Finished quilt

Here are some of my favorite blocks of my newest quilt. First, the last two 2½" squares from a vintage Moomin fabric from my childhood:

Some of my favorite colors,  latte and dark chocolate. I could have both right now, thank you!

My Liberty cotton blouse and a burgundy men's shirt

Two very nice and soft shirts from my dear Mr. K

I bought an extra wide satin sheet for the backing and quilted this big (for my machine) quilt in maybe four sessions.

It is about 155 cm x 205 cm or 61" x 81". Luckily the quilting went without too many problems and unstitchings.

The quilt is now for sale to support the Finnish Red Cross and through their Disaster Relief Fund to help the victims of the crisis in Ukraine. Our handicraft club's donations have brought over 4,700 € by now, and our campaign is continued as long as possible.

 

Summer girls

Three little girls in their new summer frocks had their identity card photos taken and we decided to take some more photos of them together before they leave this house.

Noora needs love and rules, maybe more than an average child, but she can be really, really good if she really, really tries. I think she would love a hobby like ice hockey or horse riding.

This is Helena. She is a very well behaved girl who likes reading and drawing and coloring books and friends and sausages.

Emilia is a little dreamer. She likes flowers and butterflies and carrots and pancakes. I think she will find a family in no time.

Tuulikki is a trickier one. She is clearly older than the other girls, and finding a family may prove difficult. But on the other hand, she might just be the right one for someone looking for a good friend for going to the gym and other hobbies.

Here all four new UNICEF dolls are together, waiting to be taken to Villa Cooper tomorrow. Our special Summer exhibition this year is old dolls from club members, so visitors may be interested in adopting a doll and supporting a  good cause at the same time. The adoption fee of each doll will enable UNICEF to give six essential vaccinations for one child in need.

 

Autumn's Joys

Finally the Autumn quilt is quilted, bound, washed, re-washed and delivered! Autumn's Joys is the name I gave it. In my previous post I told the story behind the rows of blocks.

Washed, you may wonder. Yes, I wanted to be sure the colours would not bleed, and washed the finished quilt (stupidly enough) in cold water to save energy. What I had feared, happened: the red apples from the top end bled, and I didn't even notice it before the quilt had been drying over night. I did what I thought was right, and washed the quilt again, but in hot water and with a colour catcher, and to my big relief all the white was bright again and all stains were gone.

I had some problems with the machine quilting, the needle thread formed loops on the reverse when I crossed multiple layers. I unpicked the worst, but decided to leave the small loops of  some few stitches.

This quilt was delivered today to Villa Cooper and is for sale for the Finnish Red Cross' Disaster Relief Fund to help in Ukraine.

Like always, I have been busy knitting in the evenings. Five pairs of wool sock and two pairs of mittens are waiting for the cold days of Autumn and Winter. With the energy costs going rapidly up, it is necessary to drop room temperatures, and wool socks will be our way to stay comfortable.

 

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:

 

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. 

Helping through the Red Cross

What has happened in Europe since the 24th of February is hard to understand. Never in my lifetime has a war touched so close, and the willingness to help Ukrainians in need seems to be great. Our club or group of handicraft people at Villa Cooper have donated some of their products to be sold to raise money to the Finnish Red Cross, and our customers have found this a good way to help and to be sure the funds go where they are meant to go. Many members have created new products just for this, using blue and yellow colours as they are the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

I made this quilt top in 2018 for the Red Cross, but didn't have the energy to layer and quilt it.

Now seemed the perfect time to finish the project and as I happened to have a backing fabric large enough for the quilt at home, I only needed to buy some batting and get to work. The batting price was a little shock for me, five times as much as the one I had bought before this.

The quilting is as simple as possible, and I finished it in three sessions. I have a bad habit of pulling my shoulders to my ears at the sewing machine, so I needed to have a break after an hour or so.

I quilted diagonal lines except for the bright red cross where I went around the outlines.

These blue and yellow chicks are also for the aid for Ukraine project. Half of my first lot was sold in the first few days so I made some more.

These tiny ones with more details I made earlier in March for the normal sale as hanging Easter ornaments. I made the fundraising chicks larger so they can sit on a table as a couple, and used only blue and yellow fabrics and felt.

 

New Quilts, Good Bye Splendid Sampler

Back in 2016/17 I was struggling with the Splendid Sampler QAL, making two new blocks every week. Or at least almost so. Here are some of my 100 blocks waiting for assembly.

Mid March the same year I had managed to create two halves of a king size quilt, each with 10 rows of 5 blocks, and borders on three sides. I was hoping to quilt it like that on my own machine, but the task seemed overwhelming, and so the top halves found their place at the bottom of my unfinished quilt tops.

Finally this Autumn the idea came to me to make smaller quilts by some rearranging of blocks and making new borders. This was the bottom left corner with one vertical row rearranged to make the quilt rather long than wide, 4 x 5 blocks, and a new border in brown added.

Top left corner 5 x 6 blocks as it was, with original borders added where there were none.

Bottom right 5 x 6 blocks of the original arrangement, just borders added to match the existing ones.

And finally the top right corner with similar changes as in the other smaller quilt.

These four lap size quilts joined the Paper Dolls quilt to keep people warm when they go out in wheelchairs or just want to take a rest and feel the nice flannel backing and look at the pictures of cupcakes and coffee cups, flip flops and flowers, and pincushions and sewing machines, and all kinds of stars.

It feels good to have this finished, and to have done it in a practical way, all materials from my stash and no problems with the quilting.

Finally a quilt finish

Sometimes plans and schedules are very useful. Some other times they are not. Example: Last year and the year before I managed to sew several quilt tops with the thought that I will worry about the quilting later. This way I had five tops neatly folded waiting for the final steps, and I had decided to finish them in the order I had stacked them, with the light blue and brown Log Cabin quilt on top. 

When the inspiration came, I layered it, pin basted it the way I'm used to doing, and started machine quilting it on my machine. And so the inspiration went away, and stayed away. The backing puckered and loose corners of the backing were caught in the quilting, and there were big folds really on the backing, so every one of my first 4 to 5 quilting lines had to be unpicked totally. Long lines, diagonally across the whole width of the quilt. A very uninspiring job for me at least. I still haven't unpicked everything, and so my quilting projects have been standing still for a long, long time. Only a couple of baby quilts have been started and finished during this time, bypassing the queue of unfinished quilts.

This month I decided to forget my plans and work on any of the quilts whenever I felt like it, all the way to the finishing touches or just as long as it was fun. This was the first quilt that 'spoke' to me, and today I donated it to be used as lap quilt for wheelchair users. The pattern is Paper Dolls by Loft Creations.

I had added one row of dolls in both directions and a narrow horizontal sashing between the rows, and borders to make the quilt suitable size for the use intended. Layering,basting, quilting, binding it - everything went smoothly and without any problems at all. Just like it should be every time.

As the days are getting shorter and colder I spend less and less time outdoors and enjoy the feel of warm wool in my hands instead. I played with this easy pattern and knitted three different pairs of socks.

Then I wondered how on earth the slouchy socks were knitted in 3D, and had to try that pattern. The answer is knit and purl stitches arranged in a certain way. Fun and fast!

I had lots of soft merino wool left from the chemo cap knitting, so I used up the bright pink in this bubble hat with a curly pony tail,

and some of the blue, green and yellow in this more traditional striped one. Both have found new owners by now, I hope.

It has been a beautiful Autumn with brilliant colors, but now the leaves are falling, most trees are almost bare. I think I need to concentrate on warm coats for my Swallows so they can continue their adventures outdoors. Enjoy the Autumn colors if you have them, or the new leaves if you are on that side of the world.

Twelve and counting

Summer projects are preferably lightweight, small, cool and fun. It is also a good thing to use up small rests of material, and it would be nice if the result would be useful to someone. I don't like to waste anything, not even my time, so when I'm watching something on the TV that doesn't require my full attention, I usually knit or crochet.

I saw this book in the Summer Sale of the bookshop, so I bought it:

The book has patterns for crocheted and knitted octopuses for premature babies or other persons who like to fiddle, like dementia patients, and many ideas for creating different looks for the octopuses.

I had many small rests of cotton and bamboo yarns from dishcloth making, so I started crocheting with the Tour de France TV broadcasts. So far 12 little creatures are finished and some empty shells are waiting for stuffing. I have stuffed them with the polyester wadding I use for the Unicef dolls but my bag is empty now and I hope to get some more today.

The tentacles take a lot of yarn so some have bi colored tentacles when I have seen that there is not enough yarn left for 8 tentacles. The book's instructions are good and they give explanations for their "rules" too. For safety reasons the max length of the tentacles is 22 cm. The octopuses will also have a hot wash in the machine before they get donated to a baby ward so they will be ready to keep company to the smallest babies.

Family photo

Here we are, finally!

From the left: John, Susan, Titty and Roger. The Walker kids, also known as the Swallows from Swallows and Amazons. Clearly you can see a family resemblance.

We have come to stay with Auntie Ulla so she can make more clothes for us and play with us. She has sent 74 dolls out to to world to be adopted before us, so it is high time she gets some dolls too to play with.

We too will be registered with identity cards from Unicef, and four more real kids out there somewhere will get their vital vaccinations against out fees.

We have not yet had time for new adventures, but Susan's cardigan is finally finished (Auntie is one of those knitters who make their yarn last longer by unraveling  the knitting from time to time and starting again) with a smaller decorative stitch. For me she knitted this scarf last night, to match my pullover, socks and beanie.

I think we are going to have some tea with biscuits soon. I'm planning something nice with Auntie, I hope we can show that to you next time.

Keep warm, the wind is still cold!

Yours,
Titty