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April was a very interesting reading month. I seemed to have been plagued by some bad narrators. With audiobooks the narrator is key and ruined several of these for me.  Power Down by Ben Coes This is the 1st book in a series featuring Dewey Andreas, a former Delta Force member. As this book opens he is managing an off shore oil rig that is attacked by terrorists. It's only one of many targets and Dewey is working to find the culprits. As I think back it was a pretty good story. LOTS of action but also a good dose of absurdities. What really ruined the book for me was the narrator. He couldn't really do different voices very well so his solution was to give them strong accents. The head of the FBI is Mexican, an NSA chief is Irish and, best of all, an interrogator is German....but they are all American. The main character always sounds angry and the rest of the narration is in a tone like he's telling a secret. Incredibly annoying. The next book in this series has a different narrator so I'll likely give it a try.  Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson This is another 1st in a series terrorist/spy novel. I liked it much better than Power Down. In this one John Wells is "the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda. Since before the attacks in 2001, Wells has been hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, biding his time, building his cover." The CIA isn't sure if he's still friendly or has crossed. The narrator on this one, Dean Robertson, is much better too.  The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell Reviews compare Ian Caldwell to Dan Brown. I suppose that's because of the subject matter. This book is a story built around the Shroud of Turin. "In 2004, as Pope John Paul II's reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome." It's an interesting story with believable characters and a mostly plausible story line. I read the DaVinci Code and several other Dan Brown books and I'm not a fan of his writing. Ian Caldwell is a much better writer developing deeper characters and a more plausible story plot. I'll read Ian Caldwell again. I've read 2 Dan Brown books and that was my limit with him.  The Ghost War by Alex Berenson It's rare that I read 2 books in a series in the same month and I'm not sure how it happened this month. But I thoroughly enjoyed another adventure with John Wells. This time there's a mole in the CIA and China threatening attacks on the US. This is a sequel to The Faithful Spy. This one was narrated by one of my favorite narrators: George Guidall. He's outstanding.  The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer April was a month of big accomplishments for me including this website and finishing 2/3 of the great playroom wall. I can also count finishing all 26 1/2 hours of this book. My history education in Bassett, VA in the mid-1970's leaves much to be desired and my interest in it was zero. I'm much more interested in history now and enjoy reading history books. This one is a comprehensive history of the ancient world (East and West) until the Fall of the Roman Empire. Now I could listen to John Lee read the telephone book and he kept me going through this but it was a lot to slog through. It was interesting but I think this would be a better book to read with access to maps, timelines and maybe Wikipedia. I don't retain chronological history well and that's what this is. It's thorough but requires a lot of concentration. I made it through and I don't regret reading it but this one will not have wide appeal.  The Kill Switch James Rollins and Grant Blackwood James Rollins writes the Sigma Force series. I read the first one, Sandstorm, and didn't love it because there was too much of a fantasy element. This one is the first in the Tucker Wayne series. Tucker is ex Sigma Force and travels with a well trained Belgian Sheppard. His assignment is to extract a pharmaceutical researcher from Russia. Of course it's not simple. He and Kane end up on a long adventure to save the world from a weaponized pathogen. This book was a nice break after the History of the Ancient World! It's not the best mystery book I've read but it was interesting enough to try the next one in the series.  The Plantagenents By Dan Jones I read another Dan Jones book, The War of the Roses, in January. I enjoyed it and was looking forward to this one. As long as audiobooks have been out and as polular as they are, there's no excuse for poor narration but that's exactly what we have here. After 4 house of listening to Clive Chafer I decided that I did not need to suffer through a bad book and gave up.  The Silent Girls
by Eric Rickstad At least I finished the month on a relative "up" note. I usually only buy books over 10 hours but this was a bargain book so I gave it a try. Frank Rath is a private investigator. He raised his niece after his sister was murdered 17 years ago. Now the murderer is up for parole, his daughter is in college and there are young girls missing. It was a good story with good characters and it left off begging for a sequel! When I moved the old blog content to this new site I got to read through some of my older tutorials. A few of them weren't nearly as clear as then needed to be. One of those was my tutorial on centering a quilt back on the longarm. I used the QOV quilt this week to take all new photos and completely rewrite it. If you are a longarm quilter I hope you will find this technique useful. Just so I don't leave you without photos. Here are the 2 quilts that forced me to figure out how to do this. You can read all about these special quilts here. These photos of the backs were taken after the quilts were quilted and bound.
If you are in need of a custom dyed quilt back I can dye one for you in any color combination or pattern.
 It's done! I officially have 2 finishes for April. It may look familiar because I made my Shaken, Not Stirred quilt with the same pattern last year. My quilt club helped by making most of the blocks.  I'll admit that my favorite part is the spiral ice dyed back. I like making the tie dyed backs and then centering them on the longarm. If I get my act together I'll have an updated tutorial tomorrow for how I do that. If you want to see more details of this quilt check it out here.
If you need a custom dyed quilt back for your quilt contact me. I can make them in any color combination. I spent all day yesterday grouting my mosaic wall and I should be sharing photos of that today. But I was too tired to take and edit photos. Instead I'll catch you up on our bird boxes. For new visitors, we have 3 bluebird nest boxes on our property and have been "hosting" bird families since 2008. We mostly get Eastern Bluebirds which makes sense since the boxes are designed for Eastern Bluebirds. But we have also hosted Tree Swallows, Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees. Some years are great years and some not so great but that's how nature works. We also have a Carolina Wren nest in our propane tank every year and an Eastern Phoebe that nests at the top of one of our gutters.  The Eastern Bluebirds are nesting in box 1, the most popular box. Six eggs is a large clutch for our birds. We usually have 5. These should start hatching later this week or weekend.  Box 3 has either a Chickadee nest or a Titmouse nest. We aren't sure but think it's a Titmouse. There's a Mockingbird that hangs out near this nest and sometimes runs the nesting birds off. Hopefully these will get to stay.
Tomorrow I'll have the mosaic update. Today I'm cleaning up the huge mess that is the basement. Before I get into my quilting weekend I want to try to help anyone who hasn't gotten the blog to work in your blog reader. If you have Bloglovin' you have to search for the blog by searching "Colorways By Vicki Welsh" If you are using any other reader you need to use the URL on the RSS feed : http://www.colorwaysbyvicki.com/1/feed I hope that helps anyone still having ussues. It's amazing how much free time I seem to have now that the website is done! I took full advantage of it this weekend. On Friday I quilted some veteran's quilts and Saturday I quilted my Quilt of Valor.
Then a miracle happened. I dyed a spiral quilt back form my QOV on Wednesday and got the quilt quilted on Saturday! All I have to do is the binding and this one is done and ready to deliver to a QOV rep.
Is it possible that I will have 2 finishes for April?  It's ridiculous that it took me 3 years to make these pillow shams for the guest room but I'm glad to have had a quick project to work on this week while I finish up work on the website. Even with piecing curves and inserting zippers in the back these could have been done in one afternoon.....3 years ago.  They were needed because the pillows kind of stuck out on the bed. I know why I procrastinated. I couldn't settle on a design. I was making them much more complex than they needed to be. In the end I just followed the name of the color palette - Red Sunset. The quilt is double sided. You can see the other side and more photos of the bed and headboard on the Gallery Page.  I even took an extra 10 minutes to change threads for top stitching the flange in place. I prefer flanges to ruffles. They are easier and I'm just not a ruffle kind of girl.  I had a small panic this week with the quilt. The mattress that I bought for this bed is REALLY firm. Too firm. So I bought a foam topper to help out. I completely forgot about the size of the quilt. I made it to tuck under the mattress as you can see on the Gallery Page. Fortunately the topper wasn't a half inch thicker!  The fabric also matches our red recliners so I recovered my chair pillow so it would match better.
At least I have 1 thing off the UFO list for April!  My brother, Tim, sent me a photo of the Cathedral Window quilt in it's new home. It's perfect on this antique bed! I asked him to let Lulu model the quilt because she was the first to "admire" it when I gave it to him. I laid it on the sofa and she immediately jumped on it and settled into a little quilt nest.
I'm so glad that the quilt has found a perfect home and hopefully the grandchildren will enjoy sleeping under it. If you missed the Cathedral Window drama you can read all about the background of this quilt on my Cathedral Window page. In website news, I am sooooo close! I have about 60 more products to load and then I'll be ready for you to visit.
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 I'm getting pretty burned out with website building so I had to take a break yesterday and the wall was calling my attention the loudest. I had one section left to do before I can grout this side of the wall. I wanted some more yellow in this area and I immediately thought of a sunflower. I had found plates in the 3 shades of gold when I was thrifting in Newport News in February and they were perfect for this. The "seeds" are glass florist beads. Becky gave me bags of them and they really come in handy. I paint the back of them the color I need and I have custom elements for the wall. The touch of pink in the background was perfect to finish it off.
Now I just need for this little spell of cold weather to pass so I can open the windows and grout. The grout contains VOCs and I'm highly sensitive to them so I have to wear a respirator and need really good ventilation to clear the air. It will probably take me 5 3-hour sessions to do all the grouting so it will take several days. I'm trying to decide if I want to risk loading a quilt and having it exposed while I'm grouting. I cover the machine with sheets when I grout but I'm still kind of messy and prone to large spills. Maybe some sewing in the sewing room is in order instead. |
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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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