Bag Club strikes again

After having made our own versions of the Mary Jane bag pattern Stephanie from Loft Creations so generously sent us in June, we decided to order a new pattern from her and make a different bag each for our next project. In fact we are gathering strength to start a demanding project from The Bag Making Bible for the Autumn, and wanted to relax with a well written, easy pattern during the Summer.  "We" are the unofficial European Bag club, Bag Ladies: Simone (now an official Supreme for Stephanie's patterns), Melanie and I.

I decided to make the sweet little Hailee Bag, as I had bought some giant rick rack a long time ago and wanted to finally use it. Within two hours from ordering I had the pattern downloaded and printed, in spite of the time difference.

To my stash I went, and in honour of Stephanie I wanted to use polka dots. Mine are naturally brown; the brown on white from a piece of farbric from my sister P, and the bigger dots on brown are from a sleeve I had from my mother's stash. I don't know what happened to the rest of the dress, but I was happy to have the sleeve. Maybe she cut two left sleeves at first? It was a short one, so I made a seam in the bottom middle of the strips.

The solid dark brown is from the last one of Mr. K's slimmed shirts with long pointed collars from the 70's, and the lighter brown is a scrap from a charity shop.

The lining is from my father's shirt, and the biggest remnant of the dotty sleeve made a tiny pocket for keys or lipstick. Just my style: recycled fabrics all from my stash, nothing needed to be bought.

My sister Maija was here on a short holiday and she liked the bag so much that I gave it to her. The sleeve could have been from her dress, these are her colours as well as mine. This was a fun little bag, very easy to make. The fabrics make all the difference: If you look at Stephanie's Hailee Bags, they are sweet as candy, and my bag could make you think about coffee and cappuccino!

I wonder what Simone and Melanie have put together. Will there be a West Linn bag? It was the first of Stephanie's patterns I used after I won it and a charm pack from her giveaway in 2009.

I used unbleached linen for the solid colour. This is a very practical bag.

Maybe they are fond of Dresden plates and made a Ladyfingers bag? Some day I'm going to make one for myself using my father's old ties for the fingers. This one was a Christmas gift to DS1's girlfriend last Christmas.

They will not be making a Modern Mary Jane, as this was the bag we all just made in June. I can carry my A4 papers in this along with a smaller folder, notebook, tissue pouch, make-up pouch and wallet.

There is of course the Loft Tote, like this one I got from Candace for my birthday in the Spring. She is also a Supreme pattern tester.

This is a perfect bag for someone who needs to carry more than a wallet and keys in her handbag. Like me. It is deep enough to keep my things safe and there is room for some shopping as well. I think Stephanie has designed a bag for every lady, and it is easy to add pockets and details if you feel like it. If you pop over to Simone in Holland and Melanie in England you will see more of Stephanie's (Ohio, USA) bags in different styles. They will be showing their newest bags today too. These patterns and some more by Stephanie are available from Loft Creations in PDF form and you can get them today, if you want to try making one of these bags.

Stash use report for March

This should be the beginning of Spring, and the shops are full of daffodils in yellow pots. They can cope about -10C /+14F, and I planted some to replace the faded Callunas of last Autumn. After their first day we had some new snow again, and then two nights with -15C/+5F. About half of my flowers have frozen to death, but many have survived. I hope the nights will be warmer from now on.

One more birthday present, a rusty brown and red shawl knitted by my sister Maija. I'm wearing it now around my neck with my winter coat, but it will be lovely in Summer on my shoulders too. Kiitos, Maija!

As you can see in the picture, there is quite a lot of snow on the ground and it will take weeks before the first Snowdrops raise their heads through the last snow.

My stash seems to be growing, but there is a perfectly good explanation: My favourite fabric shop will close in the Summer when the owner lady retires, and she started selling everything 30 % off the normal price from the 1st of April. I was looking for some white flannel for baby quilt backings, and as she didn't have any, she sold me some in red, and gave me the special price in advance. As the cotton prices are expected to go up, it is only rational to buy now.

This is the pieced backing of my 9-patch quilt, with some 9-patches in different sizes just for fun. I had to piece the backing as I couldn't buy new fabric for it, to meet Anne Marie's challege rules.

I wondered how stupid a quilter can be. You see, I straightened the edges for the binding and cut exactly at the points of the red sashings, thinking the white points will be sharp anyway. And then I machine stitched the binding on, and spent three nights hand sewing the three edges before I was too annoyed with the cut-off red points.

So the stupid quilter unpicked the binding, ironed it again , cut a bit from all 4 sides of the quilt and started sewing the binding back on. It is almost done now, so I can count the backing and binding to my March fabric use.

This is something else I did in March, after Melanie sent me the adorable book on Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery by Jan Messent.  The book is about ancient embroidery and the new use of the stitches and pictures by the author. Beautiful, inspiring pictures of her work. Melanie had sent me some plant-dyed threads earlier, and some perlé threads a year ago, so I thought I would use them to make her a small picture of the Kalevala Jewelry bird I sent her for her birthday. I added some antique silk threads from my Great Auntie Saima. My design and stitches reveal that this is my very first attempt, but I had great fun while making it, and Melanie understands all the hidden meanings important for both of us.

A few weeks ago we had a visitor from Belgium in our sewing class, and to give her a feel of quilting I helped her sew one QAYG block from my strings for the Oz Comfort Quilts. I made one too, and hope to get at sewing some more for a new delivery later this month. Counting all these projects together I have used 4.5 m of fabrics from my stash in March, but also bought 5.5 m new fabris. Increase: 1 m. I need to finish lots of projects in April to make the figures look better!

I'm off for a trip abroad

This has been a busy time, making things not to be shown yet and preparing for an exciting trip to Germany. Exciting for two reasons: only this morning we heard on the news that the strike is over which threatened to cancel Finnair flights and we can travel in the afternoon as scheduled, and exciting because I'm not only meeting my sister Maija, but I'm also going to meet Suzie of Littlebusybee! We (Mr. K and I) are visiting the EuroBLECH Sheet Metal Working Technology Exhibition (can a girl ask for more?) and staying at Maija's house like so many times before. For tomorrow we have arranged to meet Suzie in Hannover! She lives not too far from there, so we finally can sit down with a cup of tea and meet face to face. We have been good blogging friends for over two years already.

Before the snow covers everything here for many months, I thought I could show you some before and after pictures of Mr. Kotkarankki's five-year project in our yard. Like I have mentioned in some blog posts and e-mails, he is building us a new terrace for coffee drinking out in the open air. This will be the path to the said terrace, picture taken last year when he started by removing the old concrete tiles (under the sauna window by the wall).

Here is the same area this week, with new tiles and new soil for a small lawn. We can't plant anything here because this is where the snow falls from the roof all winter and stays a little longer in spring. The first snow we had two weeks ago lasted several days but it is all gone now, and there have been sunny days. It is cold though, and the ponds in the village are for a large part covered in thin ice. The swan family and ducks are still there.

This is the newly paved area late this summer.

Back to last year: here it all started. The old concrete tiles are gone and Mr. K has started to build a very good foundation for the new terrace. Frost can make such tricks in our climate, if the foundation is not properly built. The old terrace had some dales and hills and no chance to place a table steadily any more.

This summer's picture is taken from another angle. Everything is built on level here, measured twice and some more (I was at the other end of the tape most times), and just waiting for the boards next summer. The black square you can see down on the lawn is the roof of the new pump house Mr. K built on top of our old well so we can get water for the garden hose and for the little spring to be built in the old round swimming pool he has filled with sand, on the right lower corner here.

 

All I have been able to do here to help was to make coffee and bring him bottles of cool mineral water when he was working during the hot summer days and evenings. Now it is time to put the hoe, showel and rake aside and concentrate on preparing the garden for winter. I'm grateful to have a lovely husband like Mr. K. I'm happy to go with him to the big machines at the fair and see how they cut and bend and weld and drill sheet metal, and be his interpreter and act like I understood something about the things. There will be a break in blogging (like that would be some news at the pace I have been posting in the last weeks) and a travel report will follow some time next week. I know it is not as interesting for you as a quilt show would be, but I'll do my best.

Vintage Thingies 46 - Sewing Notions

The weeks seem to miss a day or two, because Thursday aways comes sooner than I expect. I had no pictures prepared for this week, so I remembered the tatting shuttle I told you about last week.



No luck finding the shuttle in the places I looked for it. I found some other old tools instead:

The little embroidery scissors are made in Germany. My mother gave them to me when I was supposed to read for my final exams and was cross-stitching instead. The thimble is just an old thimble, my size but not my favourite shape. The knife is made by Fiskars in Finland. It has been my mother's, and she gave it to me to be used as a ripper. I love the smooth wooden handle.

The next two pictures are of the same items; I just wanted you to see both sides of the pincushion. My sister Maija gave me that pincushion together with a calender printed on fabric. She lived in Germany already, the year was 1970 or a little later.

The folklore clothes are so special! When we visited DH's sister in Munich earlier this year, I bought a Trachten vest for me. What I really would like to try on is a complete outfit with a wide skirt, white blouse and tight vest.

The scissors here remind me of the numerous times I was shopping for fabrics with my mother for her sewing. The fabric shop ladies always had such curved scissors with rounded points in their pocket, and when they cut the fabric on the big table, I heard that lovely sound. It took me years to understand that the scissors must touch the table to make the sound; and if you only have paper to cut and your scissors are made of plastic, you just are not big enough to make such sounds. What did you love most in fabric shops when you were little?

Suzanne is hosting this week's Vintage Thingies Thursday with memories of her childhood. Go back there and see the list with links to other vintage lovers.

A Late Finish of SSC 2008

Do you remember the Summer Stash Challenge from Summer 2008? Eileen and I wanted to start and finish a quilt during the summer, using only fabrics from our stash for the top. Nearly 50 other quilters joined us, when they read about this idea on Eileen's blog. Eileen made this cute logo using our fabrics; the prints are from her stash and the plaids are mine. My sister Maija planned making a quilt for her daughter, and I asked her to join us.





Maija has no blog (yet), so I published some pictures of her progress on mine.

She didn't quite make it by the end of August 2008. I wanted to encourage her to go on with the project anyway, and last year during my visit to Germany I stayed at her house and helped her baste the quilt layers for stitching in the Autumn.

The batting was so thick she couldn't machine stitch the quilt but had to hand stitch it all. The quilt was finished for her daughter's birthday in September 2009!

Maija was just now visiting me, as she is in Finland for our mother's 93rd birthday on Saturday. It was so nice to have her here for a little shopping and chatting, and she stayed over the night. She even ironed almost everything from my ironing mountain while I was working on a secret hand sewing project on the sofa. How cool was that? (She had to take off her cardigan, so I think she didn't think it was cool.) Today our eldest sister picked her up to stay at her house until tomorrow, when she returns to our mother for the rest of her stay.

Here is her quilt all finished!

She had one more picture. This is her newest project, a cushion cover for her daughter. I think this will be finished for Christmas.

Hurrah for Maija! She has finished her first quilt. She told me how she had many possibilities to learn how not to make a quilt, and she is quite eager to start a new one. I think we are going to have a true quilter sooner or later.

Celebrations

The past few weeks have been full of reasons to celebrate something. In Finland we celebrate the "Name Day" like a small birthday. All (almost all) names are listed in the calendar, and so everyone will know whose day it is. When I was at work, we used to buy pastry to our closest colleagues on our name day, and many jobs have a tradition of bringing candy for everyone when you celebrate. Usually no gifts are given. The name day can also be a reason for visiting friends, you can just phone and ask if they will make coffee if you bring some ice cream. When I was young it was expected that the family was prepared to get visitors on short notice.

Mr. Kotkarankki and I have our name days only five days apart so we usually celebrate them with one cake on the weekend closest to one of the days. I baked this strawberry cake last week for us:

On Friday it was Great Auntie Saima's name day (she passed away over 40 years ago), and my sister Maija happened to come from Germany for her summer holiday on that day. She came to see us with her husband on their way to our mother's house. We had some cake and coffee, and celebrated Saima, too. My brother-in-law proved right something Stephanie quoted during the Time For Tea Swap about men and tea cosies. Well, he wasn't even alone in the room.

Today we had another strawberry cake for our wedding anniversary, and on Tuesday we celebrate not only the French Revolution but the day we first met, which was 30 years ago. To avoid getting too many calories Mr. K will go fly fishing for the day and I will skip cooking lunch and have just some salad instead. I hope to sew something too. I have only been making things I can't show yet.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 9

Time flies and it is Thursday again. A good excuse to show old things and hide the fact that I haven't finished anything I could show you! Coloradolady is hosting this fun with a Guest writer, and in her blog you find the links to other blogs participating this week.





This is an old Christmas angel made of rye straw. It is from my childhood home, and I took the picture in October when I was visiting my sister Maija in Germany. Looking at the picture now I remember that there used to be a halo behind the angel's head, made of gold paper. There were two of these, one must be from our maternal grandmother. The wings have suffered a little during all the years, but she is still shiny and beautiful.






This other, typical Finnish Christmas decoration is himmeli, also made of shiny rye straw. Our mother has made this for my sister, and she keeps it in the living room all the time. The himmeli decoration is easily breakable and needs to be stored hanging, so why not hang it so everyone can see it. In the old days the himmeli stayed in the ceiling until next summer, and a new decoration was made every year for Christmas.





This is all for this time, because all my own Christmas things are still on the attic neatly packed.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 5 - Maija

This week I will be showing my sister Maija's vintage thingies. She has no blog of her own, yet, and my faithful readers know her a little already, as I have been showing pictures of her stash challenge quilt last summer. Last week I visited her in Germany for a couple of days, and took these pictures.

She wanted to show you a little vase with forget-me-nots. Our big sister P has painted this, like she painted my Moomin plate I showed earlier. Imagine this with forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley!

Maija also has her share of old copper things from home. The coffee pots are from our parents/grandparents, but the kettles may be from her new country as well.

I thought you might be curious to see what the pictures on the wall behind the copper were, so I took pictures of them was well. Some of these are really old, some are made after old originals. The Bahlsen cakes factory is a big employer in this area.

Even big ships can sail all the way to Hamburg. We came there by flight and took the train for the remaining bit to Hannover and to Maija's town. It must have been quite different at the time shown here, when it was possible to get in six days by ocean liner from Hamburg to New York! The ladies have cute and practical dresses for the little trip, don't you think?

Soap is also needed for washing:

Babette has a nice hat:

In the garden was an old wash basin put to better use. It is unbelievable how Maija's garden flourishes. She and her DH must have green thumbs. There are many flowers we can only dream of, because our winters are so cold and the summers so short. (A good excuse for my lazy gardening!) This basin is in the back corner of the garden, obviously not for the best flowers but maybe for growing new ones.

This was all for today. Maija reads this blog so you can leave your comments here as usual and she will find them.

For other Vintage Thingies this Thursday you will find the links on Lisa's blog.

Back again - Travel report 1

On Saturday I came back from my trip to Germany. We spent a lovely time with my sister Maija and at the Euroblech 2008 fair in Hannover. This is the first part of my travel report, and it will be little text and lots of pictures, as my daughter Kaija is at the moment visiting us and I shouldn't spend too much time by the computer. I'll need to catch up all my reading later!



You may remember Maija from our Summer Stash Challenge. She didn't quite finish her quilt by the end of August, but I hope she will be inspired by the little progress we made at the quilt. This picture shows us basting her quilt layers for stitching, Maija on the left and I'm busy with basting on the right. I also cut her binding ready.





Maija lives in a small town near Hannover, and here are some pictures from the pedestrian area in the middle of the town.





This is Maija again, she is catching us up after having stopped for a chat with friends. She seems to know almost everyone!





The town is very old but the statue is quite new. I have lived in this town and in this street for one summer during my studies, and the town has changed a lot since then. (It was 36 years ago, maybe that is the reason!)

The shop window was decorated for autumn.

This house was from 1911.

Here the text shows the years 1810 and 1834. Notice the horse's heads on the rooftop. There are lots of these Fachwerkhaus houses, where brick walls have been built in a frame of wood.

We came back to this shopping area on Friday afternoon, but it was raining and I couldn't take any nice pictures of all the beautiful houses. Luckily the weather was fine on the days we went to the fair. It was a lot of walking! But there will be another story about the fair and the size of the exhibition halls; and vintage thingies from Maija's house on Thursday. This is all for today.

Two first quilts

A while ago I had a big laundry day for my father-in-law and took also this woollen lap quilt to be washed. After I had ironed it I took this picture to show you the first quilt I have sewn. I made it for my mother-in-law in 1992 during and after my short quilting course.

It is my own design, as you might have guessed. I used sample books of men's wool scarves, and some wool fabric rests my mother had given me. The only thing I'm still satisfied with is the colour scheme! Given that material today, I would have prewashed the fabrics to avoid uneven shrinkage. I would also have made the sashings in a different way. But as I said, this was my first one, and the teacher didn't interfere with my design. I wish she had!

This is my sister Maija's first quilt in process. She is joining in the summer stash challenge to help her finish this quilt for her daughter. As she doesn't have a blog (yet), I promised to report her progress here from time to time. A couple of years ago I introduced her to the quilting world, so I'm pushing her a little to keep going with her work.


The rows are sewn together now and as far as I can see, Maija has done a pretty good job here. She will post more photos in the Summer Stash Challenge Flickr group when the time is right. Her Flickr name is Maijukka, a diminutive form of her name our parents used when she was little. And later, too, of course. If you are in the Summer Stash Challenge and have not received an invitation to the Flickr group, please contact me or Eileen to get you there. That group is a place where you can see everyone's challenge quilts together.

Medieval tourism

This weekend we visited Turku, where our daughter Kaija lives. She took us to see the Medieval Fair ot the old market place near the cathedral.




There were stalls where you could buy handicrafts or something to eat.

And there was an area with work performances. This one was showing how yarns were dyed with natural ingredients like birch leaves, juniper, fungi etc.

I think the rare blue colour is achieved by woad. My sister Maija has given me some seeds but I have not sown them yet. I think I need to go to a course first to learn how to dye and how to handle the plants for it.

We had a lovely weekend and now I have to adjust me to normal life again. Tomorrow I can finally go to a favourite fabric shop and by the backing and batting for my stash quilt.