Pinning and women's talk

Thursday was nice and sunny and already 30 degrees outside. You will read now lot of me whining about hot weather. Ursula made a bag with sunflower fabric and used her fabric flowers. They look right in place. She used simple zigzag stitches on her bag too.

Therese's Christmas tree wall hanging is quilted and ready to be posted to its owner.

Regina, Ursula, Therese and me sandwiched Therese's quilt. She bought ready cut triangles set and after Thursday it is ready to be quilted. This is the first quilt that she will have for herself. In the past she made many and they were all presents. Ursula suggested the name "Rose Garden".

After being for a long time absent from quilting Regina came with her paper-pierced Christmas tree. All eight hands were pinning this little quilt to put our signature. OK, there are only six and some of us have to take a photo.


After we sat and chatted. Actually, mainly listening Regina's life story. She was the first Portuguese woman to be a manager of the Ritz hotel in Lisbon. She speaks Spanish, English, French and of course Portuguese. She learnt English and French because in the 1960s she was not allowed to go to a university and her parents hired language teachers that she can learn languages.

She traveled a lot to the America and Europe attending tourism fairs and her favourite city is Berlin. When she was interviewed for a job and was asked whether she can type or not. Her answer was "No, but I can play a piano!"

An incredible woman. It was a pleasure to listen her story.

Photo and text Javhlan

WRVS Car Boot Sale

WRVS is organising car boot sale on Saturday June 5th 2010 at the Carcavelos Clothes Market from 10.00h to 14.00h


Browse for treasures such as toys, books, baby items, clothing, household goods, furniture
and much more including WRVS hot and cold drinks, snacks sandwiches and delicious home made cakes!

To reserve a place for €12 to sell from your car

Email Simon on sdjwebb[at]yahoo.com

or Kim on kimwulff59[at]hotmail.com

and leave a message with your name, Tel No or email address.

If you would like to donate items email Ineke on wrvsportugal@gmail.com

Flower bloom at the Quilt Bar

Spring is spreading all over Portugal. Flowers blooming everywhere and many people are going to garden centres to brighten up their gardens with spring flowers.

Quilt Bar was blooming with fabric flowers too. On Thursday, Ann, Cinzia, Irene, and another Irene (Ann's friend) and Ursula came to make with me fabric flowers.

This is Cinzia'a flowers. She made only two flowers because she had to run home.

Ann made her flowers from her Liberty fabric which had been in her wardrobe for more than twenty years. Fabrics were fantastic to make flowers.

Irene's flowers looked gorgeous! I liked her choice of fabrics.

These are our visitor Irene's flowers. She does knitting, crochet and cross-stitching a very crafty woman from Holland. At some point there were three Dutch speakers two Irene and Ann. Ann is very talented with foreign languages unlike many British. I think, she speaks French, Dutch, Portuguese and of course English.

Ursula made three flowers with her hand dyed fabric.

Without these plate full of buttons we would not have completed out flowers. These buttons Ann bought in Australia and she offered us to use for our flowers. Bisciuts and coffee or tea cannot be separated from craft as you can see in the photo.

Ursula and Irene were concentrated on making wonderful flowers.

Ann, Irene and Cinzia were working hard to learn everything.

Text and photos Javhlan

Cinzia's painting and applique

Cinzia is one of our talented person in the group. She does painting on T-shirts and sweatshirts. A Spider Man for Afonso below.

A little and cute Minnie is waving to you.

This applique Cinzia started last Thursday.

And here is the finished product.

Football for South Africa

In my favourite fashion magazine "Burda Style", I found an invitation to join in to campaign to make a football for "South Africa". The magazine is having this charity performance due to the Football World Cup Championship in South Africa in this year's summer. I am not a big football fan and I never before thought of sewing a ball!

But I liked the idea, that Hubert Burda Media is going to donate 10 euros for every ball that is arriving in the publishing house in Munich to the foundation of Christian Liebig (Christian-Liebig-Stifung). So I thought by myself, it would be nice to have part in the set up that they want to make of all the balls, that they hope will arrive from 90 countries, where Burda Style is published. At least one ball from Portugal is there now also.

Above all, one lucky sender of one football can win one Pfaff Coverlock 3.0 mashine.

So I made my ball, and to my surprise I found it so much fun to sew this! It was really a most pleasing and " to have fun-project", so I made two balls. One to take part in the project of Burda Style and the other one for my daughter's godson.

This one is for Burda, the fabrics are from Buttinette. The combination of stone and grass is maybe a little bit odd, but also I like the way of Nature that it is always succeeding to find a way to surface in men-built objects (such as my driveway,............ this looks the same).

For the ball for Paul Matthias I used my hand dyed fabrics. I wanted it to be with colours but also to follow a certain pattern. For this I had to use some brainstorming and I had to buy a cheap plastic ball
to see how the colours would come.


This is the sewing pattern. (Burda Style 04/2010)

Somehow this is clear that it is going to be a ball, isn't it??



Text and photos Ursula

Birte's new Quilt

Birte sent a photo of her new quilt. This time she chose Biblical motive blocks. She said that she had some problems to fit the blocks together and is now happy that the quilt is finished.


photo: Birte

Ann's work

Ann's Australian story will not finish for a while. From previous posts you have seen that she brought fabrics, buttons and books from there. Below photos are showing what she made to take to Australia. She made for her daughter a paper pierced table centre and a patchwork bag.


This quilt's photo was taken by Ann in Canberra museum.