To pass the time

The Winter has been long and my energy levels low, but my needles have been busy anyway. Here is the collection I have finished this year: socks in different sizes and some mittens too.

The quilt top is now waiting for some final ironing. I need to put the backing together from two unused sheets before I can layer the quilt for machine quilting.

When the weather is not good or the pavements too icy, I prefer to stay in the house and do something fun, like putting together the jigsaw puzzles together with Mr. K. This one was especially tricky, and irritating at the same time.  

The pieces were sawed in a peculiar way so the rows didn't hold together sideways except in the top and bottom edges. Anyway, we managed to finish it before taking the photo above:

 

I love the old fashioned pictures on many of my puzzles, like this couple:

I don't like cats, but this puzzle was fun as it was so tricky. The boxes don't have a photo of the puzzle so it will always be a surprise to see the finished picture.

I wish the snow and ice would melt away!

Accumulator Seriali Spinoff Series

In March I thought I could post about my collected/accumulated treasures every Saturday like my daughter Kaija does under the title Accumulator Seriali on her blog Paperiaarre. Well, as my treasures are not real collections but spread all around the house, I didn't come to making the necessary photos (and the weather was cloudy etc.). Now that I found out she is making today's post about jigsaw puzzles, I decided to show mine on the very same day. I'm using old photos I took in 2013 (and 2008) when I had a period of puzzle making, so some of these may have already changed owner and appear on my daughter's blog too. In my childhood the puzzles were a lovely, quiet way to spend rainy Summer afternoons indoors.

These puzzles all come from my mother's family, from the first decades of the 20th century. They originally came in hand made folded boxes made of strong paper, but when those fell apart, small chocolate boxes were used to keep the pieces safe.

I made a lot of new boxes after the original pattern and copied the hand painted logo to be glued on the lid.

I bet you want to see a hand-made jigsaw puzzle from almost one hundred years ago. Here is a typical one, a landscape picture from a magazine, glued on thick cardboard.

A more exotic looking one, with a tip of one piece fallen off. We used to write on the box bottom if pieces were missing, or tips.

Favourite themes were art reproductions, like The Gleaners by Millet (I had two of these and gave Kaija the other one)

or  this Shepherd Boy from Paanajärvi by the Finnish painter Akseli Gallén-Kallela.

Some jigsaws look like illustrations to romantic stories from a ladies' magazine

or this one, The Diva,

and some other are more on the domestic side.

There are unusual shapes, like oval pictures

and unusual shapes of the individual pieces, like in this one:

They were almost impossible to hold in place until a larger area was finished, but the result was this charming picture:

Very few of the pictures are from Finland (the Shepherd boy painting and the gingerbread baking), but at least this one showing people on their way to Christmas church has all the elements of an old fashioned Christmas card.

My mother was not a little child by the time she started building these jigsaw puzzles so there are no children's puzzles here. Four Little Pals would have pleased a child as well, but putting it together is no child's play. My mother used to lift a finished puzzle like this one from one corner, and it would hold together. But it had to be finished, and no pieces missing.

This is the only picture that looks like an illustration from a children's book,and even the sawing is easier than in the other puzzles, where the maker has intentionally chosen tricky lines along a shape in the picture.

I leave you with this dark picture of a young girl. The saw lines remind me of free motion quilting.

More antique jigsaw pleasures on Kaija's blog right now!

While I was supposed to be cleaning the house ...

... I was putting together these:

 

to make this:

 

I hope you spend your time in a useful way.

Birds, puzzles and boxes

There must be some kind of lazy bug in the air as I don't get my sewing  going. I have ideas and plans, but all I can manage is some knitting in the evenings. The birdwatching nearly two weeks ago went fine, we saw 8 species but no big numbers of individual birds. The Common Redpoll was this year's most frequently seen bird. We have one male who has already started to change colour and grow red feathers on his chest.

 

 

The Great Spotted Woodpecker has also found our bird restaurant and enjoys the peanuts and the fat, but he also looks for insects in the trees.

 

With no inspiration for sewing, I have been playing with jigsaw puzzles from my childhood. Actually they are from my mother's childhood and youth in the 1920's and 30's, all hand sawn. We used to assemble them on rainy days in the summer. The original boxes are folded of heavy brown paper, many of them crushed and torn, some mended with masking tape.

 

 

I wanted to try if I can make new boxes to replace the worst ones. I took one box apart, made some measurements and started. Some of you know that my dear daughter is a master bookbinder; I think I have inherited some of her skills because this went really well for a beginner.

 

 

One width from the paper roll gave me three squares so I needed cut another strip to make a lid for the odd bottom I made with the third square. And so on...

 

 

First box completed. I added a picture of the finished puzzle in the box because some of these puzzles are really difficult.

 

Here you see this one: look how the pieces are cut on the colour lines on the minarets.

I made nine boxes in slightly different sizes, copied the original logos from the boxes and glued the copies on the new boxes.

 

 

I think I must go through every jigsaw puzzle, put it together, measure it, count the pieces, take a photo, and add it to to box with the pieces. Some puzzles have a note about missing pieces, but I also have a box with some spare pieces. It would be fun to find the right picture for all of them.

 

 

Vintage Thingies Thursday 6

It is Vintage day again! Lisa, the Apron Queen is hosting this fun game and you can find the links to participating blogs at her place here.







This week I will show you something I enjoyed doing already when I was a child. These jigsaw puzzles are from the childhood and youth of my mother, 92 next week. Most of them were packed in little handmade boxes like this:






The pictures are magazine illustrations glued on thin plywood or thick card, and the pieces are sawn by hand. This little puzzle is called Dog Friends:





And this morning I put together this

to make this, The Swimmer Girl:

This was all for today, pop over to the Apron Queen to find other vintage treasures! Why not join in?

Finished mystery quilt

Today I finally finished the "Stranger quilt" I have been showing pictures of this summer. It has been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture of the finished puzzle. And with the modern, machine made pieces with the exact shapes repeating over and over, so that it is possible to put a wrong piece in place. I personally prefer these vintage jigsaw puzzles somebody really sawed by hand when my mother was young. Every piece is different, no chance for a mistake.

The quilt was at this stage when I received it some years ago from the mother of DS1's girlfriend. I don't know who has started the patchwork, but there were foundation pieced rows of about 4" squares, with varying seam allowances.

I tried out many different arrangements but nothing really seemed to make sense. I concluded that there never was a plan, although some rythm and repetition was in the rows.

Finally I ended up with this arrangement. And then I changed it.

I added a few rows to both ends of the top using pieces from too long rows, some fabrics which were in the same bag as the rows, and some fabrics from my stash. Then I dyed an old sheet for the borders and backing. The border piece was dyed first and a little longer than the backing, for darker colour.

For the binding I used the same fabric as in some pieces from my stash, fifth from the right on bottom line and diagonally above it in the picture above.

This morning I sewed the last bit of the binding and took these last photos. The darker spots are shadows of leaves, the sun was shining through a big tree.

I'm pleased with my "jigsaw puzzle" stitching. The rows of the quilt were straight in only one direction, as the squares were not all finished the same size, and I couldn't stitch in any way following the seams. These wavy lines go across the patches in both directions. It was a pleasure to use the new sewing machine for the quilting.

On Monday P (the girlfriend's mom) is coming to pick some apples because we can't use all the apples. I'm going to give her the quilt then. She will most probably not see the faults in this quilt because she is not a quilter herself. I will also ask her what she can tell me about the rows and who started them.