Monday 23 March 2020

The quilt show that didn't show

At the beginning of March our club put up a quilt show at Villa Cooper. The town was full of quilt events, as the annual FinnQuilt meeting was going to take place there over a weekend. Yes, and then everything was cancelled and closed and postponed due to the pandemia. We had an opening, and some visitors during the first few opening days, but after that the quilts have been waiting alone in the closed villa.

I'm showing you a little tour around the room with the quilts. This one is mine:


Beautiful purple shades by another member. Only a few of the quilts are for sale, most of them are borrowed for the show. 


We have limited possibilities to hang the quilts for show, so many are just draped on chairs


or folded and stacked. 


Like these two here.


This beauty was spread on the dining table.


The framed quilt was borrowed from another quilt show near our Villa Cooper, sadly also closed.


Our exhibition closet was this time too small for the show, but smaller items found their place there.


My Raggedy & Friends quilt finishes the round. I have not managed to get a good photo of the quilt, but in the link you can see some closeups of the stitcheries that are just a blur here.


I hope this tour cheered your day a little, especially if you are told to stay at home. Well, we all have a great hobby to keep us busy with our quilts, knittings and blog visits.



Monday 16 March 2020

Socks again

It has been a while since my last post. My sewing machine was serviced, and the week and then some days caused a break in my nine-patch sewing, and somehow I lost interest in them. Instead I have been playing with yarn and needles again and knitted some socks.


This first pair has one repeat of a pattern from a book showing old socks and mittens in museum collections. The original pair was in a much finer yarn and using two grey shades and white. I cut several corners and made the pattern my own.


To make these socks I just played with knit and purl stitches.


And the last two pairs have simple stripes.


This is to show that I knitted pairs of socks, not just one sock of each pattern. I always knit socks and mittens two at a time on a long circular needle, so once I'm finished, I have a pair and don't need to start from the beginning of the second sock. They always end up having the same number of rows too, and the same increases and decreases.


My snowdrops are still fresh as new after six weeks! No other signs of Spring in the garden, just the lack of snow.


Sunday 1 March 2020

Day out with Daughter

Last week I had a very nice girls' day out with my daughter. We went to see an art exhibition showing textiles and collected items by Anu Tuominen. We had seen her potholder color circles in Jyväskylä too, and I have posted about that here.

You may have noticed that I'm a keen knitter nowadays, so this sock was my favorite in the exhibition this time. It is called "The Measure of a Woman? (A heel of a sock)". Knowing how to knit a heel of a sock may still be considered here as some kind of a basic skill every woman ought to have. I think this multi heel sock could happen if you knit and watch TV and don't concentrate on your knitting properly!


Another version. She also had a square sock with three heels all turning the same way.


Here are most of the color circles. Potholders recycled, found or bought from charity shops.


For some reason this piece had a girl's name, Pirkko.


I have only shown here some of her textile pieces. There were also wonderful works using other materials like old dining plates, ski shoes filled with pussy willows, crayons or color pencils, nesting enamel bowls, you name it.

After the art we had some lunch, spent some time at a big book store and finally had coffee before she took me to my train and went to work. Lovely feminine boost day for me.

My sewing machine has been away from home for service but came back to wait for a new part, so I have tried to keep up with my own challenge of making nine-patches almost every day. Here are ten new ones in random colors.