Back at the sewing machine again

For the first time in ages I have started a new quilt. It looks like little huts at dawn, doesn't it?

But it isn't, it is paper dolls holding hands! I used some vintage children's fabric for this, some summer frocks and nighties saved because of their pretty fabrics. Some fabrics are new, I didn't want to use the same fabric more than twice and there were not too many old fabrics available. My favourite is the yellow Moomin fabric in the bottom right corner, it used to be my summer frock before I went to school.

The Paper Dolls pattern is by Stephanie from Loft Creations and available here. I just made it a bit bigger. Apple sauce cooking came in the way and the quilt is still waiting for the batting and backing to be cut and layered and the rest.

Someone I know is getting married and I just heard about it last week. I wanted to get her a little gift, and as she is a fan of Harry Potter and the Moomins, I decided to make her some mug rugs and get her some Moomin tea bags, as I'm sure she has several Moomin mugs already. I had seen some great paper pieced Harry Potter blocks on Terri's blog, and she always linked them to Fandom In Stitches.

There I picked the easiest patterns and managed to make a Hogwarts Robe, the Golden Snitch, Sorting Hat and the Cauldron. For the backing I used my yellow Moomin fabric so she can use that side with her Moomin mugs.

New quilt top, last socks and this and that

Today I finished this Paper Lanterns quilt top, just ten days after starting it. It has 100 blocks like my previous one, but half of them are just plain solid squares and the others are not too complicated either.

The pattern is Stephanie's Paper Lanterns, and you can buy it here. Her version is smaller and very feminine. I wanted to make bigger blocks and a bigger quilt, so I enlarged the blocks, and I made my lanterns shine in a dark August night. - I think I can manage to quilt this one on my sewing machine.

I used all my "impossible" fabrics, large prints, almost no colour in some, and fuzzy cut some big flowers from an odd shaped leftover piece. Some of the fabrics are from my mother, corner pieces left over when she made a round tablecloth. Some are my own curtain or cushion cover rests, and many come from my sister P. The fabric in the bottom row center is from a summer frock of my dear great auntie Saima. So once again I have sewn memories of the family into my quilt.

The blue and white sock challenge for babies born in Finland this year is doing really well. Of the 56,556 pairs of sock estimated to be needed, 55,706 pairs have been delivered to maternity wards throughout the country. A few hundred pairs are still missing from the big hospitals in the metropolitan area, and it is only March. I used up all my blue and white wool yarns and finished this lot last week:

I took them to the Flying Mitten on Monday, and once again they had a basket full of socks waiting to be collected and delivered. I reached my goal of 60 pairs, and even exceeded it by one pair. This has been a fun challenge, but it is over now and I have gone back to other colours and larger socks.

Little grandson has been busy painting and drawing, and his apron needs to be washed a lot. Therefore I was asked to make another one, and as there was some material left, and the pattern was there, it only took a little while to put this together for him:

It is time to clean the bird houses again for new residents. One house had fallen down in the strong wind, and another one had a big hole after an attack by a woodpecker. Mr K. made six brand new houses, with some variation in the opening diameter so the blue tits can take the smallest ones and others can choose between the larger entrances. Our trees have their birdhouses, so the new ones were placed in the woods around us.

We can see almost all of them from the kitchen window or from the places where we drink our afternoon tea in the garden. Not yet, but when the birds are nesting.

Flying Geese, Dresden Plates and more hats for babies

After a lot of cutting and sewing, all 88 geese are flying in a nice formation around the houses of this mystery quilt I'm making after Kaaren's design.

The corners have blue Dresden Plates appliquéd on yellow table cloth (really, this was a self-made tablecloth for a Summer party some years ago).

I like trying new blocks in a small scale, like just four Dresdens. I only have made a Dresden plate block once before in my life, when I made a bag after Stephanie's pattern.

Then of course I have been knitting. The broadcast from the Vuelta is usually just a little over an hour so these baby hats are not strictly Grand Tour hats. I simply like to keep my hands busy when I'm watching something not too demanding or interesting on TV, and so there are 11 new hats for my bag to be taken to the maternity ward. I try to make them for every taste, for boys and girls, small heads and bigger ones. It is fun to try out new patterns, and I happened to develop a new one too: the white hat in the middle was going to be 2 tog, yarn over, purl 1 but I started accidentally with ssk, yarn over, purl 1 and so the zig zag pattern is softer than 

in this yellow one in the middle of the front row. Oh, I see these make together already 21, my goal for the Vuelta. I still have some yarn left, and the Vuelta ends on this coming Sunday.

Maybe 70 hats instead of the intended 63 would make a nicer number?

New quilt, same old shirts

Here is a new project I have started this year. I looked at my endless stash of men's shirts, chose 12 of them from the blue and grey box, just blue ones, and from another box the last bits of the light blue suit shirts from my father. Sorry for the poor quality of my photos, but we still have only six and a half hours of daylight and many cloudy days.

I made HSTs and ironed and cut and ironed and sewed and ironed ... and now I have 8 blocks at this stage:

and the remaining 4 blocks at different stages of sewing and ironing. At least the blue shirt bundles in the box look flatter than the red, brown and green ones. I'm already making plans for a next quilt to use those colours. This must be at least the 5th quilt I have used the same shirts in.

In the evenings I have been knitting burb cloths for a baby, these two using Sugar and Cream cotton from Stephanie, thank you, 

and three will be in this 100 % bamboo yarn from The Flying Mitten:

Vive le Corduroi!

Getting started is the most difficult part. If the project is nice or very important, keeping on working is easy. I promised to show what happened to the plum coloured tight tunic from my last post. Well, you know the Uncommonly Corduroy book by Stephanie, published earlier this year? I tested one of the bag patterns for her, the Ethel and MJ, and after I got the book I was ready to have a go at a new pattern. I really wanted to use corduroy this time, but with the fabric shops so far from me, and their selection being more curtains than quilting fabrics and especially not baby corduroy, I just kept knitting...

... until I realized I had this great piece of fabric (the old tunic from my last post) just waiting to be repurposed in its deep plum coloured baby corduroy loveliness. I decided the California Girl pattern was perfect, and the size of the parts needed was small enough so I didn't need to make any extra seams.

The back and the flap are corduroy. For the lining and front I used a floral print, originally cut up by my mother to make a shirt dress for one of her daughters. By the colour I would judge it to be my sister P. Turquoise or yellow would have been for M, light blue or bright red for T and brown, rust or olive for me. We all had our own favourite colours.

 

So, here it is, with pockets under the flap and inside. I'm still looking for wonderful buttons for the flap. I have great ones, but some of them are too colourful, some are too shiny, so I keep looking.

I'm not a tiny person, so there was some leftover fabric after I finished the California Girl (go ahead, this link is to another version!). I also happened to need a smaller bag for a nephew's wedding this weekend. None of my old purses would do. My outfit is unusually colourful, but the corduroy just happens to be the same colour as my new tunic. The new bag had to be small but large enough to hold my EpiPen. I'm allergic to wasps, and I can imagine the local wasps will find their way to a garden where there is wedding cake and perfumed ladies, so I must be prepared. So I measured the EpiPen, and the short sleeves of the old tunic which were the largest pieces left of it, and I designed a little bag for myself.

I had used all long strips of the tunic for the California Girl's strap, so there was not enough fabric for a strap without too many seams. I went shopping and found exactly one velvet ribbon, luckily in an OK colour, and a dark blue gross grain ribbon for the strap lining. I forgot to think about keeping the bag closed, so I just added two little squares of Velcro by hand under the flap afterwards. To the bag front I managed to sew the other halves by machine.

 

Sewing with corduroy was pure joy. I used my machine's walking foot because of the heavy fusible interfacing. For use in a quilt top nothing special is needed. I have some narrow strips and yoke pieces cut on the bias left over from making these two bags, and I will put them aside to wait for a suitable project.

 

 

Now I just need to pack for tomorrow's flight. Weddings are such happy events!