Baby blue blocks and a finished quilt top

This month's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is baby blue, and my geese are flying on a pale blue sky.

They made the top row for my Autumn themed quilt. Then I hurried to join my rows and

even frame them with white and a brownish orangeish floral print.

Autumn is here, apples are ripening, leaves are turning yellow, orange, red and brown, fruit and berries are conserved in jars, hot tea warms us up after a walk in the forest having picked mushrooms in a basket while wearing warm knitted socks in out wellies. Oh, and flannel shirts too, they are the tiny 4-patches.

With the rapidly rising electricity costs we will be wearing wool socks in the house as well when the Winter comes. Luckily I love knitting and trying new patterns too. 

I'm linking this post to ScrapHappy Saturday.

Orange jars and leaves

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge's colour for August is orange. After a search in my yellow stash I found a scrap of bright orange, suitable for a couple of jars of cloud berries.

With some imagination we could count these maple leaves for orange as well, don't you think?

It has been unusually hot for this time of the year, so I have spent more time indoors with books or my sewing machine. Our three old apple trees have been full of little green apple babies, but with the strong winds lately we have had apples raining from the trees. Mr K. has picked them for a friend who takes them out to the forest to feed deer, so they are not wasted. I only need a little to make baked apples with custard, and some apple pies in September, when the apples are ready for eating. 

New girls ready for school

My newest Unicef dolls are both little school girls. This first one is dressed almost like the very ugly fabric doll I made at school when I was about 9 years old. A simple green and white dress decorated with rows of cross stitches, but back then it was all hand sewn, we didn't use sewing machines until the next year.

In this photo made for the birth certificate she doesn't have her final look yet. I added a dark green bow to keep her hair to the side.

This young lady was ready for the world today. Yesterday she had an unfortunate accident with my blue permanent ink felt tip pen, and we were both nearly in tears. Stain removing didn't help, the colour was diluted but spread wider and wider, and the damage that started at her heel was creeping up to her knee.

Embroidering the face and sewing the hair are the most time consuming parts of my doll making, and essential for creating the personality of each doll. I just could not waste all that energy, so I had to perform emergency surgery. As a happy owner of an artificial knee joint I knew a transplant would work here too. Quickly I prepared a spare leg, stuffed it, sedated the poor little doll, cut off the damaged leg and replaced it with the new one at the hip joint. Good as new, and it takes an expert to notice the seam where on the healthy side the doll has just a hand stitched line to allow the legs to bend for sitting.

Today I took her to Villa Cooper where seven Unicef dolls have already found a new home this year alone.

 

Blocks, socks and flowers

Still going purple with my quilt blocks, Rainbow Scrap Challenge's colour for July. I found a plaid with purple in my stash so I made two 9-patch blocks for future use.

My knitting has been with purple as well, using up last bits of baby merino wool I bought for chemo patient hats some years ago. I thought there would be enough light blue yarn to finish a pair of bed socks for my own use, but I was mistaken. I'm forced to go yarn shopping in a real yarn shop as this yarn is not grocery store quality. Poor me! I might have to buy some other yarn there as well, if I'm tempted, which I probably will be.

I have mentioned sock knitting in most of my posts, and here is finally a photo of my efforts towards using up my yarn stash. The all grey pair needed just a little more than I had, so I bought more, and then knitted several pairs of small grey socks with stripes that used up tiny rests. Now all I have left really is some black and some white, and I have started a pair of mittens for a change.

Villa Cooper's campaign to raise money for the Finnish Red Cross to help Ukraine is still going. I'm happy my Red Crosses quilt has been sold. I have made these mug rugs with flowers and with birds in raw applique. 

The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine. Each set of two mug rugs has one sunflower and one other flower.

Here are some of the little birds:

 

Purple blocks in July

This month I have been working on some blocks for my new quilt. I made a purple hat and another that is at least almost purple, if not just some kind of pink.

These mittens are more purple than the second hat.

And the second pair of mittens is definitely purple.

The knitting basket is full to the rim, but the socks in it are not yet ready for a photo shoot. After a long heat wave we are having a cloudy day with much welcome rain. I will wait for better light on a sunny day.

I'm linking this post to Soscrappy's blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2022.

 

More blue

Midsummer holidays have kept me from my sewing machine, so only two new blue blocks have been finished since my last post.

The one hat on the left is a really light blue. I designed the block myself, and it took me several attempts to get the pompom look somewhat round, and the proportions of the hat and bottom fold right. Now I'm pleased with the result, and will make more hats in different colors.

I'm linking this to So Scrappy's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Next time I hope to have all my recent knitting sorted and photos taken. The mountain of socks is getting bigger every week.

 

Blue blocks

This month the Rainbow Scraps are blue. My 2½" squares' box had enough squares in these blue plaids:

I felt like starting something new, so I went through my other blue and light blue stash and found these floral prints and one dotty fabric most suitable for mugs. The one in the middle is for me, a left handed mug.

Rag doll making leaves me with odd shaped bits of white sheet fabric from the ends and sides, where the sheets are not worn thin. I often cut these bits in 2½" squares for the 9-patch blocks, or even smaller like 1½" and 1" and even 3/4" squares for cutting corners like these mugs. Bigger leftovers are stored in a box and can be cut for longer strips like the ones I'm going to need when I join the mugs to a row and add background on both sides of the row.

I hope to add to this new quilt project something blue next week too.