 A New Day by Patricia Caldwell, 30" x 30" Today's inspiration comes courtesy of Patricia Caldwell. "Life has its ups and downs and that is why my appliquéd circles in each square are not quite centered. I quilted a large sun with expanding rays that show a new day is on the horizon. Added Crystal Chrysocolla Beads" She used the Lakeside Gradient along with other hand dyed scraps.  A New Day by Patricia Caldwell, detail She was kind enough to share a couple of detail photos so that we could see her quilting and embellishments.  A New Day by Patricia Caldwell, detail For sharing, Patricia 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.
What a great book month! Aside from one book that I DNFed early, I enjoyed all of them. I'm back to reading some good non-fiction this month with 2 entries. What good books have you read this month? DNF: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin - I enjoy Rick Rubin's podcast but this book bored me quickly.  Last Words By Michael Koryta, Read By Robert Petkoff Marcus Novak works for a non-profit legal firm that defends death row inmates that they think are innocent. Marcus has had difficulties since his wife was murdered and it has not been solved. He's been resorting to some not-so-legal means to get at the killer. To get him out of sight for a while, his boss sends him to Indiana to assess a cold case that doesn't fit the organization's profile. He thinks it's a waste of time. Ten years ago Sarah martin disappeared in a vast underground cave system among rural farmland in Indiana. Days later, an experienced caver emerged with her lifeless body. Ridley Barnes has no memory of finding her and he's not sure if he's the one who killed her. That's why he wrote to Novak's organization for help. I enjoy all of Koryta's books and this was no exception. At one point there was a scene in the cave that actually made me feel claustrophobic. I had to stop the book for a bit and get my bearings before continuing. That's a sign of pretty good writing, in my opinion!  Daughter of Australia By Harmony Verna, Read By Brigid Lohrey This story unfolds in 1898 in Western Australia. A young girl is found in the desert by a miner and she's barely alive. She's given the name Lenora and is sent to an orphanage run by a kind priest. She's mute but eventually forms a bond with another orphan, James, and comes out of her shell. Eventually she is adopted by a very wealthy family from the United States. Leonora never forgets Australia and she makes a painful "deal" to return one day and eventually reconnects with James. This book is a mix between family saga and romance. I usually don't like romance novels but this one has more depth than a typical romance novel. It's a really beautiful story and the characters were believable and well developed. I enjoyed it.  The Paper Daughters of China By Heather B. Moore, Read By Nancy Wu This was a very interesting historical fiction account of Donaldine Cameron and her time running the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in San Francisco. Around the turn of the 20th century there was a active slave trade for young Chinese girls in California, especially San Francisco. Donaldine was a well known as a champion for these slave girls and was instrumental in ending the practice. At the age of 27, in 1897, she became the superintendent of the Presbyterian-run home. She worked with Tien Fuh Wu who was rescued as a young girl and worked tireless her whole life at the home. It's a very interesting story and a very important one.  Half Broke Horses By Jeannette Walls, Read By Jeannette Walls When working the primary election earlier this month we had a lot of down time and chatted quite a bit about books. This is one that was recommended by one of my co-workers. This author's most well-known book is The Glass Castle about her own life with her wandering parents. My coworker recommended both but suggested that I start with this one as it's about her grandmother. It's a novel but it's based on the true story of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, who lived a touch but vibrant and very independent life. She was raised on a ranch where she had a talent for breaking horses but she left home at 15 to begin a teaching career. She goes from West Texas to Chicago to Arizona, unknowingly marries a man who already has a wife and kids, is a crack poker player, sells prohibition liquor and loves teaching. She's a fascinating woman and the author is the perfect narrator for this wonderful tale. I wish I could meet Lily.  The Return By Michael Gruber, Read By Jonathan Davis Richard Marder has received a medical death notice and he decides to leave is comfortable life and do something totally out of character. He's going to Mexico to avenge the murder of his long-dead wife's parents. Due to a very savvy investment, he has enough money to do anything. Along the way his Vietnam veterans friend, Patrick Skelly decides to join him. They served together along the Ho Chi Minh Trail doing some very unpleasant assignments that changed both men forever. Richard's daughter, an engineer, has figured out that her dad is up to something out of character and she sets out to find out where he is. What follows is an action packed roller coaster of a story as Marder tries to fight the local drug lords.  Clean By James Hamblin, Read By Barrett Leddy This is an interesting book. It was published in 2020 but I feel that the information in it is up to date. It covers the history of hygiene habits, skin cleansers and skin care products. The chapters on the ineffectiveness and toxicity of skin care products was worth it alone. The last chapters were about current research on the skin microbiome and was very interesting and we are already seeing some of the fruits of this research in the marketplace. It's not a long book and I learned a lot.  The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel
By Douglas Brunt, Read By Scott Brick I always prefer my history lessons to come from reading biographies. For some reason, I absorb the timelines better. The book that got me hooked on biographies was The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Rise and Fall of New York. It is the history of the development of New York City in the life of one man. This book had a similar impact on me. I learned more about World War I from this book than in any book or history class previous. On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel was one of the most famous men in the world. His engines had become the standard engine for ships and trains. It was the eve of the start of the war and Diesel was on a steamship between Brussels and England when he disappeared from the ship. Eleven days later a body was found by fishermen and several items belonging to Diesel were recovered. The body was released into the water. This book tells the story of Diesel's life, the development of his engine technology and the story of other developments that were happening concurrently, especially once the war effort was gearing up. One interesting part of the story is how the Diesel engine threatened the businesses of John D. Rockefeller. The ending of the book explores, in depth, the possible outcomes of Diesel's disappearance. It was a good read to finish off the month. Well, my trip to Nebraska was canceled! I was going to Lincoln to meet my friend who was driving in from Colorado. Then I was going to travel with her back to Virginia. Then a big storm came through the West and she can't leave Colorado yet. We'll have to do a road trip in her campervan another time. So I'm back to cutting veterans quilt kits. My order of patriotic fabrics (on sale) came in and I got started with 4 kits. The kit on the left has 2 quilts in it.  I have a lot more fabric to cut!
Today I'll get back to doing some dyeing and I hope to also get some time to do some longarming. By Monday I'd like to have 4 more veterans quilts quilted. Then I'll have 2 more to get done before the next meeting.  When we go to Maine in the summer I like to have a "big" project to work on and I like to kit it up ahead of the trip. That's where I worked on the Red Sunset quilt. Last year I did some veterans quilts but I wanted something different for this year. I love Elizabeth Hartman patterns and this one looked fun. I think it might eventually used as a fundraiser quilt for a local organization. I dyed some blue fabric for the background because I'm really tired of gray. I decided to pull the fabrics for the blocks this week and see if I needed anything else. I'm posting the groups here just so I can have it documented somewhere for when I start cutting the pieces.  The strawberries.  The horses  The cows  The pigs  The sheep  The chickens  The goats  The bees  The sunflowers
Now that I've seen them against the blue I am thinking that I might want to have a lighter blue. What do you think?  Our friends from England are still here and we had a lovely weekend with lots of great food. I got away for a few hours Saturday to take a class in fly tying. It was so much fun and the instructor is a true master of fly tying. He's an Iraq War veteran who has had a fascinating life. He got into fly fishing through a program he was invited to join to help with his PTSD. That was 15 years ago and he's been an avid fly fisherman since. There were 4 of us in class and we each made these 4 flies. The top one is called the Chernobyl ant, the fluffy one is the Bunny Leech, the tiny one is an ant and the pink one is the San Juan worm. I was right in my assumption that sewists would be good at this craft.  In the sewing room I decided to finish putting this veterans quilt top together. I started it at quilt club last month and I had the blocks all together already. I hadn't been longarming for a while. All that quilting I did in January and February was a little too much on my neck so I've had to take it easy for a while. It's the process and posture of quilting pantographs that did me in.  I decided that I was ready to load a new pair of quilts and quilt them from the front in short sessions. Usually I quilt overall patterns but this one (which is bright lime green) really inspired me to have a little fun. It's still pretty fast quilting. It should be done in a couple of days.
All of the patriotic fabrics that I ordered came in and I've soaked them to remove any bleeding dye so I might get back to cutting some veterans quilt kits before I leave for a little trip Thursday.  We've had another couple of good days here with our friends. Wednesday we took advantage of the last sunny day for a few days. We went to Charlottesville to hike Ragged Mountain which is a nice 6 mile hike around the city reservoir. It was windy but a beautiful day.  Laura has been doing some sewing for her grandson. His parents are chefs and he's likes being in the kitchen so she made him an apron. Then she made him a drawstring bag and pouch for his car collections.  While she's been sewing I worked on more veterans quilt kits. These are the leftover blocks from the big blue bowtie quilt.  I decided to do something like this. I had plenty fo blue scraps left to cut out pieces for more blocks.  Here are all of the pieces cut and ready to sew together for this quilt and there are still some fabrics left over. I think I'll still need binding but I might just cut a scrappy binding.  There's a stack of blue strings and I think there are enough for a string quilt like the one in this post.  I cut the foundations and I had this orange/yellow fabric in my stash that I thought would be good for the center strip of the blocks.
I got the notice today that the patriotic fabrics that I ordered should be in Monday. I'll be ready to start on them when I get back from my road trip. I leave Thursday to meet my friend in Lincoln, NE and ride back to Virginia with her in her van. It should be a fun trip. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get 4 veterans quilts quilted before I leave and today I'm taking a fly tying class and that should be fun.  In 2021 I made this quilt for my SIL. I had a ton of fabric left over from it and I found that stash this week. It seemed a prime candidate for a masculine veterans quilt. I liked this quilt when I made it in 2020. I made a couple of versions and decided that it was a good pattern for these fabrics too. The enters will be different prints. The dark brown and ivory fabrics will be the outside edges of the block. There was even more of the fabric left over!  I made this Crossroads quilt in 2015 and it was the perfect patter for the rest of the batik scraps. So I have 2 more veterans quilt kits ready! Then I went to the basement and finished quilting Anne's quilt.  This quilt is about 60" square and I think it was a kit. The fabrics are all the same print but in different colorways. It's a nice effect.  The backing is a hand dyed that I've had in my stash for years.  The quilting doesn't show at all on the front but it does show nicely on the back. It's a pantograph called Spin and this is the first time I've used it.
Today we are going to Charlottesville to hike Ragged Mountain. It's a 6 mile hike around the reservoir. We did it last year and it was a lot of fun. Next I'll get back to some veterans quilts.  We are having a great time with our guests. So far we've stayed close to home because they mostly wanted to relax and recover from their jet lag. Ian has been doing some yard work with us and we've been taking 5 mile walks. (Ian loves doing yard work. I'm really not a horrible host.) Laura has been doing some crochet and sewing and I've been making veterans quilt kits. The first one another version of this quilt. I loved it when I made it last year and am ready to do another. This was cut quickly on the Go! Cutter.  The next quilt is from an idea I got from Cynthia Brunz. She coordinates a ton of charity quilts and I get some great ideas from her. My centers are scrap pieces from the last batch of patriotic veterans quilts that I made and the background is an assortment of blue hand dyed quilt back scraps from a lot of veterans quilts that I quilted in the past year or so. I think this one is going to look pretty cool.
The third kit is a double 4-patch block. I've made this one several times. This one will reverse the dark and light positioning and it's going to have a border. The tan and light green are also quilt backing scraps. I didn't have enough of those fabrics to do blocks for the whole quilt so I found a stripe fabric to make a 4" border.  Then I found a stack of large tumblers and cut more so I'd have enough for a 48" x 60" quilt. I'll put this together and if it needs some calming down I'll cut it apart and insert some sort of inner border. These are already labeled in rows ready for stitching. That weird piece of green fabric that looks to me flying in from the right is actually on a table.  When I go through my scraps to cut them up I tend to cut 4" HST pieces and I cut enough to make another quilt like the one in the paper. I think I made that one about 12 years ago. It was a pretty pretty quilt and I'm ready to tackle another.  Next I pulled these fabrics from my Nadelstern stash and I had great plans but just as I was typing here I realized that my plan will not work. I think I have a good idea for a replacement fabric for the sashing so I'll work on that, and some other kits, this week.
Last night we had a friend over for dinner. Today we are going to visit my Mom and my brother and then doing a little shopping and we have a hiking excursion planned for Wednesday.  Yesterday was dyeing day so I didn't get much else done except for quilting 2 rows on this quilt. The quilting doesn't show at all from the front.  But my friend will be able to see it on her quilt from the back. This a pantograph called Spin that I've never used before. It's quite dense and uses a bobbin every 2 rows but I think it's going to look really good on the back.  I picked up 12 more veterans quilt tops at the quilt club meeting Tuesday night so Brenda and I will now be lacking things to quilt this month! I also dyed the backing for the big blue quilt so I'll be ready to quilt that one soon too.
Our friends from England arrive this evening so it's possible that I will not post again until Monday. Activity on the blog is likely to be sparse the next few weeks while we are hanging out with them.  I honestly haven't accomplished a lot the past couple of days. We were offered a FREE truckload of firewood so I've been arranging the various woodpiles and adding the new wood. We are almost fully stocked for next winter. We will pick up one more truckload from the same friend and that should finish it off. I did have some time yesterday afternoon to put the binding on the Tucson placemats. I made 2 sets of placemats from some fabric that I bought in Tucson and I used almost every inch of it making 2 sets of 4 placemats.  I bought one large scale print, the yellowish stripe and 2 small scale prints. The two small scale prints did not work together so I decided to make 2 sets. One we will keep and one for our friends who invited us to Tucson. They aren't really my style because I rarely work with commercial printed fabric but they do bring up good memories.  I found these peachy colored dyed napkins in my stash that work great with this set.  The second set have the blooming cactus print and this set has the better quality center images. I cut them out first.  I have solid black napkins to go with this set and these are the ones that will be gifted to our friends when we go to Tucson next January. I have one more set of placemats that need binding but I have to find fabric for those.  I'm also starting to think about putting some veterans quilt kits together. These are all of the cutoffs of backing fabric for veterans quilts that I've quilted so I'm going to try to use these in some of the kits. While I'm waiting for the patriotic fabric to arrive I can start making some kits with my bins of hand dyed scraps and symmetry fabrics.
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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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