Here are the quilts that I mentioned yesterday that Mom made for our veterans quilt project.

My Mom has a huge bin of 2.5" squares that she's been making quilts from and that's where these quilts started. The blue fabric on the outside came to use from a friend. She and her husband have been clearing out his Mom's house. They send the sewing stuff to me. Lots of it was garbage but there was fabric that I'm using for dog beds and there was probably 5 yards of this blue. There's enough for a 3rd quilt that we are going to make to send to the MIL.

Gosh, I love a scrap quilt!

They are quilted with a stars and ribbon pantograph on this blue hand dyed backing.

​Next I'll quilt the Grandmother's Choice quilt and then I'll be back to veterans quilts.

So, I forgot to post yesterday! But I have an excuse. Tuesday morning right in the middle of printing shipping labels my printer died. I spent much of the day trying every hack I could find on the web to fix it but after several hours of work I had to give in a declare my 10 year old Canon dead. I give it credit, it lasted 3 times longer than any of the 3 previous HP printers.

So I went to pick up Mom for our quilt club meeting and decided to go buy a printer on the way back to my house.  All I'll say about that unfulfilling expedition is this. Local stores bemoan the fact that we prefer online shopping. Well if they want to fix that they need to think about their products and our needs a little better. A printer is something that always breaks at an inconvenient time and people usually need one right away. So if I were an electronics store I'd have those babies right up front and I'd make sure that some members of the staff actually knew something about them!

Our program Tuesday night was about our resolutions for 2020. I don't make resolutions but I occasionally make an attempt to clean up my language. I'm married to a sailor and sailors are nothing compared to restaurant workers. I picked my bad habit up from all of the years of waiting tables. I always fail to clean up my act but I do try. It's a good thing I didn't make that resolution  this year because my Mom can tell you that printer shopping would have broken that one into a million pieces.

I finally just called Canon and asked them which printer replaced the MX870 that I had loved. I need a rear tray that holds more than 1 piece of paper so I can feed in fabric sheets. I also need and ADF scanner and the ability to reduce and enlarge from the copier.

This is what I came home with and I spent yesterday morning setting it up before heading to the dye studio for the afternoon. The one cool new feature is that I can now print from my phone. 

Now I'll get on to what I wanted to accomplish yesterday and that was to do some planning for projects over the next few weeks.

First up, veterans quilts! I stopped taking tops in October so the Country School Quilters have been building up a quilt top inventory. There were 8 more than this stack! Other longarmers took 8 and I brought home this stack. I had a few already so I think I have about 14 to quilt over the next couple of months in between other projects. First I have 2 that Mom made and then....

I'm going to quilt this old UFO. Anyone remember Barbara Brackman's Grandmother's Choice? I made 2 and after they were done I realized that I had made one for each of my Grandmother's. I finished the first one, Lura's Choice, and this one has languished mostly because I don't like what I did with the borders and can't come up with a quilting plan.

Last month my uncle died and I've decided to finish this and take it to my cousin at the memorial service in 2 weeks. It's going to get a swirly pantograph so I can get it done in time and I hope she will like it and use it.

Then I decided that I'm going to do something with these. I appliqued these blocks a LONG time ago. My friend, Becky, and another guild member, Dot Holloway, taught me how to applique and I practiced on these blocks. Originally I thought I'd make a quilt from these but I'm not at all inspired by them. Well, you know what that means. Placemats!

I had put aside all of the fabrics that I used in the applique so I'm cutting then into strips to frame these blocks. 

I do have a new project I want to start soon but I'll wait until Ian and Laura go home. We are easily sharing my sewing room now but if I pull out my symmetry fabrics for the next project things could get rough in here! These projects will keep me busy enough and I always have quilting time in the basement.

If you like the Gradient fabrics then this is your week! All of the news this week is about Gradients.

I don't consider my self an art quilter but I still like using Gradients for all of the color variation I can get in one fabric. This Hunter's Star uses a gradient with a couple of solids. It's the Gradient fabric that really makes this quilt sing.
​

The fabric of the week this week is the Coleus Gradient. It's 20 % off through Sunday.

One of my favorite things made with this gradient is Daylily made by Becky Brown. This isn't a quilt, it's a collage that's mounted on a stretcher frame. Aside from the bright yellow, every piece of this is from the gradient!

Laura and I had a fun and productive couple of days at sewing this weekend. She worked on her Stack and Whack turtles quilt. I apologize for these bad photos. I took the with my cellphone at the center and the lighting there doesn't work so well with cameras. You'll have to pretend that the colors look good.

I worked on my Hunter's Star veterans quilt. I got all of the half blocks together and was going to lay them out for the quilt. But since it's scrappy I thought I might be able to shortcut that part. Each fabric makes pieces for 4 blocks. I separated the pieces into 8 stacks with one of each fabric in every stack.

Then I sorted the light stacks on the right side so that I can pair them up with the dark stacks and know that I won't get any duplicates. After all of the blocks are made I should be able to just work straight through the 4 stack to pull the blocks without laying them out. 

I got the first stack of blocks together before we packed up for the weekend. This quilt will be done next month and I absolutely love it. The "white" isn't white. It's actually a nice pale gray.
This project is packed away until next month but I'll need to get another cut and ready before then.
I actually have a couple piles of fabric for veterans quilts and I'm working on ideas for them. I'll share that later this week after I have time to do some cutting.

This week I'm also starting to work on another very old UFO! Maybe I'll have one more finish for January.

This week's inspiration comes from Chery Breadley. A Grand Morning was inspired by her photo from a visit to the Grand Canyon. It's collaged fabrics on a  custom dyed gradient background. 

For sharing, Chery 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. ​

The first 2 veterans quilts of 2020 are all done, except for binding. Someone in quilt club will volunteer to bind them.

I tried to be bold with the quilting to bring all the dark lines in the African fabrics into the solid squares with navy blue thread.I wasn't sure at first but I like it!

I took a clue from the orange fabrics in the tops and picked a pale orange for the back. The navy blue thread and quilting pattern really shows here and I love it. I'm glad that we have a wide variety of quilt styles to deliver to our doctors and nurses. They uses these quilts to help people who are having difficulty processing their upcoming treatment plans. With such a variety of quilts they have the opportunity to really personalize the quilts to the recipients.

I'm still wandering around a bit trying to figure out what to do next. I don't want to get out something new until we get Laura's projects cut and underway. One new project mess at a time is enough. So instead of starting a new project it seemed a good time to be in the basement and get a start in this year's allowance of veterans quilts. I try to quilt 40 a year. Sometimes I do more, sometimes I do less. Last year was a more year and after hearing what these quilts mean to the nurses and doctors at the VA I'm motivated to have another "more" year.

I'm starting with 2 quilts made by my blog friend, Patty. She made a lot of these 16-patch quilts last year and generously sent 2 to me for our veterans quilt project.

I pondered a long time about what thread to use. Eventually I decided to take my lead from the dark lines in the African prints and bring those into the solid fabrics. We'll see how this will look.....I'm not ripping it out. That's rule #1 with veterans quilts. I make a decision and carry it through.

It's going to be bold on the back too!
​These should be done by the end of today.

Meanwhile, upstairs Laura decided that she wanted to make a Stack and Whack quilt and that meant a call to Mom for a private class.

Here's the fabric she picked. She and Mom spent an afternoon cutting pieces so she can start sewing this weekend at Country School sewing days.

She's playing with the layouts of blocks in anticipation of sewing. Today shes going to iron a pile of veterans quilt backs for me that I dyed this week! :D

Tomorrow we go to sewing. She will work on her S&W and I'll get back to this Hunter's Star veterans quilt. 

It's my first finish of 2020!

The binding is on and the quilt has been washed. Aside from the label, Groovy II is done! We love this quilt and it's going to be a great summer quilt for our bed. You can read more about it and see the ice dyed back in the Gallery.

With this quilt finished I'm feeling a little lost with nothing to do. I've been dyeing more veterans quilt backings and Laura started a new Stack-and-Whack project under Mom's tutelage yesterday. I forgot to take some photos but will snap a few to post tomorrow. But I need to find a new project. I think I'm going to try to attack another UFO and design a few veterans quilts before I start something new. We need to get both of Laura's new projects cut out before I start spreading one of my new projects out. It already looks like a bomb exploded in here......although we did try to neaten things a little for the cleaner today.

Most of you know that I mix all of my own colors. It was the exercise if mixing all pure dye colors with each other that was the foundation of my little business. I've recently added 2 new pure colors to my palette so I'll be making lots of new Shades and Gradients in the coming months. To make room I'm being ruthless in clearing out some of my order colors.

I'm staring off the New Year with a lot of new Clearance fabrics that includes these Gradients and Shades! They are all marked 25% off and they are only around while supplies last. Once they are gone they will be permanently discontinued. 

Daybreak Gradient is a relatively new one and quite popular. If you've been waiting for it, it's now back in stock!

We had another great weekend with our friends visiting. Ian and I took a city hike Thursday night that was about 4.7 miles with almost 900 steps! It was quite a workout and had some great views of Richmond. We found the hike through a local hiking meetup group. We had a visit from our friend's dogs Friday, a party Saturday and 4 football games. It was a busy weekend. We always have a lot of fun when Laura and Ian visit.

But I did get in a bit of quilting time while Laura was knitting and I finished quilting Groovy. I'm glad I decided to do a simple pantograph so it wouldn't take a ton of work or, more importantly, thought.

Here are 3 of my favorite blocks and, if you click on one, you can see the pantograph design. We all love this quilt I look forward to using it this summer once. But I have to get the binding and label done first. The binding is my task for today.

Meanwhile, Laura and I have been working in EQ to design a quilt for her newly-redecorated bedroom. This is the design we settled on. The center is from an old book called Shadow Quilts. The fabrics have been dyed and we are just waiting on finishing the processing to get started.

But she has another quilt project too! Mom is coming over tomorrow to teach her Stack-N-Whack. We bought fabric for that this weekend too. One was a turquoise batik and it's been soaking 48 hours so far to get it to stop bleeding. Turquoise always bleeds at least 48 - 72 hours. She might start this one later this week. The SNW will probably be her first priority.

​For me, priority is binding.