This is what happens when you are searching a shelf and find a box and wonder what's in it. In this case the box had these things in it. There once was a Accuquilt Go! die that made these 3 sizes of triangles. I ordered it thinking that the triangles were bigger and was surprised they were so small. I should have sent it back right away but, no, I had to play with it. Like every 5 year old I quickly tired of that game and put the bits in a box where they have comfortably resided for a few years. Of course when I reopened the box I was most fascinated with the tiny ones. I was listening to a book, it was evening...let's see how many I can put together before bed. This many....in 3 hours. Only one thing to do with it at this point. Make a postcard! I did finish off the edge with a purple satin stitch but I forgot to take a photo.
Usually when I make a postcard design I make at least 2 so that I can keep one for myself. Not this time. This is a true on-of-a-kind card that I sent to my best friend for her birthday. She loved it and so do I but I'll not make another. Today I'm off to my monthly sewing days with my quilt club. I'll finish the autumnal Hunter's Star and start the gray/brown one this weekend. the weather is crummy so it's a perfect weekend for sewing. Remember back in September when I pulled this stack of sunprints out of my stash? The original plan was to make some sort of wall hanging. I've tried to go through my UFO projects this year and ruthlessly assess the probability of the project actually getting made. This was one of the projects to hit the chopping block. I simply wasn't the least bit motivated to make a wall hanging. But I'm not tossing these projects out. I'm trying to turn them into something else. These got turned into 2 veterans quilts. I've shown them being quilted before but now they are actually done! I showed how I made these in 2 previous posts: part 1 and part 2. It's a simple approach that would work great for any orphan blocks or focus fabrics. The backing is a pale hand dyed green and the quilting pattern is this simple (and fast) leaf motif. I think I quilted both quilts in about 2 hours. These quilts were delivered to our coordinator Tuesday. The next veterans quilt will likely use these fabrics. My friend and I bought fat quarter sets of these years ago. I gave her mine so she could finish a quilt for her brother-in-law. These are all of the leftovers from the quilt and I've decided that I'll use them in a new veterans quilt....that I'll plan to start sewing in January.
I have a great group of former co-worker friends. We have been getting together almost every month since I retired over 9 and a half years ago. Now 3 of the 6 are retired with one schedule for next year. I enjoy coming up with a handmade gift for them each year. This year I ordered these Grocery Totes from Dharma and screen printed them with different designs using Jacquard Color Magnet. I absolutely love using this stuff. You have to dye the item a light shade so that the printed area gets nice and dark. This technique works best with colors other than yellows and golds. Here are all of the results. I was really happy with them. If I had more time I could have added some painted details but the 88 postcards took most of my time! ![]() Everybody got 2 bags. Some had different designs front and back. It was all about the screens I had and how I could put them together. One of my friends made a special request for new potholders. Since she makes Chris the most amazing peanut brittle I was happy to oblige! I use this tutorial to make my potholders. These are really popular and I know I've made over 100 of them over the years. This week I'm featuring all of the lovely browns of the earth. Fabric of the Week - WalnutMy favorite brown of all my browns is Walnut and it's 20% off through Sunday! Orders over fat quarter size will be custom dyed but the sale price still applies. Walnut is a deep, dark grayish brown. I see tree trunks in an art quilt. Here are a few other brown Shades Packs available in the shop. These fabrics are also really popular for monochromatic portraits. Earthy Gradients Back in StockThere's one more great fabric to use when you are looking for beautiful earthy browns and that's the Earthworks Stash Pack. Earthworks has a great collection of light, medium and dark value browns in fat eighth cuts.
These are probably the most special postcards that I've ever made. Even Chris says that these are his favorites. I unearthed these embroideries from one of my Bins of Magical Things a few months ago. I made then YEARS ago and they were intended to be ornaments just like you see in the pattern photo. I did the embroidery but never actually made the ornaments. It was time to do something with them. The first step was to pick some fabrics. I had a nice red satin that would be a great background for the 6 red and green ornamants and this green would be a perfect frame for both designs. I eventually dug up a pretty purple satin for the background of the gold embroideries. The first step was to fuse WonderUnder on the back of the green fabric and cut out the circles that will frame the embroideries. I used WonderUnder because I wanted to be able to draw guidelines to help center the circle. To put it together I first cut the embroidery about a half inch larger than the hole and then centered the embroidery in the hole and tack fused it in place. The teflon sheet is so helpful. I had prefused the back of the satin fabrics and then cut out circles the same size and the hole in the fabric. I used the paper backing to position the satin fabric on the postcard base and fused it down. then I flipped the embroidery part on top of that and fused all the layers together. I used a pressing cloth to protect the embroideries. I did a satin stitch around the ornament and added a hanger and bow. I stitch lines like the bow and hanger at least 3 times to build up a bold line and to hide any bobbles. Here's a close up of the stitching. These cards will be mailed in clear envelopes to protect the stitching. I made 12 of these cards, 6 in each design. I also unearthed these two old/vintage cross stitch projects that I might have done over 35 years ago! I used the same method to turn them into cards too. That's 88 cards made this year!
There's still a ton of stuff in that bin..... Today's inspiration comes from Susan Price, a fiber artist who also had an Etsy shop where she sells wonderful nature-inspired thermofax screen. The flowers in her art quilt were made with the Blye Sky Gradient.....the very same Blue Sky Gradient that's on sale this week!
For sharing, Susan 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. These cards, like most all of my cards, started with trash. This was the pile of cutoffs from the Groovy quilt blocks. Just look at that pretty pile. I couldn't toss it out! Instead I grabbed a sheet of WonderUnder and fused the strips into stripes. (Say that 3 times fast.) It reminded me of all things 60's so the design for a Peace tree came to me quickly. Besides I always have one tree design every year. I wanted to screen print the Peace lettering so I created a Word document and sent it off to Susan and she had the screen to me in just a couple of days. Getting custom screen made is really easy and not expensive. I just couldn't accept a solid color Peace. It's easy to get a rainbow effect by overlapping the colors that you apply to the screen. I did have to wipe everything clean every 10 cards or so because it does eventually blend to brown. It was very peaceful. The trees were cut and fused to the cards and at this point I was in love! The fabric bits aren't totally fused so they had to be stitched down. I tried several methods and colors of thread but a simple black outline worked best and set the stage for a colorful serged edge. This variegated thread was perfect for the edging and one little crystal tops each tree. I made 30 of these cards.
Usually I make 3 designs each year but this year I actually made a 4th very special design and I'll share that one Monday. After I finished the blue diamond postcards I still had a big stack of scraps left and one night in October I sewed them all together and made a big piece of "new" fabric. I didn't have a plan for it, I was just play sewing. A few days later I needed to either put the new fabric away or do something with it. The easy answer always is to cut it into postcard backgrounds and that's how this new card design started. I thought they might look nice with a Spirograph motif on them for a stylized snowflake look. It took a surprisingly long time to get to this point. I tried getting the designs to work on fabric but I just couldn't get a sharp white line. So I broke my rule of not buying supplies for postcards and ordered some krafttex. That's awesome stuff! You can sew it like fabric but it's also like paper. I'm going to have to play with it some more. But for now I have bright white snowflakes. They looked a little lost on that background. A rummage through the Drawer of Magical Things unearthed this white fabric that had been over-painted with pearlized paint. That's what it needed! All they needed after that was backing and some edging. I got 23 cards out of that pile of blue scraps.
Over the next several days I'm going to be sharing this year's Christmas postcards. I was very happy to get all of them done by December 1 and now I'm finally editing the photos to share. First up are the Blue Diamond postcards. When I make the sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern I like to try to use some of the scrap fabrics in my Christmas postcards. ![]() These are the fabrics that I started with from her new Artful Snowflake line. I made my "I'm Not a Snowflake" quilt and it involved a lot of fussy cutting so the remnant fabrics looked like a lot of Swiss cheese. I decided on a framed diamond shape. I started by cutting as many symmetrical diamond shapes as I could from the scraps. That turned out to be 21. I added a frame in black. I also had a lot of cut off corners from that fabric that looks like beads. They were perfect for making the frames. Some of the frames are narrow and some are wide. That's because some of the diamonds were smaller than others based on the scrap of fabric that I had for the symmetrical design. After I serged the edges black I thought it needed a little something else and for Christmas cards that something is almost always crystals.
I made 21 of these card. Fabric of the Week - Blue SkyThis week's newsletter is all about sky elements for your art quilts. ![]() The first sky element fabrics that I made were the Blue Sky Shades Pack and Blue Sky Gradient and they continue to be the most popular fabrics for sky landscapes. Patricia Caldwell used the Blue Sky Gradient in her Red Rock Sunrise quilt at left. Both Blue Sky Shades and Blue Sky Gradient are 20% off through Sunday! New Stash Pack!Keeping with the sky theme, Skyscapes is the newest Stash Pack in the shop. This pack was designed with sky elements in mind. Each Stash Pack contains 10 fat eighths. In this set there are 5 streaky fabrics in blends of yellow to gold, orange, pink, purple and blue for a sunset effect. There are five different mottled blues for bright and dusky skies. These can be combined with sheer fabrics, cheesecloth or fibers to add cloud elements. Other Sky FabricsIf you need larger pieces of sky element fabrics check out the Reflections fabrics. Here are few that were created specifically for sky elements. See all of the Reflections fabrics here.
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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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February 2025
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