Double Dutch Quilt Along plus Spin-off

I really enjoy the Double Dutch Sampler Quilt Along. So far I've made several blocks based on two tutorials by my fellow Quilt Along-ers: the House block (second on the right in the photo below) and the Diamond-Plus block (second on the left). All the other blocks are things I improvised, blocks I enjoy making and there's even an 'orphan' X and Plus block I found in my stash that fits the colour scheme!

This is just a small selection of the blocks I made, there wasn't any room left on the little improvised 'washing line'. :) Anyway in the Double Dutch QAL group on Flickr I spotted some so called 'Economy' blocks. I had heard and seen Economy blocks before but hadn't made any myself and a Sampler Quilt is perfect to try out blocks you haven't done before! So I made three for the Sampler Quilt but didn't stop there and started a new quilt. An Economy block spin-off of the Double Dutch Sampler Quilt!

Again this is just a small selection (I think I have about 35 to 40 blocks now), just to give you an idea of the Happy Colour Scheme and fabrics I'm using. There's lots of Heather Ross' Briar Rose in the blocks and a lot of stash and scrap fabrics too. The Heather Ross fabric is really lovely to work with and has lovely bright, sunny prints of bees, clover, frogs, flowers etc. I saw some on sale here and here if you are interested.

I used the Red Pepper Quilts tutorial for the Economy block and you can find links to the House and Diamond/Plus blocks and more Quilt Sampler inspiration here.

As it's quite summer-y over here I guess progress on these quilts will be a little slow in the next few months. I have already taken my huge English Paper Piecing Project with Hexagon flowers from the WIP stack. A great hand sewing project when you are out and about and not in a hurry to finish :)

Double Dutch Quilt Along

About a month ago I wrote about Lotje's 'Everything but the Kitchen Sink Quilt'.

A delightful random and scrappy sampler quilt  (see photo below) which inspired us to start a Double Dutch (the name of our quilt group) Quilt Along. You can find the first block and further details about the Quilt Along on Lotje's blog. There are few rules and you can make as many or as few blocks with us as you like. You can add 'orphan' blocks from your stash or make lots of extra blocks. And you don't even have to be Dutch to join in!  I had a lot of fun making the first block, a 6" block with a house and I'm looking forward to what the next challenges will be. :) 

In the past few weeks I already made a few try out blocks which you see pictured (alongside the house block) above. As you can see I'm using a fairly limited palette with grey, blue, orange, white and red. These are colours I associated with Holland. Grey skies, clouds, rain, Delft Blue, the Sea etc etc. I'm definitely going to use some 'typical' Dutch elements too like Windmill blocks. So I hope you feel inspired by this and want to quilt along with us! Or maybe you just would like to see what we're up to in this Quilt Along on our blogs and social media. Look for #doubledutchqal on Instagram and Twitter and you can find the Flickr group here.

Double Dutch

Double Dutch is the name of the quilting/sewing group I regularly attend, we meet about once every three months for a day of chatting and sewing and to show each other our best quilting efforts. So yesterday I travelled to Leiden, a lovely old town in the western part of the Netherlands, to attend our Spring meeting. Despite the fact that I went to uni in Leiden I can never find my way around town. I graduated in 1996 and the town probably didn't change much in the past 18 years but neither has my sense of direction. ;) 

I didn't have much to show in the meeting as the last time I worked on a quilt was in January and I'm not exactly the most talented quilter of the group anyway. The other ladies brought some pretty impressive stuff with them though. Muriel (top right) brought a Pippi Longstocking quilt top she and other quilters made in the Cocorico Patchwork Bee. Fabulous theme and all the blocks were so well executed and original. You can check out this and other wonderful patchwork projects in the Cocorico Bee Flickr Group. 

Lotje made the 'Everything but the kitchen sink' (which I just found out is actually called 'Funky Garden') quilt on the left which consists of a delightful random collection of different quilt blocks. There was so much to see and admire and we all felt really inspired by Lotje's quilt. So there and then we decided to start a Double Dutch Quilt Along to make a similar (yet different) quilt for ourselves. Everyone is welcome to join in and details will be announced soon!