Exercises

Thank you all for your good advice on free motion quilting. I practised, not a lot but some. It started to look like this:


I'm not very keen on any kind of exercising. It made me think that I usually learn by doing, so I started quilting the actual, biggish quilt. I even remembered to use my reading glasses instead of the normal ones with a reading area in the lower part of the lenses (I usually look above these lenses to write). Keeping my shoulders relaxed and all. My lovely machine has a longer arm than usual sewing machines; the needle is about 10" or 27 cm from the machine body, so there is more space for the quilt when you are working further away from the right edge. This doesn't mean the quilt would move easily there, so no question of smooth movements. After a while I started to wonder why the machine sounded different. Then I noticed that my shoulders covered my ears almost completely. Dropping them down helped for a while, but soon I was quilting in a difficult spot, and there they were again! I also clenched my teeth together, so my jaw was all stiff after the work. Luckily I hade a massage appointment on Thursday, which leads to my other exercises.

Pip from Meet me at Mike's has asked people to Move it like Mike. I walked with her International Walking Team last year until I hurt my knee. Now I'm on better medication and better understanding what a traditionally built woman of my age can and can't do, so I joined in. I earned two points of the weekly three required, when I walked to the massage and back.


I think I earned an additional moral point because it was raining; see how my hood is dripping after I was back home. The shoulders are relaxed again, thank you, and I didn't catch a cold because I changed into dry clothes and had some hot tea. The quilt it quilted, the binding is machine stitched, so there is only hand sewing left to be done. Pictures will come after the work is done.

Free Motion

Many of you may remember the wonky star quilt I have been working on this year. Well, the project is coming on nicely. I used my fancy walking foot to attach the sashings between the star blocks.





Then I wanted to machine quilt the quilt nicely like Tia did with my Bushfire Quilt top. I knew I needed to practice my free motion machine quilting, because I have only tried is once and the result was a ruined preemie quilt. So I practiced yesterday. On the left you see the reverse of my two first attempts:






On the right I had the threading right, but it seems like I need some more practice on the "free motion" part of the fun. For some reason my hands don't move the way they ought to. And yes, I replaced the walking foot with my fancy spring loaded free motion quilting foot. And dropped the feeders and adjusted the machine by the book. It's just me. Wish me luck!

Stars and Squares

This is what I have been doing with my granny squares while watching TV in the evenings:

I have added one or two rounds in cream coloured wool so they are all about the same size. I have more than 10 squares waiting for the extra rounds, and I will be making new squares as well.

I have also been sewing a little, adding to this pile of my 6" Maverick Star blocks.

You may remember the Shadow Plaid quilt pattern I wanted to make? I started cutting squares for it so I could use the leftover scraps from those shirts for the Maverick stars. Time for the Shadow Plaid is maybe in the autumn. I need dark, medium and light plaids, hundreds of squares for the triangles. It is going to be so much fun.

These are some of the newest stars I made.



You may also remember that I made a star quilt top for the Bushfire Quilt Project earlier this year. Last weekend Tia organized a quilting bee to finish quilts from the blocks and tops she was sent from all over the world. You can read here about it. My top must have been among the most exotic ones, because she gave it so much publicity.

We are having a long weekend now, but I hope to get something sewn as well.

Cake and flowers

The busy schedules of February with Time for Tea Swap and my trip to Germany left me no time to do my BOM for the Country Calendar. But this month I have sewn two blocks; here is the February block with Valentine's Day hearts:




And this is March with tulips. I'm doing this the easy way, machine applique and just some hand stitching for the details.


In my garden there is no hope of any kind of flowers this time of the year, but I have some tulips from my bigger brother, who needed three pairs of new trousers shortened.

I happened to have a little reason to celebrate, my birthday was yesterday, so I hade some more flowers. The sweet roses are from my biggest sister P.

And the orchids were sent by my brother-and-sister-in-law.

After having received all these flowers I baked a cake; and had only male company to share it with me, Mr. Kotkarankki and our two sons. We had quite big portions!

I had some unexpected presents. You already met Raggedy Ann and Andy, Eileen sent them for my birthday. But I also had something from AnneMarie from Norway. I know her through the Summer Stash Challenge 2008, the Stitching Angels and the Time for Tea Swap. She sent me a beautiful floral print in my favourite shades, some wooden buttons with hearts engraved, and a thimble from Norway. The picture of a reindeer walking in front of the midnight sun could as well be from the Finnish Lapland; we are neighbour countries up there. It was really sweet of her to send these gifts for me. The blog world has given me such dear new friends!

I had this very thick book for my birthday from DH. To be honest, he didn't choose it but let me have whatever I wanted from the bookstore. I had been looking at this book many times and hoping they would reduce the price, and now I'm really glad he bought it for me. It is about Finnish rya rugs over a period of 270 years. Maybe I'll show you some of the contents later.

Last Thursday was my first sewing group night in 5 weeks, and I was going to continue my photo transfer project there. My transfer experiments failed very badly and I need to start over with other material choices. Instead of that project, I was able to sew some 6" Maverick stars, and today I made 5 more and rotary cut background squares for more. I hope to finish that quilt for the spring exhibition in April. Suzie from Little Busy Bee told in her blog that this is a National Quilting Day in USA, and suggested it could as well be made international. I agree, and even if I can't go to any quilt shops, I have done some quilting related sewing today. By the way, she has made an excellent tutorial on the Lemoine Star. Happy Quilting Day everyone!

Small scraps can make a difference

You probably know I can't throw anything away, because I might need it for something someday? So I keep even small scraps of fabric. They can be used like this:


But my tiny scraps are not always big enough for a project. I wanted to make a set of four coasters, and use a pretty pale yellow floral print in one of the trapezoids. Well, my scrap was big enough for three, but for the last one I had to take a different fabric. It is the first trapezoid from the top clockwise in the bottom hexagon.


Here is a blue set under construction. Next I will make the backing and then top stitch the coasters. I found the pattern in the new Stitch magazine.


Talking about hexagons, there is a project called Hexagons of Hope going on for the bushfire victims of Victoria, Australia. The idea is to send EPP fabric hexagons so the women who have lost their houses and everything else and their fabrics and needles and sewing machines, could put their hands on a new project. I first heard about this from Suzie, and I think it is a great idea. There is a lot of information about the size of the hexagons and how to make them, just follow the link.


Today I finally had a chance to mail my wonky Maverick stars to the Bushfire quilt project. I got a little carried away and instead of the originally planned 12 blocks I suddenly found myself making the 25 to finish a quilt top. I thought my recycled men's shirts (the man is not recycled, I'm his first wife!, but the shirts are) are so different from other people's fancy quilting fabrics, and so I took my scrap bag and went on happily.

This star is one of my favourites, a combination of a plaid flannel shirt, a twill shirt and our living room curtain fabric.

And this is the top finished. I got to make the fun part, and the good ladies in Australia will provide the batting and backing and machine quilting and binding.

Star blocks

When I was going through blogs and Flickr, I found a great way to participate in helping the people who lost their homes in the Australian bush fires. Tia in Australia is organizing a quilting bee to make quilts for those people. You can send 12" blocks to her, and she and her quilt guild will sew them to tops and quilt and bind them. She recommended the Maverick star using 4.5" squares and a light background. One tutorial is here. The Quiltville tutorial is using 2.5" squares, but for the 12" blocks you make the squares 4.5".


I had been making the smaller star blocks for a while for another project, but now I took an unbleached white calico from my stash and cut it up for this project. It was enough for 12 blocks, and this morning I aready sewed six of them.

So far I have only used two fabrics for the stars, but for the remaining six blocks I will find more colours. Tia was also looking for more masculine fabrics, and I think men's flannel shirts certainly are masculine.

There are other projects going on as well, like the Brown Owls' Restash a Crafter, the Handmade Help, Jan's string quilts with tutorial - make your choice! Every block helps, a donation made with warm, appreciating thoughts will be welcome.