Working hard for Fabric Diet ;o)

Today I have been lonely and busy. I can't sleep well when I'm alone, so this morning I woke up at six and couldnt fall asleep any more. By eight I had had breakfast with two newspapers, washed one machine full of laundry, taken all heavy coats to the attic and started ironing. I don't want to be this effective. I'm so glad my DH is coming back tomorrow!

After I had taken the train to the next town to do some shopping and come home again, I made a mini wallet like these:


Only without the string to hang it around your neck. It is for any ATM or credit card or key card. The mini wallet protects the magnetic stripe from scratches. You just pull the tape or string which comes through the button hole, and the card glides up. I got the idea from the Quilting Arts Magazine last year. Not a very big finished project for my Fabric Diet!

And because I don't have new pictures to show, I'll show something I have made some years ago. This is a set of needle book, scissor holder and thimble case. They are made according to some Victorian patterns but I tailored the scissor holder to be perfect for my Fiskars embroidery scissors. I also made a hexagonal sewing box, but don't have a picture of it available. I was taking a course to make them, and I gave the first sewing box to Kaija. At that time she had so little sewing stuff that she could keep it all in that one box.

Which binding?

Now you have a chance to express your opinion and tell me which fabric I should use for the binding of the new baby quilt I have almost made:




The options are from the left: A) plaid like in the Friendship Star, B) blue floral print on white, or C) white floral print on blue. D) would be the heart print used in the pinwheels and for the backing. "I like it" will be a reasonable enough argument, feel free to comment. If you convince me, I may follow your recommendation!



This was the situation last night. I hope to finish the quilt tomorrow. Everything I used was from stash!

Grandmother's garden was kind of ready stitched when I started thinking what it will look like when I have washed the quilt and the cotton batting shrinks like I've known all the time it will do. And to avoid a catastrophy (in a small scale, but personally a disaster) I decided to quilt around each middle hexagon (where the pin is) between the zigzag lines three rows apart.






That means over 200 hexagons if I counted correctly. And that means that I should have started quilting around the blocks to emphasize their form instead of trying to make less and end up doing something that may be described as "interesting" or "a personal view". And at least as much work.

So, help me, which binding for the little pinwheel quilt?

Working for my fabric diet

This is something I found on Saturday when I was digging in my boxes:





And after a little thinking I did this on Monday:





And some of this, too.




Later I will show you what became of it. These were leftover pieces from my Friendship star quilt.

Yesterday I had wonderful news from my daughter Kaija. She won the second price in a big bookbinding competition. You can read more here. I'm proud to have a talented daughter, and especially glad that her talent is in her hands as well as in her mind and her heart.

Tidying up my stash

This is what I have been doing this morning. I'm arranging and organizing my chaos with a new set of plastic boxes. Optimistically I chose five of these 30 l boxes and three 16 l boxes for small pieces. They are all rather tightly packed now, and I only emptied one big cardboard box and some plastic bags. Then I emptied one huge black carbage bin liner and filled the big box I just emptied.

I could only take detail photos like these, because this is the only visible change in the room. Even I could not tell that the fabric mountains are a little smaller. The rest of my side of the room is still a mess. Imagine a teenager sharing a room with a toddler, and a mother who couldn't care less, and you get the general idea of my sewing room. At the other end lives the tidy nerd big brother who minds his own business and keeps his desk tidy. That is my husband's side. I love him very much and he must love me at least as much, because we can work there very peacefully.

I made some interesting finds digging through the archaeological layers of plastic bags. There were leftover blocks from old quilting projects and interesting, big pieces of fabric. This will make it a lot easier for me to keep my fabric diet.

I have spent too many hours reading interesting
blogs with the words "stash" and "scraps" and many new ideas are bouncing in my head. I feel like quilting something small that will be rady in no time, but I also would like to try out more ideas from my Japanese Patchwork book, and there are so many bags just waiting to be made. The first thing I ought to do is a lightweight bag for groceries. I always carry a used plastic bag in my shoulder bag (for international readers: Finnish groceries use thicker, big plastic bags which can be used for heavy shopping many, many times if you want to), but a fabric bag would be a better message against global warming. I found many interesting fabrics suitable for this purpose. Some of them were in the depths of the bin liner, a cupboard cleaning project of my sister who moved to a new house a couple of years ago and shifted her stash to my cellar.



Today at six o'clock my time I will write down the names for the giveaway and my son will pick up one. Chances to win the potholders are very good at the moment ;) so if you are interested there is still some time to participate by commenting on the post titled Giveaway!.

What happens when the country girl goes to town

This week I joined the Fabric diet 2008, like I told you before. It seems to be going as well as my other diets: Yesterday I was in Helsinki for some important shopping and I had a little time for myself as well. I went to the big fabric shop near the railway station and bought 2.5 m fabrics. Then I went to Ateneum, the art museum, to see an exhibition of the works of Pekka Halonen, who has lived in this area in the beginning of the 20th century. This is the art museum Ateneum:

And this is how Helsinki was yesterday, now that we finally did get the winter that didn't come when it was time.

Then I came to Järvenpää like every Thursday, and went to the fabric shop that is moving back to its old address further away, so I had to shop a little because next week it is too late: 3 m fabrics. And I haven't used any, because I have been busy doing real things and stitching the big quilt. I have also gained some weight, thanks to all the Mignon eggs. These are Easter eggs with 52 g nougat chocolate in a real egg shell. No little rings or toy surprises for me, I want the real thing: chocolate.