Yesterday was dyeing day. I dyed about 60 yards including this Sugar Maple gradient. I didn't do much else except talk to my art advisor, Estelle. We talked about my floor cloth project. She is the person who eventually got me to learn to test things before starting big projects. It was a very difficult lesson for me to learn! After doing the test drawing on the florr cloth painted with eggshell paint I was all set to get satin finish paint for the "real" ones but we decided that I need to get a sample and test that too to make sure that the marker will not smear on the shinier surface. I'll pick of a sample jar today to test that out. Meanwhile I need to get a new project kit together now that the county is letting us have our sewing days again! We will have a small group because some people still aren't comfortable being out but I'm so looking forward to having sewing days again! I like to have a dedicated project to work on there to make packing easier. I've done enough veterans quilts for the year and still have a few of the tops I made to quilt so this will be a totally new bed quilt. I looked through my books and decided that I liked these 4 candidates. Next I decided on fabric. I've been wanting to make something with either my drawer of green hand dyed fabrics or the drawer of blue. So one of these will be pulled. I've also been wanting to make another quilt with my coveted waste fabrics. So I voted on the 4 candidates and this one won. I'll make the frames from the greens and the windows from the waste fabrics. It could look pretty cool or it could be a hot mess. I won't know until I make a few blocks this weekend. Here are the fabrics that I selected so everything is packed up and ready for Friday! I changed out the quilt on our bed this week and, for the first time, we are using the spirograph quilt! I love getting to see this every day. It's still a little stiff but will soften over time. It's so nice to finally use it.
I didn't accomplish a lot yesterday. The morning was exercise and chores and the afternoon was training to be an elections officer. I've been wanting to do this for a while and with covid and this particular elections I figured that they might need more staff. They are doubling staff on our county precincts this year! They have had early voting going on for a couple of week. With that and absentee ballots, about 20% of our registered voters have voted already. Should be an interesting day on November 3. I did have a little time yesterday morning to work on the practice floor mat. I learned that for the real floor cloths that I want semi-gloss or satin finish paint so that the pen will mover more smoothly. This paint was eggshell and it's a little grabby for the giant black Sharpie that I'm using. But I still LLOOOOOVVEE how it's looking! Much of these edges will be folded under so some of the design will be cut off. That's exactly the effect that I wanted. I've been taking some free online classes in the evenings. I'm on a Jane Austin class now (don't love the lecturer but it's still interesting). While listening I do get in some crochet. I finished the body of this blanket and now I have these bits of yarn left over to possibly add to the border. Usually when I make blankets with the Mandala yarn I use it all in the body of the blanket but as I got toward the end of the first ball I realized that this blanket was going to be proportionally too long or too narrow, depending on your perspective. I decided to stop with the yellow in the center and to wind off the oranges and red. I don't know how it will look to add these colors to the border but I'm going to give it a try. If I don't like it I can undo it. I started with SC of the fuchsia and HDC of the yellow. Next I'll add the gold and then orange. If I don't like it I can undo it back to the yellow and call that row the finish. We'll see. In other crochet news my friend sent me this pic of her grandson with his blanket that I made earlier this year. This baby is only 2 weeks old and never had the typical raw newborn look. He cam out looking a month old!
Today is dyeing day and I feel more stash packs coming on! First, a scheduling note. If you need anything custom dyed over the next 2 weeks please get your order in by tomorrow morning. I'll be away from the dye studio the week of the 19th and will have a limited schedule next week. There will be no orders shipped October 19 - 22. This week I have a beautiful new Stash Pack for you. Stash Packs have 10 fat eights of fabric and each piece has a lot of wonderful color texture. Oceana has all the beautiful blues of the ocean. The blues in this pack are on the brighter side because each has blues that are all based on turquoise. There are streakies and mottles to help you depict any seascape. Fabric of the WeekClearly I'm in an ocean blue mood because I selected the beautiful Monterey Bay gradient as the fabric of the week. It is also a turquoise based bright blue. It's 20% off through Sunday. Back In Stock
This week's inspiration comes from Sharon Schutt. She made this in a quilt along with Helen Godden. She used a pack of fabric that she won in a blog drawing. I probably need to schedule another giveaway week! You can click on these image to see details of her great quilting.
For sharing, Sharon 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 know that no one reads these monthly posts and I'm cool with that. These are for me. They really help me keep some sort of focus and I can tell that it affected my focus to have not done a report for September (because of vacation). This one is going to combine August and September. Probably the biggest focus for the two months was veterans quilts. On vacation I pieced 5 new veterans quilt tops and I got 2 of them quilted and bound when I got home. I also quilted 4 more veterans quilts for my quilt club members. I also finished 2 more crochet baby blankets and made 4 more pet beds for a local pet shelter. Here are my stats as of September 30:
Starting UFO 13 (15 in 2018) Finished YTD 6 Started YTD 3 Ending UFO 10 Veterans quilts made - 11 Veterans quilts quilted - 24 Fabric Postcards - 26 Pet Beds 9 Garment Placemats - 12 Quilted for others - 3 Crochet projects - 12 COVID masks - approximately 180 Tea towels for WHEAT fundraiser - dozens! Mosaic pizza oven My goals for October are: - finish 2 crochet blankets that I started on vacation - finish Kim's Garden - finish the floor cloths - start making Christmas postcards Normally I post my monthly summary on the 1st but I didn't have my act together last night and I have my physical this morning so I did this quick post instead. But first a couple of updates. They wan the cape! My relative in NY has a niece who is very excited to get the family cape. I am beyond excited to send it off. In the mean time I've learned some new tidbits about my family that I'm not going to share but suffice it to say, one branch of my family tree isn't boring! Yesterday I posted my book summary but it posted to early in the month. If you are interested and didn't see it you can read it here. I'm finally on the last pass of quilting for Kim's Garden. I'm working on the yellow sections now. It really is buttery yellow and not the dull tan that it appears in this photo. I'm doing this sort of stippled feather in all the yellow blocks. 2 of 9 rows are done. We recently moved the furniture out of the guest house bedroom so we could use the space for something else. (We've halted the Airbnb business for a while for obvious reasons.) Then that plan fell through but I realized that it was the perfect place for me to finally work on the spirograph floor cloths. I've only been talking about these for over a year. I have the canvases cut and one side primed with gesso. Today I'll get the other side primed and then we can buy paint!
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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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May 2024
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