Usually Tuesday is reserved for my newsletter but there's no newsletter this week. It being a holiday week here in the US and all the Black Friday sales going on, I expect that there's very little attention for fabric. I'll be back to normal Tuesday posts next week. Yesterday I finished quilting Kim's quilt. This is a pretty quilt and will be a lovely comfort quilt for her friend while she's going through chemo and radiation. I think it's about 70" square. I used a pantograph called Fluffy Clouds with King Tut and SoFine threads. The quilting really shows off in the sunbeam. I also continued progress on my postcards and have worked out the second design. I bought the ribbon at JoAnn and used that as the jumping off point for my color palette. Now there's just a bit of cutting out left to do. The idea for the third design is percolating. I think I can have these ready to take to the river next week for stitching.
Today is a follow up for my annual physical and running a few errands but I hope I might have time to load the next pair of veterans quilts for quilting and also cut out bird parts for the postcards. Yesterday I took MOm to a doctor's appointment and ran some errands but I still made progress on my cards. But first, how about this view? This is the street that Mom lives on now. It was even more beautiful when I was there 2 days ago. It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I didn't even go into the office with her. I found a nice spot in the corner of the parking lot, rolled down the windows, put on my audiobook and started cutting. I got all of the leaves traced in the morning so I was all set up for cutting in the car. I was having a very nice and relaxed time and she was out in no time! I only got about 25% of the leaves cut out. I got more done during the game last night and I now have all of the berries and half of the leaves cut out. All of the paper backing is off the berries but I still to remove it from the leaves. But first, I have 60 more to cut out.
The week after Thanksgiving Kim and I are going to spend some time with Anne at the river before she leaves for Colorado for 3 months. I'd like to have all 3 of the card designs planned to the point that I can get them constructed there and come back and only have the edging to do. My goal is to always have them in the mail by December 10. I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have anything interesting to share. The last couple of days have involved a lot of driving around and no sewing or quilting. But I have been noodling ideas for Christmas cards and have landed on the first design. I always do a rough idea of any design ideas and I've been wanting to do something with holly leaves for a couple of years. After some playing around, I settled on this. I have enough of the gold to make 30 cards. That sounds like a lot but I make a total of 80 so I'll need 2 more designs. So far I have fused WonderUnder to the back of several green fabrics and 1 red fabric. I know that's too much green fabric but I may need one for a tree idea to work on later. The patterns are made and ready to trace to the back of the paper backed fabric. I make my patterns using 2 layers of index cards glued together. That makes the patter thick enough to trace easily. I'm starting with cutting berries freehand. I only have to cut out 90 little circles...... Over the next several days I'll be working on the cards and quilting some veterans quilts and a quilt for a friend. Speaking of veterans quilts, look at this lovely stack of 25 quilts! I'm delivering these today and that will bring our YTD total to 116 (2 more than all of last year). We've donated 437 quilts since the beginning of 2020. We've done lots more than that but I only have records from 2020. The hospital says they are getting a record number of port requests for new cancer patients.
I had a little panic a few days ago when I realized that I needed to get a birthday card in the mail to my SIL the next day. I didn't have an appropriate card in my stash for her. I had some of the Martian cards but I had already sent one to my brother. One household can't have 2 of the same cards. I had to make something quick. I walked into the sewing room and saw the stack of bonus HSTs left from the blue bowtie blocks. Since the quilt is for her, it seemed just right to make a card from these little blocks. I just randomly sewed a bunch of them together. The fact that there's an arrow in the middle is a complete accident. I didn't want to have to be fussy to try to center the card on the pieced fabric so I took the easy way out and set it totally off kilter. I like it enough that I might make some more of these! It took less than 30 minutes from the moment that I walked into the sewing room.
Yesterday I started quilting some veterans quilts. Today and tomorrow are sewing days with my quilt club. I have a new veterans quilt kit to start and it's very bright colors. I hope you have a great weekend. With the Goldfinch top done I needed to work on something quick and fun. I also needed to make some postcards for the guys in my life. They started with these fabrics. They are leftovers from the backing of my Corona Cats quilt. It was a wide panel called Stargazers. I don't know if it's still available but it's a super cool fabric and I saved every little scrap knowing that I eventually wanted to use it in postcards. I've played around with a couple of ideas over the past year or so but nothing really stuck until the recent "news" talk about UFO reports. The idea started to percolate and had to come together quickly since one card needed to be in the mail by today. I played around with a spaceship idea but that seemed to be too complex, then I thought about Martians! I found a free clipart image online and resized it to fit my cards. I traced around the image on Contact paper and then cut it out. I adhered the Contact paper to a silk screen and screened all of my little green Martians. The next task was to add the eyes and I needed a stencil for that. I stuck clear Contact paper to both sides of the printed image so that the paper wouldn't get destroyed with the wet paint before I could finish all of the cards. I cut out the eyes and the cut away the top of the head, each side of the neck and part of the hand. I used the cutaway sections to line up the stencil perfectly. As long as I didn't see any green around the edges I knew it was lined up correctly. Then I could use a pounce sponge to do the eyes. I wiped the back of the stencil clean after every use so that my edges would stay crisp. All that was left was to fuse on a back and serge the edges.
These cards make me so happy! Next on my list is to get back to quilting my Mom's quilt. I'm allowing myself a week and a half to get it done and then I'll quilt the Goldfinch. I wanted a bright Spring-like card for Mother's Day this year and I found this idea while wandering around the web. It's not original. I just love the simplicity of the egg shapes for the birds. My free-motion stitching skills aren't great so I always stitch around at least 2 times to help hide the mishaps. One of the nice things about sewing fabric postcards is that you don't have to worry about tying off thread. The fused backing fabric holds everything in place. I made 8 of these cards because I also have a bunch of May and June birthdays. I like my little flocks.
I did all kinds of things this weekend but it started by quilting my last 2 veterans quilts! This one is the same pattern of the green cougar one in Friday's post. Like I said then, I think Gwendolyn made both of these quilts....but I might be wrong. This is quilt #13 of this month! I know this one was made with the Accuquilt Go 6" HST. I think that Sharon made this one. I delivered two of the finished quilts to Becky and Nancy on Friday. Nancy had another top ready but I asked her to keep it until the May meeting because I needed the break from veterans quilts for a couple of weeks to work on some of the other quilts I need to quilt. I know I could have just hung it in the closet but I think I needed to feel a sense of being "done", like when the laundry basket is empty. I switched to the star and ribbon pantograph for these last 2. These are all of the trimmins from the last few months of quilts. It's time I made more pet beds for RAL. Next I moved on to making some birthday postcards. One of them was due April 6th. That was after my beach trip and was in the middle of the massive cold that Chris and I had. I sent my friend a birthday text and promised her a card before the end of the month. She's a fellow Hokie so this ribbon, that I bought for my Ultrasuede bear, was a good start. This is what I came up with and I love it! I started with 4 of them but....oops! I ended up with 3 of them and that's enough for the people I need to send them to. I started another set of cards but I won't be able to share them for a few weeks. The card is for Mother's Day and for my friends having birthday in the next 2 months. I'll get them finished this week. The other thing I worked on was finding a a blue that would work with this quilt. It's a quilt that my quilt club is making for a local food bank. We give them a quilt every couple of years to raffle as a fundraiser. I want to dye a gradient back but I want it to match the front and this color will work perfectly! Believe it or not, ths one has a lot of grape/boysenberry in it. It's about 70% grape to 30% cerulean. While I was walking to the mailbox Saturday I noticed that the first iris are blooming.
I have a few December birthdays and one is 2 days before Christmas. My only goal with the cards for these birthday girls is to make these cards look decidedly non-holiday. I was a little behind in getting these done so Friday evening I had to get busy and get them knocked out. One of them is already a week late! These cards started with some sunprints that I made a few years ago. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled these prints out to try to figure out something to do with them. I've been trying to use them as a the whole card image and nothing ever inspired me. Friday evening I pulled them out again and thought that cropping the image might just do the trick.....and it did. Some shiny, bright pink stitching was all that was needed to finish them off. I made 6 and mailed two of them Saturday. In the end I think they are pretty cute!
I did lots of other things this weekend but I don't have photos yet. The tie dye tshirts are all done and I started 2 new veterans quilt tops that I'm going to probably finish this week. I don't have any other sewing projects queued up so I'll put these two simple tops together. Photos of all those things will come in the next few days. I don't have anything creative of my own to share today. Yesterday I spent the day making bread and cookies and other chores. But I do have 2 cool photos to share of my postcards being displayed. Mom and I went to our quilt club holiday pot luck dinner last night and she shared this photo with me last night. This is how she had displayed her cards. I love seeing them all together! She hasn't received her card for this year yet. I hope it doesn't throw the display out of balance. After I dropped Mom off I remembered that another friend had told me that she displays the cards too. Just as I was thinking about texting her to ask for a photo she sent me one! Literally, at the exact same time. It was weird...and cool. I've had a few connections like that happen this week. Here is Mitzi's display. I love the way she clipped them to garland. She has received her 2022 card and she clipped it right in the middle. I think her whole mantle display is beautiful.
This is why I make them. I'm never sure which people really love getting them but I know there are some and I make the cards for them. Every year I do one design that is tree themed. This card was supposed to be the design for last year but I got stuck in the design process and couldn't come up with anything that I liked. They ended last year like this. I had the stenciling done and just did not like it and didn't think I could save them. I decided to let them rest for a year. They needed more red! I think the red stripe fabric is a Kaffe fabric that I had in my stash. It made for nice edges and some red paint dots fixed the trees. Once I had my mind made up they came together quickly.
I made 24 of these. I think I made a total of 80 cards and they are addressed and ready to mail today or Thursday. Also, I have a few extras! If you would like to receive a card leave a comment below and I'll contact you to get your address. I have at least 5 extras and will take them on a first come first served basis. |
FeedsTo subscribe click the RSS Feed button and copy the URL of that page into your blog reader.
In Bloglovin you need to search "Colorways By Vicki Welsh" to find the blog. About Vicki
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
All
Archives
April 2024
|