 There was a lot going on this weekend. We had guests in the guest house for the first time since last June. These are some of our original Airbnb guests that we have come to think of as family. We hadn't seen them since 2019 so it was great to catch up. There are 6 kids (5 boys, 1 girl) in this family and I was proud of myself for getting all the names right! They come each year for a homeschool convention and the kids are all delightful. I'm so happy that they were back! It was also sewing days with Country School and I got these tops pieced. This was the last of the kits that I cut out a couple of years ago. This is all the leftovers. The light blue fabrics are cut from the hand dyed quilt backs that I do for the veterans quilts. They aren't spectacular quilts but I'll do some bold quilting on them and they will be very good comfort quilts.  I also got to revisit this old quilt before it heads off to a new home. I made this in 1999. It was my first foundation pieced quilt and it was made with charm squares that I collected through and exchange on AOL. Yes, it was that long ago! This quilt hung in our bedroom for years and years but it faded from the light exposure and I replaced it. A friend contacted me saying that he wanted something to use as a concert blanket and I thought this would be a great new life for this old quilt. It's going off to it's new home today.  About today....
It's supposed to be near 90 and it's a perfect day for sun printing. Two of my friends are coming over and we are going to do some sunprinting. I haven't done this in a couple of years but I'm excited to get back to it. We have dinner out tonight with friends so there may or may not be a newsletter this week.  Spring by Julie Griffiths, 14" x 19" Today's inspiration comes to us courtesy of Julie Griffiths. She was inspired by the works of Dena Crain and Rachel Derstine. She used Stash Packs and Shibori in her Spring-inspired art quilt.
For sharing, Julie 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. This is sewing weekend with my quilt club, Country School quilters. I generally work on veterans quilts so I thought I'd give a quick update on my current veterans projects.  Yesterday I shared my new sewing machine hack for piecing on my Brother machine and since then I got a lot of the HSTs done. This is all I have left to do before I start piecing blocks.  Here are the last of the kits that I have cut out. The one on the bottom will make 2 quilts. As I write this Thursday might I'm not sure which I'm going to work on this weekend but I should have at least one top ready by Monday.  This is the fabric that I bought in Paducah. It's been soaked and is ready to cut into more kits. I'll get started on that in the next week or so. There's got to be at least 8 quilts in there, especially when I combine it with some of my hand dyed stash.
For the time being I'll try to get a few more tops done in June.  In April I shared that I switched to the Microttex needles to help prevent fabric shoving down into the bobbin when I start stitching pieces. The needles helped a lot but it didn't eliminate it. What I needed was a straight stitch plate but I don't piece on this particular machine very much and didn't want to buy a straight stitch plate to use occasionally. Plus, I don't like those plates because inevitably I'll set the machine to zig zag and break a needle. I decided to see if I could hack my plate to be a straight stitch plate and it worked! I cut two tiny pieces of masking tape and placed them over the edges of the hole. It did require a tweezer to place them but it works perfectly. If I happen to switch to a zig zag stitch it will only break some tape and not my needle.  After I did that hack I pieced all of these sets and not one corner jammed into the bobbin.
Awesome. So I've started working on Groovy 3 a little. Mostly I'm just in the planning stage.  But first, I have this random photo of a shirt that I dyed last week. I picked up this shirt on vacation and dyed it in beachy colors. I love it! I have a sheet set that I want to dye and it will be done using a similar folding pattern but in a mandala format. I think it will be awesome.  Back to Groovy. I'm doing a medallion format for this one so the first thing I did was create a center in EQ so I could see what size I need to cut the center pieces. Next I ironed the new fabrics I sunprinted and did some layouts to see which ones I want to use.  I don't mind this center with the one on the loser right for the corner but I don't care for the two darker corners.  I love this center, I don't like the lower right corner and don't love the upper right one either. The boobs in the upper right stand out too much. The upper left corner isn't bad at all.  This is probably the best center choice and I'd probably pair it with the upper right corner. What do you think? Next I have to make a final decision and pick a sashing color so I can get it dyed next week.
Here's another fun surprise from my ice dyeing day. This was the fabric that I put under the dyeing tray to catch the drip through dye. I LOVE how this turned out and Chris loved it too. I'm thinking about what I want to do with it but one idea is to use it as sashing for a quilt made with scrappy blocks made form solid-ish hand dyed fabrics. Imagine a bunch of star blocks on this background. I think it would be cool and look kind of like a galaxy.
I'll try to work on this more this weekend after my Country School sewing days sessions.  We had a great weekend here in Virginia. I hope you also did where you are. Before I share some photos of our outdoor activities I'll share these two veterans quilts that I finished. I'm not a huge fan of working with panels but I admit that I see the appeal. They make quilting making really fast if you aren't too distressed about them not being perfectly square. In the end, I love how they turned out.  This one was harder to work with because of the landscape orientation. I was also running out of my stash of patriotic fabrics so my options for the top and bottom borders were limited. It turned out much better than I expected and I'm not al all hesitant to donate this one.  I quilted it with my current favorite and super-fast Woven Wind pantograph. I think this makes 6 veterans quilts for the year so far. Now I need to start cutting kits from the patriotic stash that I bought in Paducah. I only have 2 kits left from the previous stash to sew together and I'll get started on those this weekend.  We took advantage of the great weather on our little neighborhood lake. It's not a very big lake but it's close by and there's rarely anyone on it except for lots of birds, turtles and fish. Whenever we have to move we will both miss this quiet little lake. We have no plans to move anytime soon.  While I did my 2 laps around the lake Chris had some great success ad fishing Friday night. We went back last night for another peaceful hour.  One of my favorite things on the lake is this tree branch sticking out at one end. There is always a Cormorant perched on it. I never see any other Cormorants around, just the one.  This was sunset Friday night. The lake was perfectly flat and calm. There's nothing more relaxing than a paddle around the lake, unless it's late July 95 degrees and 95% humidity. Then you can't pay me to go out there just to be a buffet for the mosquitos. But, this week, it's perfect.  I also had a few sewing sessions to work on my scrappy HST project.  I have about 120 little triangles left to sew together before I start making them into 4-pathch blocks. For the small amount of time I spend sewing on this, it's progressing well.
This week I'll work on planning Groovy 3. I've got the new sun prints done and am trying to decide which ones I want to use. I'll take some option photos and share those Wednesday.  Life is getting more balanced. I've got 6 crochet projects and I'm starting to build up a stable of quilting projects. I like having multiple (but not too many) projects on hand to be able to respond to my mood on any given day. Yesterday I worked on 2 projects. The first was to load and start quilting the two veterans quilt tops that I made last month. We had some storms roll through late in the day so I shut the machine down about halfway through. I'll get these quilted and bound this weekend. I don't expect to get much of anything done today, I have lots of errands to run.  The other thing I'm doing is starting a new Groovy quilt. You can see Groovy 1 and Groovy 2 here. This time I decided that I wanted a medallion style quilt so I started playing around on the design wall. I liked where this was heading but I wasn't sure about that dark purple/blue corner.  No problem, I can make more! Please don't get excited, these are for me, not for the shop. There might be one extra for the shop but, at the moment, I'm not planning to make more of these to sell. I'm trying to not raise my fabric prices so I'm having to cut out things that were already marginal for me and Crystals are #1 on that list. I made them because there were fun and people liked them but I don't make money from. They would have to be $50 and I wouldn't even pay that for one! Anyway, I set up 3 big and 6 small ones to ice dye. I put another fabric on a screen underneath to catch the drips and I can't wait to see what it does. I usually put this fabric in the bottom of the bin but I knew that it would just be brown because I was using a rainbow of colors. No matter what it does, it will be good because I can always cut it up into something!  This looks promising!
This weekend I'll get all the fabrics washed and ironed and start doing the actual math to determine the block and sashing sizes. I'll work on the scrappy HST some more too and, who knows, I might start something else.  This is hilarious, isn't it? SIX crochet projects underway. Three of them are actively being worked on. Two are for "away from home" and one is on time out. Let's take a closer look.  The first three are the ones that I am actively working on. I alternate days that I work on them and never work on one two days in a row. I'm finding that three different yarn weights, stitch patterns and hook sizes really helps with the stress on my hands. This one is a blanket for my oldest brother. It's the same yarn and pattern that I made for Chris and I will make 2 more for the other 2 brothers. The red stitch marker is where I left off so I've made good progress since last month. I'm almost 60% done and just started the 5th out of 7 balls. This is fast and easy but it's heavy and hot for summer. Good thing my chair is right next to an AC vent. With summer in Virginia arriving, there's no rush for this one!  This is the Coboo tshirt and progress is slower because it's a smaller weight yarn, small hook (G) and dense stitch (linen stitch). But it's moving along. The yellow stitch marker is where I was at the last update. You can see the sides curving in. After I tried it on the last time I decided that I wanted to bring in the waist a little so I'm using and F hook for a few inches to add some shaping.  This is a baby blanket made with Yarn Bee Sweet Delight yarn and I've fallen in love with this yarn. I bought this on clearance at Hobby Lobby last year but I noticed recently that they still carry this yarn, just not this color. I'll have more in the future. This is a very light weight blanket and it will eventually have a border. The red marker is where I was at the last update. This is the 3rd of 4 balls. I'll finish most of this ball on the enter of the blanket and then I'll have one ball left for a really nice border. This will ultimately be a donation blanket. Those are the tree that are actually getting some love and attention when I sit down in the evenings.  This is the Carrie Penny shawl that I make for donation. I've made enough of them now that I'm starting to modify it. On this one I started with a chain of 54 (I think) to create a neckline. Then I've decided to stop at the shoulder edge and go straight (no more increases) with a granny stitch. I did a different shawl that worked out that way and I really liked it. This is my car ride project so I started this to go to the beach. I'll keep it aside for when I'm at meetings or in the car. It's really mindless. I bought this yarn on clearance from Lion Brand. I like it a lot and I bought quite a bit of it. I've got a lot of shawls in my future!  I also keep a hat bag for chemo hats. I take this to my Country School meetings because I can make good progress on a hat in just a couple of hours. This one will have a pink band in the gray hat and this yarn is perfect for chemo hats.  This is the project that's currently in time out. I don't love it but it's always been intended to be a donation blanket. I am doing it just to learn new crochet techniques and it's really working for that. But I don't totally enjoy it so I'll probably get 20 blocks done and call it done. I do not want to put the blocks together but I've learned that someone at the donation place will do that for me! When I finish one of the above projects I'll introduce this one back into the rotation.  I have a twelfth block almost done and all that Lion Brand Pound of Love is taking a good hit. I have more than what's in this bag. I might have over-bought. Ultimately the whole goal of this project was to use up that yarn. After I make 20 blocks I might donate the blocks with some border yarn and then use the rest in some sort of stripe blanket. It's clear that granny square blocks aren't going to be my go to type of project.
Now it's time to get some new quilt projects going! Thank you so much to everyone who entered the drawings on my blog last week. The contests are closed and I've let Rafflecopter select the random winners. If you didn't win please don't despair. There will be many more giveaways to come.
The winners: Monday - Gene Black Tuesday - Mary Beth Wednesday - Ramona Neifled Thursday - Karen Jantzi Friday - Kay Welch Saturday - Carol Hulbert Winners have been notified. If I do not hear from a winner by June 10 I will draw a new winner. |
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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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