Quilt Show

The shopping centre where we buy our groceries has every month a new exhibition. Once I have shown you the socks knitted for friends who need warm socks, once there was our club's exhibition. Often they exhibit paintings or photos, but the newest exhibition is by the local quilt guild Tilkku-Ainot. It was a sunny day when I took the pictures, so there are reflections of glass, and many of my pictures were just a blur.

Unfortunately there was no list of the names of the quilters or their quilts.

I love the colours of the quilt above.

Some of the quilts were less traditional, like the green one above, or the next one:

These quilts are the result of a challenge: each member of the guild was given a piece of a busy fabric and challenged to make something out of it, using only fabrics from stash to complete their work.

The fabric given was the one with red, blue and orange, peeking from the right in the next picture.

Some quilters had cut tiny parts:

One more picture from their show:

I hope you enjoyed their work as I have not touched my sewing machine at all during the weekend. I hope there will be more energy during the week.

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.

VTT 4 - Shopping Bag

For this week's Vintage Thingies Thursday I'm showing you something that represents my ideas in many ways. You know by now that I have most of my vintage treasures from the family, I like recycling and I'm against plastic bags when you can use a real fabric shopping bag instead. Here is a perfect example:

I made this bag for myself several years ago. The fabric was originally a portiére in the hall of my mother's grandmother in the early years of 1900. Later it was used as a wall hanging, and after that it was put aside and saved, in the attic of our log sauna. Several decades later my energetic big brother was clearing this attic, dumping all kinds of old stuff on a dumpster, including this curtain and another one with a different pattern. You see, he is only a man. Luckily my sister P was also present and she rescued them and some other, less historical fabric for me. The other fabric ended up in my other sister Maija's stash, and I made two bags like this of my piece. I have used the bag so much that the handles are all worn out, and I need to replace them with new fabric.

This was all from me this Thursday. Let's see who else is on Suzanne's list!

Stash Use Update

January is over and it is time for me to see how I managed with my own challenge of using my stash.
First the incoming stash: only one plaid shirt for 2 € from the thrift shop, a colour I needed for the Shadow Plaid quilt still on my list. Pretty good, I think.

Fabric used from stash:

1) A Christmas Wish BOM quilt completely from stash, 75 x 75 cm finished size

2) So far 8 pillowcases for the Hole in the Wall Gang's summer camps through Jackie:

3) three blocks for Abbe who is making a purple quilt for a dear friend:

4) by Sunday evening 28 string blocks which also qualify for Stephanie's No Strings Attached challenge:

5) I almost forgot the Country Calendar quilt!

Not too bad at all! February is such a short month so it will be difficult to beat January's results.

It has been snowing again, 8 inches since yesterday. I was clearing the driveway from the snow the snowplowman left there when plowing the street and the cycle path. It took me over an hour, and once I sank in the snow as deep as over my knees when I was taking the snow away from the street. I felt like a little girl when I came back in with my boots full of snow, my hair clinging to my forehead all sweatty, and my cheeks red like tomatoes. I even wanted to drink some cocoa, like when I was little. This time I had to make it myself.

VTT 3 - Sock Pattern

Suddenly it is Thursday again and time to see what Suzanne's friends are showing this week for Vintage Thingie Thursday.

Around Christmas, when DD Kaija was helping me start to reorganize my cellar sewing room, she found my hand written notes from my school days in the early 60's. It was my 6th year of school, second year in the big school, and I had already learned to knit mittens. Twice, in fact. The second time we used two different colours to make stripy mittens. But let's see how to knit socks:

You need to know the names of the different parts you are going to learn to knit.

And you need to understand the signs for the different stitches:

The heel is difficult for many beginners.

 

Then you must knit a sample of the different patterns and choose your favourite, and count you stitches.

My notes included pictures of other fashionable socks, for inspiration.

I had also found pictures of different heels in my mother's knitting magazines.

My socks ended up very well made, just the right size, and I even had a chance to practice mending on them when my toes finally found their way through the sock.

This was all for this week's VTT. Time to go on with the link list!

New Books

The beginning of the year means also the beginning of great sales. I haven't found there anything for me to wear, but the book store's sale never fails to offer me something. This year's find was this originally Norwegian book about quilts. Original price was 51.50 €, I bought it for 8 €.

I love their fabric choices, and that makes me love the patterns more, too:

I also ordered one book online, a book I have known about before it was even there. This is the book Pip Lincolne from Meet Me at Mike's published last year.

There are fun and easy projects from crafting and sewing to a delicious recipe. If you follow Pip's blog, you can imagine how encouraging and lovely the text and the photos are.

I'm still waiting for my tatting book to arrive.

This morning I have started two more pillowcases for Jackie, the tubes are sewn and waiting to be ironed so I can sew the French seam on two sides to finish them. Nowadays my sewing table looks usually like this:

 

No strings attached yet there, but so far 25 blocks are sewn for the string challenge quilt.

We are still enjoying beautiful frosty weather, this morning being one of the coldest this year with -27C or -16.6F. Today we are expecting new snow, for several days, so there will be less sun. Yesterday I took a couple of pictures at 11, to show you how "high" the sun is. First a picture to show the Finnish blue and white:

 

The cold weather keeps the birds away from the feeder, and I'm afraid most of them will not come back. They manage a few cold days without wasting energy for flying, but then they must get their seeds and fat to survive.

 

The picture is so dark because I wanted to catch the sun in it, too. Barely above the tree tops, at noon it was about as high as the second highest tree from the left. When I turned to go back in, I felt that the dark door was warm from the sun.

Last Christmas Wish Blocks

This weekend I finished stitching Gail Pan designs'  Christmas Wish BOM blocks. Here are the last three, happy

Noel

and magic

Today I have been cutting the sashings. I have decided to allow myself a fun sewing project only after I have sewn something useful first. This means mending Mr. K's trouser pocket. After changing zippers, that is my least favourite reparation. The trousers are otherwise in good condition so I better change a black spool and bobbin in the machine and get it done.