 There was a couple day lag in the postcard progress lately but I got back to it yesterday. The 2 other sets are ready for fusing the backs so I'm on to the 3rd set featuring my favorite Christmas character: The Grinch! These will have a lot of sewing in 3 colors of thread and I'm starting with the hand. I have 10 of 30 done and will work on these more tonight.
The funnies thing about this card is that the original idea used lime green fur fabric and I'll just leave you to imagine what a huge mess that was! There are 2 guys in my life who love tie dyed shirts. Chris will wear them occasionally but he doesn't "love" them. Kim's husband, Jamie, loves them and, best I can tell, wears them every day. My brother, Tim, loves them too. It's good to have both of them because occasionally I get in a tie dye mood and I know I have someone to give the shirts too. Lately I've been in a tie and ice dyeing mood so they are getting new shirts. Some are winners but a couple should become work shirts right away. Here are the newest shirts for Jamie and Tim.  Both of these were dyed the same; one for each of them. They didn't turn out quite like I envisioned but they aren't total failures either.  These are both for Jamie. The one on the left is one of the coolest shirts I've ever dyed. Both of these were ice dyed and you really have no idea what you are getting when you start. I never intended for the one on the right to have so much purple. It's kind of cool from a texture and pattern point of view but I'm not sold on the colors. Not sure what he will think of it either! it doesn't have much of a "dude" vibe.  The rest of the shirts are for Tim. He really prefers muted colors like black and camouflage. I really hope he likes this one because it took forever to tie and dye.  This is what it looked like while I was tying it. As I dyed each bulls eye I covered it in plastic to keep other dye from migrating on it.  Both of these were tie dyed and the one on the left turned out exactly like I planned. The one on the right, not so much. I still like it but t shirt fabric is too thick to tie successfully. I really need to invest in a big set of hemostats so I can clamp the designs.  I expect that the spiral on the left is going to be his favorite of the bunch. The one on the right is horrible. It was ice dyed and I think it will get a second trip through the process. I fix a lot of sins that way. I'll fold it exactly the same as before and just add more dye.
I have more clothes and shirts (all for me) to share on another day. I'll just leave by saying that dyeing leggings is so much fun! Yesterday was a sewing day with Country School Quilters so I had a day away from working on postcards but it was still a good day of sewing and a chance to work on my Rainbow Quilt again.  Even if I didn't sew a stitch it's fun to look at all these bright colors together. It's even more fun to sit and chat with friends and see what everyone else is sewing.  But I did sew! I finished 55 blocks and now have 230 of 318 blocks done. After I did the count I looked at what's left to sew together and I think it's a lot more than 100 blocks. I'll sew together everything I have. I already know I have enough for a king and lap and maybe there's a baby quilt or some placemats in there too!
No sewing today. My friend and I are heading to Blacksburg for my first visit to Virginia Tech in over 2 decades! We're going to watch the Georgia Tech game and I'm really looking forward to getting to participate in Enter Sandman. The multicolored tree cards are to the point where they are ready for the backing so it's time to move on to the next design. I like to have at least one design each year that involved screen printing and I had a stag screen image from Carol Sloan that I've been wanting to use. I don't see this screen in her shop but I'm sure she could make it again if you wanted one.  I printed 3 fat quarters of these, backed them with fusible and cut each one out. It only took 2 football games to cut out 30 of these.  Then I pulled out my Pine Bough screen from PGFiber2Art and printed about a half yard of fabric. Then I fused this to my Stiffy interfacing and cut out 30 postcards.  A little fusing and a little stitching and here's where I stand on these. Next I have to fuse the backs, edge them and then add some paint dots. I'll do that after I get the 3rd design fused and stitched.
 My best days are the days when I receive mail from customers. This week I received this quilt from Susan Buckingham from Wisconsin. She made this using the Barrier Island Gradient along with some commercial and hand dyes from her stash. The quilt is for the New Quilts from Old Favorites competition sponsored by the National Quilt Museum.  I love the hand dyed fabrics with the Asian print and her flying geese are perfectly pieced!
If you've made something with my fabric I hope you will consider sharing it with us. Allowing me to share it in the Customer Gallery gets you a 20% discount that's good for 3 months! This post has nothing to do with politics. The title is literal. I was about to burn down my house! For months, and maybe over a year, I'd come into the sewing room and smell something burning. Chris and I searched high and low checking outlets and cords many times and never found anything.  Monday I was ironing and something was scratching on the fabric. I looked and some broken piece was coming out of the back of the iron. I turned it off and cooled it to remove the piece. That's when I noticed for the first time that there's a gap between the sole plate and the tank and element cover. After a closer look I saw lint stuffed in there. There's also a gap between the handle and the cover too.  Sooo much lint! By the time I pulled out everything I could have filled a cup with lint. But take a close look. Some of that lint is brown and black. It's burned! My iron has been burning lint and the reason I didn't necessarily smell it while I was ironing is that I was smelling it smoldering. Clearly I've dropped this iron one too many times.  This iron is only used for ironing fabric for the shop. I never use steam and really just needed something simple and hot that doesn't have an auto-shutoff. It has a designed gab between the sole plate and tank but it's wide enough that I'll be able to blow it out periodically.  This iron isn't optimal but I needed something fast because I have stacks of fabric to iron so I'll work with it until I find something better. Meanwhile, Check your own iron just to make sure you don't have a similar problem happening.
When I started making the tree postcards I figured out a stitching path so that I wouldn't have any starts and stops. There's a little stitching over previous lines but that's still faster than stopping to cut threads. Johanna asked for me to show how I stitched them so here it is. It's not very pretty but I think you will understand.  The trick is to make sure that the trees touch each other and to start where 2 trees touch. I started in the red tree where it touches the orange tree, stitched the top of the tree, the trunk and then the green triangle and then back to where I started.  Now I want to travel over to the blue tree on the left and I do that by stitching only the bottom part of the middle tree. I stitched the trunk and the green triangle and then over to where the blue and orange trees meet.  Now it's on to the blue tree. I stitched the trunk, the purple triangle and then the top of the tree and back to where the blue and orange trees meet.  The last step is to stitch the top of the middle tree.
The way that I stitch the left and right trees might vary and that doesn't matter. What matters is to start where 2 trees touch, stitch the tree on the end, then half of the middle tree to travel to the other side, stitch the other side tree and then finish the middle tree. It took me a little while to figure this out but it was worth the time to do it. When I make cards in bulk like this I am always looking for shortcuts to save time. Usually I work on one set at a time but this year I'm working on all three designs to get the fronts done. I'll fuse all of the backs on at one time and serge all of the edges at one time. That way I don't have to set up the serger 3 times. It's all factory production here. Laura and I were so happy to not have to shop yesterday. She's going out again Sunday to finish her shopping while Ian and I watch football. I finished mine off yesterday with some online ordering. I should be good for fall/winter clothes for a couple of years. Laceflower left a comment yesterday about having to shop recently because of her weight loss (congrats!) and that she even made the decision to dress better at home. I just had to laugh. Because I don't know what I'm getting into every day my "home wear" looks pretty much like "homeless wear". It seems that no matter what I wear every day it gets messed up with paint, dye, oil, mastic, grout or gets cut while I'm sewing.  Yesterday, in our "homeless wear", Laura and I were happy to stick around the sewing room. She's busy finishing up 2 more sets of postcards before she leaves Tuesday. The gift boxes and stocking are made from scraps of her ornament cards. The stars are cut from the Accuquilt Go star die.  I used my new dimensional paints to decorate the trees on my cards.
While those dried I started trying out some design ideas for the next 2 sets of cards. I'm trying for a Grinch theme for one and maybe stockings or a snowman for the others. Whenever anyone visits from overseas the one thing they want to do before they leave is shop. Our prices are better and generally the exchange rates gives them an even bigger discount. Yesterday Laura wanted to shop and I decided to go along because I wanted to look for a few things for myself. My wardrobe, such as it is, is a tattered mess. I hate shopping so will wear my clothes as long as I can. I'm hard to fit and have a narrow range of styles that I like so shopping is always tedious and painful. Apparently Laura is my shopping good luck charm because I brought home bags of stuff! We shopped from 11 until 5. I was absolutely exhausted but very happy to finally have some decent "public" clothes. My home clothes are still a tattered mess, as they should be.  We made only 1 stop at a craft store because she wanted to get some cake decorating things for her daughter. I picked up these dimensional paints.  I'm hoping I can make some dimensional dots to decorate these cards a bit more. I have all the trees sewn on so I'm nearing the end of this set.
Laura and Ian have less than a week left with us here so we are trying to pack in as many things as possible. Tuesday we went to Farmville (where my Mom lives) to hike part of the High Bridge Trail and visit with my Mom and niece. That night we came home and Laura and I met up with Lora to take a jewelry class at Glen Allen Cultural Arts Center.  I've never made earrings before and it was fun to learn a few of the tricks of the trade. The silver ones aren't really my style but they were fun to make.The dangly ones are ones that I will probably wear and might even make more.
Yesterday Laura and Ian were out and I got back to the dye studio. Today we are shopping! In between I'm trying to get a few more postcards stitched. |
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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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