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.

Accumulator Seriali Spinoff Series - Needle Keepers and a mystery tool

Last Saturday my daughter Kaija, the original Accumulator, showed her vintage pins and needles here. I don't have a single old package of needles, they have all gone straight to her, but I have quite many old and new needle keepers. So many that I can call it an accumulation, as I have not tried to collect them.

 The first one is a stitched little thing from my mother's side of the family.

On the left is a little pocket, and there are two pieces of felt for different needles.

The two holders at the top are traditional crafted items from Lapland, with an engraved reindeer pulling a Sami man in a sleigh. I would think they are souvenirs, maybe for my Grandmother and her younger sister, my great auntie Saima. Needles are fastened in a little piece of red felt sewn on the leather that goes from the bone ring through the hollow piece of reindeer bone, ending in the twisted loop used to hang the needle keeper on one's belt or on a hook.

The three small ones hold the needles loose inside. The wooden caps are just pushed on, but the tiny bone thing has a twisted on cap. The middle one has a text Gütermann's Nähseide, so it advertises popular sewing threads.

These three are my modern needle books, all from a very dear friend. I'm sorry I have misplaced the pink needlebook Kaija made for me when she was a little schoolgirl.

With the heart needlebook above at the bottom came also this pincushion I couldn't find when I showed you my pincushions here.

Which brings me to the other pincushions missing from that post:

On the left, the red dressmaker's pincushion and the felt flower were my mother's. The small round one with an elastic band is one that Kaija made for me at school. The red and greed one with an edelweiss is from my mother-in-law. The big acorn in felt and the little angel with a back pocket for scissors are by Melanie. I remember how my mother made the felt flower pincushions, I had one of my own as well. They were made for a craft fair to raise money for our school. The Women's Committee did an amazing job as money raisers and provided all kinds of useful things for the school, like a language laboratory which at that time was a rare treat. It took much more than some pincushions to reach their goals.

Finding all the needle things I came across this mysterious tool, two of them in fact:

The shaft is hollow, and there is a hole for some kind of yarn or thread. Any idea about the use?

Porvoo, part 2

This will be a long post, so you may want to take a cup of coffee (it is still my birthday party!). Yesterday you saw the Cathedral of Porvoo in snow. The first church here was built in the late 13th and early 14th century, and the present church in the 1450s. Let's go in now through this door.

Behind the altar ther is a window and a crusifix. The altar painting is on the far right (not in sight), a version of the Last Supper.



The church's roof was badly burned in a fire in 2006, and it took two years to rebuild it. I think the dark colour in this vault is fire damage. The chandeliers fell on the floor but the ceiling was not damaged.  The church has suffered several fires during the centuries, but it has always been rebuilt. During reformation it was usual to cover all the paintings in churches with white paint. The original paintings could be restored only partially.

The four apostles are painted on four pillars in the church. St. Matthew

St. Marc

St. Luke

and St. John

Miniature ship  hanging from the ceiling. Some ships were donated to the church as votive ships by grateful seafarers after a dangerous voyage, or before one. This tradition has spread to Finnish coast areas from Sweden.

I thought you wanted to have a better look at the unicorn.

The organ opposite to the altar.

Two galleries on both sides of the church. Usually there is just one, but this is a cathedral. The wood is painted to look like marble. 

This was the end of the tour. - In the evening we had the most delicious meal in the restaurant Wanha Laamanni. They have a special organic and local menu for this month. I had the soup and Mr. K. chose the Islander's plate with various cold fish. We both took Fried whitefish with Beurre blanc for the main course, and Colostrum panna cotta with lingonberry sauce for dessert. Yum! The restaurant was very close to our hotel, and we enjoyed the walk in the snow after the meal.

Back home I had the lovely gifts from friends waiting. Big sister P must have read my earlier post about bright flowers, because she brought me a bucketfull of tulips, one for every year. I needed three vases for them!

Then I admired the presents again. ( I must admit I opened them before I left for the weekend.) These are all from my European blogging friends, it takes surprisingly long for mail to cross the Atlantic. In alphabetical order, first the presents from Anne Marie from Norway:

Two beautiful cup mats, four lovely fabrics folded like a star, and some Easter marzipan chocolates. Thank you, Anne Marie!

Next comes Melanie, she has been busy sending me presents - I showed the wonderful book already. We share a love for mushrooms, and she knows I have a messy sewing room, so she made me a unlose-able pincushion in the same style as her houseelf's house.

  

In my Christmas parcel came a birthday-wrapped present I have kept in the closet waiting, and finally got to open it. The prettiest ever Miss Bunny was there, cramps in her legs and her pretty dress all wrinkled, but after some ironing (for the dress and apron) and some stretching (for the legs and ears) she was happy to find Christobel's old place on the fireplace corner.

This is Christobel, the Christmas elf from Melanie:

She is spending the off-duty time in my sewing room, and I bet she'll tell Melanie that I don't deserve any gifts for next Christmas because I'm so messy.

The last lot is from dear Suzie. She sent me a fabric with old sewing machines, very inspirational for the cutting mat bag I have ben planning to make for several years already. It will be perfect for the front side. Under that fabric is some "pocket Coffee", chocolates with liquid espresso filling. The first night Mr. K. and I had three of them each, and stayed awake half the night! Now they are restricted to one/night or two in the afternoon.

Here is a closer look at the sewing bag Suzie made. You can see part of the heart stitching on the right.

Inside she used other lovely sewing themed fabrics, and I found some hand sewing needles and machine needles and some quilting thread in the pockets. Thank you, Suzie!

I think I need to show you one more present, this is from Mr. K and DD Kaija. Some of you know that Kaija has started a new blog showing old black and white photos taken by my Great Auntie Saima's husband, Emil. She has scanned the photos from an album my mother gave her, and now she has hand picked lots of them for me and had them made to a book.

The front cover shows Saima at very young age in a white summer dress. In the next pictures she is a grown woman, with a lovely hat. Kaija did a wonderful job with the layout of these not-standard size photos, and now I finally have some photos of my dear Great Auntie Saima.

This was the end of the birthday party. I hope your liked the whitefish as much as we did. Don't eat too many chocolates!

A week of very small accomplishments

Weather report: the winter is still very much the same, cold and long and snowy. The temperatures keep around -20 to -25C (-4F to -13F) in the mornings but warm up to about -10 C /+14F by early afternoon. The sun must be working a little on the snow, because in the morning the trees are often covered with frost as the humidity in the air concentrates on any surface. It has not been snowing in over a week.

I had more cupcake mail from Melanie:

She used up her cupcake fabric rests to make me a mushroom mat for autumn. We have had long correspondence about the use of mushrooms in the kitchen and for dyeing yarns and fabrics. Melanie knows so much about history and old methods in handicrafts.

I have been sewing some more QAYG blocks for Oz Comfort Quilts, satin stitching the shoes I showed in my last post, and using little scraps of fabric for a needle book for my friend P who is desperately waiting for the wallhanging to be finished:

She started in my sewing class last autumn, and for her new hobby I equipped her needle book with small scissors and a seam ripper

and some machine needles so she can continue sewing at home when school is out.

At the moment I'm working with some silk threads I have inherited from my Great Auntie Saima. My regular readers know a lot about her, she was like a young grandmother for us and lived many years with our real grandmother, her elder sister, so she was always there for us.

If you want to see a picture of Saima, you should visit my daughter Kaija's blog here. My mother has given her a photo album with pictures by Saima's husband. Now Kaija has started a new blog, Emil's, to show the contents of this great amateur photographer's work. We have very little information about the people and places in the photos, but they are great pictures from the early decades of the 20th century. Enjoy!

VTT 18 - Monograms

Two weeks ago in my VTT post I showed you a collection of marking thread , because there was some talk about it in Miri's VTT post. Today you  will see some of my linens with monograms stitched with these threads. Suzanne is hosting VTT here.

     

Here are my kitchen towels with different monograms. Actually, the one in the top left corner is for my face, it just happened to be with these other towels. The next towels I made by hand because I didn't have a sewing machine at the time, and used red marking thread and chain stitches. We had the towel fabric as a wedding gift. The ones in the bottom row are from my grandmother and from my mother.

Grandmother's towel is used for glasses, because the fabric is lint-free and thus perfect for drying up glasses. Cross stitches in red marking thread.

Here is a pillowcase with her initials, white marking thread on white linen. The pillowcase has two pairs of tape at the open end, tied together to keep the pillow in place. When I was very little, I sometimes was allowed to curl the tapes with a pair of pliers by turning a wing nut at the end of one of the grooved cylinders in them.

Different monogram on a face towel from Grandmother.

Striped linen towels, good as new, made by my mother before she was married to my father. I believe she has never used any of these  kitchen towels, and neither have I. They feel stiff and don't dry very well, just because they have not been used and washed. Red cross stitches in red marking thread again.

These were my initials when I was a schoolgirl and made one towel like this at school. My mother bought some more of the same fabric so I could make the first half a dozen towels for my "hope chest". I only have four of them, two have been used threadbare. Cross stitches in embroidery floss this time.

When I was leaving home to live on my own, my mother made me 12 of these towels and marked them in light blue marking thread.

When I was engaged to Mr. K, mother made the rest of my hope chest linens: pillowcases and bed sheet with lace crocheted by my late grandmother at a time when I was just about 10 years old. She crocheted lace inserts for all 6 of us, for half a dozen sheets. Here are my old initials for the last time.

These are my favourite towels, only used about once a year just to kep them from yellowing:

Great Auntie Saima's monogram in red and white marking thread. This was before she was married, so it must have been in the 1930's or earlier.

Grandmother's big dinner tablecloth of linen damask, big monogram in red and white.

  

Finally the oldest monogram, my great-grandmother Amanda's little tray topper.

  

I hope you enjoyed the peek in my linen closet (with some re-runs from earlier VTT posts). Other kinds of vintage thingies you will find on the list of links at Suzanne's blog here.