We are having a great time with our guests. So far we've stayed close to home because they mostly wanted to relax and recover from their jet lag. Ian has been doing some yard work with us and we've been taking 5 mile walks. (Ian loves doing yard work. I'm really not a horrible host.) Laura has been doing some crochet and sewing and I've been making veterans quilt kits. The first one another version of this quilt. I loved it when I made it last year and am ready to do another. This was cut quickly on the Go! Cutter. The next quilt is from an idea I got from Cynthia Brunz. She coordinates a ton of charity quilts and I get some great ideas from her. My centers are scrap pieces from the last batch of patriotic veterans quilts that I made and the background is an assortment of blue hand dyed quilt back scraps from a lot of veterans quilts that I quilted in the past year or so. I think this one is going to look pretty cool. The third kit is a double 4-patch block. I've made this one several times. This one will reverse the dark and light positioning and it's going to have a border. The tan and light green are also quilt backing scraps. I didn't have enough of those fabrics to do blocks for the whole quilt so I found a stripe fabric to make a 4" border. Then I found a stack of large tumblers and cut more so I'd have enough for a 48" x 60" quilt. I'll put this together and if it needs some calming down I'll cut it apart and insert some sort of inner border. These are already labeled in rows ready for stitching. That weird piece of green fabric that looks to me flying in from the right is actually on a table. When I go through my scraps to cut them up I tend to cut 4" HST pieces and I cut enough to make another quilt like the one in the paper. I think I made that one about 12 years ago. It was a pretty pretty quilt and I'm ready to tackle another. Next I pulled these fabrics from my Nadelstern stash and I had great plans but just as I was typing here I realized that my plan will not work. I think I have a good idea for a replacement fabric for the sashing so I'll work on that, and some other kits, this week.
Last night we had a friend over for dinner. Today we are going to visit my Mom and my brother and then doing a little shopping and we have a hiking excursion planned for Wednesday.
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I had some free time on Saturday so I decided to focus and get the blue quilt top done. The border blocks were already together so I just had to put them together and attach them for the final border. This quilt, whenever it's done, will by about 96" square. It's a big one! After I finish quilting Red Sunset I will need to pump out a lot of veterans quilts before I can do this one, but I'd like to have it done by May. I really love this quilt and I'd absolutely consider making it again. I have a lot of leftover blocks and I've decided to set them aside for later to make more blocks and use these for a veterans quilt. The next time I make up a bunch of veterans quilts I'll kit up this one. I think it would make a really nice veterans quilt.
I hope that as you are reading this that we are on a nice hike in Arizona. I only had a few hours of crafting yesterday. I had to go to my brother's to get him to trim some hinges for me. Our cabinets have some really cheap hinges that break regularly. It's not a problem, I have a bag of replacement hinges and they are easy to replace, except on the bathroom cabinets. It seems that the cabinet maker trimmed the edge of the hinges so they would fit around the inside trim. My brother makes knives and axes so had a lot of really cool tools. He was able to trim 4 of them for me in just a few minutes. Now I have a stash of 3 for the bathroom cabinet. After that was accomplished and my cabinet door reinstalled, I got down to some sewing. I gathered the blocks off the floor and stacked them with my favorite clips. I remember when these came out and I thought they were a gimmick. I try to stay away from new sewing tools but I did eventually get some of these and I use them all the time. I love them. I got all of the blocks sewn together but they still need pressing. This will give you an idea of what the border will look like. I think it's a really cool quilt and I'd consider making another. It's a perfect pattern for monochromatic scraps. The one in the book is in pinks.
This weekend is all about preparing for our trip Sunday. Next week I expect that I may only have my Audiobook and January summary posts. I might have a weekend summary post Monday if I actually do anything blog worthy. Otherwise, will not be posting daily on vacation. I'll see you February 5th! I know this looks the same as a few days ago but it is different because it's all sewn together now! I had a lot of errands yesterday that included getting my new glasses, so I didn't have a lot of time left.But it was enough to finish putting the center of this quilt together. I really love it. Next up are the border blocks. They are value reversed from the center blocks. I'll start sewing these together this week but today I'm going to head to the basement for some quilting time. When I made the blocks for this quilt I made lots of extra ones so there are probably some placemats in here!
I posted really late yesterday but that was because I scheduled it for 10:30 pm instead of am. This is what I got done while that post was waiting to go live. I got all the center blocks stitched together. I was motivated because I needed to get the blocks off the floor before the cleaning lady comes today. I'm hugely motivated by deadlines! I love how this is looking.
In the evening I worked on the blanket for Chris' friend. I'm determined to have that done by Friday. Today is dyeing day so I don't know what else I'll accomplish. Sorry for the late post. I don't have a newsletter today because I need another week to get the next batch of new fabrics ready so I'll share an update on my blue quilt. I also worked on the Red Sunset quilt yesterday but another photo would look much like the last photo. I'm also plugging away at the big blanket for Chris' friend. I pulled out all of the dark blocks and laid them out in groups of 4 to sew together big blocks. This quilt is designed to be put together in rows of smaller blocks but I thought it would be easier to keep the block orientation right if I pieced them into 4-path blocks first. I need 36 of the large dark blocks and I was glad to see that I made lots of extras so I was able to replace a few bow ties that didn't have enough contrast for my liking. Here are the first 6 blocks on the design wall. I'll keep plugging away at these this week. I really like it so far! We also got a little snow yesterday. In the end it was a little more than this but just the right amount to be pretty but not bothersome.
Today's post is a lot more boring than yesterday. There's no new project just more work on the blue blocks and more quilting on the raffle quilt. I had my physical Tuesday and yesterday was spent dyeing fabric. I've also started blowing leaves. We have at least 10 trees that are over 70' that drop a ton of leaves. I'll be blowing leaves for weeks. It's nice to be outside and it's a little exercise so it's all good until I run out of places to put them! I've had a couple of sewing sessions so I'm almost finished sewing blue blocks. I only have that one little stack and then I can start making bigger blocks and putting the quilt together. While I was stitching Tuesday I had a visitor to the pond. I love my sewing room view! Here's a little autumnal color that I caught at my Mom's apartment Tuesday. The red trees are really spectacular around here this year. Sometimes it's an orange/gold year but this year is all about the red. You already know that I'm a very slow quilter. I let myself get analysis paralysis over my quilts. I'm working on the center blocks for the raffle quilt and I'm spending way too much time agonizing over the quilting for a raffle quilt that's meant to be a bed quilt. I finally settled on the pattern for the star blocks and I've finished 6 of 12. I'd like to finish the other 6 today. It would also be helpful if I can get a chiropractor appointment today. My back would like that before I spend too much time leaning over the longarm.
In the evenings I'm doing some crochet and will to share those tomorrow. For the next several days, these are the only projects that I plan to work on but I might also need to make a birthday postcard. I also need to get started on my Christmas card ideas. It's about time to start the annual Christmas card panic! I got permission to share my "Paula" quilt this week! Here's the backstory: I don't buy many commercial fabrics but I buy most of the fabrics designed by Paula Nadelstern. I fell in love with her symmetry fabrics when I took a class from her sometime around 2008. For many years now she has invited me and a few other quilters to make samples from her new fabric line. We used to have to make 36" square wall quilts but now we can make whatever we want. I choose to make 48 x 60 quilts that can become veterans quilts. The fabric line this year is called "What If" and you can see all of the fabrics here. I was particularly excited to see the stripes this time and I plan to stock up on them when the fabrics arrive in stores in the Spring. I hope you have a few minutes to check out the Virtual Fabric Show to see the other quilts that were made. Go to the 35:05 mark to see Paula's section. The other quilts are really fabulous! There's one by Peggy True that I want to make. Hint: it's not the applique wreath! I was on a really tight timeline for my quilt so it had to be simple with 12 blocks and some sashing. My only goal was to use a little of every fabric in the line. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. You can look at each of the blocks in detail by clicking on them. If you look close you will see that they are all very simple. The fabric does all of the work. I decided to use the two grayscale fabrics for the sashing and border but felt it needed a little extra. That "extra" came with stripe inserts in the sashing.
When it came time for quilting I was down to the wire so it got a quick overall design. The baby shower was this weekend. Mom and I headed to Chesapeake Saturday morning, went to the shower Saturday afternoon, visited with my brother and SIL (the "thank God you are alive" one) Saturday evening and watched a football miracle (UVA vs UNC) Saturday night in our hotel. Sunday morning we visited James and Ashley (parents to be) and stopped to visit my other SIL and niece in Newport News on the way home. It was a quick trip but very worthwhile. Ashley loved all of the blankets and has designated a use for each of them. I did give them permission to give any of them to another baby but they insisted that they were keeping them. Our visit to their house was the first time we've seen it since they moved and I had forgotten that they have FOUR wall quilts that I've made and they are using all of them. They have requested a set of placemats for the newly remodeled kitchen and they will certainly get them. We were asked to give the baby a book. I gifted two. One is a new book and the other is a book that my Grandmother gave to me in 1966. At some point in my young life I became very possessive of my things and I wrote my name really large on the front blank page. James was happy to have something handed down from family. It was a nice day and Ashley looks great for someone about to have a baby in 5 weeks! In the hotel I started a new kid hat. I will make 2 of these for my brother's step-grands. I worked on it more last night when I got home. Before we left, I got a little quilting and sewing done on Friday. I've started the 12 star blocks on the raffle quilt. 3 are done, 9 to go. I also got all of the corner blocks trimmed for the blue quilt and started sewing them into bow ties.
Today I have my annual eye doctor appointment and tomorrow is my annual physical. The restof the week should be dyeing, sewing and blowing leaves. Yesterday involved a visit to Mom and a clothing alteration but I did get the rest of the corners sewn for the blue quilt. Block trimming comes next. The clothing alteration was a black pair of pants, hence no photo. I got them at LLBean on vacation for 60% off but they were too long in the waist and length. It was worth getting the to try because they cost less than $20! They are a very nice knit and I wanted to wear them to the baby shower tomorrow. I got them done but it was almost a crisis because the air threading mechanism wasn't working on one of the loopers. For you serger owners, here's my tip for the day. When the thread wouldn't feed through this looper channel I figured that there was a blockage in the pipe somewhere. Digging around in my supplies I found a box of these loop dental floss threaders. I split one apart and it was exactly long enough, flexible enough and stiff enough to go through both halves of the channel and it pushed a pretty significant lint ball out of the looper.
Tomorrow we head to Chesapeake for the baby shower so there won't be much creative stuff going on this weekend but I'll be happy to see family, especially my SIL. She's out of the hospital and doing well! Thank you for all of your prayers and good thoughts. |
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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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