Helping through the Red Cross

What has happened in Europe since the 24th of February is hard to understand. Never in my lifetime has a war touched so close, and the willingness to help Ukrainians in need seems to be great. Our club or group of handicraft people at Villa Cooper have donated some of their products to be sold to raise money to the Finnish Red Cross, and our customers have found this a good way to help and to be sure the funds go where they are meant to go. Many members have created new products just for this, using blue and yellow colours as they are the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

I made this quilt top in 2018 for the Red Cross, but didn't have the energy to layer and quilt it.

Now seemed the perfect time to finish the project and as I happened to have a backing fabric large enough for the quilt at home, I only needed to buy some batting and get to work. The batting price was a little shock for me, five times as much as the one I had bought before this.

The quilting is as simple as possible, and I finished it in three sessions. I have a bad habit of pulling my shoulders to my ears at the sewing machine, so I needed to have a break after an hour or so.

I quilted diagonal lines except for the bright red cross where I went around the outlines.

These blue and yellow chicks are also for the aid for Ukraine project. Half of my first lot was sold in the first few days so I made some more.

These tiny ones with more details I made earlier in March for the normal sale as hanging Easter ornaments. I made the fundraising chicks larger so they can sit on a table as a couple, and used only blue and yellow fabrics and felt.

 

Yellow plaid

The colours for March in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge are yellow and gold. As I'm only making 9-patch blocks in plaids for the challenge, my choices of fabric are very limited.

I had only two fabrics to work with, and I made these six blocks with them.

The heavy flannel shirt was from my DH, and the other fabric with more yellow was a blouse my mother had sewn for herself and worn a lot.

The yellow colour makes me think of the first wild Spring flowers like coltsfoot and and dandelion, or daffodils, but we have still deep snow and night temperatures down to 8 degrees below freezing point. Luckily the sun is yellow in the bright blue sky. 

 

New finishes

I have many projects just waiting to be finished. It is always so fun to start something new, but when it takes a long time, the enthusiasm fades away and the project finds a place somewhere, usually a bit out of sight, and is forgotten. This box of embroidery floss is a perfect example. I have inherited, received as gift and bought embroidery floss over the years, and tried to keep them in one place.

As you can see, the place is an old shoe box, and my system is not very organized. I was thrilled to find these plastic bobbins online, and when they arrived at the beginning of last year, I started to organize my collection.

It was a very slow project, I found more fun doings, and the floss was forgotten for a year. Then I decided to finish it by working for an hour a day with the floss and bought another box as I could see one box would not get me very far.

Dear daughter spent last week with us, and on Thursday we sat together and organized the bobbins by colour. The DMC colour chart was not useful as I have embroidery floss from several manufacturers. Therefore we decided to use our intuition and just tried to please the eye.

Doesn't is look delicious?

My other finish was this Paper Lanterns quilt designed by Loft Creations. I made the quilt top five years ago, and this year I plan to quilt as many as possible of the tops I have waiting.

My blocks are slightly larger than in the pattern, and I used a dark background to make the lanterns glow in the dark night. This reminds me of a late Summer night when I was about ten years old. My eldest sister was coming home after a year in student exchange in the USA, our parents were meeting her at the airport and they were coming home very late in the night. We hanged paper lanterns in trees and on the washing line to welcome them.

In the photo the binding is only pinned on the backside but today it is sewn, with label and all. Two months of the year are behind, and I have finished two quilts. I hope to finish one again before the end of this month. 

Teal and Aqua?

Teal and aqua are not colors often seen in my stash. Nice colors, but where to find them for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge? I decided not to take the definition too literally, and solved my little problem with these blocks:

A closer look will show the bluish, tealish shade in the plaid fabric.

I'm linking with Soscrappy. Go and see the other participants and their use of the color of the month!

Bits of knitting and an old project finished

Some people have cold hands, and some other people can knit, and so I knitted hand warmers for those

two who have such cold hands. Little Miss Purple has grown and she is now Miss Black for the time being.

My old project was this doormat, with layers of worn flannel shirts, wool jumper washed in hot water, and some dark T-shirts under the top layer, a rest bit of quilt backing flannel.

I cut between the stitched lines with my normal scissors, added the binding

and washed the new mat in the machine and dried it in the tumbler.

Soft, thick and lovely. It became a bathroom mat.

Naturally I needed to knit in the evenings, and I decided to use up my yarn rests. I almost had enough for this set, but bought more of the light grey that goes with everything. 

We have lots of snow, so I think more sock knitting is on my list.

New year, new challenge

For the first time in years I have taken a challenge in order to use up my scraps. It is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by Angela at Soscrappy. This month's color is red, so I searched my 2½" box for reds and found seven sets of five squares.

The whites were in the same box, so sewing the 9-patch blocks didn't take too long.

Here they are, waiting for the February color to be announced.

I think I mentioned my unlucky quilting of a Log Cabin quilt. Anyway, I had a backing that was too small, some machine quilting with serious bumps in the backing, and for once the energy to rip up the quilting that had gone so wrong. I added a row of squares for width and another for length, and so the backing was no longer too small.

Ironing, careful layering and pinning, and I was bale to finish the machine quilting in just two sessions.

Happy end for this quilt top from 2017 and 2019!

My normal evening activity is knitting, and I have been using up rests yarns for small projects like these fingerless mittens in merino wool

and the black ones in alpaca yarn.

A new pair of socks is still on the needles, and I have knitted some simple mittens that went to use already with no time for photo sessions.

 

December

Busy times before Christmas, so I have not found time to take photos and write new blog posts. Socks and mittens have left the house without a photo, but here are some of the newest knittings:

The socks are "just normal socks" but the mittens are both traditional patterns I figured out from originals knitted by my Grandmother in the 1950's. The one on the left I have later found online but the one on the right is so far my own secret.

Here I experimented with a Latvian Braid, which was easy but time consuming.

Baby socks in pink merino wool.

Fabric baskets in coarse linen and Christmas prints and antique crocheted lace.

And finally more fabric baskets, filled with chocolate pralines for some special people.

I wish you all a peaceful holiday season, good health and no stress. See you next year!