Shopping in Barcelona

Yesterday I had to do quite a big shopping tour in Barcelona for the students in my workshops.
First of all I went to Nunoya for some kimono prints Maria uses for a colourful and elegant
log cabin quilt and I passed some time in the shop, cause they had got some new KOKKA fabrics...
dangerously beautiful!!!

After that I needed I little coffee and sandwitch break at one of my favoured places for that, just around the corner from Nunoya.
"La Granja" with it's old roman wall in the back, good background music, very good coffee and a good sized sandwitch for just 4euros.

Then I went on the hunt for one of these Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dress pattern...
.. and got hold of this one

it says "easy" and might be just the right to start, like I haven´t sewn a proper dress for ages.

All excited next stop was to get the material for it. So I went straight to one of the most stunning
fabric stores I know : Ribas i Casals - I have been to this from the very beginning living in Spain and it's incredible what you get there.
Yesterday the crowd was buzzing in there, seems that everybody wants to do the spring collection.
I got some really smooth material for two wrap dresses and some other fabrics.. the offers are just to
good..

Last stop was a real Patchwork shop, which I visit frequently more for it's good selection of fabrics
than for the friendly attendance... got what I needed and than back out of the city.

By the time I was at home and completely exausted, I thought it's really great to live so close to a great shopping city like Barcelona...but just close..

 ...today I started with the wrap dress!!!

Silvana

scrapping the scraps

Doing Patchwork and creative sewing for about 15 years, creates boxes and bags of scraps!!!

And like I am a real recycle, up cycle and upgrade junky

I hoard them like treasures, going through them to reorganise and categorise, than starting to mix them up again to see which ones are working together...

...always creating a mayor mess around my workspace, but just feeling happy 

discovering another snippet of a long ago used up fabric.

But know I found the ideal way to give a lot of my fabric scraps a chance for glorious show up.

Years ago I got from my German cousin a bale of white cotton, lots and lots of meters...

great to count on for my project:

I cut the cotton in 4 to 6.5cm wide stripes

grap what ever comes of my scrap box and cut the fabric bits roughly equal

than I sew them in an garland to a cotton stripe, cut them with scissors and sew the opposite side to another white cotton stripe

now I match them with similar wide fabric bits to a longer patched stripe,

white cotton stripe on either side and on and on it goes...

There is only one rule to this work:

No concession in matching colours!!!

everything counts...and if it gets a bit crooked, the livelier and better....

Hope you have a nice weekend ahead.
I will go for some material shopping in Barcelona tomorrow....

Talk to you soon
Silvana

wild at heart

 
when I stumbled the other day over this pin at Pinterest and got all excited by the idea to knit up all my carefully collected yarn scraps.
Seriously, I never thought that there is a way to match the awful colour and texture mix of them.
But from my experience in scrap patching, I know, the wilder the better!!!
So I just got started last Friday evening and by the time it was past midnight I was already half up the way...
as I looked at the job at day light the following morning, I was stunned by effect.

I am working with a circular 100cm wooden 7mm needle and use what ever I have in the scrap basket,
merino, mohair ( doubling the yarn), Aran tweed ( my favoured) and pure new wool, a lot of the wool I
brought down to Spain nearly 20 years ago!!

Like I don't know yet, if this is going do be a poncho or a wrap, I casted about 180cm length of stitches.
Working in rows of Knit and Purl stitches as it pleases me, and if sometimes I just get confused in the middle of a row -doesn't matter...

So this is an other WORK IN PROGRESS !! and so much fun...

Hasta luego
Silvana

All you knit is love

I was giving a knitting workshop this month for beginners,

introducing them into knitting with circular needles.

It was quite a task, as my students are Spanish and they already new a bit of the job, working with long needles...

and this was my dilemma!!!

Cause they have this funny way of  clamp them under the arms and lift the yarn over the needles, instead of catching it...

The mere look at it gives me muscular cramp,

but they resisted to learn it the other way,

so we kept on going round and round...

and made beautiful and comfy double  loop scarves from wonderful 100% wool, 

which

I bought in my favoured wool shop in Barcelona

All you knit is love

Carrer de la Barra de Ferro, 8

It has to be something like this...

a few days ago I was looking for a wrap tunic pattern in the Internet, but I couldn't find anything interesting.

Instead I came across with a lot of wrap dresses, most of them referring to the fashion icon from the 70ties, Diane von Fürstenberg.

As I scrolled through the images I got really amazed by the way a simple design can be so feminine, comfy and easy to make and decided to get me pattern and fabric...