 Going in Circles by Andrea Luliak, 24" x 24" Today's inspiration is a challenge quilt made by Andrea Luliak suing the South Pacific gradient.
From Andrea: "This was a challenge from my FL art quilt group, the Dirty Dozen. We had to paint an ugly watercolor painting and pick a section for inspiration. The ugly painting was the hardest part of the challenge, and I'm pleased with the use of the gradient! I added a small bit of yellow, as the gradient piece could not completely cover the area. It will be exhibited at Quilts and Lace in Florida." For sharing, Andrea 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 got very little done yesterday because I was hardly at home. Mom and I had much with my cousin and then I visited with a friend and we went to the hospital to visit another friend. It was a good day to be out and catching up with people. But you can see that I've started on the final border segments and this is what I'll be doing this weekend.  This is Ginger, my best friend's dog. We had lots of catching up to do yesterday. She had gotten into a little trouble that morning so she was glad to have a ally around for a few hours.  When I got home last night we watched the terrible football game and I made more progress on David's blanket. It's almost to the halfway point!
My goal this weekend is to finish the Red Sunset border segments. I need to get thsi quilt top wrapped up so I can get started on Christmas postcards.  This project is moving along quite well. It's possible that I can get the top together before my friend, Laura, arrives on the 27th. Yesterday I finished to right side of the spike border. None of this is sewn together yet. I'll do that after I get the final borders made.  Here's everything ready to start piecing the last border sections. It's pretty simple so should come together quickly.
 I thought I'd take a crochet break today and check in with the progress on my current projects. This is David's blanket and at this point I'm almost done with 3 of 8 balls of yarn.  This photo is closer to the true colors of the yarn. I just love it!  This is the donation baby blanket being done in moss (or linen) stitch. I just started the second ball (of 4) of Mandala Ombre yarn in the color Happy. I will do color control on this one to keep the stripe colors in order so I will have to break up the yarn balls to start on the right colors. This is going to be such a soft blanket.  This is my third, and final, pattern start with this yarn. It's a hexagon sweater and I'm working both halves at the same time to make sure I do them exactly the same.
So far I'm pretty happy with all 3 projects. Note: I will be out of town Wednesday - Friday. Orders placed during that time will be shipped Saturday.  Amethyst is back! My business is basically a micro-business so to have a gradient sell out in two days is a unicorn event. That's what happened with Amethyst last week and I wanted to get more back in the shop for those who told me they missed it. If you wanted some but missed out, it's back! To those who have already purchased it, thank you! New Stash Pack Terra Firma Stash Pack The other item that has been requested a lot recently is a new brown Stash Pack. I try to keep Stash Packs in every major color group and the brown fabrics sold out recently. The newest brown pack is Terra Firma. It's a wide variety of very textured browns for your landscape needs. I think I have most of the colors of dirt included in this one. 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!
Each Stash Pack has 5 streaky fabrics and 5 mottled fabrics. Here are larger views of 6 of the fabrics. The fabrics you receive will not look exactly like these but they will be these colors and general textures. I dye 2 yards of each fabric in the collection and the nature of dyeing fabric like this means that there's lots of variety over that 2 yards. Each fat eighth is a gem on it's own. There are so many possibilities for fussy cutting applique or landscape elements. Fabric of the Week Espresso gradient is 20% off through Sunday! Do you need even more brown fabric for your stash? Look no further than the Espresso Gradient. It's a nice gradient of deep blackish brown to light tan. Espresso is 20% off through Sunday.
The first thing I want to mention today is that I've heard that some people are having trouble getting the blog subscription newsletter. I think it's related to the email address that I'm using. I've made a change that I hope will work. If you have stopped getting them all together you might want to try to re-subscribe on the box on the right side of this page.  Sewing weekend was very productive! I got another veterans quilt top done. This is from the same kit as the one I made last month. I think I like this one a little better than the other one. It's just mroe to my personal taste. Both will be good comfort quilts for 2 veterans.  This one is all scrap fabric. The large squares are a Paula nadelstern fabric that I used as the background from my Pleides quilt. The gold is leftover veterans quilt back fabric and the small print fabrics are all symmetry fabric scraps.  I finished that quilt and had time to clean my travel machine, wind a bunch of bobbins and make one block from the next kit I'll work on. This one has enough pieces for 2 quilts. They should go together pretty fast but I will not work on the until the next sewing weekend. I'm in no hurry. I've made 10 veterans quilts this year so far and I'm happy with that productivity.  Mom stayed with me Friday night so after sewing we visited my brother. I delivered his blanket to him and also delivered this little sweater that I dyed for his massively spoiled dog, Lulu. Lulu is a little nutty and very demanding of belly rubs and attention. She's a funny dog and she's really grown on me. I was surprised that she actually kept this on for about 15 minutes.  After she gets all of the attention that she needs she digs into her blanket and this is all we see unless she hears anything that might sound like a treat.  I spent a lot of Sunday ironing while watching football but I also made a little progress on my Red Sunset quilt.
I might be going out of town for a few days this week so if I don't post a for a couple of days that's why.  Wedding chuppah by Helen Ernst Today's inspiration is a special and very personalized wedding chuppah made by Helen Ernst. The design is based on a photograph of the mountain where the groom proposed. Helen used a combination of gradients (Blue Sky and Forest Canopy), Stash Packs, Shades Packs and Stars in her composition.  For the top of the canopy she had me dye yardage of the lightest side of the Blue Sky gradient .  Here's a photo of the happy couple the day that they first saw the chuppah. They were thrilled!
For sharing, Helen 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. Yesterday was a really busy day but I feel like I didn't really accomplish much of anything tangible. I did some laundry, made some bread and delivered some food to the local food pantry.  I probably spent most of my time timing my longarm. I'm not good at doing that so it usually takes me a few (or 10) tries. I think I have it but I wasn't in the mood to load a quilt and give it a go.  I packed up a box of soap for a local charity.  I've made a little progress on the next set of pieces for Red Sunset but, honestly, this project has been mostly ignored the past few days.  Yesterday, I mentioned that I was going to start a hexagon sweater with Lion Brand Jeans yarn. This is the third start with this yarn. I really like it a lot but it's difficult to see the stitches in this dark, speckled yarn! I think this pattern is going to work out just fine. There are about 500 different video tutorials and patterns for hexagon sweaters but I've settled on this one. I like the cuffs and edging that she designed and her video tutorial is really thorough. If I can't get this yarn to work for me in this pattern I will give up and donate the yarn to someone else! I really should have picked a lighter color of this yarn.  During my meal breaks I'm reading up on my training for working the election polls next month. I had training Tuesday afternoon and this is out homework. I really enjoy working the polls but it's a really long day.  So I guess I've been pretty busy but today and tomorrow I'll be at sewing days with my quilt club. If I talk less and sew more I might get another veterans quilt top done!
 This little project sat dormant for a while but I want to start a new cardigan and needed to get this wrapped up. I left off with the hen hedge and sleeve edges left to do.  The hem finish I used is not the one from the pattern. I like the pattern hem a lot but it used a puff stitch and that proved to be really frustrating with a splitty yarn. The pattern hem was also too long and I needed to come up with something shorter. I settled on 3 rows of SC, 1 row of DC mesh, 1 r0w of alternating DC mesh and DC3 together, 1 row of DC mesh and 3 rows of SC. Next I moved on to the sleeves and did one with a modified version of the pattern. I then tried it on and Chris and I both agreed that it looked better without the extra sleeve. My shoulders are narrow and the cardigan as designed is plenty wide for me.  I have to say that this is a well written pattern and what I loved most about it is that there's no seaming. It starts at the shoulders and works down. Once the back is done you attach the yarn back at the shoulder to work one side of the front and then do the same for the other side. So you seam as you crochet. I liked that a lot.
The pattern is Mimosa Spring Cardigan by Sharon Murphy Lion Brand Coboo yarn (worked great!) Hook size G (4mm) I made this to be a summer cardigan to wear over tank tops and I have some summer shorts that this will match perfectly. Now I'm going to start a hexagon cardigan sweater with Lion Brand Jeans yarn. It will be my third start with that yarn. Hopefully third time really will be the charm. I just wanted to show you today that I am slowly making progress on my Red Sunset quilt. I'm actually really motivated so I work on it whenever I can make some time. The "border" is actually 4 corners.  I started in the center of the corner triangle and am working my way to the edge. Many of you will look at this and think that there is not enough contrast between the blue points and the background. You are probably right but I'm not about to re-do them. It's a bed quilt after all and I'm cool with them the way they are.  Now I'm working on the gold spike border. It was a lto of work to cut it out but the stitching isn't quite as burdensome as I expected. So far, so good!  Next I will start on the other side of the spike border. After that there's only one more border to piece before I can put it all together.
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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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