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While I'm away I have very little internet access so I can't post daily but I'm determined to do some sewing every day while I'm on vacation. This is a 100% relaxing vacation, not a destination vacation. I plan on a little hiking, a little kayaking and a lot of reading and sewing....and eating. But I won't be able to post our (mine and Laura's) sewing progress while I'm away so I thought I'd take this opportunity to have an "oldies, but goodies" theme week to share some of my customer's great projects that we haven't seen in a long time. I"ll also highlight some of my favorite tutorials and maybe even a project or two of my own. Oldies But Goodies - Shades Packs EditionI thought I'd develop some sort of theme to the show-and-tell and settled on product categories. Today we are looking at projects made by customers using Shades Packs. Please don't be upset of you made a project that isn't included...I had too many to choose from and just picked a few!  Log Cabin by Katie Lewis Katie Lewis used Red Purple and Purple Shades Packs for her log cabin quilt.  Table runner by Pattilou Quilts Pattilou made this table runner with Rosewood and Black Shades Packs.  Art Quilt by David Armour David Armour uses lots of Shades Packs to get transparency effects in his complex quilts.
Stephanie Wilds uses Shades Packs for her monochromatic portraits. She is teaching this class at John C Campbell Folk School in October.  Coming Home by Vicki Welsh I made my Coming Home quilt using the same fabric sets that Stephanie used in Faces of Music. This quilt now resides in England with the friends that are with us on vacation. Oldies but Goodies - Keepsakes Quilt Tutorial Keepsakes Quilt While I love making complex quilts for the challenge of making them, my first love is making "blankets". I developed the Keepsakes "pattern" originally as a system for making tshirt quilts. I found it also works great for focus fabrics. I have such a huge shibori collection now that I think it's time to make a Keepsakes quilt with them.
Clearly, writing the posts for this week is going to be dangerous. I'll probably end up with 5 new projects planned.  Oh boy, I love this project! Donaleen Kohn used a couple of yards of the Thrive Gradient to make a bunting that provides some shade for her West-facing porch.  It's a really simple project too. The fabric is attached to a taught wire with clothespins and it tied with jute.
For sharing, Donaleen 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 showed you last week that Laura was working on some pillow covers using my stash of shibori. We leave for vacation today but she got these 4 finished so far. I absolutely love them!
We are taking my sewing machine with us so hopefully we will have several projects to share in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I've left you with some posts to revisit some great customer projects and don't forget the Farewell to Summer Giveaway starting August 27!  For my booth at the AQS Virginia Beach show, I am displaying several quilts but I wanted another way to display the fabrics. After lot of research I discovered Martha Stewart's giant fabric flower. Fabric flowers would be perfect! But I needed mine to hang on a wall instead of filling a vase. So I set out to modify her instructions for my needs. My new tutorial, Big Fabric Flowers, is the result. I'm going to make several flowers in different sizes and designs but this prototype was designed specifically to show off my Color Wheel fabrics that come in a set of 10.  Here are the 3 flowers for the Color Wheel fabrics and I love them! Color Wheel fabrics come in dark, medium and light shades so there's one flower for each pack. They will be shaped before they are hung but I'm keeping them flat for travel. I used 3 shades of gray/black for the centers.
I have more planned including a bigger one made with a Crystal and flowers of Shibori and Shades Packs.  Innes Baby Quilt - 58" square I'm so excited to have a finish for August and it was an easy one! I made this top several years ago when I hosted the Crossing the Drunkard's Path quilt-along. I've just been waiting for the right baby to come along to finish it. Baby Innes will be here in 2019 and baby's parents love the wedding quilt I made for them so they absolutely deserve a baby quilt. This one will be big enough for a floor quilt for baby and guard dogs. I will not tell them that the block is called Drunkard's Path!  These fabrics are from the first time that I ever dyed fabric. This was back when I thought hand dyed fabric was stupid but Anne forced me to do it during one of our craft weeks. It was while dyeing these tone-on-tone fabrics that I learned the joy of mixing colors and got hooked on fabric dyeing. That light background fabric was difficult. I seem to be physically unable to dye light colors.  I quilted it with the new Innovatech thread and, I have to say, I love this thread. I think as I use up So Fine colors that I will replace it with Innovatech.  The back is also hand dyed. It's quilted with the Happy Times pantograph. It was the first time I used this one. It was fast and easy and worked out great for this baby quilt.
I still have to make a label but I have MONTHS until the baby arrives. First a little reminder: No Shipping August 17 - September 3! But I'm not leaving the blog unattended. We're all due for another giveaway week! Be sure to visit the blog all 6 days starting August 27 for a great giveaway each day.
I'm officially caught up...until tomorrow. I know I'll get more tops at the meeting tomorrow night but I won't worry about those until September. Here are the last two for now.  This one was made by Estelle. I love the leafy focus fabric. She's been working really hard to make veterans quilts from her stash but I was in her studio last week and, like the rest of us, you can't tell that there's any fabric missing!  Peg also makes most of her quilts from stash. But this one has an added twist. A few years ago Country School Quilters were gifted a lot of fabric to use to make veteran's quilts. We made well over 50 quilts with all that fabric. At the end there were a lot of browns left over. Becky cut a bunch of 1 or 2 yard lengths and handed them out as a challenge to use them with other fabric for veterans quilts. Peg dug into her stash of green and tan scraps for this quilt. The brown really makes the greens sparkle and, honestly, it doesn't look like a scrap quilt anymore.
I love seeing how people use scraps to make stunning quilts. I quilted it with the same Burning Bush pantograph that I used last week.  Art Deco #2 by David Armour David Armour is back this week with one of his intricately pieced fractured quilts. David uses a mix of hand dyed fabrics from several dyers. This quilt includes several Shades Packs and he uses them to great effect. You can follow David on his Facebook Page. He has generously given us a few close up photos too.    For sharing, David 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.
My UK friends, Ian and Laura, are here to go on vacation with us next week. We are taking the sewing machine and some projects so Laura is busy planning her projects for the trip.  Pillows by Karen Jantzi She was inspired by these pillows that Karen Jantzi made and decided to make some new pillow covers for her re-decorated lounge.  Of course she has great taste and was immediately attracted to the shibori bin. I think this will be a nice collection of pillows (or cushions, as she calls them). These are leftover pieces from all the moons that I cut out recently. I wasn't able to let go of the newest shibori pieces that I dyed last week. Looking through those gave me anxiety so I had to hold them out. My generosity only goes so far! Laura is a psychologist so she understood. Meanwhile I've been ice dyeing more fabric for the October show! This batch has some large, 108" square, mandalas that I'm very excited about.
Time to get back to washing out fabric.  Our quilters don't make a lot of red and black quilts so I've had this one, that Betsy made, for a long time. It had to wait for another one in a similar palette so I could pair them on the same backing.  Eventually this one came in and they were meant to be together. I decided on red thread which, for me, was a bold step on this quilt. But I thought it might be nice to bring red into the middle of the quilt to tie the border in better.  I think it was a good decision because I like the effect a lot! You can't see the quilting on the first one at all but that was going to be the case no matter what I decided to do.  But the red also looks great on this hand dyed gray backing fabric. I hope that both piecers will be happy.
Only 2 more to finish before Tuesday. But today is ice dyeing day so there will be no quilting today! |
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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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