First a little reminder:

But I'm not leaving the blog unattended. We're all due for another giveaway week! Be sure to visit the blog all 6 days starting August 27 for a great giveaway each day.

I'm officially caught up...until tomorrow. I know I'll get more tops at the meeting tomorrow night but I won't worry about those until September. Here are the last two for now.

This one was made by Estelle. I love the leafy focus fabric. She's been working really hard to make veterans quilts from her stash but I was in her studio last week and, like the rest of us, you can't tell that there's any fabric missing! 

Peg also makes most of her quilts from stash. But this one has an added twist. A few years ago Country School Quilters were gifted a lot of fabric to use to make veteran's quilts. We made well over 50 quilts with all that fabric. At the end there were a lot of browns left over. Becky cut a bunch of 1 or 2 yard lengths and handed them out as a challenge to use them with other fabric for veterans quilts. Peg dug into her stash of green and tan scraps for this quilt. The brown really makes the greens sparkle and, honestly, it doesn't look like a scrap quilt anymore.

​I love seeing how people use scraps to make stunning quilts. I quilted it with the same Burning Bush pantograph that I used last week.

David Armour is back this week with one of his intricately pieced fractured quilts. David uses a mix of hand dyed fabrics from several dyers. This quilt includes several Shades Packs and he uses them to great effect. You can follow David on his Facebook Page.
He has generously given us a few close up photos too.

My UK friends, Ian and Laura, are here to go on vacation with us next week. We are taking the sewing machine and some projects so Laura is busy planning her projects for the trip.

She was inspired by these pillows that Karen Jantzi made and decided to make some new pillow covers for her re-decorated lounge.

Of course she has great taste and was immediately attracted to the shibori bin. I think this will be a nice collection of pillows (or cushions, as she calls them). These are leftover pieces from all the moons that I cut out recently. I wasn't able to let go of the newest shibori pieces that I dyed last week. Looking through those gave me anxiety so I had to hold them out. My generosity only goes so far! Laura is a psychologist so she understood.

Meanwhile I've been ice dyeing more fabric for the October show! This batch has some large, 108" square, mandalas that I'm very excited about.

​Time to get back to washing out fabric. 

Our quilters don't make a lot of red and black quilts so I've had this one, that Betsy made, for a long time. It had to wait for another one in a similar palette so I could pair them on the same backing. 

Eventually this one came in and they were meant to be together. I decided on red thread which, for me, was a bold step on this quilt. But I thought it might be nice to bring red into the middle of the quilt to tie the border in better.

I think it was a good decision because I like the effect a lot!
​You can't see the quilting on the first one at all but that was going to be the case no matter what I decided to do.

But the red also looks great on this hand dyed gray backing fabric. I hope that both piecers will be happy.

Only 2 more to finish before Tuesday. But today is ice dyeing day so there will be no quilting today!

This is a reminder that my shipping and dyeing schedule for August is abbreviated.

Tomorrow is the last dyeing day of the month! If you need anything special dyed let me know today! This includes some Shades Packs.

​No shipping August 16 - September 3

Yesterday I got 7 bins of fabric prepared for ice dyeing tomorrow and got these lovelies ironed. They are ready to sell at the AQS show in October. I arranged them like this to humor myself but I thing this is how I should display them in the booth too.

If I'm talking about quilting efficiency you know for sure that I'm talking abut veterans quilts. Because when it comes to my own quilts I seem to prefer a more agonized, time-consuming approach. But, my goal with veterans quilts is "volume with quality". I want to get as many done as possible in the shortest time possible. I don't do them sloppy. The tension is good and I do consider the pattern for each quilt. But there are things I can do to be as efficient as possible.

I have 4 that I want to get done by Tuesday and that will get me caught up. I'm sure I'll get more tops at the meeting but, for now, I have only 4.

I finally remembered to take a photo with quilts loaded on the frame to show how I quilt them 2 at a time. The quilts are 48" x 60". We buy wide backing fabric and I cut it in about 70" widths. By loading the quilts along the long (60") edge I can stack 2 on one wide quilt back. In this photo you can see where the first quilt ends and the next begins. It may seem counter productive to bast the quilts but basting really does save a ton of time in the long run. I've tested it so I know.

Our quilt club buys the backing and batting and since I'm the one buying the backing I now only buy white so I can dye the colors I need as I need them. I also get to have a good use for "expired" dyes. The dyes aren't technically expired, but they aren't full strength either so I can't use them for my business. By using them for quilt backs I cut down on waste. I know someone will ask, I get the wide backing fabric at Marshall Dry Goods. It's called Dream Cotton.

I pair the quilts so that I have 2 to go with each backing and I try to use the same color of thread on both quilts.

The second quilt in this set is mostly gray and white but has a red border and I decided to carry the red into the center of the quilt with thread. The red also looks great on the back of the quilt.

I'm using the Burning Bush pantograph and with the quilts being loaded so close together I won't have to break up the last row of the first quilt. I'm going to quilt both as if it's one big quilt. Plus this is a very wide pantograph so there's fewer times to advance and align the quilt.
​
So, 2 quilts on one back, same thread on both quilts and same wide pantograph on both quilts.
Efficiency.

The other reason I picked that particular pantograph is that it will work great on the next 2 quilts too! I think I might get these knocked out by Monday.

Today I'm setting up for another epic ice dyeing session Thursday! It's the prep work that takes the longest.

I went to NYC this weekend with 3 other women to celebrate Lora's 5oth birthday. It was a quick trip but we had a great time. We didn't do a show. Instead we went to The Cutting Room for music Friday and The Flatiron Room for whisky and jazz Saturday. I was in heaven at the Flatiron.

Our hotel was in the perfect location in the garment district and only a few blocks from the Empire State Building. We had this view from a rooftop bar next to the hotel. Right around the corner was M&J Trims and across from the hotel was Gotham Quilts!

I'm happy to report that I didn't by anything because I didn't NEED anything. But it was fun to visit the shops.

But what I will talk about a bit, if you will indulge me, are the 2 museums that we visited.

The first stop was the Cooper Hewett, one of my favorite museums anywhere. They had a special exhibit of weavings from Richard Landis and they are AMAZING color studies. He weaves with thread! This is a bad photo. The camera didn't want to focus through the glass but you can see some of his work here and listen to a great interview here.

In the next room was my nirvana, an exhibit on color and color theory! I could have taken and shared dozens of photos but decided to focus on taking it all in. On the left is a page from the Munsell Color System, the system I use for my Color Wheel fabrics. On the right is a page from a very rare book with 2592 natural dye recipes. 

The next day we decided to check out the Morgan Library that was only a few blocks from the hotel. It was a wonderful surprise for all of us. There was an exhibit on dragons represented in historical texts. Some of the illuminated books are over 1200 years old. There's also a great exhibit on handwriting with hundreds of original handwriting documents and signatures from historical figures including political, controversial and artistic people. These aren't contemporaries. Some of the documents go back hundreds of years. It's an amazing collection.

The library was built by Pierpont Morgan to house is vast collection of books, art and other artifacts. These photos are from some of the rooms in the library. The building itself is a work of art. 

It was a fun trip but now it's time to get back to work. I have a goal of binding the baby quilt this week and quilting a couple of veterans quilts.

Sue Kelly made Sedimental Journey in an improv piecing class with Rosalie Dace. It's based on inpirationa photos of rock formations. She used fabrics from a Pebbles and Rocks Stash Pack, a Stars fabric along with other hand dyes, batiks and commercial fabrics. You can read mroe about this piece and Sue's other quilting projects on her blog.

For sharing, Sue 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.

Well that didn't take long! It's going to be a baby quilt so it gets a pantograph. I had one called Happy Times that I've never used before and decided to try it out on this one. It's a great beginner pantograph and I love the texture effect. 

Now to get on with binding but no this weekend. I'm off to NYC tomorrow with friends. We are celebrating my friend's 50th birthday. When I told my college roommate where I was going and why her response was "You hang out with a young crowd!"