TdF day 16 - knittings out of the house

I promise this is the last you will see of my baby hats. I took the lot to the local maternity ward yesterday. 31 in all, if you want to know. And even if you don't. Wool, cotton and bamboo yarns, and a set of 4 in baby acrylic.

Four knitted blankets, these are all in baby acrylic.

Five tiny preemie quilts from earlier this year, one of my PIPs.

And finally the Angel Pods.

The nurses were pleased to receive all this. More than 1,000 babies come to the world there every year. They are getting hats from other knitters too.

The Tour was too exciting yesterday , I had to watch it from the beginning to the end. The Col du Tourmalet is the first thing I remember about this Tour from many many years back. All I can do without constantly looking at my hands is knitting, so here is the result:

I had about half of the blue square knitted on the rest day, and finished last night when the red square was ready. I have several balls of both yarns so this will be a red and blue blanket.

Our apple trees are full of promises of apples. Last year there was hardly anything, so this year my cellar will be filled with apple sauce jars again.

PIPS 2

This week I was supposed to clean my cutting table so I could start a new project from a clean desk so to say. Instead of cleaning the table like any sensible quilter would do (in 5 minutes, because they are not me), I just took one of the fabric piles there and found a Project in Progress. Oh how nice, Stephanie challenged everyone to finish their PIPS this year! I hurried to find the other pile of fabrics that belonged together with pile number one, to start finishing my PIPS. I found ready cut squares in three sizes, some lonely blocks, long strips of fabric and a large piece of white flannelet. I arranged the big squares first and made this Nine-Patch:

I cut some more of the middle sized squares and they turned into this:

The smallest squares became this:

There were some leftover blocks as well, with pale yellow centres. I used the remaining purple squares and added green borders to make my fourth preemie quilt.

The last one is a tiny quilt for a tiny preemie or a stillborn baby, with super soft bamboo knit backing:

 

When I get my Angel Pods finished I will take all these to the local Maternity ward to be given to the families and their babies. Five PIPS finished in two days! The table is still suffering from restricted access, but at least I put the baby fabrics away where they belong.

Stash use report for April

The month of April has gone without much work done with the sewing machine. I have not been lazy, just busy with stitches on the needles and embroidery instead of using fabric from my stash. This linen bag is all I used fabrics for:

It took 1 m of linen for the bag and 1 m cotton for the lining, totalling 2 m. The good news is that I didn't buy any fabric in April. From the beginning of the year my stash statistics look more impressive: 41.8 m used, 10.6 m bought.

I had some business at the local hospital a couple of weeks ago, and I finally took three preemie quilts to the Children's Ward. I had finished them some years ago but for some reason never took them there earlier. I only had pictures of the two pretty ones:

This one was made during the Sew, Mama, Sew! Quilting Month in 2008.

The other one is hand pieced and tied. The third one was my attempt on disappearing ninepatch, a nice pattern but the fabrics could have been more carefully chosen. Anyway, the nurse at the ward was very happy to have them. All my children are born at this hospital, and both sons were preemies. At that time there was no children's ward.

Spring is here, the days are long already. The sun rises just after 5 in the morning and sets around 9.30 in the evening. Every day is about five minutes longer, it makes more than half an hour every week. Yesterday I took a picture of the last snow:

This is where it had been pushed all winter to clear the driveway. This morning there was only a handful left. Soon Mr. Kotkarankki will have to continue his project there.

Go green and abandon the plastic bags!

Today I have been rather busy. In the morning I finished the second of the bags using some linen/cotton printed by Hollabee.
This is the first one, the print is Icy Blue Floating. Since it was just a little piece, I used some navy blue heavy cotton to make a shopping bag. The lining is solid dark blue, and there is a zippered pocket inside. This one I made during the weekend, so I had the photo taken on Monday!


Below is the bag I finished this morning. (Photo from Monday.) The pattern is Rubine Red Swirl.
The bag is a little smaller than the first one, and I used the whole bit of printed fabric to make the top of the bag. Therefore the outside pocket is of the navy cotton. For the lining I used the same beige checked fabric as under the kotkarankki text on my blog head. Inside pocket with zipper here too.

The rest of the day included a train trip to Kerava to meet my son after his day at work. Before I met him I had some time to got to a fabric shop I know from the early days of my life here. Luckily the shop was celebrating their 28th anniversary. For fabric purchases over 28 euro they gave 28 % discount! This was an offer very hard to resist and so I didn't ;). I bought some flannel in two baby prints for my preemie quilts and other baby quilts I have planned to make for sale. This was absolutely necessary because I don't have any flannel left for the preemie quilts' backing, and I have plans to make a girly baby quilt to go with the blue pinwheel quilt I recently finished. Maybe I feel a little better about my shopping if I start cutting the pink quilt this week.