “O Christmas Tree”. The pattern will be published next week, here is a little preview. And I am also giving away five digital copies of the pattern. If you would like to win one, please leave a comment and enter the giveaway. Entries will be accepted until Sunday (December 5, 2019, 11.59 PST), and I will draw the winners on Monday and email the patterns. The patterns will only be availabe in English and with Imperial measurements. This is my first time hosting a giveaway with Rafflecopter, and I hope it all works as planned. If there are issues, please be patient and let me know, and I will try to fix them ASAP. Please scroll down to the end of the post for giveaway rules and guidelines.

Comment moderation is turned off for today to make it easier for you to enter the giveaway. But please don’t leave your email address in the comment text. It is not necessary to do so, and the spam protection software will kick in and not publish your comment, so it will have to be moderated after all. I will be happy to manually publish it but please keep in mind that I am in the Pacific time zone and will still be asleep when this post publishes.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you for visiting today, and please make sure that you visit all the participants of this blog hop and look at their fabulous projects and mouthwatering cookies. Once again here is the full schedule of all five days of this event.

Giveaway Rules and Guidelines

Please take the time to read them.

• • You must leave a comment to enter the giveaway. If you don’t leave a comment, your winning entry will be ignored and cancelled.
  • You are only allowed to enter once.
  • The winners will be announced either on Monday, December 9 or Tuesday, December 10, 2019.
  • You must give a valid email address when you enter the giveaway. Any email returned to me loses the ability to win automatically.
  • I will email the digital patterns to the winners right away. Please check your spam folders if you are announced as one of the winners and didn’t receive an email. Especially Gmail likes to send anything I send straight to the spam folder.
  • No purchase whatsoever is necessary.
  • You must be 18+ in order to win a gift.
  • All winners are chosen at random.
  • All winners will be announced on the blog via the Rafflecopter entry form and a post. All winners must allow for their first name and first initial of their last name to be announced on this blog.
  • Odds of winning a prize are based on the total number of rafflecopter entries.
  • This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.