Autumn energy

The hot summer days are over, comfortable cool weather is here to stay and active life begins after the lazy summer idleness. We bought a new composter and started filling it with kitchen waste and chipped garden waste.

The colours in the nature have started changing to yellow.

Apples are falling from our bigger tree and waiting to be cooked into sauce. 22 jars are already in the cellar, plus 5 plastic containers in the freezer. Today I cooked two new lots, 22 jars.

Autumn in the living room, the last new panel of Melanie's Christmas present cushion for every season:

We finally started having a fire in our new fireplace. Next week it will be our only means of heating for two days when we will have geothermal heating installed. On Friday they already drilled a 170 m deep hole in the rock in our yard.

The change of colours inspired me to finally make something with the sun dyed fabrics I have had in storage for a long time.  Making that link I noticed I had shown these prints almost exactly a year ago, and two years ago! It really must be the change I see outdoors, and the beginning of my sewing class. This year I actually cut up the fabric and started a project!

This is what I did in class on Thursday:

   

For the heating system change we needed to clear a route from the boiler room through our hobby room so the men can carry the old system out and bring in the new one. This meant naturally towers of my cardboard and plastic boxes reaching up to the ceiling. Is there any hope for me? While rummaging in the basement with Mr. K I came across these nice wooden boxes with partition walls. I arranged things from my sewing table - the upstairs one, where there is possible to sit and sew - in this one:

In the second box I arranged my bias bindings. Yes, they are all mine, and the three big rolls are in a separate box. You see, my main suppliers, big sister P and Mother, both have emptied their stash for me to use. Now I feel I need to find a way to use 20 cm long bits of bias binding in the most peculiar colours. Maybe some more tissue holders? Christmas is coming by the end of the year, anyway.

Have a creative week, everyone!

Big Sort Out Day

Yesterday my big sister P was being my little elf like she promised in December. We spent almost three hours here in my cellar sewing room:

She had promised to bring me a couple of old white sheet so I can make more Unicef dolls, but she came with three big plastic bags. I was being brave and rejected one bagful of her things, and later gave her back some curtain fabric of hers I hade been taking care of for a couple of years.

Then she helped me lift boxes, sort out rags and history and flannels and shirts

and re-name boxes and start new boxes and empty some plastic bags and fill some other plastic bags until it started to look like this in Mr. K's end of the room which we had borrowed:

You are supposed to notice the empty floor there!

My end looked like this when we came up and made some tea:

Unfortunately there are still 5 untouched boxes under my desk, and four big ones on the stove. What we managed to do gave me hope that this project one day will end. Thank you P, you have been a tremendous help! I forgive you the two plastic bags of lovely fabric. And the lace and the yarn, too, and the pins and needles.  After all, we said goodbye to this:

    

Five bags tightly packed, and in the background are the two bags full of my old study papers. Someday, I hope, Mr. Kotkarankki will sit at his desk tying flies, and I will sit at my desk sewing seams, music is playing quietly and every now and then one of us says something, and we both live together happily ever after.

When you have too much material

Yesterday I finally can began my projects again after Christmas. My 'sewing group' started , so I had to unpack what I cleaned away from the living room tables, chairs and floor, just to find something to take with me there. I decided to finish a quilted shopping bag there, it needed just to be put together, and the lining with a zipper pocket, and the handles. This means I had done the fun part already, the quilted sides and bottom. I had it almost done, but the school's sewing machines are not too sophisticated so I wanted to fasten the zipper at home. The picture shows what was made before Christmas.

My big problem is storaging everything so that I can a) remember b) find what I have. It would be easy enough to pile up neat little folded pieces of cloth on shelves, sorted by color or purpose of use. But my pieces are not usually square but irregular, and they have a tendency to heap up and fall over. There are so many recycled pieces which I never bother to iron unless I choose to use them, and they are impossible to store neatly. I'm the second youngest of six children, and so I'm used to getting handovers. Everyone knows I quilt, and so they ask if I'm interested in some pieces they want to get rid of when clearing their closets. This way they don't need to throw anything away, because of course I take it, and so I have some more material to sort, store, remember, find use for. And I have no way to clear my closets, because I need to use what I have. And usually I have no time or energy.

Last autumn I remembered again a very useful technique to get rid of lots of material, even the ugly ones. It's called chenille or slash cut . I make 5-6 different layers of old shirts, jerseys, bedsheets, whatever, on a bottom layer I have sewn together from old jeans or other heavy material.

Then I paste the layers together. After that I draw some guide lines along the bias for stitching. The whole thing will be stitched in parallel lines about 1,5 - 2 cm apart, an easy way to get rid of useless rests of sewing thread.

Finally all top layers are cut between the stitched lines, the edges finished and the whole thing washed in the machine.

This is how far I made it yesterday. More pictures after the weekend when I have more time to finish this little bedside rug.