The Festival of Quilts

At this very moment my quilt is hanging at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham! I started working on this quilt a year ago. I first made the fish and then slowly build the rest around it. I used the Ruth B. McDowell's piecing workshop as a guideline.

I'm so happy to have found her book. Thanks to her method I can work in a rhythm that suites my brain. I can separate the creative work and technical work. With her method almost everything is possible and there is so much room to grow that I will need a life time (or more) to master it, but that is fine because I love the process of it! It is like magic for me.

The fish is inspired by tattoo art and the image of the koi-fish has been in my mind for years. During the making process I really tried not to over think it, just follow my intuition.

There was of course some last minute panic. When I had made the last stitches and tried to hang the quilt, it did not hang straight! During  the whole process it had not crossed my mind that that could happen. Thanks to internet I found a solution that worked liked magic: quilt blocking.

Blocking my quilt

And of course I forgot to take pictures until the very last minute when the lightning was all wrong and my husband had already packed his camera lenses for our vacation. Lessoned learned for the next time!

Design

Olympics are over and there is more time for blogging. It was the first time I could watch sport with my children and that was so much fun!

London has been in my mind in other ways as well. I'm reading Virginia Woolf's Night and Day and found the following description in it very amusing :

"...and then Mary left them in order to see that the great pitcher of coffee was properly handled, for beneath all her education she preserved the anxieties of one who owns china."

So that is my china that you see in the above picture. During our vacation I took one day "off" and when to Helsinki all by myself! My program for the day was to eat lunch in some nice cafe and visit one museum or gallery. I had never been to the Design Museum, so there I went. You are not allowed to take pictures there, which was a shame, so I took photos for you of my own collection of Finnish design. If you are Finnish and I guess especially if you live abroad you will have some of this stuff at your home. And as it turns out, I have plenty. Most of it are, very appreciated,  presents.

I also visited three handmade shops. I really need a cover for my phone so I thought it would be nice to support the handmade and buy one from those shops. It was very disappointing. All of the covers I found did fit my phone, but where not particularly well made, had all the same simple Velcro closing and where not firm enough to give proper protection. No innovation what so ever and at least for my taste, nothing that gave me the impulse to pay the extra money for the handmade-factor. When there is no additional design element added to the product (which of course is a matter of taste), I start to think that I'm paying for the fact that it is handmade by western hands.

That is something that I have been thinking for a long time - how we talk about handmade like the rest of the sewn stuff would have been made with big factory machines when in my understanding most of it is done by people sitting behind sewing machines. Just like us. Of course if it is done here in Europe I know that the working conditions are good. It is also a local product and supports the local economy. But I can't help thinking that I kind of want the people in Asia to be able to keep their jobs as well and be able to support their families. As you can see - shopping is not easy for me.

Back home I added a new item to my china collection.

(photo from instagram. I'm piecesoffab there if you feel like following)

I have always been a mug person and have been drinking my coffee from a Iittala Teema mug as long as I can remember (see the top right photo on the photo-mosaic). But when I saw Carolina's coffee cup I started to long for my own special coffee cup with a saucer. I saw this one in a regular boring suburban department store close to our house and loved it, but I thought I want to buy the cup in some place special. When we came back from the vacation I saw it again and though, what could be more special in this time of my life than a coffee cup bought from a store which excellent cafe I visit regularly with my children?

You could only buy it as a set of four cups in four different colours. The whole set cost me seven euros. Especially after visiting the Design Museum I have a whole back story for my Teema mugs, but nothing for this made in china -cup. I wanted to see if I could find something on the internet and I did! The collection is called Veronica's Garden, which was not mentioned anywhere on the packaging. What I could not find was how the design came about and who design it. Since I don't know I choose to believe that it was made by someone who's dream came true when she got the chance to work for Topchoice and design this cup. I also found out that it is actually not a coffee cup, but a tea cup.

So what did I buy? A story (my special cup from a special place), a functional/quality cup (can be washed in a dishwasher, my suburban definition of quality;) and design that for some reason appeal to me. What it comes to the phone cover I had the story but the functionality/quality and the design elements where missing.

Strawberry Crazy Love

I'm back from the summer holiday from my home of origin Finland. As I only spend two to three weeks in Finland during the summer, I never know what part of the short summer I get. This year we were very lucky to catch the peak of the strawberry-season. When we arrived one liter strawberries cost 5 euros and it dropped to 3 euros during our stay there. I have learned from blogs that in some warmer regions the strawberries belong to the spring, but in Finland it really is the taste of summer since they don't ripen before end of June, begin July.

The Finnish strawberries are grown outside in the sun and are sold fresh on the market or on little pop-up shops outside of supermarkets. You buy them fresh and in large quantities. They taste ten times sweater than the berries that are grown in greenhouses. Last year we spent the whole summer in the Netherlands and the thing I missed most were the strawberries.

What many people do is to buy a couple of carton boxes seen at the first photo and store the berries in their freezer. Since that is not an option for me I make jam. I love jam making! I use a special sugar for making jam that has pectin in it. I like to use that although my jams don't need to be as jelly-like as they prefer here in the Netherlands. I guess it is just what you are used to. The sad ending for my strawberry-story is that I forgot to pack the jam-pots with us, so there they at my parents house. I hope they enjoy them :)

We also bought souvenirs, a juicer and an apple peeler/slicer. I'm looking forward to making our own apple juice and cider. We are already making liqueur out of our own blackcurrants, very exiting! Our one and only shrub had a really good year this year.

Another exiting thing that I have not seen for years were the wild roses called midsummer roses. I love the ones in my garden with their big  flowers, but the simple beauty of these wild ones is amazing thing to witness as well. It was really hard to take good pictures of them, but I think you get the idea.

Number 85

A box. Not really interesting, is it?

Getting more interesting? Yes, I'm taking part on The Festival of Quilts 2012 in Birmingham UK! I'm so exited about it, I have been working on this for a year now. I will tell you all about it in August when the festival is held.

ps. If someone who is going happens to read this and could take me a picture of my quilt hanging on the exhibition I would be forever thankful!

Back from P.E.I - On My Way to India

And I'm time travelling too! I just finished the last book in Anne series, Rilla of Ingleside and even though my body might have been in 2012 in the Netherlands for the last week my mind was on Prince Edward Island in Canada during the first world war. Really got me thinking about how it shapes us on which era we are born in. I feel so sorry for the writer Lucy Maud Montgomery who died in 1942. She was born during peace and grew up pretty much without wars and then came the WW I that was devastating and then of course the second world war, but she got to never see the end of it.  I would like to shout to her where ever she is that we are all alright now and that I love your books. I hope she hears me.

In her books quilting is mentioned quite few times among many other details of every day life of that time. How wonderful that it is preserved for us to read. That is the stuff that really interests me - the everyday life of people. That is probably why I like blogs so much!

Maybe the reading is to blame, but on the garden front it hasn't been a great year. This spring I really tried to make a clean start with my flower bench working the ground and trying to eliminate all the weed. I sowed lots of different flowers and hoped for the best. Below you see the results.

Weed only, no flowers. And I was so hoping to have my own little Englih cottage garden. My problem is that I want the flowers to grow haphazardly but when I sow them like that I never know what is weed and what is not. In my kitchen garden I sowed two rows of coriander and only one coriander felt like showing up. So when everything else fails, I cheat. At least what it comes to gardening, I'm not sure that is a good rule to live by on other areas of life. So this is how it looks like now after a trip to a garden center.

Look, we have paprikas!

Garden taken care of I'm of to www.manybooks.net to download Kim by Rudyard Kipling to take my mind to India. Little tip for Kindle users - Amazon does only have a fraction of all free e-books available, but you can easily download them to your Kindle in the correct format from manybooks.net.

Happy Little Quilt

Last week I started with the above pile of scraps. A dear friend of mine gave birth to a little baby girl and I thought this is a perfect opportunity to use scraps left from my daughters quilt.  Even thought I have mixed feelings about giving people hand made as a gift I wanted to do this for her. I'm always worried that people don't like what I have made and don't know what to do with it. All my hard work ends up being clutter in someones closet! Being constantly battling with clutter myself that really would be a horrible gift to give.

At the end of the day I already had a nice stack of blocks. I'm getting kind of good at this - or at least fast! And I'm so enjoying this process. You should have seen me when I was cutting and piecing these with a big smile on my face. Happy happy joy joy! Silly, really.

   

And this is where I am at the moment. The border in aqua is quite outside of my comfort zone but the colour really reminds me of my friend and I think she will like it. It also makes the quilt more fun for me to make. Exploring new possibilities is always fun. 

   

I have now one week time to finish this thing, which would be OK if that would be the only thing I have to finish this week. I hope to be soon back to tell your about my other project (fingers crossed).

My Travel Gear and Some Book Love

Oh boy, where did the May go? I try to blog twice a month and now I missed a whole month!

I was travelling for one week and here below you can see my travel gear. I feel like a real sewing queen for having self-made travel gear. On the left is a make-up roll and you can purchase the pattern from Rachel from Stitched in Color. I love it! I don't use a lot of make up, so everything I own fits in it. I made it as a gift to myself last summer and I just adore it. On the right is a cover that I made few weeks ago for my newly bought Kindle. I used a free tutorial by Whipstitch Fabrics. I was a bit sceptical would it work but it really does. I added a ruffle to cover the elastic. I'm may not be a ruffle kind of girl, but the elastic had a very ugly yellowish white colour.

I'm experiment using my phone with filckr app to take pictures. I usually use my husbands fancy camera, but when I tried to blog in May about these I managed to delete all the pictures from his memory card! Luckily he could get the pictures back, but I feel more comfortable sticking to my own equipments for now.

Curious about what I'm reading on my fancy new Kindle? Anne of Green Gables. It was my favourite book when growing up. I remember when I was around ten years old my teacher said she was reading it to see if she still likes it as an adult. I was completely devastated by the idea that I could grow up to be someone who does not like Anne of Green Gables! I thought to myself it is best that I never read it when I grow up so that I don't have to find out that I don't like it. But no worries - I love it! And I mean truly love it, not in a nostalgic way or anything like that. And now I get to read the original version and not a translation of it. Little story for those of you who know Anne - when I finally realised 12 years ago that my now husband is the one my exact thought was "he is my Gilbert!". His name is very similar to Gilbert as well, so it really is all meant to be:)

I wonder if I ever get to reading new books since after I have finished the Anne series I would like to read Kim by Kipling, also one of my old favourites. It is such a thrill to notice that I enjoy same books that I read when I was a child. At least my spirit is still young!