 There still isn't a lot going on around here but I got my sashing fabrics dyed last week and started cutting them last night. The smaller quilt will have this deep green (Jungle).  The big quilt will have this blue. I'll use bright cornerstones on both quilts. These should go together pretty quickly so I will try to get a back dyed fror the green one this week. I already have the back for the blue one.
2 Comments
Fabric of the Week Thrive Gradient - 20% off this week!  Mother Earth by Christine Cetrulo The fabric of the week this week is the Thrive Gradient. It's 20% off through Sunday. Christine Cetrulo used the Thrive Gradient for her whole cloth art quilt, Mother Earth. New Gradient - South Pacific South Pacific Gradient I'm trying to embrace lighter value gradients because you keep telling me that you prefer them for landscape backgrounds. One of the most popular is Southwest. I thought it was time for some soft greens and blue greens. I asked on social media for name ideas and PK Solberg suggested South Pacific. It was perfect! Click on the image to take a closer look or order a piece for your next project.
It's just a cold. That's my mantra right now. Chris got it about 4 days ahead of me (because he gave it to me) so I just watch him to see when it's going to finally leave this house. We're both fine, just tired and annoyed.  But I had some energy to do some sewing and these were perfect to work on. I 21 cards ready for backs. Why 21? Well, that's how many symmetrical diamonds that I could cut from the scraps. I would have been happier with 25 or 30 but this is what I got. I'll get the backs on them this week. I'll probably save serging the edges until I have all the cards ready for edging.  I started to sweep all this in the trash but I was lethargic and just listening to my book so I thought some mindless piecing might be good therapy.  It was good therapy because ti kept me from snacking and didn't require much thinking. That's a pretty big chunk of fabric from nothing. I don't know what I'll do with it. It could be cut into crumb blocks, made into placemats or even postcard backgrounds. But that takes thinking so it's going to get folded up and put away for now. What would you do with it?
 The Eyes Have It by Margaret Griffiths Margaret Griffiths is back with another featured quilt this week. The Eyes Have It is made with some of my "waste fabrics" that she purchased from one of our local quilt club fund raisers. I bet this one took as long to face as it did to quilt!
For sharing, Margaret 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. There's nothing much to be done about a cold except to wait it out and that's what I'm doing. I did have the energy for a little bit of sewing yesterday but I didn't want to do anything that required math.  These are the scraps from the sample quilt that I made with Paula Nadelstern's Artful Snowflakes collection. They have a nice bit of silver metallic in them so I thought I'd see if I could come up with a postcard design for one set of my Christmas cards.  I worked through several ideas but settled on this. It uses the symmetry print leftovers for the centers and a cool border print for the edges. I'll finish them off with metallic thread edges and will likely add some crystals. This is going to be a fine project to work on in bits of time over the next few days.
After playing around with more sashing ideas and sending a dozen photos to my friend and making Chris look at all of them....  we decided in dark sashing with bright cornerstones. It's not really where I wanted to head with these quilts but it doesn't show off the blocks best. I dyed the fabric yesterday so might be able to start sewing Sunday.The small quilt will be the darkest shade of Jungle and the big quilt will be a blue similar to Royal. Now it's always possible that I get these fabrics dyed and then decide that I don't like them. That's OK, I can always dye more.  After dyeing yesterday I decided to focus on the Christmas cards a bit. I came up with a hippie-inspired card for the ice dyed trimmings. I ordered a silk screen to use with these strips that I fused to Wonder-Under. Now I'm working on an idea to use my Paula-quilt cut offs.
But honestly, I'm not working on much of anything. My dear husband brought home a cold from his Canada hunting trip and now it's my turn to enjoy it.  I had some time Sunday to iron and trim my ice dyed blocks. These are the ones that I chose for my quilt. It will be queen size and will probably have 3" sashing. Next I pulled out some fabric swatches for what I though would be a fast exercise to pick the sashing. I was wrong about the "fast" part. As usual.  My plan all along has been to use gray for my sashing. I also considered medium purple or medium blue. I didn't like any of these. The gray is particularly horrible. I'm also opposed to black for some reason.  A few more samples later I landed on bright green and pale purple. Still not excited, but closer...maybe.  Then I worked my way toward yellow and orange. I was surprised that I kind of liked the orange! After consulting with friends two of them said "use all the colors". Hmmm  Meanwhile, I arranged the "reject" squares for a lap quilt. While arranging them I though that I might try the scrappy sashing idea on this quilt and see how it looks before I make any decision on my quilt. So this is my next step. Cut some scrappy sashing pieces and see how they look.  There's also this! There no way this is going in the trash.
Galaxies are on sale!
Galaxies are fabrics that are 2 yards and longer that are produced during ice dyeing sessions. I love to use them as feature fabric or borders as I did with my Antelope Canyon and Maine quilts. This week all Galaxy fabrics are on sale 20% off. Use coupon code GALAXY20 at checkout. I can always create a palette for you using one of the Galaxies as the feature fabric.
Gradients Back In StockSeveral of your favorite gradients are back in stock this week!  Black Gradient  Gray Skies Gradient  Black and Gray Skies are the gradients that I'm using for background for my Loony Moony quilt along with moons made from Shibori Stash Packs.  Blue Sky Gradient  Red Rocks Sunrise by Patricia Caldwell Blue Sky is the fabric that Patricia Caldwell used as the background for her Red Rocks Sunrise quilt.  Sundance Gradient  Katelyn Morley used the Sundance Gradient to make these cute dog collars.
 Friday and Saturday sewing was a lot of fun this weekend and quite productive. I got to try out the new/used Janome 415 machine and it stitches beautifully. The 1/4 inch foot is more like a 3/8" foot so it's useless. I solved that with a piece of masking tape to mark 1/4" on the base. That worked just fine. The tension is perfect and I got about half of my blocks together. After about 50 blocks I realized that I needed to press the blocks in two different directions (out and up vs. in and down) if I wanted this quilt to go together without too much bulk in the seams.  I didn't plan any color arrangement so I wanted to see how it might looks so when I came home I spent about a hour putting all the blocks on the design wall. I love looking at my blocks through the camera. I think it gives a better perspective on how a quilt will look and I LOVE how this one looks. Even with the total "scrappiness" I think the stars stand out nicely. There will be lots more dark fabrics in the final layout. The dark fabrics are mostly on the bottom of the project box since they were cut first.
Using the GO! cutter die makes cutting and piecing very fast. Everything fits together perfectly since I took some time to verify (set) my 1/4" seam. I did a few other things this weekend with my ice dyed blocks but haven't edited the photos yet. I'll get those shared edited and shared Wednesday.  Camp Memories by Joanna Mack 24.5" x 35" Joanna Mack brings us our inspiration for this week. She wrote a blog post explaining the inspiration and construction challenges for this wonderful quilt. Be sure to go check it out and read her blog for lots more great inspiration. Joanna made this using the Nightfall Gradient. For sharing, Joanna 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.  Nightfall Gradient |
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
October 2019
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. |
RSS Feed