9-patch quilt finished

This is a quilt that has been coming for a long time. I usually cut the small leftover bits from any quilt project into 2½" squares and store them in a box. At the beginning of this year I started sewing them into 9-patches when I had suitable colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month I decided on a setting and put the quilt top together.

This time the machine quilting was no problem, and I quilted diagonal lines from edge to edge.

The sashing fabric was chosen to match this chest of drawers.

My evening activity is - as always - knitting combined to TV. These two pairs of socks were a custom order in very light pink and beige stripes, and the same pink with white and green bubbles.

 

Baby blue blocks and a finished quilt top

This month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is baby blue, and my geese are flying on a pale blue sky.

They made the top row for my Autumn themed quilt. Then I hurried to join my rows and

even frame them with white and a brownish orangeish floral print.

Autumn is here, apples are ripening, leaves are turning yellow, orange, red and brown, fruit and berries are conserved in jars, hot tea warms us up after a walk in the forest having picked mushrooms in a basket while wearing warm knitted socks in out wellies. Oh, and flannel shirts too, they are the tiny 4-patches.

With the rapidly rising electricity costs we will be wearing wool socks in the house as well when the Winter comes. Luckily I love knitting and trying new patterns too. 

I'm linking this post to ScrapHappy Saturday.

Orange jars and leaves

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge's colour for August is orange. After a search in my yellow stash I found a scrap of bright orange, suitable for a couple of jars of cloud berries.

With some imagination we could count these maple leaves for orange as well, don't you think?

It has been unusually hot for this time of the year, so I have spent more time indoors with books or my sewing machine. Our three old apple trees have been full of little green apple babies, but with the strong winds lately we have had apples raining from the trees. Mr K. has picked them for a friend who takes them out to the forest to feed deer, so they are not wasted. I only need a little to make baked apples with custard, and some apple pies in September, when the apples are ready for eating. 

Blocks, socks and flowers

Still going purple with my quilt blocks, Rainbow Scrap Challenge's colour for July. I found a plaid with purple in my stash so I made two 9-patch blocks for future use.

My knitting has been with purple as well, using up last bits of baby merino wool I bought for chemo patient hats some years ago. I thought there would be enough light blue yarn to finish a pair of bed socks for my own use, but I was mistaken. I'm forced to go yarn shopping in a real yarn shop as this yarn is not grocery store quality. Poor me! I might have to buy some other yarn there as well, if I'm tempted, which I probably will be.

I have mentioned sock knitting in most of my posts, and here is finally a photo of my efforts towards using up my yarn stash. The all grey pair needed just a little more than I had, so I bought more, and then knitted several pairs of small grey socks with stripes that used up tiny rests. Now all I have left really is some black and some white, and I have started a pair of mittens for a change.

Villa Cooper's campaign to raise money for the Finnish Red Cross to help Ukraine is still going. I'm happy my Red Crosses quilt has been sold. I have made these mug rugs with flowers and with birds in raw applique. 

The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine. Each set of two mug rugs has one sunflower and one other flower.

Here are some of the little birds:

 

Purple blocks in July

This month I have been working on some blocks for my new quilt. I made a purple hat and another that is at least almost purple, if not just some kind of pink.

These mittens are more purple than the second hat.

And the second pair of mittens is definitely purple.

The knitting basket is full to the rim, but the socks in it are not yet ready for a photo shoot. After a long heat wave we are having a cloudy day with much welcome rain. I will wait for better light on a sunny day.

I'm linking this post to Soscrappy's blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2022.

 

More blue

Midsummer holidays have kept me from my sewing machine, so only two new blue blocks have been finished since my last post.

The one hat on the left is a really light blue. I designed the block myself, and it took me several attempts to get the pompom look somewhat round, and the proportions of the hat and bottom fold right. Now I'm pleased with the result, and will make more hats in different colors.

I'm linking this to So Scrappy's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Next time I hope to have all my recent knitting sorted and photos taken. The mountain of socks is getting bigger every week.

 

Blue blocks

This month the Rainbow Scraps are blue. My 2½" squares' box had enough squares in these blue plaids:

I felt like starting something new, so I went through my other blue and light blue stash and found these floral prints and one dotty fabric most suitable for mugs. The one in the middle is for me, a left handed mug.

Rag doll making leaves me with odd shaped bits of white sheet fabric from the ends and sides, where the sheets are not worn thin. I often cut these bits in 2½" squares for the 9-patch blocks, or even smaller like 1½" and 1" and even 3/4" squares for cutting corners like these mugs. Bigger leftovers are stored in a box and can be cut for longer strips like the ones I'm going to need when I join the mugs to a row and add background on both sides of the row.

I hope to add to this new quilt project something blue next week too.

 

Sage and forest green

After some busy knitting I decided to take the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for this month. The colours are sage and forest green, most pleasing colours for men's plaid shirts. My special stash is full of men's shirts, washed, cut apart and ironed, sorted by colour and waiting for inspiring projects. My RSC block is a simple 9-patch with white. The idea of forest green is luckily a very wide range of green shades, from pine and fir and juniper to early Spring or Summer leaves of birch, aspen, willow and alder, moss greens and all kinds of forest flowers. This is my selection:

Normally I would have chosen only plaids, but the solid green at the center was too nice to be left out.

I have not yet decided how to set the blocks. If I'm going to make several new blocks each month I may have enough blocks to make two new quilts at the end of the year.

Helping Bunnies for Red Cross

As many of you know, I love to knit socks. That means many balls of yarn, and finally many tiny leftover balls of those yarns. Luckily the Finnish Red Cross has published a knitting pattern, designed by Anu Pensola, a soft toy to bring comfort to children in need. This bunny is a cousin of the Trauma Teddy from the Australian Red Cross. Currently there is a campaign to get new bunnies knitted for every child coming from Ukraine to Finland.

I happened to have all these bits of yarn just waiting for a useful purpose, so I knitted five bunnies. They are knitted in the round so only minimal seams need sewing. The bunny is stuffed through the feet left open when starting, and through the final opening between the ears.

Even a few meters of  leftover yarn were enough to make some stripes in the sweaters. The scarf has been sewed tight in the neck so it will not get lost. The knitting café Lentävä Lapanen, the Flying Mitten, is one of the places where knitters can bring their bunnies. The campaign has been running from the end of March, and on Friday when I took my bunnies to them, they had two baskets full of bunnies waiting for delivery. The campaign will last until the end of May, so there is still time to knit a bunny or three.

Before getting the idea of knitting bunnies I used some leftover yarns like they are usually used, for striped socks.

These went to Villa Cooper and the selection sold to raise money for the Red Cross. Both pairs are knitted in a finer wool and that makes them perfect for Summer use in wellies or crocs at the holiday cabin.

I don't spend all my spare time knitting, I have a soft spot for quilting as well. This month's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink, and I found two suitable plaids in my cupboards. I made these six 9-patch blocks:

I wonder what the colour for May will be. I decided to keep to this 9-patch block only in this challenge. 

New year, new challenge

For the first time in years I have taken a challenge in order to use up my scraps. It is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by Angela at Soscrappy. This month's color is red, so I searched my 2½" box for reds and found seven sets of five squares.

The whites were in the same box, so sewing the 9-patch blocks didn't take too long.

Here they are, waiting for the February color to be announced.

I think I mentioned my unlucky quilting of a Log Cabin quilt. Anyway, I had a backing that was too small, some machine quilting with serious bumps in the backing, and for once the energy to rip up the quilting that had gone so wrong. I added a row of squares for width and another for length, and so the backing was no longer too small.

Ironing, careful layering and pinning, and I was bale to finish the machine quilting in just two sessions.

Happy end for this quilt top from 2017 and 2019!

My normal evening activity is knitting, and I have been using up rests yarns for small projects like these fingerless mittens in merino wool

and the black ones in alpaca yarn.

A new pair of socks is still on the needles, and I have knitted some simple mittens that went to use already with no time for photo sessions.