Today's inspiration comes from Sue Kelly. She used the Woodlands Gradient as the background (and some of the leaves) of her art quilt. It perfectly captures one of her husband’s and her favorite hikes, Muddy Hollow Trail, at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. She completed this for a Paths challenge in my art quilt group, just in time for their 48th wedding anniversary in August.

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. 

I didn't post yesterday because I didn't accomplish anything except for the weekly fabric dyeing on Wednesday. I did a little bit of crochet Wednesday evening while I watch a lecture in a free online class I'm taking but that's about it. But I made up for all that yesterday.

It rained all day here so I had nothing to do but sew. I started by getting the next 4 blocks of my Summer Sunset quilt started. It doesn't look like much but that's over an hour's worth of work there!

But I spent most of the afternoon quilting on the flower quilt. It's now called Kim's Garden since I finally know who I'm making it for. I have 2 more rows of pink blocks plus the bottom border pink blocks to do and then I can start on the yellow blocks. The yellow ones will have a different fill pattern. The end is in sight on this one!

This is where I am on the current crochet project. I'm at a point where I need to decide if it's going to have a border or not. If not, it will be a rectangle shape. With a border it will be closer to square. If I do a border I will probably have the bright yellow as the center and use the orange and pink as the border. This shell stitch goes really fast.

Expect more of the same on Monday. These are my 3 projects for the weekend and, in my little world, the weekend starts today!.

I wasn't particularly productive Monday and yesterday. There seemed to be a lot of other things to do. I did get to spend a little time with my friend, Marcy, under the pretense of teaching her ruler work on the longarm. She didn't need the lesson but we had a fun visit.

In between I got the next star points done on both quilts. I've positioned them in reverse color order to see if I prefer one over the other. I don't have an opinion yet except that I'm really happy with the way it's looking. 

Today is dyeing day so you might not hear from me tomorrow because there may not be any progress on any of my projects.

Today's post is all about dark fabrics that are perfect for representing night or contrast in your projects. First up is a new Shades Pack.
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I introduced the Midnight Gradient (see below) a few months ago. This is absolutely my new favorite blue so I just had to make it into a Shades Pack too. This blue is so dark that I can custom dye more than 5 steps inf you need. This could easily go to 8 or 9 steps, like the Black Shades Pack. If you want more steps just send me a message and I can get it dyed for you.
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To celebrate the new Shades Pack I'm offering the inspiration fabric, Midnight Gradient, at 20% off this week! Midnight Gradient is on sale through Sunday or as long as supplies last.
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Continuing in the theme of darkness I have the Black and Gray Skies Gradients are back in stock this week. I'm working hard to get all the gradients back in stock that sold out in the August sale. Stocks should be back to normal by the end of September.

The Gray Skies Gradient is the light end of the Black Gradient. The darkest shade in Gray Skies is the middle shade of Black. These were dyed on the same day with the same dye lot so it's the rare time that the 2 fabrics perfectly match.

Jane Sleeva used Black and Gray Skies Gradients along with Blue Skies and Coppermine in her Perkins Quilt. The quilt was inspired by a painting by Philip Perkins. You can see the painting here.

I did not get as much done this weekend as I wanted. I found entirely too many distractions to waste time. But I did make progress on the next set of 4 Mardi Gras blocks. Four more pieces on each and these will be done.

I don't know what the final name of this quilt will be but, for sure, it will not be Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras just doesn't have any personal meaning to me. I might default to Summer Sunset because that's the name of the gradient that the palette comes from and for now I'm going to use that name going forward. At least it will have more relevance than Mardi Gras and will do until I get some inspiration for something better.

I'm hoping to get some better focus and discipline this week and actually make some serious progress on some projects!

The customer inspiration posts are back this week with this gem from Patricia Caldwell. Space 2 started as a leftover bit from a custom dyed piece and Patricia turned it into something special with the addition of other fabrics, fibers, tulle, beads and a lot of beautiful hand stitching.

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. ​

Remember way back in August when I started planning my next quilt? I've been wanting to make a quilt based on the Summer Sunset gradient (currently out of stock) for a long time and I've had Vector Quilts Mardi Gras pattern set aside for it for at least 2 years. Well, it's time has come!

TI do love foundation piecing a lot. I started working on this 2 weeks ago and I now have one star point done. This is pieced on leave-in foundation fabric. I haven't decided if I love it yet but I know I will love not having to remove a lot of papers!

For some brilliant reason, when I bought the pattern I thought it was a good idea to also buy the miniature version. What was I thinking?
Well, there are a lot of scrap fabrics from this quilt so why not.....

My plans for the weekend are to bind 2 veterans quilts, quilt more on the vintage flowers quilt and to work on another set of these blocks. I think I'll do them 4 at a time to try to keep my interest up.

I hope you have a great weekend. Mine will be peachy because I won't be watching any news!

Yesterday was dyeing day and all I had energy to do in the evening was to crochet so it seemed a good time to get my THREE crochet projects out for a review. Remember when it was going to be one project at a time? Well here we go with another hobby of unfinished projects.

​You knew it was only a matter of time, right?

First up is the car project. The drive to Maine is 16+ hours total  and I have to have a car project so I picked up the yarn at Michaels. I prefer working with a bigger yarn and hook in a moving vehicle.  I'll tell you now that this yarn easy to crochet with but I don't like it. Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn is softer. I might wash this after I finish to see if that softens it up some. But I'm going to keep going to use all the yarn so this will be more of a toddler size. I do not really like how the yarn looks but a white or pink border will help it tremendously.

I bought 2 skeins on the same day and didn't pay attention and you can see here that the second skein has a darker pink. Well we were in the middle of Pennsylvania and I didn't have anything else to work on so I just kept going. Hopefully the eventual recipient won't notice. I know that the people who receive our quilts mostly don't notice our quilting mistakes so I have some hope for this blanket.

The second WIP is this project. I started it in Maine after I finished another blanket. See how the pattern calls for 3 balls of yarn? I bought 4 "just in case".

Well I finished the first ball and had the sudden realization that 4 balls wasn't going to cut it! I went back to do some research and discovered that this yarn comes in different yardage balls depending on the seller. I'll go to Michaels tomorrow to see if they have more in this color. If not I'll probably by some ivory or white to blend in with it. I've also heard complaints about how this yarn behaves after washing so I might just wash this sample first and make sure that it comes through that process OK. Has anyone else worked with this stuff and have and advice?

So, I put that aside and started this little blanket using the shell stitch and my other favorite yarn, Mandala. There shouldn't be any surprise with this one. We're contemplating another short trip in October so I'll save the big blanket for that (or another) car ride.
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Like many of you, I'm still doing lots of research COVID. Honestly, most of my research now is on immune system strengthening, instead of COVID, and that brings me to today's recommendation.

This video from DrBeen Medical Lectures, discusses the latest research on Vitamin D and COVID. He's done a great job of consolidating all of the current information on vitamin D in this one lecture and it's really worth watching.

All of DRBeen's lectures are really good and worth investing some time on his YouTube channel. Another really good one is this interview with Dr. Zelenko. He's a GP in Brooklyn who was one of the earliest primary care physicians treating COVID and he had great success. He talks about the protocol in detail and the backlash he received for sharing his successful treatment program. If you think COCID hasn't been totally politicized you might feel otherwise after watching these videos.
Here's a link to Dr. Zelenko's prophylaxis protocol. It will look a lot like the MATH+ protocol that I shared a few weeks ago.

(This was supposed to post Wednesday. It didn't so I'm catching up.)
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Last night was our quilt club meeting so I've tried to spend most of my time since coming home quilting veterans quilts. I quilted 4 and 2 of them are for other members.

Betsy made this one. She has been very motivated lately making lots of veterans quilt tops. This was a great way to use string blocks.

I quilted it with the star and ribbon pantograph with red thread. Red is Betsy's favorite color!

Becky made this one. Some guy who loves hunting or nature is going to love this quilt.

The pantograph for this one is Woven Wind. I think it fits well with the idea of blowing snow.

These are the two of mine that got quilted. It's the first 2 of the 6 that I made last month. I'll photograph them once I get the binding done. I have one more to quilt and then I'll get back to the flower quilt. I'm out of quilt backing for the veterans quilts so I'm on a forced hiatus until I order and dye more backing fabric. I'll make myself finish the flower quilt before I get to quilt more veterans quilts. The veterans quilts are so satisfying!

Today is dyeing day and there's LOTS to do to catch up on orders. If I'm lucky I'll get some crochet in tonight.

(This was supposed to post Tuesday. It didn't so I'm catching up.)
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I can't believe that it's been a month since I posted shop news or sent out a newsletter. How appropriate that the news this week is about new Reflections fabrics because it reminds me of my favorite photo from vacation.

This moon rise photo was taken August 28 and is the best photo that I took over the whole 3 weeks! It reminds me of my Midnight Gradient. That mountain on the left (Beech Mountain) was one of the trails that we hiked on this trip. it was our second time hiking that mountain. 

​But you are here for fabric news so let's get to it.
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Inspired by my vacation photo, I've selected Egyptian Blue as the fabric of the week. It's set of 5 fat quarters for a total of 1.25 yards. This fabric is being discontinued so it will be on sale until it's sold out and then it's gone forever. Get yours before it disappears!
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This week I have 4 new Reflections fabrics in the shop. These are such great fabrics for landscape elements. You can see all the available Reflections in the shop.