Short travel report

Long time since I last posted! We had a five-day holiday in Germany over last weekend, and you all know how it takes some days to get back to the everyday routines.


In the first mail I opened after the trip was an envelope from the USA, with this sweet house:


It was from Stephanie, our Time for Tea Swap hostess. You may have seen them on other blogs as well this week: she made one for each of us! On the other side there is a pocket just big enough for a tea bag. Mine was white tea with raspberry! Go and see Stephanie's blog, she is making the most interesting blocks with ladies with personality!


Now I'm going to take you on a little tour to Germany with me. This was my third time ever in Munich, Mr. Kotkarankki's sister lives in a small town just outside Munich. My first visit was to her eldest son's christening 28 years ago, and on the second visit we only saw the airport. Mr. Kotkarankki has been there a lot, so we went shopping alone on Friday. It was 12 o'clock when we emerged from the S-Bahn. First we saw the Cathedral with one of the towers hooded for some renovation work, and the City Hall in front.

The musical dancing figures of the City Hall tower are a tourist attraction. It was raining lightly, so we didn't stay long watching them.

Thi last picture is from Saturday, when we made another trip there with his sister. We went to the Alte Pinakothek and saw lots of old paintings from Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and some less famous painters. Afterwards we enjoyed coffee and tea with big pieces of cake at the Wiener Cafe.

I have more pictures from our Sunday excursion, but they will have to wait.

I had another special mail, from Melanie, but at the moment I can only say the things were wrapped in red! Thank you Melanie for your Random Act of Kindness!

Between laundry, cleaning and ironing I have been sewing my first ever quilt-as-you-go blocks for Jan at Ozcomfortquilts. She uses 10.5" string blocks to make quilts for the Victoria bush fire victims in Australia. I used mostly strips from the bag I received some years ago with the half-finished quilt top I called the stranger quilt because I didn't know who originally started the quilt.

I hope to get the blocks mailed tomorrow, and then I will try to catch up with my Country Calendar blocks - February and March!

Autumn colours and embroidery

These are my autumn flowers I bought a couple of weeks ago when I was frustrated of the behaviour of my jumping petunias. As you can see, the basket has a wide bottom and it is placed safely on the ground ;o).



I also wanted autumn colours for the little table where I keep my hand-sewing projects. I chose this vintage tablecloth embroidered by my great-aunt or my grandmother in the early years of the 20th century. After taking the picture I thought I'd better iron the cloth before putting it to the table, but when I looked at the amount of projects I currently keep on that table, I saw it would be a waste of time and electricity.

I have finished the first project of Stitchers' Angel swap and sent it abroad, but the fabrics are still on the table for the other projects to come, and of course the box with my embroidery floss, and my sewing box with all the necessary things, and the folder with the instructions for all the projects. They cannot be moved away before the sewing is all done! This is how the armchair caddy looks when it is in use:

The other pocket is hanging on the other side. -It was fun trying something new. I have made some cross-stitching when I was young, and my first embroidery was the name panel for my brownie uniform. I think I'm going to like this.

On Thursday I spent the day with my mother. DH was on a fair in Tampere and took me to my mother early in the morning and picked me up in the evening. You know what little children sometimes say to their parents: "When I'm big and you are little, I'm going to ...". This has happened with my mother now. She used to be a lot taller than I, and for a time she was a "woman of traditional build" (we both are great fans of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), but now she has grown to be the little one. I altered two pairs of trousers she had from my younger sister (they had been shrinking in her closet), and I had to take in a lot, still leaving them comfortably wide and easy to wear.

Yesterday I was pampered: I had received for my birthday in spring a gift voucher for a pedicure from my friend P, who is a nurse and pedicurist. It was lovely! She is also the one who gave me the plastic bag with the stranger quilt pieces. I took the opportunity and gave her the quilt when we met. I found out that the pieces were from her late mother, who had made quilts for her grandchildren but not for this daughter, so I think it was just right that she now has a quilt started by her mother. She recognized many of the fabrics from her mother's dresses and blouses. Happy end!

From Helsinki (pedicure) I took the train to Järvenpää where I had errands to run, and I saw this delicious-looking apple tree at the station - you can see the old building behind the tree. The apple tree is called the "railway apple tree", it was a result of plant breeding in our other neighbour town Hyvinkää and used to decorate the railway station surroundings. The apples don't taste very good, but the tree looks nice with the hanging branches. It is less than 2 m high, easy to keep in shape by cutting away the branches trying to reach the sky.

Last night I finally had time to read some blogs and emails. I noticed my talented special friend Karen had mentioned me in her guest blog on Monday in connection with some real textile artists. She had been trying to send me emails, too, but I still have not received them. Go and see the wonderful art the ladies create!

Finished mystery quilt

Today I finally finished the "Stranger quilt" I have been showing pictures of this summer. It has been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture of the finished puzzle. And with the modern, machine made pieces with the exact shapes repeating over and over, so that it is possible to put a wrong piece in place. I personally prefer these vintage jigsaw puzzles somebody really sawed by hand when my mother was young. Every piece is different, no chance for a mistake.

The quilt was at this stage when I received it some years ago from the mother of DS1's girlfriend. I don't know who has started the patchwork, but there were foundation pieced rows of about 4" squares, with varying seam allowances.

I tried out many different arrangements but nothing really seemed to make sense. I concluded that there never was a plan, although some rythm and repetition was in the rows.

Finally I ended up with this arrangement. And then I changed it.

I added a few rows to both ends of the top using pieces from too long rows, some fabrics which were in the same bag as the rows, and some fabrics from my stash. Then I dyed an old sheet for the borders and backing. The border piece was dyed first and a little longer than the backing, for darker colour.

For the binding I used the same fabric as in some pieces from my stash, fifth from the right on bottom line and diagonally above it in the picture above.

This morning I sewed the last bit of the binding and took these last photos. The darker spots are shadows of leaves, the sun was shining through a big tree.

I'm pleased with my "jigsaw puzzle" stitching. The rows of the quilt were straight in only one direction, as the squares were not all finished the same size, and I couldn't stitch in any way following the seams. These wavy lines go across the patches in both directions. It was a pleasure to use the new sewing machine for the quilting.

On Monday P (the girlfriend's mom) is coming to pick some apples because we can't use all the apples. I'm going to give her the quilt then. She will most probably not see the faults in this quilt because she is not a quilter herself. I will also ask her what she can tell me about the rows and who started them.

Autumnal award

A couple of days ago Melanie gave me this award:

Thank you, Melanie! - I didn't get any rules to go with the award so I decided to give it to the following five blogs, in alphabetical order:


Antika Nöjen - Ewa-Christine who has antique and vintage textiles in her art

Eileen's Attic - Eileen my quilting friend with a love for vintage

Paperiaarre - Kaija my dear daughter

Shabby Chicken - Drewzel another Brownie with merit badges

Spirit Cloth - Jude who takes her readers to an amazing journey in textile art


Go and visit these blogs, they may be something quite different from your usual reads!

I have been exchanging emails with Melanie about mushrooms and their non-latin names, and I have told her how most mushrooms have their Finnish name. Here are some examples from our recent menus. I even found an English name for these, they are chanterelles (in Finnish kantarelli or keltavahvero):



And on Sunday we had these cousins of chanterelles, suppilovahvero:

The yellow ones grow at the time when, and in places where there are lots of yellow birch leaves on the ground. The funnel shaped brown ones are just beginning their season and can be picked when there is already frost on the ground and all leaves have turned brown. Masters of hiding, both of them!

This is something I tried a couple of years ago when I had my shoulder operated and couldn't do "anything" being one-handed for many weeks:

I took a one-afternoon course in sun-dyeing. I have not used these fabrics because I had no real plan when I put the leaves on the fabric so the different motifs can not easily be cut for use without distroying others.

I thought of giving it another try this summer, but it seems the summer days somehow disappeared and were spent on other projects.

This is one of them, the stranger quilt. I have been working on it again and I thought it was like one of the modern factory-made jigsaw puzzles you can put together "wrong" because the same shapes are repeated. You can put a sky piece on the wall or a flowerbed piece in the sky if you want to. This jigsaw puzzle came with no picture of the completed work, and so I had to guess which parts, or strips of patches, were meant to go together.

The rows are straight in one direction only, because all pieces were not the same size. No chance for my usual, boring stitch in the ditch here! At the moment I'm already sewing the binding, there will be more photos in my nex post. I used this great tutorial for the binding.

Changing colours

The summer is ending. Today it has been raining all day, but I still went for my walk, wearing raincoat and rain trousers. The sound of the trouser legs sweeping the knee of the other leg reminded me of the woosh-woosh sounds of little kids wearing their rain overalls. I can even remember my own woosh-woosh, which was very embarrassing because I was a big girl, 7 years old. I didn't have to wear those overalls to school, only when I was playing in our own yard and sandbox. - I have been walking every day this week, and this picture of the changing colours in nature was taken on Monday.



On Tuesday I picked red currants in my FIL's garden. It was a bit late, usually I pick them when the school starts in mid August.



The berries were in perfect condition and one bucket not quite full gave me almost 5 litres of juice. If the weather is dry tomorrow, I may pick another 10 litre bucket of these. It is my harvest time; next I will start cooking apple jam.

Colours are changing in the kitchen, too. Remember the "stranger quilt"? I couldn't think of a suitable border and backing for that quilt from my stash, so I dyed one old sheet with Dylon:

(I also dyed two fingers of my right hand, because there was a little hole between the fingers of the other glove.)

This is the border fabric, the flash changed the colour. It should be 'deep violet'. I tried to make the border fabric a little darker by putting it in the dye 15 minutes before the rest of the fabric. The fabrics are now hanging on the washline, and tomorrow I'll continue with the quilt.