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. Judith Denherder brings us this week's beautiful inspiration. It was inspired by Louis Comfort Tiffany's stained glass window titled "Hibiscus and Parrots". She used the Nightfall Gradient as the background for her applique. You can see it in person at the 2020 AQS Daytona Beach Show.
For sharing, Judith 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. We are having a great time with our friends here from England. They will be here until the first week in February so I'm not stressing myself to actually get things done. But when Laura is sewing or they are out hanging out with other friends, I get in a little quilting or something. My next focus is on getting Groovy done. I'm loading it on the longarm today and will start quilting it this weekend. I'm going to use the same pantograph that I used on the first Groovy quilt. But I'm using a different batting. This quilt will be our summer quilt so the batting is a flannel sheet. It makes for a nice, lightweight quilt. There won't be any real definition in the quilted surface because it will be so flat but it will be perfectly comfortable in July and August.
We're also designing a quilt for Laura to make and once we have the pattern and colors settled I'll share it. I decided to start off the new year but finishing up the puppy quilt with the label. My plan was to give it to her today when she visits but that plan has changed a bit. I was visiting a quilt buddy yesterday and she asked if I was bringing the puppy quilt to show-and-tell. I had completely forgotten my obligation to show my quilts at club meetings first! My friend will have to wait a week or so before she receives her quilt, but she will get to see it today when she visits. I used to do very simple printed labels that I created in Powerpoint. They took less than an hour to design and print. Then my sister-in-law taught me to Zentangle and then I found Wild Gears and my label-making turned into one more hobby. You can see the labels that I've made in my Zentangle gallery. Anyway....Wild Gears has a set called Strange Shapes and it has a gear that looks like a dog bone and I had to use that as the base for the label for this quilt. I always start by practicing with different gears to pick the pattern that I want. I settled on the blue one. The next step is to print the wording. I generally spend way too much time here playing with fonts and searching for new fonts on the web. But, for once, I kept it simple. I keep the file open on my computer in case I mess up the drawing and have to print another. I was good this time and got the drawing right on the first try! No fancy pen here. This is my favorite black pen from Dollar General. The base gear is the dog bone and the traveling gear is a triangle. Usually I'd stop here but then I remembered that I might have a stamp I could add. I headed to the basement to search through the bins of stamping supplies. My memory is not totally shot. I did have a dog paw stamp! My ink pad is a little old but I just went back and inked in the print with a fine point Sharpie to get them totally black. Now I'm happy. The next step was to photocopy the label to pre-treated fabric. I use Bubble jet Set on Pimatex for my printable fabric. I usually prepare 2 yards or more at a time so I have a stack or printer sheets ready to go. I line my labels by fusing a piece of white fabric to the back and then turn the edges against the lining. That blocks the backing fabric color from showing through. This is ready to be stitched on today or tomorrow.
I had 4 goals for December: - Finish Groovy 2 - Finish Dog Gone Cute - Finish the sun print veterans quilts - Grout the backsplash mosaic I am thrilled that I completed 3 of the 4! I know that Groovy will get done in January because I'm about to get started quilting it. The rest of the month was spent getting my Christmas postcards done.
I started tracking my projects in 2016 and had 23 UFO projects at that time. It was pretty overwhelming. I'm much happier with a list of only 12 and that I reduced the list by another 6 this year. I don't ever expect the list to be zero but I'd love to see it under 8. That's doable if I can control new starts. Here's how I ended the year: Starting UFO 18 (15 in 2018) Finished YTD 15 Started YTD 9 Ending UFO 12 Veterans quilts made - 9 Veterans quilts quilted - 40 Fabric Postcards - 152 Pet Beds 12 Garment Placemats - Quilted for others - 4 The UFO list only includes quilts and mosaic. Veterans quilts, postcards, pet beds, placemats, etc are just bonus. It was a big year for bonus projects! Here's what's left on my UFO list: Second mosaic wall section - beaded curtain Pleiades II symmetry quilt Blue vintage flower applique - started June 2018 Loony Moony - started June 2018 1 Groovy quilt Kaleidoscope Block of the Week (Jackie's Choice) Postage Stamp Quilt (the oldest UFO) Vintage Flower appliqué (top finished in May 2018) Shibori dyeing series (need to decide if I'm doing anything with them) Flower appliqué on green wall hanging (need setting plan) Dark red screen printed fabric (in gold) for placemats Red leaf prints for wall hanging I'd love to say that I'm going to do all of these in 2020. It would only be 1 a month but I know that at least 4 of these are going to be intense quilting projects and I'm slow as molasses at custom quilting. But I can easily cut this list in half. I have 2 new projects planned already but I'll try to at least finish one before each start. For January my goals are: - quilt and bind Groovy 2 - make placemants with some flower applique blocks because they will never become a quilt - quilt 4 - 6 veterans quilts - load Jackie's Choice and start quilting |
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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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