The weather is so crummy here that I couldn't even think about doing things outside so I got in a few hours of good sewing time yesterday. I finished all the arc blocks and started piecing the small version of Summer Sunset. This part is a little slow because I'm actually unpicking a bit of one seam in the star pints so that I can reverse direction and avoid what seems like 25 layers of fabric. That's the think about foundation piecing. You don't have much say over seam directions so seams get really bulky. But it's looking good so far and I'm just pressing the heck out of the seam areas.
This weekend I'd like to get the centers of both quilts done and have a plan for borders. I expect that I'm going to want to due more of the dark purple fabric. I don't think I have enough for a narrow border around the center before adding the gradient. I still have to cut the 4 corners and I'll see what's left from that. I also want to cut out my green feedsack blocks for the month and make some sort of green outfit for my American Girl friend. The weather is supposed to turn to real Spring by Monday. I sure hope so. Yesterday I spent most of my time on the computer. I did some long needed file cleanup and I caught up on my feather quilting class. I'm not even halfway through the class and I've already gotten my money's worth. Bethanne Nemesch is an outstanding teacher.
The only sewing that happened is this one postcard. My nephew's birthday is this weekend. He and his wife just bought a house so I made him another house to hold him until move-in in May. The sun is an iron on thing. I bought a pack of them years ago and never used them. I think I'll try to do a set of pictorial cards to use them up. Today we are having more generator drama. Nothing big. I think I finally have all of the county regulations so we can possibly settle on placement of the propane and generator. It won't be where I wanted it but it will be easier for the installation and it will be well within code and not so far that propane can't be delivered. Yes, I even called the propane company to see how long the delivery truck hoses are. Maybe we can get this project started soon! I'm really happy that we finally have someone here to do all these jobs around the house and that we are lined up to get a generator installed, but it sure does create a lot of little chores for us. We've got a meeting with the generator installer and the gas installer this morning to, hopefully, get a project plan together. Things almost went off rail last week due to a lack of communication. I can't handle projects without plans so I got things reigned in pretty quickly and put a stop to any work until we could all meet and agree on the schedule and details. It's a little hassle now but it will save a lot of hassle later. But I did get in some sewing time and got half of the arcs sewn for the small Summer Sunset Star. Only 8 more. It took me a couple of tries but I finally figured out the trick for that tight inside circle. In the evenings I'm making progress on the gingham blanket. I'm over halfway through with the body of the blanket and then it will have a border. I like how it looks and I like doing it. There will be more of these in my future.
I just don't thing there's any more beautiful hand dyed fabric than Shibori. I love dyeing it, I love collecting it and I love sewing with it. I don't make as much of it as I should because it's just so time consuming but when I do, it's pure joy and I hope you see that in the resulting fabrics. This week I have one new Shibori Stash Pack and 6 new individual half yards. Here are 4 of the pieces in this new Stash Pack. Each fat eighth has a dark side and a light side created by overlap on the pvc pole. Here are the 6 individual pieces. Each is a half yard. In the listings you can see full images of each fabric. The only on the lower right is the first true brown shibori that I've ever achieved. Check them all out in the shop. Fabric of the WeekSince Shibori fabric is traditionally blue, I selected the beautiful Indra Shades Pack as the fabric of the week. This blue is just a little brighter than the blue of your favorite denim jeans. It invokes deep seas and midnight skies. It's 20% off through Sunday.
The best part of this weekend (besides the beautiful weather) was being able to sew with my quilt club friends Friday and Saturday. I missed the January meeting and February was canceled for weather so I was really needing a fix. This is my project for sewing weekends for the moment. I've got all the blocks cut out and only 40ish left to sew together. I've been really iffy on this one but I'm feeling better about it now. Imagine that 2 of the 6" x 12" blocks makes 1 12" square block. That's how it will be constructed. It will be king size so if you look at this as the lower left corner is the center block you can see the gradation from light to dark in one quadrant. It will be 9 blocks by 9 blocks so there are 4 more columns to the left and 4 more rows below. All 4 corners will be dark and the center will be light. I think my friend will actually like it and not pretend to like it just because I made it. She's one of those people who would love a pile of sculpted garbage if she knew that you made it for her. She's absolutely batty for the postcards that I send to her. Green is her favorite color so that's why the green frames. I sure do love the effect of the waste fabrics in the windows of the green blocks! After sitting on my backside for 2 days I needed some exercise. Chris has chopped a lot of wood so I got my workout in by stacking all of it. This is just the start of what we are gathering to put in for next winter. I also almost caught up on my videos for Bethanne Nemesch's feather quilting class. I'm on the one where we learn feathered wreaths, setting triangles and borders. I have NEVER been able to do a feathered center. These aren't "perfect" but they are perfect for me. This class was worth it just to learn to do these! I'm going to practice feathers on some of the veterans quilts that I have coming up. I really hate practicing on practice fabric. I need a purpose with my quilting. I prefer to practice on real quilts and I have a few good candidates in the veterans quilt stack. Sunday morning I delivered 22 veterans quilts to our VA contact. She lives on the other side of the county from me so it's about 45 minutes to get there and back but I learned that she's moving about 5 minutes away next month. Future deliveries will be very easy. That trunk that they are stacked on belonged to my Grandmother. She gave it to me before I went to college and it's been everything from a coffee table, foot stool and end table for 40 years. It's now a suitcase rack for guests and display for finished veterans quilts. After running errands Sunday afternoon I finally sat down to finish piecing the corners for the big star. Then I started on the little star. That inside curve is a beast! But if I can get 4 done a day I'll be able to start putting the quilts together this weekend.
The weather this week is going to be pretty crummy so sewing seems the best plan of action. In the past 2 weeks I was fortunate to see two quilts that were made with cutsom quilt backs! The first quilt was made by Betsy Scott. She wanted a special back so that her niece would enjoy her special quilt on both sides. With fabric swatches from her quilt top I was able to match the blue and red in a giant spiral. The second quilt is from Amy Sheib. Her top is a great scrappy quarter square log cabin. The back is a custom dyed dahlia tie dye. She selected her palate from a Shades Pack.
Quilt backings are always custom dyed so that you get exactly what you want. I can match colors to your quilt top swatches or use colors from a Gradient or Shades Packs. For sharing, Betsy and Amy 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. Yesterday I didn't sew one stitch. We had someone deliver a truckload of firewood and then we cut up another truckload and a half on our property. We got it all moved and it's all in a big pile waiting for Chris to split it. We completely ran out of energy after that.
The only thing I have to show is the progress on the gingham baby blanket. I'm about 10 rows from the halfway point. It goes pretty quickly now that I have a rhythm going. Today we have someone coming to start a laundry list of minor repairs and small jobs around the house. It's so hard to find anyone to do this kind of work. Fortunately (for me) a friend's husband isn't 100% back to building on his main gig (a winery venue) so he has some time to spare and was willing to do these things for us. I'm so grateful and will spend much of today helping when he needs in between shibori dyeing sessions. So no sewing today either. I will likely not post tomorrow. I will be sewing this weekend because it's time for sewing with my quilt club. I missed January and February so I'm really excited to get back together. I'll have an update on that project Monday and, hopefully, some serious progress on Summer Sunset. New Gradient!I know. It's Spring and I should be dyeing some bright greens and clear pastels. Lately I've been dyeing a lot of gold and blues. I love all colors, even an occasional pink. I love the Spring colors. I love the golds and blues. But the color that speaks loudest to me is orange. My bedroom is even painted a dark orange. Last week in the dye studio I "needed" some orange and Pumpkin Patch was born. So just for a minute channel some Autumn vibes for this new Pumpkin Patch Gradient. I'm thinking that if I start now making a star quilt like Patricia's, that I could have it done in time for Autumn. Gradients Back in StockWoodlands and Jenny Lake Gradients are back in stock this week. As I look at them I see that the whole post is out of season! I'm OK with that. I love the rich autumnal colors. In fact I could see adding these fabrics with Pumpkin Patch in my star quilt. Here are 2 customer projects that use these popular gradients. Miriam Ahladas used Jenny Lake for the background of her quilt and Rene Iannarelli used Woodlands and a few other fabrics in her Fall Marsh quilt. Fabric of the WeekI'm sticking with all kinds of themes with this week's Fabric of the Week. It's a gradient, autumnal colored and it's the gradient that I'm working with in my current project. Summer Sunset gradient will be the border for a large Lone Star center. If you want to use any gradient as the color story for your project I can always custom dye individual colors the way that I did for this project. In fact I recently did a kit for this quilt for another customer in a different palette. The pattern is Mardi Gras from Vector Quilts. I know some people think list making is a waste of time and that it's depressing to make a list and then not be able to complete it. I view lists completely differently. Lists (like project plans from my former work life) are just a way to organize my thoughts and are simply an outline of what might be accomplished. I fully expect other things to come up and the lists helps me decided what a can accomplish instead. I got a good exercise in that this weekend. Things started out right on plan with the quilting of 2 veterans quilts. These 2 quilts bring my YTD total to 14. Things went a little awry after that. While I was washing out fabrics the sock that I use to trap lint from the washer stretched enough to clog the drain so the water went the only place it could, over the edge of the sink and all over the basement floor. It wasn't a big disaster. I do a deep clean annually after woodstove season is over and now that's all done! Nothing was damaged because I am always careful not to have anything that can be damaged sitting on the floor. With the hot water heater and this sink downstairs, these accidents are bound to happen. I did discover that my little shop vac works great! All the cabinets and shelves are back against the wall now and the rugs will be completely dry today so I can put it all back together and I can remove "clean basement" off my April list. It's really, really clean right now. Because my dye work tables were moved into the longarm space, I didn't get to practice for my quilting class so instead I did quite a bit of crochet this weekend. I'm really enjoying this gingham technique. I can see myself making lots of these blankets in the future. I also love the Hobby Lobby "I Love This Yarn" yarn. It's so easy to work with and it's sooooo soft. I don't like Red Heart but I hear that the Premier and Walmart Mainstay brands are also really soft and nice. I didn't get into the sewing room until yesterday and most of my time there was spent ironing the fabric that I dyed. But I did get half of the arc blocks together for the big quilt. I'll make better progress on these this week.
I have something new that I'll be doing over the next couple of months. Hanover County is operating a vaccine clinic to serve the whole county and they have asked elections officers to help man the clinic. I'll be doing that every Tuesday afternoon starting tomorrow. I won't be getting the vaccine myself but I'm happy to do anything I can to assist in getting it out to the people who want it. I was sort of hoping to be outside as a traffic cop but this week I'll be manning a registration desk. Should be interesting! Does this quilt tickle a familiar part of your brain? It might be because this is the second quilt that Patricia Caldwell has made with this pattern. This one is just as striking as the blue and gold one. I love these quilts so much that I plan to make one for myself. For this version Patricia used the Blue Morpho gradient (discontinued but can be custom dyed) along with Black, Eminence and Cosmos Shades Packs. I might even see bits of a purple Stash packs in there too. Fortunately we can make this quilt because she shared that the block is Floating Stars from Quilting Digest. For sharing, Patricia 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.
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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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May 2024
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