 Beach Walk is 25% off this week! I'm desperate for some warm weather around here but, at the moment, all I can do is dream about warm weather and a trip to the beach. So I'm dreaming with the Beach Walk Gradient. If you want some for your stash get it before it sells out. Through Sunday (or while supplies last) this fabric is 25% off or $6.75/half yard. Woodlands is Back in Stock! Woodlands Gradient Woodlands gradient is back in stock! This is the gradient that Rene Iannarelli used in her Fall Marsh quilt (below).   I'm having mixed emotions about working on this project right now. On the one hand I'm excited to see the top finished. (Notice I didn't say I'm excited to see the QUILT finished. I'm a realist.) But on the other hand I really enjoy working on it and I'll be sorry not to have it around, especially because I don't really have another project ready to go for handwork.  But the first hand is winning out and I'm moving right along with the 4th border and with 3 blossoms done I'm officially 75% done with the border stitching!
It surprises me that I still enjoy this stitching. I do have another entire set of blossoms, all in blues so I suppose I could start that when this one is done.  Pillow by Donaleen Kohn You'll remember Donaleen's work from her cool fireplace screen. She's back this time with a cool pillow made with a variety of fabrics, including many from the Red Alert Stash pack.
If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. In appreciation you will receive a 20% shop coupon that's good for 3 months!  My friend, Patty the Quilt Lady, has made several veterans quilt tops for us over the years and she gifted us with two more this year! If you want to see them in their full glory you can see them on her blog here and here.  I also dyed 4 new quilt backs for veterans quilts and Patty's quilts will work perfectly with the medium blue at the bottom. Each one of these quilt backs serves 2 quilts. If I ever finish Lost My Marbles I'll be able to load and quilt these!  But that's not all! Patty also send me a big collection of keys! Now you may be wondering why someone would want a bunch of keys that no longer unlock anything. Well, just think for a few moments while I untape these.  Did you figure it out?
What we have here is the focus of my next sun printing session! You know, I'm really big on decluttering and even have yard sale and thrift store piles being built right now. But I'll never get rid of my "trash". This is a lot more valuable to me than the plates that are going into the yard sale next month. We're all like that, right? More marbles quilted this week!  Divided into 6 segments and used the tip of 3 ovals in each segment. The circle finished off the edge.  10 segments, skip 4 places using 2 rulers.  21 segments, skip 5 places using 1 ruler  8 segments, using 1 ruler in each segment. This one was a pleasant surprise!  15 segments, 1 ruler for the inside skipping 7 segments, another ruler for the edge  12 segments, skip 5 with 1 ruler for the outside and 1 ruler for the inside skipping 5. This one shows the difference you get stitching on the outside of the ruler foot vs the inside of the ruler foot. I'm sure as time goes on I'll have plenty of duplicates. I'm not working very hard to avoid duplication. I'm just trying to try different things and I'm having fun and that's all that matters!
Everyone goes through change phases in life and my family is in the middle of one of those change phases right now. For the last 11 years my Mom and her sister have lived together in a town about 2 hours from me and it's worked great. It's been especially nice for my Mom the past 4 years because her granddaughter has been at college in the same town. But Alana is graduating and Mom has spent a lot of time here with eye doctor visits the past year so we all agreed that it's time for her to move to Richmond. That means it's time for my Aunt to move near her daughter in Florida. My Mom, who always views every change as an adventure is excited about her move. My Aunt, not so much! I thought it might help a little to have a greeting waiting for her when she arrives at her new home so I got busy Friday night to make a card that should be there when she gets "home" today.  I wasn't going to spent hours this so I set some parameters to fabrics from my bin of pre-fused fabrics and I wasn't going to do any stenciling or anything else that would have a lot of prep or cleanup time. You know that I like to give myself boxes to work in! Anyway, first I needed a theme and went to Google for a list of state "things" of Florida and settled on the flower: an orange blossom. Thank you Google Images for this feast of reference photos.  I'm lick that I have a BIG bin of pre-fused fabric. So I cut some leaves, orange circles and white petals and started playing around with arrangements.  I went with the light blue background because I had a card already fused with it! Then I decided on one orange and one blossom.  I start from the back to add the elements so the leave were fused and stitched first.  Next was the orange.  Then the blossom.  Then I fused on the back and stitched the edges. But it still needed a little something.  A little puff paint was just the right finish! Hopefully it will make it to Florida on time and in good shape.
I rarely make a single card but this time it was just right.  Eggplant = 20% off this week! The fabric of the week this week is the Eggplant Shades Pack and it's on sale 20% off through Sunday! Shades Packs are dyed when ordered so there's no limit to what you can buy. If you order multiple quantities it comes as one cut. For example, order 2 quantities for 1/2 yard cuts. Orders received by Wednesday morning (EST) will be shipped by March 19. Orders placed after Wednesday morning will be shipped March 26. Gradients Back in Stock!It was a busy couple of weeks for the most popular gradients. Not to worry, these gems are back in stock!  Red Sunset  This quilt by Rene Iannarelli uses the Red Sunset Gradient  Blue Sky Gradient  This quilt by Patricia Caldwell is made with the Blue Sky Gradient  Sundance Gradient  First Draft Pub in Denver used the Sundance gradient wrapped around frames for teh wall art in the restaurant.  Southwest Gradient  Gene Black used the Southwest Gradient for his horse silhouette.  I'm pretty focused these days on quilting Spirograph motifs and blanket stitch applique. But this weekend was the monthly sewing retreat with my quilt club. I was only able to go on Friday but made some great progress on Stars at Sea for just one day. It's hard to tell on the white design wall, but this is 2 sections.  You can see from the diagram that I've done the center and Section 1.  Doing all of the cutting and organizing ahead of time made it fun to just sit and start sewing.
This week should be more Spirograph and blanket stitch applique plus a couple of little projects. But first a detour to the eye doctor. I got a GIANT floater in my left eye last night. Fortunately I was able to talk to my doctor and he talked me off the ceiling but he still wants to check it out today. Seems like it's just going to be an annoyance for a few months. I'll take that over other alternatives!  If you follow my customer gallery you have seen David Armour's work before. All of his work is based on a mesmerizing crystal-like structure and he uses color and value to great effect. You can follow David on his Facebook page. David doesn't name his pieces so we'll just call this one Amazing. David combines fabrics from me, other dyers and some commercial fabrics. Here are a couple of detail shots.   If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. In appreciation you will receive a 20% shop coupon that's good for 3 months!
  Two weeks ago we had a great program at Country School Quilters with Lisa Loessel, one of the lead designers at Henry Glass fabrics, and the sister of one of our members. She generously gave us some great patriotic fabrics. I didn't want to hid these away int he stash so I decided to make some new placemats with some of them.  I'm not going to give a tutorial for these because I didn't take enough photos but I wanted to show you how I did the center wonky star. I wanted to do a stack and cut technique but I wasn't sure what size square I needed to start with so that I'd finish with a star big enough that I could trim to 11.5". I drew an 11" (finished size) square on paper and cut it apart. Then I spread the pieces out on my fabric allowing for generous seam allowance. That led me to cutting 14" squares to start with.  Then I cut the star out. I tried to make sure that my star points did not go to the edge of the fabric because I didn't want to end up trimming off points when I cut the block down to size.  They aren't going to set the world on fire from a design perspective but they are going to look just fine on my table for Memorial Day and July 4th.  This month at CSQ we are playing bingo and have to bring blocks to exchange for cards. I used the rest of my fabrics to make 6 blocks. These will be turned into veterans quilt tops that will eventually be returned to me to quilt.
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In Bloglovin you need to search "Colorways By Vicki Welsh" to find the blog. About Vicki
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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