 Mt. Diablo: Pollinator Paradise by GQCCC, 51" x 57" It was very exciting for me to find out that a Quilt Guild had used mostly my fabrics for their 2023 Opportunity Quilt!
I copied this information from their website but you should go there to see lots of detail photos: The 2023 Opportunity Quilt team of seven created flower blocks using raw edge machine embroidery applique. Each member took a sketch of their flower drawn by Valerie Sauban and went to task to create their applique piece as true to life as possible, sometimes creating and recreating their block to get the perfect color hue and shade and shape to depict each flower radiantly. Once assembled Jackie Seidell free-motion machine quilted the quilt. The quilt will be raffled off at our 2023 Quilt Show, Sunday, April 16th, at 3:30 pm. People can request tickets here https://www.gqcccquiltshow.org/2023-ticket-request/ Tickets are $1 for 1, $5 for 6 and $10 for 15. Need not be present to win. I posted this post a day early to give you a chance to get in a order for tickets if you are interested. For sharing, GQCCC will receive a 20% coupon for one of their special projects! 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.  Yesterday I got the binding stitched to the front of the weeding quilt and now I'm doing the hand stitching. I decided to hand stitch this binding since it's a wedding gift. The wedding isn't until June so I can work on it a little each day. When I get near the end of a project I start to get excited about starting something. Often that's multiple somethings. This weekend I'm starting quilting and crochet projects I think.  Since we are going to Paducah in 2 weekends I don't want to start anything really involved. I hope to get inspired there for a new "big" project. I'm thinking that I'd like to do a new foundation pieced project. Meanwhile I'm going to focus on a couple of simple projects. First is Groovy 3. I'm thinking I'll dye purple for the sashing of this one.  This weekend I think I'm going to cut a bunch of light gray HSTs to sew with these. I don't have a set plan yet, I'm just going to cut and sew. There might be a big quilt in here or there might be a veterans quilt or two. Who knows. It will be fun to do whatever it becomes. Where the startitis is really kicking in is on the crochet front.  I have 2 projects underway. One is this t-shirt top. I've been holding back on it because I'm worried that it's not going to fit. I had to have a little chat with myself and remind myself that sometimes we have to make a pattern a couple of times to get it right and it's OK if I end up unwinding all of this. I'll try it on in a couple more rows to get an idea. If it fits I just have a lot of boring linen stitch ahead of me. That would make it a good travel project for Paducah.  I also have the Moogly CAL blocks underway. This will be block 11. These blocks are kind of hard so I can't work on them non-stop. I do a couple and them put it away for a week. I've got no plans for these blocks so I'm in no hurry. But I really want to start a new blanket. I pulled out 2 options.
You might remember this blanket that I made in December for Chris. I liked it and the yarn so much that I bought yarn to make a blanket for each of my 3 brothers. I want to get started on a new one but I'm a little worried that I might get hot working on it. That thought led me to think about a baby blanket.  Option 2 is this yarn that I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby last summer. I saw a very pretty baby blanket pattern on YouTube and worked up a little swatch to test 2 different hook sizes. This one would also be a good travel project. The pattern is mindless once you get going. Actually, aside from the Moogly blocks, all of these projects are mostly mindless, just how I like my crochet.
I like bot of these projects and I've decided to go for it and start both. I'll work on whatever project moves me at the time. I've got lots of options of things to do this weekend!  Things have been really busy around here so far this week. I've spread a couple truckloads of mulch, we had quilt club meeting, I have a ton of dyeing to do and lots of other random things. But I did get to the basement and get the wedding quilt quilted! The goal is to get it bound this weekend and then I jsut have to make a label.  The only other thing I've done is getting a chemo hat made. I started this at the club meeting Tuesday and finished it when I got home. I love working with the Lion Brand Feels Like Butta yarn for these hats. It makes them soooo soft. The pattern is the Amazing Grace hat and I love it.
 Wheelchair Blanket, 38x46 Back in February I finished this wheelchair blanket using corner-to-corner. I had almost 3 skeins of the yarn leftover that I wanted to use up in another wheelchair blanket. I got the yarn (Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn) on clearance at Hobby Lobby last year and I think this color/pattern is good for masculine blankets. I wanted to use the rest to make a second blanket.  I knew I needed more yarn and, based on the last blanket, I estimated that I needed the equivalent of one more skein. I had 3 balls of Dollar Tree Just Yarn (which is really Premier Basix* and is a very good yarn). I decided to add a border to each end with 5 rows of black, 5 rows of print and 3 more rows of black. This black is Black Tweed.  I got near the middle of the blanket and realized that I wasn't going to have enough yarn. I wasn't going to take it apart so I just added a black band in the middle. I didn't have any more black tweed so I had to use plain black.  The drama wasn't over! I got to the other end and ran out of print yarn on the row before the border was supposed to start. I had some solid gray that I was going to use but remembered that I had some 3 weight yarn left over from a baby blanket. I held one gray strand and one white strand together to finish off the blanket. This turned out to be a true scrap blanket but from a little distance it doesn't actually look like a scrap blanket.  Here it is folded up and all of the different yarns look fine together. I can't say that this was the result of bad math. This was actually the result of no math! I just started hooking and addressed the problems as I encountered each one.
* FYI Dollar Tree Just Yarn is the same as Premier Basix and it's less expensive to buy Basix on a per yard basis. The Dollar Tree version is great if you only need a small amount of a color like for Amigurumi.  New! Zinnia Stash Pack I am not a gardener. I enjoy weeding and spreading mulch for the exercise and that's about it. I do love gardens and think they are beautiful, especially when someone else is doing the work. I especially love gardens full of bright flowers. For big bursts of colors you can't beat a flower bed full of Zinnias. A Zinnia seed packet was my inspiration for this new Stash Pack. Each Stash Pack has 10 fat eighths of fabrics in a variety of color combinations and color texture. I love them for scrappy style quilts but I think most people use them for elements in art quilts. You can use them any way you want!
The Stash pack has 5 streaky fabrics and 5 mottled fabric. Here are larger views of 6 of the fabrics. There are so many possibilities for fussy cutting applique or landscape elements. Fabric of the Week Imperial Dragon is 20% off through Sunday! It's a short newsletter this week because I only have the one new fabric. Most of my energy lately has been absorbed with custom dyed orders. I love doing custom orders and am always happy to discuss your fabric dreams with you.
This week's Fabric of the Week is the Imperial Dragon Gradient. I chose this one to stay with the color story of Zinnia. Imperial Dragon is 20% off through Sunday. I didn't realize it until I uploaded these photos but everything I worked on this weekend was blue and gray!  hand dyed fabric vicki welsh The biggest accomplishment of the weekend was getting these two quilt tops put together while I was sewing with Country School Quilters on Friday and Saturday. Before I went I laid out the strips for the border on my design wall. I had them organized and ready to sew on Friday. I got all the strippy borders together Friday and Sewed the three borders to the panels Saturday. I made two of these quilts a couple of years ago and I'm glad I found more of the panel to make 2 more. I like this one a lot. I probably won't quilt these until May.  Back at home I got the backing sewing together for the wedding quilt and got it loaded on the longarm. This photo was taken before I finished basting. As of this morning I've started quilting and want to get this one wrapped up this week.
Aside from my normal dyeing schedule, I don't have a lot of external commitments this week so maybe I can get al lot of thigs done!  Art quilt by Barbara Grandon This week's inspiration comes from Barbara Grandon. She made her art quilt using the Kashmir Gradient (similar to Marrakesh). She made this in an online class with Rachel Derstine.
For sharing, Barbara 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 didn't post yesterday because I didn't have anything fiberlicious to share. Wednesday was "dyeing day" and I had a ton to do. By the time I finished I was too tired to do anything else. But yesterday I was back in action. We have our monthly sewing days at Country School Quilters this weekend so I wanted to get 2 veterans quilts quilted to deliver back for binding.  This quilt was made by Peg and I think she did it as part of one of Barbara Brackman's quilt-alongs.  I love doing the wavy crosshatch on any quilt that has a grid. I can quilt a quilt this size (48 x 60) in less than an hour and a half with this motif.  This one was made by my Mom. It was a kit left by a friend who passed away a few years ago. She doesn't love it but I like it a lot. It was nice to get two green/purple quilts that I could pair up on one green backing.  I quilted this one with a free form Baptist fan-ish motif. This one is really fast too and I love the texture it creates. This is the green backing that I dyed for these quilts. The thread is purple on top and bottom. Next up to quilt is the Antelope Canyon quilt. Now for my special treat!  My friend Becky hand appliques and hand quilts her quilts but we baste them on the longarm to prepare them for loading on her hand quilting frame. She brought over this beauty yesterday morning for basting. Isn't it spectacular? I just love it.
I love the opportunity to see any of her quilts up close. She adds in so many little surprises with fussy cutting her applique elements. What a treat!
Now that I have my sewing room back again and and the Antelope Canyon quilt nearing it's end, I need to think about my next projects. I don't like that feeling of being lost without several projects underway! The past couple of days I spent some time pondering what's next.  I have the Antelope Canyon quilt to quilt along with a few veterans quilts. But once those are done I'll be working on this wall hanging for my nephew. All of the piecing will be done on the longarm and I have plenty of time to get it done by the May 20 deadline. That's when I'll see him at the family beach week. I think this one is going to be fun to make. I have these ice dyed blocks that I've made over a couple of years and I'm feeling like a new Groovy quilt would be a fun new project. I'm thinking of doing one with one of the bigger Crystal fabrics as the center and use these blocks around it. This week I also prepared a veterans quilt kit to work on this weekend at sewing with Country School Quilters. The 2 new quilts are basically a copy of the quilt featured in this post. I bought 2 more of the same panel because I liked this quilt so much.  Then I think I will work on some ideas to use all of these scraps that I cut up in February. I've started playing around in EQ to see if I can come up with some ideas for the HST triangles. I doubt if I'll use any of these but I'll keep playing until I come up with something.
At least now, I have some things to work on.  Crayon Box Stash pack is back! There's one fabric pack that is my absolute favorite and it's Crayon Box. It's taken me a couple of week but I finally have it back in stock for you!
This pack is based on the Color Wheel fabrics with an extra twist. There are 20 fabrics in this set of fat eighths (2.5 yards total). There are 10 streaky fabrics, one in each Color Wheel color. The other 10 fabrics are mottled and combine adjacent colors. For example, there's one that's half Yellow and half Yellow-Red. Another is a Green/Blue Green combo. There's one mottled fabric for every adjacent pair on the Color Wheel. This pack is not included in the Basics permanent sale price but that's simply because it's much more involved to produce. But for $45 you get 20 different fabrics!  The Color Wheel fabrics are a set of Stash Packs and Shades Packs based on the 10-step Munsell Color System. I have 3 Stash packs based on this system. Each has 10 fabrics, one in each color step of the system. There are three packs: one is "full strength", one is medium value and one is light value. This week The Color Wheel Light is back in stock! You can see all of the Color Wheel fabrics in the shop. I've made several projects with the Color Wheel fabrics but the Rainbow Quilt (tutorial at the link) is one of my favorites. I made this in three sizes (king, lap and baby) but the time I was done with the fabrics. Fabric of the Week Oasis Gradient is 20% off through Sunday!  Humpback Whale by Ann Jensen The Oasis Gradient is one that is loosely based on the Color Wheel colors. This week it's 20% off through Sunday!
Ann Jensen used the Oasis Gradient in her Humpback Whale pillow cover. |
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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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