The time has come.

I can't procrastinate on my oldest UFO anymore. Yesterday I got it loaded and basted. I have a general idea of how I want to quilt it so I'll likely start with what I know for sure that I want to do and figure the rest out as I go along. But, for sure, there will be stitches in this quilt by Monday. It is huge at 95" square but I was really happy that it was square and flat and basting it was easy.

In the black areas I want to do some feathers and I'm thinking about one of these threads. I want the black to stay predominately black but I would like for the feathers to show a little. I'm sort of favoring the dark green on the left. What's do you think?

In the last couple of days I also got my placemats quilted. As I was doing these on the Juki I noticed that the tension is acting up in just the way it acted up the one time it had to be serviced. So I'm taking the machine to my brother this afternoon so he can clean it up and fix whatever is worn out. 
​Today is also the day that I finally get to deliver the fancy doll dress to Ella. Her birthday was in July but I haven't been able to see her since June. I'm anxious to see if this thing fits well.

I'll be OK without my Juki and I can bind all of these projects on my Brother machine while I wait for the Juki to be repaired. These projects should keep me out of trouble for the weekend.

I've finished another blanket!

I started this blanket expecting it to be a baby blanket but it's much too large for that. As a rule, when I make a blanket I don't stop until I run out of yarn. In this case it made for a big blanket and I'm OK with that. Here are the details:

​Yarn is Universal Major - Full color selection here. On sale colors (including my blue, Aloe) here. This is the second blanket that I've made with this yarn and I have 2 more colors in my stash to work with. I enjoy this yarn and it makes a squishy blanket. It's a #5 bulky weight. I used 4 whole skeins (about 1300 yards)

K Hook, although you could get away with one size larger. I cast on 122 stitches with an L hook and did one row of single crochet before starting the pattern.

The pattern is the Inchworm Baby Blanket. It calls for 2 colorways of this yarn but I only used 1. 
​If you prefer video tutorials here's one from Fiber Spider that I used to supplement the written pattern.

I have this same yarn in a pink colorway and actually made a baby blanket with it earlier this year. I have enough pink to do this exact blanket again and that's likely what I will do, eventually. What I love about this pattern is that when you make a mistake in the pattern (usually by skipping a stitch on the fan section) it's easy and invisible to fix by skipping a skip stitch on the next pattern row.
​The pattern is one row of DC in pattern and 1 row of SC.

My blanket finished at about 42 x 60. Mom and I talked about it and decided that it would be best as a donation for a chemo or dialysis patient. It would be a really comfy and warm blanket to bring to treatments. So when I donate it I will specify that use.  

Next up I'm going to do a couple of hats for something quick and then I'll start a pocket shawl for Mom out of this yarn, Lion Brand Anti-Pilling. Based on the swatch I think it's going to be lovely to work with.

I so love our monthly sewing get together with my quilt club. We usually have 6 - 10 people and we get to leave everything set up Friday might so we can show up Saturday and just start sewing. This weekend we had 9 both days. 7 people came both days.

I finished this veterans quilt top and I love it so much! It's all scraps. The blue center is leftover from a veterans quilt back that I dyed and the color strips are leftovers from the Big Green Quilt. Trash to treasure for sure. The blocks are rectangular and finish 8 x 10 so the top is 48 x 60. I just love how the waste fabric scraps sparkle. I'd make one of these in a bed size. Some day this will get quilted.

I fired up the longarm for the first time since vacation and quilted these two tops that I pieced on vacation. I just did some simple wavy line quilting. My approach to the veterans quilts now is fast and easy. There are too many to be quilted to spend a lot of time on them. I think this motif works well with the strong geometric lines of the design. I like both of these quilts a lot and they were easy to cut with the Accuquilt Go.

Last week I got this backing fabric dyed for my postage stamp quilt. That's the next thing going on the longarm - FINALLY! My oldest UFO is going to be quilted.
I was going to do a black backing but I decided on blue and black. It just needed to be dark because the batting is black. I'm excited to finally get started on that one.

My goals for this week are:
- load and baste the postage stamp quilt
- bind the veterans quilts
- finish the current crochet blanket
- start working on enlarging the vulture quilt

This week I have 2 pieces to share with you. Both are from Ann Jensen. She blends gradients with batiks for her textile paintings.

For sharing, Ann 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 thought I'd get more done yesterday that I actually accomplished. But there was laundry, fabric to wash out and I needed to schedule our vacations for 2022. Stuff got accomplished but not so much on the sewing side of my life.

But I did get this set of blocks done. The yellow stars are obviously more successful than the green ones but these will be in a scrappy quilt and the green ones will work just fine.

After I finished those I packed up my things for sewing this weekend with my quilt club. After Mom and I go to the dentist we will be heading to the Montpelier Center and I can't wait to see my quilt buddies again.

Good news! I didn't forget how to dye fabric while I was away. Yesterday I dyed over 50 yards of fabric (exhausting) and I don't think I made any mistakes. 

​On dyeing days I'm usually too tired to do anything but sit and crochet and that's what happened.

 First I sews in the ends for this wheelchair shawl to donate. The yarn is Red Heart Roll With It and I used a J hook to keep the fabric drapey. Not my favorite, but it was what I could find while on vacation and I think the colors are very pretty. That's good because I have a second one.

The goal with these shawls is a horseshoe shape so that they stay on the shoulders and long enough to cover shoulders but short enough not to get bunched up on the back against the chair. This is the second shawl that I've made with the Carrie Penny Half Circle Shawl. I did this one a little different to make a neck opening. The pattern begins with 8DC in a circle and the wedges are built out from that center. I thought it might be nice to start with a chain of 40 to get a little neckline and I do like this better. Next time I will start with a row of half double crochet to add more stability to the neckline.

The two shawls that I made would be best for little people but I saw another video from Cinnamon Stitches for the Dina Shawl that has great instructions for making a larger size shawl. I will need more yarn than the 1 cake of Roll With It that I have leftover but I absolutely have other yarns that will work for the Dina. 

I really enjoy making these. The agency that I donate through seems to ask for these more than baby blankets. I expect that they get lots of baby blankets. I'll keep making those too but will add in some of these shawls as well. I pretty much made this one totally in the car on the way home and I split up crochet time with loom knitting. It's all double crochet and chains.

There's another horseshoe shawl pattern out on the web but it has only 4 wedges so it ends up with some sharp points. I like the 8 wedge version better.

Speaking of baby blankets, I'm about halfway through the 3rd skein on this blanket. It's going to gether very fast and I think that the pattern is really pretty.

I'm already planning a few new projects. This  is a swatch for a pocket shawl that I'm going to make for Mom. She hates wearing coats so I thought a pocket shawl would be good for wall and most of winter here in Virginia. I'll start this after the baby blanket is done. This yarn is an anti-pilling line from Lion Brand.

While I was on vacation I perused a used book store and found this crochet book from the early 1980's. It has both knit and crochet blankets but I think there are more crochet options. I actually like several patterns in this book.

But I kind of fell in love with this one which Chris thinks is hideous. What does he know? What I see is a great car project because it's made of hexagon blocks. I think I would start by making all the daisies and then go back and add the green backgrounds. That would mean less yarn to carry around. 

Most of yesterday was about getting caught up on bills and being the magic shopping fairy. I have very little luck shopping for myself but, for some reason, I am the magic shopping fairy for my Mom. I picked her up to go shopping with me for new sneakers. We both found sneakers (a miracle in itself) but then she wanted some new pants. One stop, 3 pair of pants that fit! That happens for her every time we shop together. Seriously, I can spend her money faster than lightning!
I hope that bragging about it doesn't erase the magic.
​Back at home I wanted to do some sewing in the afternoon.

Plan A was to start quilting the scrappy Serengeti placemats. I'm using my Juki machine and it's usually perfect. In fact, in about 25 years it's only been serviced once. I started having some serious tension issues that are identical to the issues that I had before I serviced it the first time. This project will have to wait until I can take the Juki to my brother. He can fix ANYTHING and I bet he will have it running like new in no time.

Meanwhile, my friend borrowed the Brother machine while I was away and I won't get it back until this weekend.

So I set up the travel machine for Plan B and decided to work on more of the blocks for the family quilts (Flora's stars).

I had to start here. When I posted the photos of all the blocks I made on vacation and later looked at this set I cracked up. It looks like I was inebriated when I was sewing these. But I don't have that excuse. It's just sloppy sewing but easily fixed. 

I also had this one block that was missing a piece.

Ahhh, much better. I'll continue working on these for the rest of the week. I think I have 6 more sets to sew. I won't cut anymore until I get all of these sewn and start doing a little planning on the setting for the 8 quilts.

​I'm loving the secondary pattern developing from this offset layout and I might need to explore this a little further because I don't have enough other ideas for new projects.

Here's the next block that I'll get pieced.

But not today. Today it's dyeing day and there's a lot of pent up demand. It's going to be a long day!