How hard can it be, really?

I have been trying to learn a new skill. You may remember the tatting shuttles my eldest and youngest sister gave me recently, both inherited from Great Auntie Saima. As a happy owner of at least two shuttles (I still have not come across the one I believe was given to me years and years ago) I thought I ought to try to learn how to tat.

First thing to do was to buy a book: Learn to Tat by Janette Baker, with a DVD showing how to do it. I also bought a ball of thread to see how it should be. So far easy beasy.

Second step was to start learning the basics. Like instructed, I started with two different colours of thread, orange and red, because they were the same thickness.

Almost even knots, looking all the same. The result of about two hours twisting and turning and bending, and rewinding the shuttle once. Then I noticed that each and every single (double) stitch was wrong. They were red (shuttle thread) instead of orange (ball thread).

New day, turquoise cotton yarn for the ball thread. I played the DVD Lesson 1 over and over, learned to hold the shuttle and the left hand thread properly, but not the shuttle thread. Look at this, it is supposed to be turquoise knots only with no red visible:

For me, it is really hard! I have not given up yet, but I'm no longer thinking I will learn the basics in February. February is such a short month, too.

My stash reducing is not going too well either. I don't even count the fabrics my sister P dumped on me because I didn't ask for them. I just happened to buy some more fabric I felt I absolutely needed: Brown I just must have, always, grey I need for the big wall hanging project and the yellow was too pretty to leave in the shop. They are in fact bed sheets, good quality 100 % cotton at 7.90 € for 2.7 m which makes a little under 3 €/m. If I buy the same fabric by the meter, it will cost at least 5.50 €/m for the 1.5 m width.

On Friday I sent the 10 pillowcases to Jackie, so she can take them to the children's summer camp when the time comes. I hope she will get the 2,000 pillowcases she was planning to deliver this year. Here are the last two I made this month, and I used my Husqvarna Sapphire to write Good Night Sleep Tight on the green accent strip.

  

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! We call it Ystävänpäivä, Friend's Day. I'm glad to call you my friends.

Finished mystery quilt

Today I finally finished the "Stranger quilt" I have been showing pictures of this summer. It has been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture of the finished puzzle. And with the modern, machine made pieces with the exact shapes repeating over and over, so that it is possible to put a wrong piece in place. I personally prefer these vintage jigsaw puzzles somebody really sawed by hand when my mother was young. Every piece is different, no chance for a mistake.

The quilt was at this stage when I received it some years ago from the mother of DS1's girlfriend. I don't know who has started the patchwork, but there were foundation pieced rows of about 4" squares, with varying seam allowances.

I tried out many different arrangements but nothing really seemed to make sense. I concluded that there never was a plan, although some rythm and repetition was in the rows.

Finally I ended up with this arrangement. And then I changed it.

I added a few rows to both ends of the top using pieces from too long rows, some fabrics which were in the same bag as the rows, and some fabrics from my stash. Then I dyed an old sheet for the borders and backing. The border piece was dyed first and a little longer than the backing, for darker colour.

For the binding I used the same fabric as in some pieces from my stash, fifth from the right on bottom line and diagonally above it in the picture above.

This morning I sewed the last bit of the binding and took these last photos. The darker spots are shadows of leaves, the sun was shining through a big tree.

I'm pleased with my "jigsaw puzzle" stitching. The rows of the quilt were straight in only one direction, as the squares were not all finished the same size, and I couldn't stitch in any way following the seams. These wavy lines go across the patches in both directions. It was a pleasure to use the new sewing machine for the quilting.

On Monday P (the girlfriend's mom) is coming to pick some apples because we can't use all the apples. I'm going to give her the quilt then. She will most probably not see the faults in this quilt because she is not a quilter herself. I will also ask her what she can tell me about the rows and who started them.

Proud Mother

This weekend I have reason to be proud of my children. My daughter Kaija, who introduced the blogging world to me last winter and put up this blog for me, is now the Featured Seller on Etsy.

She mentions me in her interview, so readers have been pouring to this blog like never before! If you are one of them and would like to see the quilt she mentioned, you can see it here and on many post before. The Grandmother's Garden quilt was one of the reasons I started this blog; I wanted to get the hand quilting and binding done in about two months. Doing this part in public kept me going, and the quilt with the 2,226 little hexagons was ready for the spring exhibition of my sewing group.

Now I'm working on this other quilt with a public deadline: my summer stash challenge quilt for my DH. I have finished the machine quilting with my angelic new sewing machine and sewed the bindings on by machine. Today I have been ripping off the basting threads and darning in the quilting threads. Hand sewing the binding is something I like to do when watching TV.



This year there will be lots of apples. These red ones are so sweet that they are no good for jam or pie, I just have to eat them. DH is allergic and can't eat them, so I keep giving (recycled) plastic bags full of apples to anyone who happens to come by. Soon I will start cooking jam of the other apples.

The other child to be proud of today is DS1: he had his Master of Science (Economics) degree officially yesterday. No big ceremony there, just the paper from a clark; and he could finallly close the school doors for the last time.

The DS2 keeps surprising me constantly so that I can be proud of him every day in a smaller scale than of the bigger siblings ;o)

Hedgehog and other visitors

I have been busy cleaning the house (including the packing by new machine in its case away from the dining table, just to make room for food!) and baking and cooking and no time to blog world for a couple of days. We had a family lunch yesterday with DH's father, sister and brother and his son and our three kids, 13 people in all. It was a warm day and we could eat outdoors under a pavilion roof and on the veranda. It was nice to see everyone, and we had an extra visitor as well. A tiny little hedgehog baby was wandering around on the lawn, and our two-year-old guest was thrilled to see something like that.

To show my slow progress on the summer stash challenge quilt, a picture of basting the layers for quilting. I was also testing our new garden table and chairs; we have been planning to buy a set for at least five years and finally did it last week to seat all our guests for the Sunday lunch! I don't trust my safety pins alone when I plan to quilt by machine, I need the basting to be sure. I know it sounds like belt and suspenders, but that's me.

This little piece I quilted with safety pins only, but it is only three rows high. They are the rows I ripped off the challenge quilt which was too long for my backing piece of fabric. I tried almost all the different quilting stitches of my new machine here. On the dark brown piece you can see the jump stitches caused by a too small needle. After I changed to a number 100 it worked all right. I decided to stitch in the ditch for the challenge quilt after all; it will look more masculine . I will use the fancy stitches for smaller, sweeter quilts to come.

To iron or not to iron?

What do you think I should be doing now (except writing this), ironing these, the new backing for the challenge quilt is on top,





or playing with this, my new Husqvarna Sapphire 870 Quilt I bought yesterday when I just went to have a haircut and to look at some sewing machines:




Look at the length of the arm! Look at all the stitches:

I haven't even plugged it in yet. It came with an instruction CD and an exercise book where I can collect all my samples when I practise. I just keep smiling all the time, like when in love! Now I must take time to learn the basics so I can machine quilt the challenge quilt easily. To show you some progress in that field I have a photo of the borders. They look like this, all the way around:

I ended up leaving three rows out. Maybe I use them for a cushion, sometime in the future. Now I think I will plug in the iron - or new sewing machine.