 Play on Curves by Rachel Derstine, 36"T x 23"W Today's inspiration comes from Rachel Derstine. She is an artist and teacher in Philadelphia. She offers online classes that you can check out on her website. For this quilt she used Sugar Maple and Barrier Island gradients to create movement in the background and carried that movement forward in her piecing and quilting. You can read more about this quilt here and she shared several detail photos with us below. Click on any photo to see a larger image. For sharing, Rachel 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.
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are finally done!  There are only 14 in the photo. One of them decided to be a truant from the photo shoot. I'm really pleased that I got 15 caddies out of a pretty small stack of fabric. Now I just need to get them tagged and delivered along with 9 that I made in May. That's right, I haven't even delivered those yet! I don't intend to make any more anytime soon so I'll get these delivered soon along with some blankets and capes.  Each of the caddies has a big pocket on one side and a patch pocket on the other. I don't remember why I designed them this way but I hope it will work for people.  When I sew them I make sure to triple stitch every area that will get stress.  The ties are simply a 1" strip of fabric folded in thirds and zig-zagged over the raw edges. I think they will hold up just fine.  This is why I don't plan to make more anytime soon (or maybe ever). Home dec fabrics are treated with stuff that flakes off and I breathe and it enrages my sinuses. I expect my machine isn't all that happy either!  For anyone who cares, this is a rough drawing of the FINISHED measurements of my caddies. I accidentally cut off a 1 on the left side. It should read 13". Is this "right"? I really don't have any idea. My Mom used to work in a nursing home and she said they will generally take whatever they can get. The demand never ends.
This weekend I will work on the ornament storage and I will either load some veterans quilts for quilting or sew the binding on the postage stamp quilt to get it ready for hand sewing.  because yesterday was dyeing day and it was a busy one! 50 yards this week. Later today I will wash all of this out and start the 48 hour soaking process. Sunday is going to be a very busy ironing day!  I intended to sew last night but I was too tired. Instead I added another ball of yarn to this quilt. I only have 2 balls left to finish this one up so I'll probably focus on it the next couple of days and get it wound up. I hope this will be big enough to be a blanket for a dialysis patient. It's going to be a large lap size.
But today will be at the sewing machine with a break to go vote. I'm voting early because it's likely I'll not be assigned to my home precinct this time. I always prefer to vote on election day but I'm glad we now have early voting options.  I didn't accomplish much yesterday. I had my elections officer training in the morning, got my fabrics ready for today's dyeing and shopped an online yarn sale. If you are interested, Lion Brand has a lot of yarn 65% off. I put tons in my cart, left it for a few hours, researched some Youtube reviews of all of the yarns and later, removed everything except yarn for 4 donation blankets or shawls. I'm glad I got myself under control before I entered my credit card info but I also got a great deal on those 4 yarns. I think each project will cost about $15. That's not bad. After that I only got 2 more walker caddies made. You will notice that on all of my caddies the pocket fabrics are different. I do that on purpose so that the walker owner will be able to see the pockets easier.  Only 11 more to go! I do want these done so that I can get on with binding the postage stamp quilt. Plus late last night I was perusing my crochet books and saw a Christmas blanket. That reminded me that I haven't even thought about ideas for the Christmas cards this year. I've got to get crackin' on that very soon.
Maybe I can use my dyeing time today to come up with an idea or two. They are going to need to be very simple ideas this year for sure.  New Reflections!  This week I have new Reflections fabrics for you. I focused on blues and golds because those are your favorites!. The original inspiration for these for water and sky fabrics. But in the photo at left you can see a quilt my friend, Marcy George, is doing. She's using a Reflections fabric as a calming presence with the African print fabrics. This is destined to be a baby quilt. I just love the dark blue Reflections blended with these African fabrics. Reflections are sold as one yard cuts so that you can orient the fabric vertically or horizontally and have a full 36" square either way. Fabric of the week Awaken Gradient - 20% off through Sunday If the new Reflections don't meet your needs for your current project you might like the Awaken Gradient for a beautiful sunrise (or sunset) background. The Awaken Gradient is 20% off through Sunday.
 I don't have a lot to update today on the creative front. My college roommate and I decided this summer that we needed to go back to Virginia Tech for a football game and we decided to take out Moms with us. We left Friday, stayed in Roanoke (because hotel rates in Blacksburg on game weekend were insane) and drove into Blacksburg Saturday morning. We had a great time driving around to see our old apartment and dorm building and visiting other sites around campus. We had some light rain in the morning but you can see that the clouds moved out in time for kickoff at 3:30. Then the Hokies proceeded to get their butts kicked. That was no surprise but I was glad that we all got to experience Enter Sandman before kickoff. We had a late dinner back in Roanoke Saturday night and then home Sunday. I got home in time for NFL games at 1:00 and proceeded to put my feet up and relaxed the rest of the day.  I always take a travel project with me and I finished this Divine Hat in the hotel Friday night. I followed the instructions and used a J hook for the hat and H for the brim. It seems a little big so for the second one I'm going to use an I for the body and 7 for the brim. I made a shawl from this yarn last month and I like it a lot. It's possible that I can get 3 hats from this one ball. These will be hats for chemo patients. But after these are done I'll switch back to Feels Like Butta for the chemo hats. FLB is incredibly soft.  When I'm crocheting in front of the TV I switch between projects. Working on this blanket with the bulky yarn is really fast but I think it's harder on my hands. I only have 4 balls left and 1 ball only does 4 or 5 long rows. I figure this one has reached it's max length and I'll start doing short rows on both sides. I think this will finish to about 36 x 48. That's a fine lap size I think. It's incredibly warm and occasionally induces a hot flash.  That's when I switch to this lighter weight project. Yesterday I added the last 2 color sections. I think I got the second wide aqua section done just before I left Friday. I am liking the effect of the wide aqua sections and I think this will make a nice wheelchair blanket. I only have a few cakes of self striping yarn in my stash and that's good. I might be kind of over it for a while. After this I'm pretty sure the next blanket I make will be another gingham using 3 solid colors. Before I left I also finished another walker caddy. These are fast to sew and I have then set up at a machine so I can work on them in small bits of time. I'm going to try to get them finished and out of the way by the weekend. This one has one of the embroidery pieces as a patch pocket on one side and a large pocket on the other. The ties are positioned at the top of the big pocket to add more stability and support for the pockets.
For anyone wanting to make these I recommend just looking online for patterns. I don't really know if mine are right or not. I found a couple of online patterns and adjusted them for the fabric that I had.  Blue Vase in a Stone Window by Marcy George Today's inspiration is from Marcy George. She created this piece for a SAQA challenge and it has been exhibited in Charlottesville, VA. She included fabrics from a Stash Pack along with other commercial and hand dyed fabrics. She embellished with thread "waste" and vintage linens.
For sharing, Marcy 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 don't have anything to share for myself today but I do have a post to share with lots of quilt photos. Our county, Hanover in Virginia, has a new history museum and they were without an exhibit for 2 months. They came to us to ask if we could help them out. Three of our members worked very hard for 3 weeks and pulled together a great exhibit. If you live in central Virginia, here are the specifics: The museum is located at 7496 County Complex Rd, across from the Wickham Building in the Hanover County complex. Parking is in the main lot across the road from the museum. It's right next to the historic courthouse building. The museum hours are Tuesday - Friday noon - 4:00 and Saturday 10:00 - 2:00. The exhibit will run through December 12. Share the exhibit details with your friends and family and be sure to get by to see it! Here are photos from the exhibit. You can see the photos that I took at the exhibit on our quilt club blog. But I want to share these 2 photos of a historic quilt from our area.  This quilt is on loan from from Scotchtown, Patrick Henry's historic home. It's a spectacular quilt.  The hand-pieced hexagons are about 3/8" across. It's an amazing quilt.
Enjoy the rest of the photos at our quilt club blog.  Yesterday was a lovely day because I was finally able to sit down and do some sewing. I didn't have any dyeing scheduled because I'm going on a trip Friday and there wouldn't be time to process the fabrics. That meant a free day! First thing I wanted to do was to finish the next set of blocks for the Flora's Stars quilts. I really like this block pattern a lot. I don't know the block name but I'm going to have to remember it. I think it has a lot of possibilities.  I'm making 8 of each block, one for each of the 8 quilts and now this set is done. I gave 3 more sets cut out and ready to sew. Once those are done I'll stop and do a little planning and see where I want to go with this project.  Then I started on the stack of walker caddies that I cut out a couple of weeks ago. These are designed to hang over the top bar of the walker and tie to the side legs. There's one big pocket on one side and a smaller patch pocket on the other. Only 14 more to go!
I may not post tomorrow. Today I'm running a lot of errands, packing for the trip and we have company staying overnight so there might not be time. If not, I'll see you Monday. From an image point of view, this has to be the most boring post ever. There's a lot of white space in this post but we'll move on and see if I can answer all the questions I received on last week's post about making your own fusible batting tape. I think that the pre-packaged batting tape it wonderfully convenient but also insanely expensive. Depending on the number of pieces of batting, you could quickly go through $10 worth of tape to make one new batting. That's still less expensive than a new batt but making your own costs half as much. One question was about the kind of fusible I buy. I get a knit fusible because they fuse at lower temperatures. You do not want to press your batting with a super high heat iron. When Joann has their interfacings on sale half off you can't go wrong with Pellon Easy Knit. Pellon also has Fusi-Knit and that works fine too. Get whatever is least expensive.  For this little demo I'm using black and white batting so you can easily see the two pieces of batting. I start by overlapping the two batting edges a bit. I need to get these edges so that they will butt together flush.  Cut through both layers where they overlap and you will have a nice clean edge to fuse. The cut doesn't have to be perfectly straight. It can be slightly wavy. Pull out the two trimmed edges and add those to the "pet bed stuffing" bag.  The batting strips don't need to be any wider than 1.5". Feel both sides of the interfacing. The bumpy side is the glue side. Those are glue beads. Put that side against the batting. You will do this wrong at least once and then you will get to clean your iron. I set my iron on the Poly Blend setting and I leave the steam on. These knit interfacings don't need high heat. A high heat iron will melt the interfacing and your poly blend batting and then you can clean your iron again. Use very little pressure. Just let the steam do the work. Hold the iron over a section for 5 - 10 seconds and then move to the next section. When you hold the fused piece up you will quickly see any sections that need to be touched up.  That's all there is to it!  When I'm working on a big piece I just do it in sections. I cut and fuse whatever fits on the ironing board and make sure that the part that's hanging over has some overlap. Then I just roll up the fused section and finish if off.  Fifteen minutes of work and I had a whole new (free) batting for 2 more veterans quilts!  I need all the free batting I can get because my closet is full of veterans quilts to be quilted!  Then there are 2 rail fence quilts that I started at sewing this weekend. I'll get the strips pressed and cut this month and will get these tops put together next month.
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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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