I didn't post yesterday because Wednesday I did absolutely nothing. I had an allergic reaction that started Tuesday night. I think it's undeclared dairy in some chocolate that I ate. It happens. It's a risk you take when you eat food prepared by others. I'm not angry about it. It happens to me once or twice a year and I get through it. It just takes lots of Benedryl and that means that Wednesday was a day of napping. That meant that Thursday became dyeing day because I wasn't capable of the simple math required for mixing dyes on Wednesday. Plus I was napping and that's not conducive to cutting and dyeing fabric. Nothing has gotten accomplished but I have plans and I'm totally recovered and ready for the weekend. Maybe not quite nothing has gotten accomplished. In the evenings I have started and been working on a new baby blanket. This is a single crochet gingham blanket from Daisy Farm Crafts. They have at least a dozen gingham patterns in a variety of stitches. They seem to have a thing for gingham and it's a good thing. It took me a few rows to get in the rhythm of the stitch with carrying a yarn along but now I can go at a pretty good pace. They have a new pattern for a velvet yarn throw that I'd really like to do. It looks like it would be fast and easy but it would be quite warm to work on so that will need to be a winter project. So one plan for the weekend will be to work on this in the evenings, like I normally do. Plan #2 is to make some progress toward getting Summer Sunset together. It's time to sew the background to the arcs and start getting this one together. Plan #3 is to quilt 2 veterans quilts. This is a twin pair so picking the pattern and thread will be easy. Stars and ribbons for sure. Plan #4 is to catchup on my Bethanne Nemesch class. Here's part of my practice from lesson 1. I did 2 of these. One is heirloom feathers (hump and bump) and this one is continuous feathers. I decided that my practice pieces can be placemats. I'm learning so much in this class. Lesson 2 was last weekend but I haven't had the opportunity to watch yet. We have a friend staying with us and he's having to remote work while he's here. Satellite internet doesn't like more than one person streaming at a time. He'll be leaving this weekend so I can catch up. Plan #5 is more shrubbery destruction. I asked my brother to sharpen my trimmers for me, which he did, but he loaned me this fine toy. By the time I'm done nothing will need trimming around here for a couple of years.
I'm so glad my brother lives closer now. He has a lot of great toys. I haven't done any sewing or quilting the past couple of days but I did get the taxes together and ready to deliver to the accountant so that's something. I did finish this blanket though. The yarn is Universal Yarns Major, a bulky 5 yarn. I've never worked with bulky yarn before but I'll use it again any time I need a blanket on a short deadline. This one worked up fast. The pattern is The Carissa Blanket and I cast on 70 stitches instead of the 53 indicated. It took 70 stitches to get the size indicated in the pattern. It finished about 29" square. There was a different border for the blanket and I wanted to do it but I knew I wouldn't have enough yarn with the 2 skeins that I purchased. I tried a different yarn (that you will see below) and it looked awful. I pulled out stitches to take the blanket back to a square and finished it off with a border of 3 hounds of half double crocket. I finished with just this little bit left. So then I had 2 skeins of this bulky yarn leftover and I decided to use it up on some hats. For this first one I used this pattern. It was easy to follow and the hat was easy to make. The yarn was easy to work with. the only change I made was to finish it off with a crab stitch edge to give the edge more stability than a row of double crochet. The patter has 2 rows of alternating post stitches. It's the green rows in this photo. You can't see them at all in this yarn so it was a big waste of time. For the second one I made the whole hat double crochet., also with the crab stitch edge. I'm really pleased with the way these turned out. They will be added to the donation pile. One skein was perfect for one hat. This is all the yarn that was leftover from the 2 hats. Next I'm starting a gingham blanket from Daisy Farm Crafts.
I believe that Reflections are the fabrics that are the most fun to make. I absolutely love making them and I need to plan a traditional quilt around them. I admit that I mostly design them for art quilters to use as nature elements like sky, water and land, but they will look great in traditional blocks as well. With my equipment I can only make 4 designs at a time which is really convenient for creating the display tile for publishing. In this set I've created a blue with streaks of gray for a moody sky. The green could represent fields or, at a close level, reeds and blades of grass. There's another Reflections in the shop that's darker green with dark browns that this would work well with. The dark purple could be moon reflections on a midnight sea. The pink/orange was the most challenging for me. I'm somewhat hardwired toward dark fabrics so it takes a lot of discipline to make a super light fabric. I've done lots of fabrics in these colors but this time I finally succeeded in making a subtle sunset (or sunrise) fabric. I'm patting myself on the back for this one for simply sticking to my pre-dyeing notes for the first time ever. I hope you enjoy these and that one will inspire a new project for you. If these don't meet your needs, check out all of the other Reflections. Fabric of the weekI don't know what things are like where you are, but we have had one heck of a gray winter and this past week feels like nothing but clouds and rain. I need some sunshine and today I'm relying on fabric for those rays. Sun Rays Stash Pack is the fabric of the week and is 20% off through Sunday.
Stash Packs have 10 fat eights of fabric in a range of colors in the theme. Stash Packs are great for stash building. Yellow is a color that many people avoid but we all need a little of it from time to time. This stash pack is a great way to get a lot of little bits of yellow to enhance your fabric stash. If you have sunshine where you are please send some to Virginia. |
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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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May 2024
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