Yesterday our marriage was tested when we decided that it was the perfect day to replace 2 fluorescent fixtures in the basement. Both had died, one spectacularly with flames when I put in a new bulb. We replaced them with LED fixtures. Of course it couldn't be done without one extra trip to the hardware store. But they are done and I have light in my exercise corner again. They kind of look like 2 idiots installed them but they are in and they work and it's an unfinished basement. Next I decided it was time to cut my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks. Since I am making 8 quilts I did 8 blocks of each. All 8 aren't necessarily the same fabrics. I'm using what I have. I even decided to "use what I have" for white fabric. I was going to set aside a bolt of white fabric but I have a bin of various white and white-on-white fabrics and I need to use them. There's no reason that the background can't be scrappy too. Now that these are cut, I'm pondering saving the sewing until we go to Maine in August. I have these arranged on boards that can easily be stacked and wrapped. We will be there for 4 weeks this summer and I like to take projects that are already cut. Last year I took veterans quilt kits. I'll spend some time thinking about that this week but it would be kind of cool to just have a bunch of blocks cut and ready to sew. I cut something else out of pink and I'll share it tomorrow if it sews up nice. You will NEVER guess what it is. While I was pulling fabrics I found this really cool one. It's vintage but not feedsack and it's awesome! I must finally use it for something. It needs to come out in public and be seen. Then it was back to the floor cloths. Here's the first motif. I have a 160 tooth base circle and I drew with a 60- toothed football shape. I had to go around multiple (maybe 4?) times skipping 5 spaces between each. I did one set of lines using the hole that's on the point (left) and one set with the hole on the side (right) Then I wanted to do a design in the center using the inside of the 160 circle. To make sure everything stays centered I first fit the outside template over the inside template and then I remove the inside template. I use lots of that artist tacky stuff to hold the templates in place. For the inside design I used a 72 tooth square and went around twice, once using the side hole and once using the hole on the point. A little coloring in and this one was done. Here's how that floor cloth is looking. The new design is at the top right. That photo reminded me to show you the gears that I used for the squiggle line. I've got loads of these shapes that I can put together any way I want. These are a lot of fun to work with. Here's the second design. I only got 2 designs done yesterday because both of these took a while. Planning, prep, drawing and cleanup took about an hour and a half for only 2 designs. The more they are layered with other designs the longer they take. I almost messed up and drew through the "top" design with this one. Here's how that floor cloth looks with the new design in the lower right corner of the photo.
They are coming along! I do love them. Well, I didn't make it to sewing with my quilt club. I started having some big allergic reaction Thursday and decided not to go because I didn't want to freak out anyone with my sneezes and sniffles. How do I know for sure it was allergies? Hives and abnormally low temperature (97.0). That's allergy. It was mostly cleared up by last night and it didn't keep me from being productive although there were a couple of Benedryl naps. The biggest accomplishment of the weekend was getting Mom's quilt quilted. The quilt was started by a friend who passed away a couple of years ago. It was supposed to be a Yellow Brick Road. After getting the whole quilt together she didn't like it. She took it apart and added the 3 sold borders and the coins border on the edge. It finished at 102" square and this is how it looks on a queen bed. The color in this photo isn't quite right. I love the backing fabric hat she picked but I had to add another few inches on one edge because the backing fabric was exactly the width of the quilt. I'm glad I don't have to bind it! I also got back to the floor cloths after more than a month away. I can only do this about an hour at a time because I'm so sensitive to the Sharpie fumes. I wear a respirator and run a fan but that only helps so much. It's just as well because crawling around on the floor isn't the most comfortable thing to do at 60. During this session I added the 2 small motifs on the left and added 2 squiggly motifs on the right. I have some elements that can be snapped together for different shapes and that's how these were done. In some future posts I'll try to remember to take some photos of the set up for some of the special shapes. Because there were good football games to watch this weekend I decided to finally tackle this mess. It's my dye binder with all of my recipes and it's become a huge mess. During the games I alternated between working on the book and doing some crochet. Once I get the book cleaned up it will save me a ton of time on Wednesdays. This chore should have been done 2 years ago.
The crochet blanket is over half done. My goals for this week are to work on Summer Sunset and the floor cloths. Yesterday was "dyeing day" so I didn't get much of anything else done. My cleaning lady came, halleluiah! She missed a time because she had covid (very mild). She did the requisite quarantine so I was very comfortable with her coming back. Plus she uses a lot of bleach products here so I doubt she could leave germs if she wanted. Chris and I did clean the day she missed and we aren't in a hurry to do it again. My allergies were crazy after that experience. Anyway, we spent some time catching up, she cut my hair (because she's also licensed for that too) and then I got to the dye studio. After dinner I did get a couple of rows quilted on Mom's quilt. Based on where I am I think this will take a total of 9 passes so 6 more to go. It's a really wide pantograph. From this photo you can get a better idea of what the quilt looks like. The quilt was started by a friend of hers who passed away a couple of years ago. It was supposed to be a Yellow Brick Road. Once Mom got it together she hated it. She decided to cut it up and add the 3 borders and I think it made a huge difference. It's going to basically be big enough to be a bedspread on her bed and it's going to look great in her bedroom. I want to finish quilting it by the weekend because I expect that I'll be picking up more veterans quilt tops at sewing this weekend. So, on to the real purpose of this post, to introduce my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. I've been following the RSC blog for several years and always considered starting a RSC quilt but nothing has ever really grabbed my attention. But while cleaning up the sewing room this weekend I got to pondering my modest collection of feedsack, vintage and repro fabric collection. I feel like it's time to do something with them. ![]() Then I remembered these star blocks. This is the very last of my Great-Grandmother Flora's UFO projects. You might remember this quilt that I made for my brother a couple of years ago. It's actually my childhood quilt made by Flora, recovered in her orphan blocks. It's really heavy, just like my brother likes. The only blocks left from her stash of stuff are the 8 stars. I started to play with them over 10 years ago and got one set in a white background and bordered with Broken Dishes blocks. Then I packed it away. I couldn't decided if I wanted multiple quilts or one big quilt. I've now decided that I will make 8 lap quilts and give them to members of my family so that everyone will have a piece of her work. This will be a multi-year project and I'll use the RSC project to make a bunch of 9" blocks to set around the stars. They may all be identical or I may make a couple of quilts at a time. For now I'm just going to make some blocks and see how it goes. You can see that she used whatever fabric that she had and I plan to do the same. I'll use mostly vintage and repro but I'll probably add in some plaids, solids and maybe some hand dyes. I will not be buying fabric. That's really the only rule. I've pulled a basket of pink fabrics for January. I'll pick a block from this book each month. ![]() Here's the first block. I plan to get some blocks cut out this weekend and sew them next week. I'll work on this as much as I have time. I'm not going to stress over it because I expect this to take a few years to complete. ![]() I'll play around with layouts but I expect that I'll end up with something simple like this but with different blocks and some sashing between blocks. We'll see how it goes. We had some really beautiful weather Saturday and we had a lovely walk in light jackets. The weather is what I love most about Virginia. July and August are mostly miserable with heat and humidity but we get some breaks of mild weather and, where I live, we don't get a lot of hurricane or tornado activity. September - December is generally very pleasant. January and February are cold, but like the summer, there are mild days that often get up to the 60's, like Saturday. The are great days for taking walks and catching up with the neighbors. March - June in Virginia is generally glorious. The rest of the weekend was pretty darned focused for me and I got lots of things done or started. I got an immediate start on veterans quilts. My goal every year is to quilt 40 of them. I only have 38 to go! I have several other longarmers in the group to help out now so we should be covered if they have another year of 100+ quilts. This one was made by Mom. She keeps trying to deal with her bin of squares but she doesn't seem to ever use them up. I'm not sure who did this one. I couldn't really see the pattern when it was on the quilting frame but once I hung it up and stood back I got it! That's quite a "wow" of a quilt. I have certainly gotten my money's worth on this pantograph. It's one of my 3 favorites to use on veterans quilts for obvious reasons. I had planned to load my postage stamp quilt next but I've decided to wait on my two custom quilts because I've given myself the gift of the Freehand Feather class with Betheanne Nemesch. I know that I want to feather both of those quilts so I'll concentrate on mostly veterans quilts for a couple of months. Next on the frame is this big quilt that Mom made. I think it's about 95" square. With both the busy front and back the quilting will never show on this quilt so it's getting a pantograph. I haven't checked in with a crochet update in a couple of weeks and I do have some things in progress. This blanket is my "car" blanket. This is the third blanket that I've made in this DC/chain combo pattern and it's easy to do in the car. I added a few rows last week when we went to Amherst VA for a hike with friends. In front of the TV I'm working on this blanket. I started it in Maine but quickly realized that I had not bought enough yarn. I bought more yarn so it's back in progress. The pattern is from Daisy Farm Crafts. It's front and back post double crochet and is easy to do once you are past the first few rows. The yarn is Bernat Baby Velvet and I really like working with it. The color is closer to this. It's kind of a seafoam green and it's sooooooo soft.
I love the patterns from Daisy Farm Crafts. They are so well written and the video tutorials are easy to follow. I other news I've decided to participate in the Rainbow Scrap challenge this year. I'll have a post about it later this week when I've gotten organized. I expect that I will start 2 projects this month and I'm cool with that. I'm so excited to have a new customer piece to start off the New Year. Sandi Schadt created this gem using the Bay of Campeche (replaced with Monterey Bay) Gradient and Algae Shades Pack. The dark end of the gradient is at the top and she used the lightest side of the gradient in the tree. Brilliant! Her piece was inspired by hand embroidery made by artist Laura WasIlowski.
For sharing, Sandi 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'm not much on annual goals or resolutions. But I'm pretty darned good at monthly goals. I like lists and goals but 12 months at a time is a little much for me. Several years ago, though, I had a big goal of reducing the number of unfinished projects. In 2015 I had 29 UFO projects and I was overwhelmed with it. I've slowly attacked the list and this year I finally got the list down under 10! I have a page for everything that I completed this year but this post is just about December and January. My goals for December were: - finish and mail 80 Christmas postcards - done - finish the floor cloths - didn't work on them at all because I was making coasters instead - make 3 Christmas gifts - done but can't share until January - start quilting my oldest UFO, the postage stamp quilt - this will wait until February to align with a feather quilting class that I'm going to take - return to working on Summer Sunset - made coasters instead From that summary it looks like I didn't accomplish anything in December but actually it was a really good month. I even knocked out 2 more veterans quilts yesterday to close our the month. ![]() Here are the quilts that I quilted yesterday. Clearly they were made by the same quilter and I think they are very striking. I used the Loose Leaf pantograph with King Tut thread. I picked a light denim blue for the backing. I think it goes well with the cheddar fabric. In December I also finished about half of the 80 Christmas postcards, quilted a quilt for Mom, made about 7 sets of coasters for gifts and finished a baby quilt.
I also finished a sample quilt for Paula Nadelstern and finished my best friend's Christmas gifts but all those things will have to be counted in January because I can't share them yet. That's going to make January look fantastic! Here are my final stats for 2020: Starting UFO 12(15 in 2018) Finished YTD 9 Started YTD 5 Ending UFO 8 Veterans quilts made - 15 Veterans quilts quilted - 41 Fabric Postcards - 109 Pet Beds 9 Garment Placemats - 12 Quilted for others - 4 Crochet projects - 14 COVID masks - approximately 180 Tea towels for WHEAT fundraiser - dozens! Mosaic pizza oven Coaster sets - 9 My UFO numbers will go up in January because I'm starting at least 1 new project. Here are my plans/goals for January: - finish the floor cloths - finally - work on Summer Sunset - start a quilt for my SIL - work on the Club Noir blocks (green) and make a decision about what I'm doing with them - quilt some veterans quilts - get back to fusing glass |
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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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