 Mission accomplished! I finished the rows on my Indonesian batik quilt.  Someone asked how I put the rows together. Honestly, I wing it a bit. I admit that I just sew the sashing piece to the last row without measuring, the same way that we do to get wavy borders. Then I chalk a diagonal line across the sashing to continue the seam line.  Then I match up the seams of the next row of blocks with the chalk line. It seems to lay flat and the intersections all look good so I'm sticking with this method.  I spread it out on our bed to see what I needed for borders. It will be 6" top and bottom and 2" on the sides. I will measure these to make sure that I properly deal with any stretching in those setting triangles. I don't need 6"wavy borders to quilt. I hope to get this done and ready to quilt by Friday. I've got to do some machine maintenance before I load the next quilt. We'll see how that goes!
0 Comments
Fabric of the Week! Helios Gradient - 20% off through Sunday! The fabric of the week this week is the Helios gradient! Through Sunday this fabric is 20% off or $7.20/half yard. This is a great sunset or sunrise background for a landscape quilt. New Reflections!  Reflections fabrics were designed out of a custom request from a landscape quilt artist. She wanted fabrics that would make good water and sky reflections. My best product ideas come from you! These are sold in 1 yard increments with up to 3 yards available. Cheryl Kotecki used a Reflections fabric for the trees and border in this panel of a king sized quilt. Gradients Back in Stock Navajo Gradient  Under The Sea Gradient  This past weekend was sewing weekend with my quilt club. I only got to go for one day because Mom and I went to an artisan studio tour in Charlottesville Saturday. I made the most of my one day of sewing and most of the center of my Indonesian batik quilt done.  I only have 4 more rows (sashing and blocks) to do before the center is done. I'll finish it off with a wide purple border. I've decided to go ahead and work on in here this week to finish it. It's a bed quilt so it will get quilted simply. I want to quilt this one before I put Lost My Marbles back on the frame. LMM is going to take a while to finish and finishing off this one will give me one more finish for the year. It will also give me my new winter quilt just in time for winter.
 Color Study by Rene Iannarelli Rene Iannarelli took a 12 month course with Elizabeth Barton and this is one of her color study pieces. I love the fine lines. She used the Color Wheel Red and Blue Green Shades Packs for this quilt. Below is another project from the course (not yet finished) that used the Purple and Yellow Shades Packs.  For sharing, Rene 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.
I didn't post earlier today because I was intent on having two finishes in one week! In between errands, a clay shooting lesson (I'm still bad but improving) and chores, I finished the set of Christmas tree cards! This post counts for Thursday and Friday this week.  I usually make 3 or 4 card designs each year and there's always a tree. This year I decided to quilt a little free motion tree to use up some thread. The threads I picked are Superior Rainbows variegated trilobal polyester thread. They have a little shine to them. I'd quilt some on the margins of quilts that I had on the frame. I've been working on them off and on all year.  You can clearly see here that they are totally free motion stitched!  I have 6 different background fabrics simply based on what I had in my "waste fabric" stash.  I wanted to add an extra element...also from my stash. Some have dyed cheesecloth "ground" and others have pieces of knitted metal mesh as a background. The sequin star is from my old stash of beads and sequins from the ornaments that I used to make.  With an obscenely large thread stash it was easy to find the perfect thread colors for the serged edges. I have a great start on the 80 cards that I need with 31 of this design!  I also put a tiny dent into the thread stash. I'll finish off the rainbows the next time that I need to baste a quilt.
 Antelope Canyon quilt 90" square Last night I finished the binding on the Antelope Canyon quilt. I'm very excited to see this one on the guest bed and ready for use. I really love the graphic nature of this pattern by Laurie Shifrin. There's a resonably good chance that I will make another one at some point. This design has so many possible effects depending on how you turn the blocks and how you use color.
To see more photos and the mandala back visit the Antelope Canyon page. Fabric of the Week Blue Spruce - 20% off! The fabric of the week this week is the Blue Spruce Shades Pack and it's on sale for 20% off through Sunday! Blue Spruce is a beautiful blue that is perfect to represent a dark turquoise blue ocean. Fat Quarter packs are ready to ship, larger cuts will be custom dyed for you. New TapestriesThere are two types of fabrics in the Tapestries category. There are giant Crystal Mandalas that are at least 108" square and there are other large pieces that are ice dyed mottled fabrics that are perfect for quilt backs. I'm so happy to finally have the giant mandalas back in the shop again! These are so involved to make that I don't do them very often. But I have these 6 new ones for you this week. I generally use these for quilt backs but customers have used the for whole cloth quilts and duvet covers. Click on the image for more information on each piece. Here are 4 of the new quilt backs. These are also ice dyed but are placed under the folded mandalas to catch runoff dye. The texture that I get with these pieces is very bold.  The great thing about having a lot of projects going is that you can usually work on something no matter your mood. My mood the past week has been pretty darned lazy. I had a long to-do list this weekend which really meany Sunday because I was gone all day Saturday. We didn't get home from the game in Blacksburg (that we lost) until after midnight so I was lethargic yesterday. It was a perfect day to sit in the recliner (after exercising in the morning), watch football and stitch. By the end of the Patriots-Packers game last night I had finished the last of this set of flowers. The little bright centers really make a huge difference. I didn't like that block in the lower left corner until I added the center. Now it's perfectly cute, just like all the others.  Here are the 20 that are done already. I really love the effect of the alternating pink and yellow blocks. Given my total disdain of all things pink, this is a miracle. I have 38 blocks left to make so I don't have to even think about setting and quilting for at least a year.
 Crystal Mandala by Margaret Grifiths As I'm writing this it's an overcast day here in Virginia so this bright quilt is a welcome treat for my eyes. Margaret Griffiths is a local artist and member of my quilt club, Country School Quilters. She was kind enough to lend this to me to display in my booth at the AQS show. More than one person came into the booth asking for the fabric for this quilt. Sadly, there's only one and Margaret worked magic with it.   Since I had the quilt in my possession fora while I was able to take a couple of extra photographs to show you the wonderful quilting that Margaret did to highlight the dye patterns in the fabric.
There are lots of Crystal fabrics in the shop now of you want to try your hand at quilting your own mandala. 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. For months this summer I couldn't quilt because of the injury that I did to my arm in May so my friend, Marcy, helped me catch up on the backlog of quilts. We also have some new longarm quilters in Country School that help out a lot. We never have much of a backlog anymore. In fact, since September, I've only had to 2 do and this week was the perfect time to get them done.  The quilter who made these made either 3 or 4 in the same pattern. I expect them to be very popular with our patients at the VA hospital. I quilted this one with a stipple. Withe everything going on in the fabric it only needed simple quilting. One of our other quilters quilted the others.  The center of each star has a quotation patch. I didn't want to quilt over that so I did a little SID around the block.  My Mom made this quilt and it started about a year ago. When she had her first cataract surgery it did not go well at all. She had so much trouble with her vision for months after that. She couldn't do any sewing or fine work so on one of her visits here I set her up with the Go! Cutter, several dies and a big stack of scrap hand dyed fabric. She spent several days cutting fabric. One of the shapes she cut was the applecore. Fast forward to a couple of months ago and she was looking for a project and I "gifted" her the applecore blocks. We both love the quilt but she has declared this her last applecore quilt. She will trim it down so that she can do a straight binding.  Ruler work has been the most troublesome for my arm so I decided to do ruler work on this quilt to test my arm and warm up. I am now ready to get back to Lost My Marbles! I've missed quilting the Spirograph blocks. I've even ordered Bethanne Nemesh's Lily Lines rulers just so I have more shapes for my marble.
First, though, I need to do some basic maintenance on the machine like replacing the check spring and adjusting the hopping foot and a deep, deep cleaning. That will be work for next week because tomorrow I head to Blacksburg to watch my Hokies. |
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
November 2018
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