I don't have anything creative of my own to share today. Yesterday I spent the day making bread and cookies and other chores. But I do have 2 cool photos to share of my postcards being displayed. Mom and I went to our quilt club holiday pot luck dinner last night and she shared this photo with me last night. This is how she had displayed her cards. I love seeing them all together! She hasn't received her card for this year yet. I hope it doesn't throw the display out of balance. After I dropped Mom off I remembered that another friend had told me that she displays the cards too. Just as I was thinking about texting her to ask for a photo she sent me one! Literally, at the exact same time. It was weird...and cool. I've had a few connections like that happen this week. Here is Mitzi's display. I love the way she clipped them to garland. She has received her 2022 card and she clipped it right in the middle. I think her whole mantle display is beautiful.
This is why I make them. I'm never sure which people really love getting them but I know there are some and I make the cards for them. I know that most of you are pre-occupied with holiday preparations but I hope that no one is having a blue Christmas! I want this new blue-themed Stash Pack to make you joyful and not blue. I could have simply named this one "Not Turquoise" because I used all of the blue dyes other than turquoise. Eavery 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 WeekThere's nothing wrong with a Blue Christmas if you love blue! For the blue-lovers among us, the Fabric of the Week is the Caribbean Stash Pack. This one has all of the turquoise missing from Lapis. You can pick up this one for 20% off through Sunday.
I'm not sure exactly what all I accomplished this weekend except for watching football all day yesterday (hence the crochet update). I know I did some yardwork and I did make a Christmas gift Saturday. I can't share the gift yet but I can tell you that I'm really happy with it. Sunday was all football and all crochet so here's where I stand with my crochet. Look familiar? This is the second capelet I've made in this yarn. It's Lion Brand Ice Cream Cotton Blend. It's lovely to work with and feels great and I got it at a great deal (the only way I buy yarn). I just don't love how the colors pool. I also have 6 balls of this in shades of tan/brown and I think it will actually look better. The pattern was for a smaller weight yarn so I had to do lots of adjusting for 4 weight yarn. This one is a medium size. The last one was large. In the end, I'm confident that it will find a good home. I didn't have a lot leftover but I added what there was to my 4 weight scrap blanket. Even yarns of the same weight vary quite a bit in size but I"m not worrying about that. It's a scrap project that might become a pet bed so I'll just keep going. My next charity project will be a blanket (baby or wheelchair....whatever) using tis Caron cake yarn that was also bought on sale last year. I think I got this yarn half off. It will be just like this blanket with either a purple or turquoise border. It was interesting to go back and read that post where I talked about the pain in my hands and how I had to limit my crochet time. I'm so glad I found a good chiropractor! I crocheted for probably 5 hours yesterday and I'm no worse for it. No pain at all. I do have some pain from my ab-focused workout this morning. My computer app tried to kill me. Barclay's blanket is coming along well. I'm about to start ball 5 of 7. He will probably have this right after Christmas.
I still have the blue sweater underway but haven't touched it in a bit. The next step requires me to sit down and focus on the instructional video. I hope to have time for that next week. This week requires me to do a lot of tie dye shirts for Christmas gifts. Today's inspiration is Highland Bess by Stephanie Schneider. Bess is worked on a background of the Woodlands Gradient. Bess' lovely hairdo is made with dyed cheesecloth.
For sharing, Stephanie 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 have a small group of friends that I used to work with and we all get together each month for drinks and to catch up. Sometimes we do other things together but the monthly catch up is our thing. There are 6 of us and we've been getting together pretty much since I retired in 2010. We exchange Christmas gifts each year. Kim, Lora and Mary always make homemade treats that Chris really enjoys. Kim makes amazing peanut brittle. Lora makes a yummy coffee chocolate bark and Mary makes killer Rum Balls and cookies. Mitzy and Susan always come up with something really clever and I always make something. I've done coasters (2 ways), potholders (need to do those again), dyed socks, dyed scarves, soap and lotion, glass dishes......I can't even remember everything. I've even made tea towels before but it was a long time ago. I know that because the ones I made for myself from that year are worn out. This year is tea towel year again and these are the 5 sets I selected, from the 10 sets I made, that I will gift to my friends this evening. Here's how I make them. I use stencils and screens and a product called Jacquard Color Magnet. If' you have been around the blog for a while you will know that I use this often. I have pretty severe allergies to the VOCs in fabric paints so this is the absolute safest way for me to get imagery on cloth. It's limiting because the results is tone on tone, but it doesn't fade over time like paints often does. The Color Magnet is bright yellow and the consistency of mucous. It's really slimy. It works best with screen printing but I have more holiday themed stencils than screens and I had to figure out the best way to apply it with a screen. I made a sample cloth a couple of weeks ago trying a few different methods and the best, by far, was using a dense sponge and sponging the stuff on. You have to be very careful using this product because once it touches the fabric it's on there. You really can't successfully wash it out. So any spatters or drips are going to show. Over time I've just learned to embrace that feature. Having a print surface is very helpful but you can't use the same print surface without letting it completely dry out between uses. Otherwise any bleed through of the product will stick to the next towel and it will show in the dyeing. I have a random roll of batting (that I probably was given or picked up cheap somewhere) that's thin polyester with a scrim. It's pretty useless for most things but it makes a great print surface. I cut 5 pieces of that and I printed 5 towels at a time. I did 5 a day giving the print pads a full day to dry before I did the next set of 5. It worked great because I was usually bored with the stenciling process after 5 towels anyway. This is what they look like after they are printed and while still wet. Once the dry the yellow image is very pale. Then you dye! This process works with pale colors. The dye magnet picks up most of the excess dye that didn't stick to the fabric and that's how you get a darker image. But if you dyed the item dark, then the image would not show well at all. Yellows and oranges don't really show up well either. I think it works best with blues, greens, purples, reds, grays, tans..... This process also works best with full immersion dyeing but I wanted some texture in the background so I used my normal low-water immersion. In one particular bin, because of the way I had the fabric arranged, the images didn't develop as well as I wanted. But I thought I knew a trick to deal with that. In my early days of using this product I learned that the Color Magnet keeps working for a few washes. I learned the hard way that I cannot put all of the colors together in one wash cycle because the items keep picking up dye and the images turn gray. I have to do the soak process by color. For the ones that didn't absorb as much dye as I wanted, I rinshed them enough to get the soda ash out and then put them in a bin of water with some green dye. The printed areas all took up more dye and the images became clearer. Because there was no soda ash, the rest of the towel didn't absorb any discernable additional dye. Here are all 10 designs that I made using every stencil and screen that I had in my stash that was remotely holiday themed. I made 2 of each design. The 5 at the top of the page are the ones I selected to give my friends this evening. These are probably my 3 favorite designs. The snowflake stencils worked really well and I like the other two with the blue middle bit and the green edges. I'll probably keep one of these sets for myself.
Next up in the Christmas making department is tie dye tshirts. I've got 2 weeks to get those done. So, recently I went to Joann to get some thread for Mom. I took my usual stroll through the yarn department to see what was going on there. There was a lady standing by and end cap looking at the O'Go Colorama yarn. I stopped for a second and she pointed out that it was buy 1 get 3 free. We started talking about making hats for charity and discovered that we make things for the same organization, From The Heart Stitchers. I know I said a month ago that I had made my last hats for the year but FHT had made a request for more hats recently so I bit on the Colorama deal. I like The Chunky Guy beanie for fast hats made for men. They don't look so good flat but they actually look great on. So I got started and decided to only work on hats until I made as many as I could with this yarn. I paid about $9 for all of the yarn and I got 9 hats made. I probably could have made one more but by the time I got it down to $1 a hat I was done. I did not love this yarn. It made a comfy hat but it wasn't fun to work with. I refused to put this yarn in the closet and forced myself to use it as a lesson to myself on impulse purchases. With the hats finished it was time to make a delivery. These are the things that our Ashland group made in the past few months. I delivered the Tuesday. I'm already working on another of the blue capelets. I'll be happy to see the end of that yarn as well. I love the texture of the cotton/acrylic blend but I don't like the way the colors flow. I know someone will love it though because it's very warm and comfy. In other news, I keep a puzzle going and usually work on it while I'm eating breakfast. This one was a little surprising because it turned out to be one of those with hidden animals. I just couldn't do the sssss so I'm calling this one done.
The other thing I've been working on this week are some gifts from friends. I think I'll have them done and ready to share tomorrow. Next I have to work on some December birthday cards and I want to make sure they don't look anything like Christmas. Every year I do one design that is tree themed. This card was supposed to be the design for last year but I got stuck in the design process and couldn't come up with anything that I liked. They ended last year like this. I had the stenciling done and just did not like it and didn't think I could save them. I decided to let them rest for a year. They needed more red! I think the red stripe fabric is a Kaffe fabric that I had in my stash. It made for nice edges and some red paint dots fixed the trees. Once I had my mind made up they came together quickly.
I made 24 of these. I think I made a total of 80 cards and they are addressed and ready to mail today or Thursday. Also, I have a few extras! If you would like to receive a card leave a comment below and I'll contact you to get your address. I have at least 5 extras and will take them on a first come first served basis. This new gradient didn't turn out like I envisioned it in my mind and I'm so happy that it went its own way because this is a lot better than my imagination! This is what I call dyer's bliss and that's why I named this new gradient Bliss. It's a lovely gradient from pale jade green to to a pale medium purple. The purple in this gradient coordinates with the Lupine Shades Pack. The jade isn't a current Shades Pack but I can always custom dye coordinating fabrics for any gradient. Gradients Back in StockAlong with the new Bliss Gradient, I have 3 more that are back in stock. Fabric of the WeekThe fabric of the week this week is the Helios Gradient. This one will bring a bit of sunshine to your next project and it's 20% off through Sunday!
The idea for this card started in the heat of summer when I did some sunprinting with Estelle and Marcy. I dyed 32 fat quarters that weekend. Two of them were dyed using a window sheer that I picked up at Goodwill. The star motif sunprinted really well and I knew that I wanted to use these fabrics for some Christmas cards this year. Two years ago I painted a stash of fabric with metallic and pearlized paints. I found a couple of those to use for my moon and star. The stitching took two different machines. Once all of the Christmas cards were done I had used all 5 of my sewing machines! The Brother (the most expensive machine) doesn't like sewing with specialty threads so I could only use that one for some stitching on the tree cards (unveiled Wednesday). I used a Janome 415 for the zig zag on the star but it doesn't have a free motion foot. I pulled out the Janome Gem Gold to stitch the gold loop and do the straight stitching on the star. I used the Juki for some stitching on the candle card that I shared Friday and I finished all of the cards on my serger. For once I didn't have too many machines! It took me a long time to figure out what to do on the edges but in the end I felt that the card needed more sparkle so I picked a Razzle Dazzle thread from Superior Threads. It needed just one more thing. I had a ton of crystals left over from on one (and only) foray into diamond painting and just needed some Super Glue to finish these cards off.
I made 24 of these cards. I'm addressing a few each night and hope to have them all in the mail by Saturday. This week's inspiration is another inspiring art quilt from Patricia Caldwell. The coastal influence of her new home in Oregon is really showing through. She use the Waves gradient as the jumping off point for her trademark stitching and embellishment. In this close up photo you can see some the the wonderful details that she's added to the quilt that include fibers, dyed yarns, Larimar and Chrysocolla crystal beads. She's also included driftwood pieces and polished jasper and small pieces of agate found on the beaches at the Oregon coast.
For sharing, Patricia 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. |
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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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