Yellow and blue strings

Tiny scraps sorted according to colour. I used these to make 1" wide strings. No wonder my fabric stash is getting smaller so slowly!

Now I have as many blocks as I need, and the quilt centre is ready. A couple of borders will be needed to make this a nice size for a child's bed, or for a wall hanging.

My socks of the week are very traditional, in the warm and heavy yarn men seem to prefer, in the perfect pattern my mother always used for the best fit.

I hope you had a good week and will be enjoying a nice weekend.

Strings finally finished

Here is the quilt I started early last year and and showed in my last post with the safety pins.

Now it is quilted and has a binding in the same blue as the inner border. The backing is a checkered flannel.

Today we had a big step towards Spring: in the morning mist we heard and saw the first whooper swans flying in a large circle above our home, looking for open waters. In the afternoon we saw maybe 20 of them in a flooded field; the lakes are still covered with ice. The first snowdrops have raised their buds through the snow in our flowerbed. Water is running in the rainwater pipes Mr K. installed last Summer, so the yard will soon stop being muddy. In the afternoon the sun was shining from a cloudless sky. I know we may still get lots of new snow, but it can't last too long.

A finish and a half, and new plans

Usually weeks go by between my blog posts because I haven't done anything new to show you. This time I have been too busy doing things to even write or take photos! First, I have finished the Bear Paw quilt. Men's shirts once again finding a new life as a quilt.

Second, I have crocheted nearly all squares for my cardigan. I needed to buy more green and purple yarn to finish the 3D flower squares, and the Flying Mitten had to place an order for the green. While I'm waiting, I have thousands (almost) of yarn ends to hide and I can start sewing squares together.

Dear Mr. K saw me kneeling on the floor sandwiching the Bear Paw quilt, and heard my funny noises, and noticed my swollen knees after the job, and he borrowed me his knee pads for the next project.

It was this string quilt from last year. The knee pads were good, kneeling on the safety pins occasionally didn't hurt a bit. For some reason the quilt had remained waiting as a top, but today I'm hand sewing the binding on it, finally. A deadline can work wonders! In just a little over a month my old and new quilts will be displayed at the Villa Cooper,

When the weather gets sunny again, I can get a photo of the finished quilt. And guess what? When I was looking for binding fabric, I found another UFO, from years ago, a red and white quilt with 12 finished blocks and all fabrics for the rest of that lap size quilt. I'm already itching to start cutting the pieces!

New quilt top, socks and a pheasant story

 

The strings in the wind have grown into a quilt top. I took your advice and kept the other colours to a minimum. Next step is to find a free floor space to make the layers, and quilt it. Luckily this is not a very large quilt.

 

A new pair of Train socks, this time for the Red Cross. I have knitted at least one pair per month for the Järvenpää babies as well, but I often forget to take a picture before giving them away. Anyway, they all look the same, just different yarns. Here I used two little rest balls of baby sock wool. One pair only takes 38 g  of yarn.

One day I happened to look at the little rock just outside our yard, and I noticed someone had brought a mossy stone on top of the rock.

I looked closer (through the camera lens) and saw that it was a pheasant cock fast asleep!

 

He must have heard me or felt that I was watching, because he opened his eyes...

... and stood up, looking around as if to see if anyone noticed ...

... and then he stretched his neck and let everyone hear his "song", flapping his wings.

"What, no applause?"

 

Some days later I caught him hammering our cellar window, where his rival and enemy is lurking every time he comes to check. He also fights back, every time!

 

We were just 15 inches apart, only separated by a dirty window. I think I need to tape a newspaper on the glass to make the mirror image disappear.

 

 

Strings in the wind

Earlier this year Stephanie of Loft Creations challenged her readers to use up their strings and make string block projects without a deadline or any other rules. Finally I have started my own new quilt, using the free String-X pattern from Quiltville. As it was a sunny day, I arranged my 15 first blocks outdoors on the terrace floor. I snapped this photo and was just going to turn the last block the other way...

 

 

...when the wind came and scattered all my blocks around! I have my strings assorted according to colour in 6 boxes, and tomorrow I'm going to add one or two colours to my sewing table and maybe put the blue box aside for a while.

 

At last I got a picture of my favourite little friend, the robin. They come to eat at the bird feeder now that we have peeled sunflower seeds there. Their tiny beaks are not meant for hard food, and as insects are still hiding from the cold(ish) weather, the seeds will do them good. Our feeder is like a building site canteen for most of our little birds who are busy trying to find a place and building their nest and charming their partner. Fast food is a time-saving option!

The swans are back too, I saw them from the school window last week when I was having my last Tunisian crochet class and they were having an evening flight to the pond by the school. I will share my crochet project when it's finished.

Attached Strings and ancient UFO's

Finally my string block quilt is finished! Everything except the batting is from my stash, and please note that I was only digging in the blue box. I used very thick batting so machine quilting was out of the question. I decided to tie this one, and this is how it looks on the flannel backing:

The knots are tied with two shades of blue perlé thread (546 double surgeon's knots, to be precise).

My quilt ended up little oversized, but people are so tall nowadays so it may be a good thing.

 

Making string blocks was fun, and I have seen such lovely projects on other participants' blogs that I think I need to start a smaller string block project in the near future. Stephanie just recently told that there are over 150 finished projects already, and the deadline is at the end of June. Plenty of time to make something nice and fun.

Spring is really on the way here: On April 1st I saw the first finches, not just  one but a group of 10 boys. They normally feed on insects, but because of the snow and cold (not very cold any more) they were looking for the sunflower seeds and peanuts we give our winter birds.

 

Today it has been raining almost all day so there is much less snow left. Under the trees you can already see the ground. The lack of frost and the amount of light make me think of summer, and I wanted to start a summer project. Among many tempting alternatives I picked an UFO of the previous generations. I have told about this treasure here, but when I look closer I can see that there is more than half of the work still to do. The style and colourfullness make me think of dear Great Auntie Saima rather than my Grandmother or my Mother. What do you think of this:

 

The blue circle is finished, with thick perlé thread. The flowers and leaves are sewn with 6 strands of variegated embroidery floss. I finished a set of leaves and two flowers in one group yesterday and managed to make them look like the older ones. Here is a closer look to the edge:

   

(Blogger wants to tilt my pictures today!)

(I'm using the organizer from Anne Marie for this project to keep all the floss in one place)

The table cloth has been bought as a kit with no instructions but with some stitches here and there started so you can figure out what stitches to use and what colours. I need to find solid orange for the little flowers on the edge and the groups of dots in the circle. Other threads are still there. When the embroidery is finished, I will invite you all to the garden for tea and cake! 

Contry Calendar BOM Quilt, with borders now

Thank you everyone for your opinions about the sashings for this quilt. I looked again at the fabrics in good daylight and decided to use the oatmeal colour B. Every colour was voted for, but B looked best with the  dark olive floral print of the corner stones and the yellow-brown-black of the border.

It took me two days to finish the quilt top. First I ironed the seam allowances of the corner squares the wrong way and the corners didn't meet with the sashings. Rip off and do it again. Then I noticed that I had sewn three rows of four blocks instead of four rows of three, and had to rip again. And sew again. It is not always easy being so stupid.

This white azalea is the last one to show of my Christmas flowers. I'm glad I took the photo, because my usual thing happened: I couldn't keep it alive. I always water too little or too much, and to be honest I don't even know what went wrong this time. The  blossoms have withered, the green leaves fall on the table and all I can do is take it to the compost.

Luckily the beauty lasted over two weeks, and most of the buds opened.

Did you notice the new button in my sidebar? Stephanie has issued a challenge No strings attached on her blog. You only have until the 15th to sign in, all the rules are in that link. The idea is to use up your stash for a string block project to be completed by June 30th. It is not a swap, you sew for your own use, and your project can be any size from table runner to big quilts. If you are interested, follow the link and sign in! I think this is a nice way to help us all get rid of our little scraps of fabric and reduce our stash.