It's here! Giveaway week is here!
Every day this week there will be a new giveaway but you don't have to check in on the blog during your holiday week. Each giveaway will be open through Tuesday of next week. There are multiple opportunities to win each day: - every one gets 1 entry - newsletter subscribers get 1 extra entry - Facebook followers get 1 extra entry - Customers get 5 entries!
I'm kicking off the week with the package that is usually my grand finale prize! I call these "waste fabrics". They are strips of hand dyed fabric that are approximately 6" by the width of fabric. They are used when I dye gradients to help keep runoff dye from going places where I don't want it. That's where the "waste fabric" comes from. They are byproducts of gradient dyeing but they are treasures for me. I use them a lot in postcard making and I've used them in several quilts, including Black Swan.
​Enter the giveaway in the Rafflecopter box below. If the Rafflecopter box doesn't load, click on the link below to get the box to load. It's been a while since I've done a blog giveaway and there's no better time than now. Thanksgiving Week is the best time that I can think of to thank my customers and followers with 6 days of great giveaways! Check in each day next week for a different giveaway. Don't worry if you are (wisely) taking the week off from the internet to be with real people. The giveaways will be open through Tuesday, December 28. Sometimes my giveaways include scrap bags and that's exactly what Sharon used to make the 2 quilts she shared today. This one is called Brilliant Clusters and a block pattern by Upstairs Hobby Room presented in her 2016 One Block Wonders quilt along. There red, orange, and brown are from the scrap bag. The ocean theme quilt is her own design using Cheryl Lynch's Curvalicious ruler for cutting the curves. The Seahorses are from Connie Kresin Campbell's Coastal Seahorses pattern. The octopus and seahorse fabrics are from the scrap bag. Be sure that you enter the giveaways next week to get some great hand dyed fabrics of your own!
Your feedback yesterday was about half and half. I went with the lazy half and didn't add anything else! I did actually try some things but everything I tried looked exactly like what it was: a tortured attempt just to add something. In the end I decided to leave them elegantly on their own. I do always love how much the edging adds. I had a green thread that matched the green stag perfectly. The blue was more challenging. All of my solid blue thread was wither too navy or too royal. I think this variegated thread worked perfectly in the end. I laughed out loud at Mary Anne's idea to make snow with French knots. No way, not on 23 cards! They wouldn't be done before next Christmas. But she's a "Crazy Quilter" and can be excused for her crazy idea. Not knowing exactly what people do with these cards I don't want to invest too much time in them. Next up are these sun prints. The bling is going to come out big on these. Now that I've made all of these cards using sun printed stencils I have to admit that sunprinting them was a complete waste of time. Every card design that I've made with them would have been perfectly fine just stenciled with paint. Lesson learned. When I'm working on a new design I usually sacrifice one card for practice. In this case I had the first card that was done on a purple background and it was a fail. But I knew I'd need a practice piece and saved it. This one is helping me work through the threads and techniques that I want to use. I'd love to have these done my Monday.
I didn't do any quilting yesterday because it was "dyeing day". It's gotten cold here so Chris made a fire in the wood stove and I was quite toasty dyeing 35 yards of fabric. But over the past week I have been slowly working on the first set of my Christmas cards made with these sun printed stags. I'm planning to finish them up today. But I'm trying to figure out if they need anything else. Last year I made this card and decorated the antlers with Christmas ornaments. I was thinking that I might do something similar this year but the more I look at them the more I think they are perfectly fine as is. They seem a little too stately tart up with tinsel.
What do you think? This little project should be done by now but it also got waylaid by the cold. All I have left to do is to quilt something in these wide spaces. That something is going to be a wide version of this. It won't take long and hopefully I can finish this by the weekend. I jsut haven't been in the mood for quilting yet. One the last of the quilting is done I'll be ready for washing, blocking and binding. I dyed 2 binding choices last week.
So this one is really close to being done. The fabric if the week is Brickwork Gradient. If you want some for your stash get it before it sells out. Through Sunday (or while supplies last) this fabric is 25% off or $6.75/half yard. New Clearance Fabrics!
I realize that my immune system is total crap as evidenced by my dozens of allergies. But I used to be able to weather colds pretty well. Last year I had one that lasted over 4 weeks and this current one is starting it's 3rd week. From what I hear, my experience is not unique. Instead of flu shots maybe we all need cold shots. Poor Chris has it now but a 2-week-long cold for me is usually 3 days for him. One of my problems is that I'm really limited in the meds I can take so I usually just have to ride it out. Plus I always get laryngitis and that can last for weeks. Today I feel much better which is good because I'm having lunch with some former work friends that I haven't seen is a while. They will just have to do all of the talking! I seriously spent most of last week napping, coughing and watching TV. I did try to work on my ornament some but ran out of that gold braid. In over 130 kits that's only happened twice. I called and they immediately sent me replacement braid. Unfortunately I bought this kit a few years ago so they've since replaced the braid and the new stuff is too yellow. When I go out for lunch today I'll be stopping by Hobby Lobby to find something else that I can substitute. I think it only needs to be narrow and gold because no one really looks at these very close.I really, really want to get this finished and call an end to my ornament phase. I've also started working on my Christmas postcards. I didn't make a ton of progress but at least I've made some!
My goal today it to just get myself reorganized and see how I've left things. I need to catch up on dyeing orders and get my sewing room reorganized. Since I can't talk to anyone maybe I won't get too distracted! This week we have another new quilt from Patricia Caldwell. It's 25 little quiltlets sewn together with copper rings. If you check out her Facebook page and scroll back to mid-October and earlier, you will see lots of detail shots of this quilt in process. Patricia's piece was created with a custom gradient but I loved the end result and decided to add Sunshine and Shadows to the shop.
If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. In appreciation you will receive a 20% shop coupon that's good for 3 months! After I finished Beware of Lust I had some fabric left and was inspired to make something else. I wanted to use 2 backgrounds and 2 of the colorways to create a quilt with a transparency effect. Wondering Star is simply one star block in EQ blown up to 36". I didn't have enough fabrics left to be fussy about how I cut them. That was actually a good thing because with limited options this quilt came together quickly! I cut the pieces from whatever I had with no concern to how it would look next to it's neighbor. In this closeup you can see the nice effect of the 2 colorways of prints. The fabrics in each section of the star are cut from the same motifs of 2 of the colorways. I loved this effect and want to do a larger quilt like this. It's finished off with a Zentangle label and I'll admit that this one idea is totally taken from a Zentangle that I saw on the web.
Now about the names. Every year that I make one of the sample quilts for Paula I try to make some reference to the fabric line name. For Palindromes I named my quilt a palindrome: Murder For A Jar of Red Rum. For Chromazone I found a band name Chromazone and name the quilt after one of their songs: Time in Place. Clearly, I spent way too much time thinking about names! For Wonderlust I decided to split the word and use part in the name of each quilt. Wondering Star came first because it was easy. That left me with Lust. The easy answer would have been "Fabric Lust" but why do easy? The I focused back on the quilt. I had 9 moons. Nine moons could translate to 9 months. Nine months makes a baby. Ah ha! The result was Beware of Lust! Now don't try to read anything into this. I'm not pro or anti baby. It was simply a train of thought that let me get to the end of these 2 quilts. I really should simply number my quilts. Life would be so much easier that way! I started these cards before I got sick and they just needed a little finishing. I was able to get that done yesterday. These scraps from the Maine applecore quilt (that is only cut out at this point) were haunting me. There's too much good stuff here to throw them out and, you know, that means postcards or placemats....or both! I had these screen printed dragonflies and some autumnal hand dyed braid. Well that just screams for crazy quilted postcards and that's what I did. The braid added a nice element. Well, I think it does anyway. The wavy braid in the middle is the same as the flat braid with one of the threads pulled. This is YLI Quilt Highlights and I love working with it. I even bought a Christmasy metallic one to use for some holiday cards. I usually don't like variegated threads for edging but, in this case, I think it works perfectly. These cards will be for our Airbnb guests.
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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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April 2024
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