I could have finished this yesterday but I'm holding myself to limited time quilting so I will finish it today. I haven't picked a binding yet so I might have to wait until I dye something for the binding. I'll be happy to load some veterans quilts again soon! I am so glad that I started this quilt. It's really re-energized me for making quilts. I've been a little lost since the blue quilt was finished. I just love making these houses and I got another street done yesterday. The two longest streets are now done. I think in this photo you can now see the gradient effect in the background. I have 8 shades of this purple and I decided to use the lightest 6. I didn't want a very dark corner. I'll use the dark for the binding whenever it gets to that stage.
I expect that on Monday you will only see these 2 projects again. I'm visiting my SIL Sunday for a special project so I'll only have Friday and Saturday for sewing and ironing fabric for the shop.
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Yesterday was "dyeing day" so I really didn't get much else accomplished. Most of this dyeing was for custom orders, including a UVA shirt for Chris to give to a friend of his. I did get a couple more rows quilted on the big blue quilt. The end is in sight and I think it will be done this weekend. I should have it ready to deliver it to my SIL at family beach week. I haven't done a ton of crochet since the end of football season but I work on this blanket a little each week and I'm almost ready to add the border.
Today I have some bloodwork, a errands trip to Walmart and acupuncture. Then I can get another 2 rows on the blue quilt and, maybe, make some more house blocks. Yesterday I had lunch with Mom and my cousin and then I went to the repair shop to make the appointment to get my car fixed. May 6 is the date to drop it off. The weather has also been beautiful and I've tried to spend time outside every day. Yesterday it was for a long walk in the neighborhood. On the way out the driveway I checked on the baby bluebirds. We have 4 in this clutch and them are at least a week old now. It's also been nice to be back to quilting. I've gotten a couple of rows quilted on the big blue quilt every day and it's about half done now. I love the cloud look on the back. I also got another row of houses built. It's coming together fast because the pieces are big and it's a lap size quilt. I am loving it!
Today is dyeing day so I might not get much sewing done but I might get in 2 more rows on the blue quilt. This week's shop new is all about Gradients. There's one new one, three back in stock and one that's returned from the archives. The new Gradient is Dusk. You may recognize it as being almost the same as Midnight. That's because it is! I've thought that Midnight might be a little too dark so I decided to remake it one shade lighter and I'm really happy with the result. Back from the ArchivesI have always loved the Campfire Gradient but I gave it a little break from the shop. It was time to bring this one back again. Back in StockI didn't intend to stay away all week last week but I just didn't have anything creative to post. I helped my friend move Tuesday and Wednesday and that all went really well. I then spent Thursday just resting my back and Friday was errand day. On Saturday I had a chiropractor and acupuncture appointment and that helped a lot. By yesterday I was ready to spend some time in the sewing room and I decided to start another project. I don't have any specific project that I want to work on but I've had this pattern hanging around for several months and this seemed like a good time to make it. I went back and forth on what I wanted to do with the background. I knew I didn't want gray and I was leaning towards blue. But then I found this set of fabrics in a grayed purple. I thought that might make an interesting background bu grading the background from light to dark. I always knew that I wanted to use my "waste" fabrics for the houses. Here are the first two rows of houses and I love them! I think you might be able to see that the purple HSTs under the bottom row of houses is slightly darker than the first row. I think this is going to come together pretty quickly and it's a really fun pattern.
I don't know who will eventually own this quilt but I think it will make a nice gift at the right moment. I got the news last night that the mosaic patio is all grouted and finished.I hope to go see it in the next 2 weeks and get lots of photos. Today's inspiration is a new pillow cover from Ann Jensen. Makana Honu was made with Gradients and batiks.
For sharing, Ann received a 20% coupon for the shop that's good for 3 months! If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. The only rule is that projects have to be complete. It doesn't have to be made totally from hand dyed fabric, just include a recognizable amount. Today I'm helping my friend move so I thought I'd share the rest of my weekend events. It was sewing weekend for my quilt club. I always look forward to our 2 days of sewing together. On Friday we had 16 people, one of our largest groups ever. During the 2 days I got all of these blocks made and I sewed the top together Saturday night. I now have 3 of my own veterans quilt tops that need to be quilted along with about 7 more....once the big blue quilt is done. On Friday afternoon I went into Short Pump (yes, that's a town name because "back in the day" there was a short pump where people could get water for their horses) and met up with Chris. Chris is a super nice lady who work with that Lutheran Relief organization that I mentioned last week. She takes all kinds of fabric and craft donations from people. What they can't use she passes on to various organizations around town. She gets a lot of linens in the donations and she now passes those on to me for dyeing. She had 2 bags for me this time! Saturday evening I sorted through it all and have piles of things. Some are complete sets, some is fabric that I might be able to dye and some I can't use and will pass on elsewhere. Most of it, though can be used and some will be used for a specific patchwork project that I have planned. While I was at sewing Saturday this happened. There's a park area there and the parking lot gets a lot of traffic. So now I'm working on dealing with this through the insurance company. It will be an annoyance but much worse things have happened.
I accomplished a lot of things this weekend but today I'm only going to talk about yesterday. It's the first time since July 2020 that I've had an opportunity to mosaic. It was a great day although my back is a little unhappy. My friend, Nadine, has a back patio with a pergola and a HUGE Wisteria tree on it. The weight of the tree on the patio slabs has cracked and tilted the slabs over time. It's a huge trip hazard. They are afraid to replace the slabs because it might kill the Wisteria. We've been talking for several years about doing a patchwork mosaic to level out two areas of the patio and yesterday was the perfect day. The weather was absolutely beautiful, the Wisteria was in bloom and the bees were having a blast around the blooms. They didn't come anywhere near us. This the the biggest section where we started. The tiles are mostly Mexican-style tiles. We edged the area with small square tiles, placed some big tiles randomly throughout and filled in with broken tile pieces. Nadine is on the right. Her son is on the left and the impetus for getting this done is to prepare for his wedding in June that's going to be held at the barn on their farm. Before we started that corner in the upper right was at least 3" lower than the surrounding slabs! Her son poured concrete earlier in the week to give us a level surface to work on. Here are the last tiles going in behind the post on this section. This took is about 4 hours, start to finish. This is the second section and it took us about an hour and a half. We were all EXHAUSTED by the end but really happy with the results. My back is not happy at all but I don't care. It was so much fun to mosaic again. Here you can see both sections finished.Nadine and her son will grout it later this week and then I'll go over and get some photos of it finished.
Next on tap for this week is helping a friend move. I may be doing some today and will definately be helping Wednesday. I'm leaving my schedule open for later in the week too. So I don't know how often I will be posting. It's been a couple of days. I didn't post yesterday because I dyed fabric Wednesday and that's all I accomplished. Yesterday was a little more productive. How's the pollen where you are? Yesterday I hosed off my car at 11:00 and it was green again by 1:00! I normally wouldn't look forward to rain but we will all appreciate a couple of showers this weekend. I started the day yesterday by getting my second acupuncture treatment and it seems to especially be helping my right foot issues. I'll keep it up for a few weeks and see how it goes. After I got home I decided to put some borders on this quilt. The blocks are from a block collection that we did in quilt club. Carolyn put the 12 blocks together and returned it to the club meeting Tuesday. It wasn't big enough for a veterans quilt so I brought it home, and after auditioning several fabrics, I decided in lime and navy borders. I think it calmed the blocks down quite well. I cut more lime for the binding and after it's quilted someone in the club will bind it. It will be a true group effort quilt. Next I decided to start quilting the big blue quilt. I tried to come up with an idea I liked that I could quilt from the front but I really, really wanted a pantograph. I wanted Happy Times. Even though my shoulder isn't totally healed, I'm doing it anyway. I'll quilt one pass at a time and a max of 2 passes a day with a long break between the 2. I like how it's looking so far. The last thing I worked on was this card. We got word yesterday that one of Chris' friends had emergency heart surgery yesterday morning. He was supposed to join Chris and a bunch of other guys next week for their annual Myrtle Beach golf trip. He even asked his doctor right after surgery if he could still go if he didn't golf! Doc said he didn't recommend it.
Dudes will be dudes..... I decided to make him a quick card with the golf ball just missing the hole. John just missed the golf trip but he also missed dying and we are all grateful. This card is the reason that we keep stashes of things that look like garbage. I the message with some cheap letter stamps. The background a fabric that I printed probably 8 or 10 years ago! The other elements came out of my box of pre-fused scraps. The hole is from a 1/2 inch strip that I would have normally tossed. The whole card took about an hour and I think John will like it. Today and tomorrow are sewing days with Country School quilters. We have 2 months left to meet in our current location. The club has been meeting there for 35 years! It's a little sad to leave but we have a wonderful space right next door and it cleaner and brighter and the center really wants us there. We are quite excited. For now, I'm looking forward to working on one of my new quilt kits. Our friends returned home Monday and we are slowly getting back to our normal life. I decided that I'd get the big blue quilt loaded so that I'll quilt it before the veterans quilt tops that I picked up last night at the club meeting. I think I know how I'm going to quilt this with some simple continuous curve motifs. I didn't have anything ready to start sewing so I decided to tackle this bin of fabric scraps. These are the quilt back leftovers from veterans quilts that I've quilted. This pile was much higher before I started putting together veterans quilt kits but I couldn't use all of it in the quilt kits and had this big pile left over. I keep adding to it every month. Last week I found out about another group of local sewists who make quilts for Lutheran World Relief. The quilts they make are very utilitarian and they use 11" cut blocks. The woman who is our contact gives me occasional bags of napkins to dye. People give her orphaned fabrics and sometimes it includes things like napkins and other unusable items. She works really hard to find homes for everything. Anyway, I found out about the 11" squares and thought I could turn that mess of backing scraps into something they could use. I cut and sewed and sewed and cut and in no time I had almost 100 squares to donate to their charity. I hope these work for them because it would be nice to have a destination for the leftover backing fabrics. Then I found a stack of 3.5" strips leftover from another project. I spent about an hour sewing them together and produced another 15 blocks for them. I got the pile down to this. I kept the gray and dyed blue fabrics because I do use those in my own veterans quilts. I feel like I really accomplished something!
I'll be getting on with quilting the big blue quilt today or tomorrow. First I have to do dyeing today. |
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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April 2024
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