Quilt Patterns Everywhere

On Wednesday I was in Helsinki on my day off. There was a big construction site just next to Stockmann's Christmas window, and I had to take some photos of the wonderful pavement they were laying there. It is a pedestrian zone, and the tiling will cover a 250 m long area. This first part is 50 m long.

Isn't this a perfect (and difficult) quilt pattern?

One more view. The yellow shade is only a reflection on the water, the slabs are in grey and red granite.

 You can read more about the British mathematician Roger Penrose and Penrose tiling here. A less scientific and more fun approach to the subject is here. Helsinki has just been nominated  design capital of the world 2012.

The window reflected everything so badly that my pictures are of no use. Here is a tonttu girl, especially for you, Melanie!

The clock tower of the main railway station is under renovation, but look how nice tarps they use to protect the work:

The sky behind the tower in the tarp picture is blue, even when the weather is all grey.

In Helsinki I went shopping for some fabrics and things I needed, but mainly to have a pedicure. You may remember the custom order by my friend PN, a 6 m long wall hanging for her in exchange for free pedicure. I have almost all the fabrics for it from her, all I need is nice blue fabrics for the sky. I used my big box of coloured pencils for the first time to make a sketch of my ideas.

The drawing is 1 : 10, and I think I will need to make a big sketch on paper before cutting any fabrics. Luckily ther is no rush so I can postpone this project to January.

Finally I read about the results of the Tanzanian orphanage project in the newspaper. They received 177 quilts and blankets, 441 sheets and 24 pillow cases. Most of them have already been delivered to orphanages and hospitals in Tanzania.

This is a busy time, with secret projects, so there are no pictures of my doings in the sewing room. Have a wonderful weekend. It is time to light the first Advent candle on Sunday.

Orphanage Project Finished

This is a project I started last summer, and my faithful readers have been following the progres here. I made it my Brown Owls Community project, and it can be used for gaining the Sewing, Knitting and Crochet badges as well. The church will be sending quilts, blankets and sheets for orphanages in Tanzania, and asked members to donate them. I used my granny squares from Pip's challenge A Granny A Day in May to make two blankets of yarn rests. This is the girly one:


And this one in for a boy (or a girl who likes the same colours as I):

I used an Africa themed fabric to make this window quilt, and added green squares from an old pillow case. The border is my mother's old summer skirt, also used in some windows, and the brown jungle pattern was my summer skirt.

I used the giraffes and lions to make my first strip quilt.

Yesterday I finished the binding of this elephant quilt. The pattern is from Miri, and Eileen made a sweet baby quilt with it last summer. I copied her idea of making some of the elephants face each other and one elephant giving a flower to another. If you click the picture, you can see it is the dark grey elephant with the purple one.

My youngest sister gave me some of her sheets (wrong size for the blankets she has, I think), and I made 8 sheets of them for the project.

This was my pile before the last quilt and the blue sheets.

I also planned to knit one blanket, but I ran out of a) time and b) yarn in the right colour, so I just packed my 16 squares in a plastic bag (recycled, it was used for tomatoes first) with a note asking someone else to finish the blanket for me.

Then I packed the whole stack in a big plastic bag (used, of course, and because I had to leave it there) and asked Mr. K to take me to the parish office. This is me going there. Then I was just asked to leave my bag in someone's empty office, and that was it. I hope the little orphans like the quilts. They are all backed with soft flannel, so I think they will feel warm at night.

Catching up

Let's see if I still know how to do this. Feels like I had been away ages, and I missed reading blog posts. I was in Helsinki for 9 days, and coming home means a lot of laundry and cleaning before there is time for fun. It is only 50 km away, half an hour by train, but the sea makes the city warmer in the autum. They still had so many leaves in the trees!





At home it looked more like this in the swan pond. I think I saw "our" swan family in flight this week, at least it was 7 swans together.



The apple trees are all bare.

Earlier I was busy with secret projects, but now I can reveal at least some of them. Stephanie had her 50th birthday this week, and I made her some kitchen towels. For this one I copied the pattern from my vintage butter crock.

During the course in Helsinki I had time for hand sewing in the evenings, and I managed to finish this little candle mat. It is from a kit Candace sent me early this year, along with fly fishing magazines for Mr. Kontarankki. Don't look too closely, it was my first wool applique ever.

Sweet Melanie wanted to equip me for the visit in Helsinki, but her lavender smellies reached me right after I came back. How did she know I used my last firming cherry mask when I prepared for the hot date with Mr. K. on the Book Fair last Sunday? Well, the follow-up part of my course is in April, so I can use the lavender products then.

After I came home I have been busy working on the last orphanage baby quilt. Machine stitching is done, and I hurried to take the photo while the sun was still up. I haven't decided on the binding yet, but I will need this one finished for Monday. That is when I have a chance to deliver my things to the people who will take them to the Women's Day event on Nov. 14th to be taken to Tanzania soon after that.

That is all for today. For the final picture I want to share with you the clear autumn sky of today. I love autumn days like this.

Autumn Gardening and New Granny Blanket

This morning we had the coldest temperature of this autumn, only -4 degrees C (25F) long after sunrise. In this picture you can see how low the sun is shining at quarter to ten. I was trying to catch a picture of the aspen leaves falling from the trees when the sun warmed them; there was a strange noise like someone was walking there, but it was only the frozen leaves.


Mr. Kotkarankki planted the bulbs I tried to start planting earlier. I was working at a table doing quality control and choosing only the best 500 bulbs to be planted.


There they are! The rest found a place in our leave composting area; we will see the best of them in spring and the rest are too small or dry to survive.

Because the weather was so lovely I was able to take some pictures of my newest finish. This is the second granny square blanket for the Tanzanian orphanage.

A closer look. The red yarn I used for the connecting rounds has many shades of red.

This is the quilt with lions and giraffes you have seen in progress, now all finished with wavy stitching.

Here is the Finnish Brown Owls' project so far, two quilts, two blankets and six sheets. I'm still working on the elephant quilt and a knitted blanket.

Happy Mail

Just a while ago something very nice happened: I won a giveaway I didn't even know about. Stephanie from Loft Creations had this unannounced giveaway, and because I follow her blog and very often comment, I was in. Today the mail brought me the gift, Stephanie's newest pattern for two matching bags, Ladyfingers and Sugar Baby.





I had thought about buying the pattern, but it was not yet in her Etsy shop. This is what I had in mind for using for the Dresden plates:


Or this:

Or a mixture of both. They are my father's old ties, the leftovers after my brothers and sisters had their pick for some ties they wanted to wear. I have been keeping these in my storage and thinking about how to use them in a quilt. They are a difficult material, so I think I will come back to this bag idea later. Don't worry, I will show you if I ever get anything done either with the pattern or the ties or both together.

In the meantime I have been busy with two projects. One is the orphanage quilts, blankets and sheets. Last time I was in Tampere I picked up a giant plastic bag my youngest sister T had left for me at our mother's. It was full of her old sheet, in perfect condition. The pale crepe ones seemed not suitable for quilts, so I already cut one up and sewed three children's sheet of it. The blue with daisies will make two, but there is another one so it will make four, and another pale crepe sheet, totals 10 sheet. The one very soft white sheet I will keep to be used for backings, I might also dye it. Thank you, T!

Here is my Tanzania orphanage project results so far, three sheet, two quilts and a crocheted blanket. One elephant quilt is slowly in progress, and the granny squares for the second blanket still need to be joined together. I'm also knitting one blanket, I started it on my holiday in August but it seems to take a long time.

The other project is only in my head at the moment, but I need to start writing my ideas down. It is a very big custom order, a wall hanging about 120 x 600 cm, but it can be made of several pieces. It will be for the same lady, PN, who received my Stranger Quilt last year. She brought me a huge pile of fabrics for the wall hanging, and I will go through my stash and seek for suitable fabrics as well. She brought me a small sketch so I can get some idea of what she is after. Houses are included, sky and sea, and shoes. This may take really long time!

Swans, Elephants and Grannies

Do you remember the swan family I told you about in June? The couple walked their babies to the big pond in the centre of our village, but after a week or so they noticed there were too many people around so they walked to a more quiet little pond to raise their family. Usually the Cygnus olor nests in the wilderness up North, and they are always very shy birds, unlike the mute swans.


The babies have grown and are learning to fly. They need a long runway to get air under their wings, so a bigger pond was needed again. This pond is between the fire station and the big school.


The young swans - all five of them survived - are about as big as the parents but still grey in colour. They are not headless, but hungry! One has his or her wings up, trying to reach something delicious in the bottom of the pond.

One more picture, you can see the colour difference.

I promised to show I have been crafting as well. This is what I have been doing in class on Thursday evenings. Elephant blocks for another orphanage quilt. Miri has designed this cute pattern, and you can download it from her blog.

In the evenings, with Emmerdale and Heartbeat and Desperate Housewives and CSI and Mentalist I have been crocheting more and more Granny squares. Two more, and I can start playing with them and arrange them for a second orphanage blanket. I'll combine the squares with a variegated red this time. I will join them as I make the last row, I think this way the seams will not be stiff. Actually there will be no seams.

In Autumn we fill our cupboards and cellars

Last Wednesday I visited my mother in Tampere as a surprise to her, while Mr. K was on a fair all day in town. He brought me there very early, and as I waited for my mother to wake up, I hand sewed the binding of the Giraffe quilt. It is just plain dark brown, a leftover bit from the birthday quilt I made for my BIL in June. The length was exactly right for this little quilt when I used straight seams instead of bias to combine the strips.





This is the reverse side. The green and the dark brown are again leftovers from the Maverick star quilt, the beige is new flannel.






My visit at my mother's included, once again, a raid through her sewing room (guided by her), and another trip to the attic with my sister P, who came there in the afternoon. My loot included small and bigger bits of fabrics like this:

and some old clothes from the attic, some of them made for me by mother, others handed down from one sister to another and another and even another. We usually kept the home made clothes and recycled bought ones to the church or Salvation Army.

I think my mother has even more unfinished projects than I have, but of course she is much older than I am, so there is plenty of time to break her record! This looked like an interesting apron project. It is not just one but at least three aprons. They may have been meant for my school's fundraising fair. The mothers in the "ladies committee" made a tremendous job arranging Christmas Fairs, children's parties and other events to raise money for the school. Not only did they buy and sew curtains for the whole big school, but they managed to get a language lab with 20 sets of tape recorders, headphones and sound isolated desks in the 1960's. For my young readers I can tell that it was very advanced technology, and I spent many lessons there learning to say: I like reading my books. Ann likes reading her books. She sits there. She is sitting there. Do you want to play? Does he want to play? - And the same in French.

On Thursday I will show a couple of the dresses I saved, very vintage as they are! And if I manage to find all necessary parts to make an apron of this mess or of the other project I didn't photograph, you will see the results some day. It is so good to know there is material to work on when the dark, long evenings are just almost there! My fabric stock has never been so full before.

Now my duty calls, I have lots an lots of apples to cook. It is such a lovely, sunny, clear autumn day today. Rain is to be expected tomorrow, so I'll try to pick as much apples as I can today.

Sun Prints

Some time last year I told here about a method of printing fabrics with the help of sunlight. I took an afternoon course a couple of years ago and last week I wanted to try it again on my own. Here comes a little tutorial.

First I covered a metal plate with a bin liner to avoid rust stains.





Then I attached my fabric on the surface with some masking tape and sprayed it with water.


After this I used protective gloves, changing to a new pair every time they were stained so I wouldn't ruin my print.

I used textile paints, adding colour pigments to a basic spray emulsion.

I kept adding pigments to get different autumn shades.

This fabric was too big to work on in the sun, the fabric and colour dried before I added the darkest shade so the colour change was not smooth. I placed leaves on the fabric to stay there until the colour had dried completely.

It was too windy to let it dry ourdoors in the sun, so I had to take my project indoors.

This is the result. The colour will disappear under the leaves (or whatever you decide to place on the fabric). Here are some closeups. Rowan:

Birch:

Oak:

Something was different this time, because my prints from the class look like this:

and this

We used glass panes there, and the work was done indoors so everything was kept exactly in place; and the fabric was really flat on the glass. My bin liner was probably not flat enough to make such clear pictures. I'll be wiser next time. This tutorial is "Don't do like I do, but like I tell you to do"!

The printed fabric needs to be ironed to fasten the colour. I may use the prints for a table runner or a bag or something. I tried to position the leaves so that I could cut squares of the fabric.

This week I have hand sewn the binding on the Giraffe quilt, machine sewn binding to the Lion and giraffe strip quilt, and crocheted some granny squares for the second orphanage blanket. On Wednesday I visited my mother and came back home with some (a lot of) fabrics and unfinished projects of hers. I also found a box with my old dresses from the late 60's, too small for anyone to wear. There may be something to show on VTT!

Yesterday was my Back to school -day, because it was the first night of the sewing group to meet. I started cutting and sewing the sweet elephant quilt Miri designed. It will be my third Orphanage quilt.