This week's inspiration is Grief by Julie Griffiths. She made this improve art quilt as a way to work through the grief of losing her husband. I think we makers are fortunate to have creative pursuits to help us process many of the difficult and stressful times in our lives. Julie used the Aurora Gradient in this piece.
For sharing, Julie 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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Anyone remember when I used to do some Zentangling? Well, yesterday I needed to pull out the books and pens and revisit that craft for a few hours. This is the envelope for our files for the tax accountant. Overkill? Maybe, but there's a backstory.
Many years ago we started having our taxes done my professionals because, well, I'm incompetent at it and I really hate doing it. When we moved to Richmond we went to a local firm where my cousin worked and she did our taxes for years. About 5 years ago I decided to start decorating the envelopes for her just to give her something different to see other than a pile of endless manilla envelopes. She liked them but I didn't know that she liked them enough to hang them in her office for everyone to see. Fast forward to last year. My cousin had retired so our new accountant is Samuel. Woohoo! I didn't have to decorate envelopes anymore. Then Samuel called to let me know that the taxes were ready and mentioned that he didn't get a decorated envelope. So here we are. I'm back to decorating tax envelopes! This is what I spent yesterday doing and it was fun to do some Zentangling again. It took several hours but it's such a relaxing was to spent time. Below are some progress photos. Tuesday was primary day in Virginia so I spent the day working as an elections officer. We have a nice group of people in our precinct so the day is really pleasant even if it's brutally long. We have to be there at 5:00 am and don't get to leave until about 8:00 pm. We had about 25% turnout, which was higher than I expected and it was fun to see some of my neighbors, friends and former co-workers. Since football season ended I haven't been watching TV so haven't been crocheting as much. But I do a little here and there and eventually finished this shawl for donation. This is the third time I've made this shawl using Ice Cream Cotton Blend yarn. It's a discontinued yarn and great to work with. I don't love the color pooling but it's going to be incredibly comfortable for someone in assisted living or a nursing home. I have yarn to make one more. I'm making some progress on the baby blanket too. I like the subtle stripes from this yarn.
I've been having fun doing some updates to old Gradients and making new ones. Today I have one new one, one upgraded one and one restock. This one, First Blush, is a new one. This one was inspired by the colors of the sunrise. This next Gradient, Estuary, is an upgrade to the Jenny Lake gradient. It's a subtle difference but, by using a different blue, I like the end result better. I also have Sugar Maple back in stock. Sugar Maple is one of my favorite Gradients and may be the foundation for my next big quilt. Fabric of the WeekThe fabric of the week this week is the Autumn Harvest Gradient. It's 20% off through Sunday.
Mom and I went to the Mid-Atlantic quilt show Friday and went to meet her new Great Granddaughter Saturday. It was a fun trip and we really enjoyed the quilts at the show. Between Thursday and yesterday I was able to kick off March with 4 more veterans quilts. This one was made by Peg. This one was made by Ann. They were both quilted quickly with this fern or banana peel motif and turquoise thread. I even finished off a cone of thread with this quilt. Quilt #3 was made by Clara. She's quite the prolific piecer. It was quilted with loops and stars. I don't know who made this one but I like it a lot. I quilted it with this free-motion fan motif. I hadn't use this in a long time. I need to get it back in rotation because I like it a lot.
I have 2 more to get quilted before the meeting next week. They are on the frame, basted and ready. Tomorrow I'll be working the primary election so I don't expect I'll have anything to post Wednesday. This week I have two quilts to share with you! Both are by the prolific artist, Patricia Caldwell. This first piece, Connections, is one that she made to submit to Sacred Threads. Her goal with this piece was to show that everything is connected in some way, including in nature. The words and tree of life stenciled with shiva paint stick and she embellished with hand dyed yarns. She used the Frolic Gradient. The second quilt is Releasing Joy and this one certainly exudes joy. She used Stash Packs in various colors for this one. Here's a great detail photo of her quilting.
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. My goals for February were: - finish Red Sunset - quilt 8 veterans quilts - make placemats for my nephew and I did all that and a little more! Once the quilting was done on Red Sunset I needed to catch up on veterans quilts. I set a goal of 8 but ultimately finished 15! Chris and I even had time for a little vacation and I got some more chemo hats made. I used 4 balls of yarn in February.
My current stats: Quilts - 1 Veterans quilts quilted - 14 Pet Beds - 6 Crochet blankets - 1 Crochet/loom knit hats and scarves - 5 Placemats and Table Runners - 6 Other Donated items - 102 Garments (sewn and cochet) - 1 Balls of yarn used or gifted - 15 My goals for March are: - finish 3 sets of placemats that are already quilted - quilt 6 more veterans quilts -quilt a quilt for Anne - quilt he blue quilt We have friends visiting for a few weeks in March and I have a trip at the end of the month so I expect I'll do more crochet than anything. I'm not sure I'll have the time to get a ton of quilting done. But it's good to have the goals! February was a very good reading month. There weren't any books that were disappointing. My favorite was Demon Copperhead. It lived up to all of the great press that it's received since publication. For something lighter, I really enjoyed Factory Girls. What books do you have to recommend this month? The Nix By Nathan Hill, Read By Ari Fliakos I'm not sure I know how to describe this book except that it's long and rambling and I really liked the ending. It's kind of about a mother and son relationship but it's also about decisions of the grandfather that ultimately affected the mother and son. But it's a lot more than that. It's incredibly detailed and goes off onto a lot of other tangents with other characters. I know I'm rambling but I seriously don't know how to describe it. There's a lot of detail about many of the supporting characters that, frankly, could have been edited out. It's 22 hours long and should have been about 15 max but I enjoyed it and I'm glad I read it. The Librarianist By Patrick deWitt, Read by Jim Meskimen Bob Comet is a retired librarian who has lived a very quiet and solitary life with his book. One day he helps a lost woman find her way home to the senior center where she lives. After the visit he decided to volunteer there and eventually discovers he had history with one of the residents. The book is a walk through his life to show how he got to this solitary place. The book is a little slow to start off but it was worth the wait. He's a very likable character. It reminds me a little of Mike Gayle's All The Lonely People but it's not quite that good, but still a good read. Demon Copperhead By Barbara Kingsolver, Read By Charlie Thurston I loved this book. This book has been showing up on a lot of recommendation lists and I understand why. It's a masterpiece. Kingsolver took Charles Dickens' David Copperfield as her inspiration to tell the story of an orphan in Appalachia in the middle of the opioid crisis. Demon is Damon and was born to a single mother in a single-wide trailer in Virginia Appalachia. He inherited his bright red hair from his deceased father so his nickname was easy for his schoolmates. When his mother dies he finds himself in the foster system that is sometimes just a child labor system. It's a hard life and it's just the beginning. It's a wonderful book with some difficult scenes. If you read via audiobooks I think you will also love the narration. Being from SW Virginia, I can say that it was spot on. Factory Girls By Michelle Gallen, Read By Amy Molloy It's 1994 in a small Northern Ireland town. Maeve Murray has just finished school and is awaiting her exam results to see where she will be able to go to University. She's taken a summer job at a shirt factory with her 2 best friends. These Catholic girls will be working alongside Protestants which will bring it's own challenges. The book brilliantly mixes the vibes and challenges of the time with a good dash of humor as we follow Maeve's adventures and challenges in the last summer of her youth. It's perfectly narrated by Amy Molloy. The Engineer's Wife By Tracey Enerson Wood, Read By Libby McKnight Emily Warren Roebling was the wife of the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. She was one of the most important women of her time. It's well documented that during the building of the bridge her husband developed health issues from " the bends" and was eventually mostly bedridden. Emily educated herself in engineering and handled on-site management with her husband's guidance from home. At a time when women were starting the suffrage movement, Emily was a quite powerful and influential woman. You can read a wonderful book about the building of the bridge called The Great Bridge by David McCullough. Enter this book. This is a historical fiction account of Emily's life and it's mostly fiction. As a piece of women's literature, it's a perfectly fine and entertaining book. For Emily, though, I was a little offended to have her life reduced to a fictional love interest. If you decide to read it, be warned that the narrator has a number of jarring mispronunciations in the narration. I almost forgot to get the final photos of Red Sunset! I had a nice opportunity yesterday to go outside and get the official photos. This quilt was made to replace one on the guest bed that's now too short since I added a foam topper to the mattress. I started this in the summer of 2022. The back is a hand dyed mandala that shows off the quilting nicely.
I have a project page here that has lots of close up photos of the quilting if you aren't already tired of seeing the photos on the previous blog posts. It was a weekend of good progress! Most importantly I finished this set of placemats and they are ready to be delivered Friday. I was very lucky to have these 2 fabrics in my stash because my nephew's wife wanted all grays. The really needed the black to make them big enough and to keep them from being too boring. I quilted them with straight line quilting on the longarm. I like to quilt placemats densely because they don't wrinkle up so much in the wash when they are quilted densely. Straight lines are easy and fast on the longarm and I can get 6 of them quilted in less than an hour. I was really stymied on the binding on these. I had barely enough fabric to make them and I felt they were a little small. I could only fix it with a wide binding. It took me a bit to figure out how to do it. I cut a 2" strip and pressed one edge under 1/4". I sewed the unfolded edge to the back and then folded the binding to the front like normal. Worked like a charm! Usually I dye napkins to go with the placemats but my black dye doesn't really go well with commercial black so I cheated and bought some napkins from Amazon. The next thing I accomplished was hemming some pants for Chris. I wasn't the only person in this house in desperate need of new clothes. I sent him to the mall Friday and then hemmed pants for the first time in years! We both looked reasonably presentable at the funeral Saturday. The service was lovely and it was nice to catch up with friends. On Sunday I got busy quilting the other 12 placemats. I did the Tucson placemats in straight lines and the kind-of-ugly patchwork placemats with all-over leaves. I will try to get these bound this week and then I just have to dye napkins to match.
Today, though, is an all-errand day. I have my training to work the primary voting precinct and then a bunch of errands and an evening meeting. I'll get back to the sewing room tomorrow. |
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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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