New Dolls for UNICEF

Finally I have something new to show you here, if you still can find your way to my blog. During the Summer I have made four new UNICEF dolls. This is Kerttu:

Her dark-haired friend is Ilona:

Aura here has typical Finnish hair, straight, fine and fair. Her pretty frock is made from my mother's old summer skirt.

The last doll is Susanna, she will be a retirement gift for a friend later.

Here they all are, just waiting for their identity cards. The UNICEF office as been closed during July but I hope to get a delivery of cards and those little fabric labels to show that they are original and genuine UNICEF products.

By today I have made 90 girl dolls and only used 8 names twice, each time because the new owner wished to give her doll a name I had already used for a doll earlier. Finding a nice name for a doll is part of the fun.

 

April's News

This April has been full of weather surprises: some very warm days, and then a cold week with lots of new snow and traffic chaos. During the cold days it was still perfect weather for warm knitting, so I knitted two pairs of socks, one in light blue

and the other in yellow and teal:

Then I used the rest of the yellowish yarn with brown for a perfect pair of mittens to go with my warm winter coat.

I finally had the inspiration and energy to machine quilt this starry quilt, the only one I have been working on this year.

I quite like it. The stars are made with two different blue plaids each, and the red 16-patches have a random selection of various red shades. All these fabrics are recycled, mostly shirts from the men in my extended family, and some fabrics come from sewing projects never finished.

 

To pass the time

The Winter has been long and my energy levels low, but my needles have been busy anyway. Here is the collection I have finished this year: socks in different sizes and some mittens too.

The quilt top is now waiting for some final ironing. I need to put the backing together from two unused sheets before I can layer the quilt for machine quilting.

When the weather is not good or the pavements too icy, I prefer to stay in the house and do something fun, like putting together the jigsaw puzzles together with Mr. K. This one was especially tricky, and irritating at the same time.  

The pieces were sawed in a peculiar way so the rows didn't hold together sideways except in the top and bottom edges. Anyway, we managed to finish it before taking the photo above:

 

I love the old fashioned pictures on many of my puzzles, like this couple:

I don't like cats, but this puzzle was fun as it was so tricky. The boxes don't have a photo of the puzzle so it will always be a surprise to see the finished picture.

I wish the snow and ice would melt away!

The new year's first quilt

After a holiday break from everyday routines I have started a new quilt. I chose ten or so blue and white(ish) plaids from my endless stash and made lots of HST's with white. Trimming them to 2½" took a long time.

Almost all the 2½" white squares I needed were just loitering in my 2½" squares box, so it didn't take long to finish the strips for the other sides of my blue stars.

I used the same plaids for the 4½" center squares. I thought I would need 24 stars but made 28 just in case I wanted the quilt a little wider or longer. 

Now the stars are all ironed and stacked away, waiting for the next burst of inspiration and wondering how the alternating blocks will turn out. 

The Best Mittens Ever

Knitting is my favorite craft nowadays. I have been improving my mitten design with every pair I have knitted, and I think I have reached my goal with this pair. The pattern is one my Grandmother used a lot, but I have changed the overall design. Instead of her ribbed wrist in one color, the pattern begins at the wrist and continues all the way to the thumb and the tip of the fingers. As the pattern uses lifted stitches, the rows are tight together and thus warmer. Granny's thumb and top of the mitten were in plain stockinette in one color, so our fingertips were easily cold.

See how beautifully the pattern continues in the thumb gusset and thumb!

The mittens are a gift, and so are the socks in Broken seeds pattern.

Our Christmas tree is a mini version on the balcony. Happy Holidays for everyone!

 

Finished quilt

Here are some of my favorite blocks of my newest quilt. First, the last two 2½" squares from a vintage Moomin fabric from my childhood:

Some of my favorite colors,  latte and dark chocolate. I could have both right now, thank you!

My Liberty cotton blouse and a burgundy men's shirt

Two very nice and soft shirts from my dear Mr. K

I bought an extra wide satin sheet for the backing and quilted this big (for my machine) quilt in maybe four sessions.

It is about 155 cm x 205 cm or 61" x 81". Luckily the quilting went without too many problems and unstitchings.

The quilt is now for sale to support the Finnish Red Cross and through their Disaster Relief Fund to help the victims of the crisis in Ukraine. Our handicraft club's donations have brought over 4,700 € by now, and our campaign is continued as long as possible.

 

New Quilt in Process

Sometimes I want to start a new quilt just to use up the hundreds of little squares I have cut from final rests of fabrics and stored in neat boxes. I made the dolls' quilts with such squares and other project rests when I was looking through my 2½" square collection. Naturally I had to cut just a few new squares to get the required number of 4-patch blocks.

For the alternating 150 HST squares I allowed myself to buy some new fabric, my all time cheerful favorite grey! The beige is from my stash. Here I was testing the arrangement of the blocks. One upside down 4-patch escaped my control and I had to unpick it later. Luckily it was so close to the end of its row! (Right end of second row from the top, to save you the trouble of finding it.)
 

And this is how far I got before I got my first flu since the pandemic started, and recovering has been very slow. The backing has been washed and ironed, and I hope to find the energy to get back to work later this week.