I have mailed all of my postcards and I have a few left over! The first 5 people to post a comment here can get one mailed to them. US or international, it doesn't matter.
Do not leave your address, just leave a comment telling me that you want one and, if you are one of the first 5, I'll contact you for your address. Once they are all claimed, I'll turn off comments. All of the cards are spoken for! I'm on the home stretch with the last of my veterans quilts for 2023. I finished 2 more yesterday. This is one that I made and I absolutely love it. The blue fabrics are all from leftover veterans quilt backs and the color fabrics are hand dyed FQ sized scraps. This fun quilt was made by Marcy. I always love seeing her quilts because she and I think so differently and I often try to channel a little more Marcy in my quilts. Both of these are quilted with the Square Spiral pantograph. I have 2 more quilts ready to load today and hope to have them done by tomorrow. Then I will dye a quilt back for one of my big quilts and try to work on that over the holiday. After I finish the last 2 veterans quilts I need to get busy making some pet beds. This is the current stash of chopped up batting scraps and it will make a lot of pet beds!
The other thing I want to do this weekend is to get the Sashiko machine out and start learning how to use it. Stay tuned! I have some work friends that I get together with each month and we've been getting together at least since I retired 13 years ago. Every Christmas I like to make gifts for them and this year I chose dyed beach towels. I get my beach towels from Dharma Trading. They dye beautifully and are very soft. I used to always dye beach towels in a spiral design but I'm kind of tired of that so this year I decided to do something more organic and, honestly, it took just as long! I love the effect and might order some more towels to do some for myself. I each of my friend to tell me their 2 favorite colors and that's the guidance I used for the colors. I delivered two of them last night and will deliver the others next week. I also dyed one for June. June works for Hanover County and she is the person who "manages" our group and she is the NICEST person in the world. She loves the color red because it's the color of her college sorority so I made her a red stripe beach towel. I have 4 more beach towels to dye for my SIL's grandkids and then I'll be all done with Christmas making. Chris and I don't exchange gifts but conveniently we are getting a new printer and new water filtration system for our "gifts" this year. Yesterday I also got 2 more veterans quilts loaded and one of them done. I hope to finish off this one this afternoon. After that I have one more pair and I'll be done for the rest of the year! I might get one of my big quilts loaded and started.
Today I'm going to do something that I've never done before, participate in a medical trial. It's for a blood test for cancer screening. It's already commercially available but they will have to have a pretty extensive trial to prove it works for insurance to cover the cost. All I have to do is give blood and I get the test for free and they follow me for 3 years. That's it. If you are interested you could probably find a trial near you. It's being done nationwide in the US and they are enrolling thousands of people over the age of 50. It's a very expensive test and this is an opportunity to get it free. It's also being run in the UK by the NHS. Yesterday my best friend sent me this photo of her Christmas decorations for this year. She will be out of town for Christmas so she decided to pull out all of the Christmas postcards. I know that the silver tree (second card on back row) was the first card ever so that means that this year is the 19th year that I've been making them! Then she sent me this photo of all of the other cards that I've sent her, mostly birthday cards. The sun looking one in the middle is all thread painted and, I think, the first card I ever sent her. It might be the first card I ever made. A few of the cards are from some online swaps that I used to participate in. It's fun seeing them all together! We had quilt club last night so I wanted to get a couple more veterans quilts quilted and I finished just in the nick of time. This one was made by Becky with a line of fabrics from Barbara Brackman. This one was made by my Mom from some fabrics that I brought home from Maine one year.
I have 2 more veterans quilt tops in the closet and should be able to get on with those today. This weekend was all about catching up on quilting and addressing postcards. I started with quilting 2 veterans quilts. One is this quilt made by Brenda. The second one is this quilt that is one of mine but it was pieced my my friend, Laura, on vacation this summer. I got it quilted and bound. Both of these are quilted with this all-over leaf motif. It's freehand so it was very fast to quilt. I also put a red scrappy binding on this veterans quilt. It's another that Laura pieced on vacation and I quilted it several days ago. I now have 2 more quilts ready to deliver to our veterans. Finally, I quilted this quilt for my friend, Kim. It's 80" square. She is going home to Alabama at the end of this week and wanted to take it home with her. I think the pattern is called Scrapbook but I can't find it anywhere on the web. I quilted it with white thread (as requested) and the Fluffy Clouds pantograph. It's a very quick and easy pantograph and it makes some lovely texture.
All in all, that was a pretty good weekend. The cards also got addressed and will be in the mail today. That means I can get the Sashiko machine out this week! My Christmas chores are almost all done. This week's inspiration is from patricia Caldwell. She just took a class from Bethanne Nemesh called Breaking Boundaries with Blended Quilts. Patricia decided that she would start off small with what I learned from her. Hand stitching and some Chrysocola crystal beads added. She used one fat eighths from a Stash Pack for her central fabric.
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. The one thing that's consistent from year to year is that there is always a tree design. Recently, there's also always been a design using Paula Nadelstern fabrics. This year I combined the two. The dot fabrics are from her 2023 line that was released earlier this year. The others are from the 2024 line that will be available in February. I made this set last because I knew that they would be the easiest to cut out and stitch.The tree fabrics are from the same print that will be available in 3 colorways. I decided to go bright with these are use all 3 colors that aren't really Christmassy. When I planned these cards I was certain that I wanted to outline the trees with black thread. Boy was that a bad idea! I quickly changed my plans to outline the trees in colors to match each tree. I added crystals to the top of each tree for just a touch of bling. I made 25 of these cards! Here are 81 cards ready to address this weekend! I also have to quilt a quilt for my friend, Kim and dyed some gifts for friends. Today is a sewing day with my quilt club so I'm going to try to get 2 veterans quilts bound. I have 2 more veterans quilts to quilt but I don't know if I can get those done by Tuesday for the club meeting. It's going to be a busy weekend!
I have been wanting to make a holly-themed postcard for a while. I did one the one below in 2013 and it was based on a stitching technique used by Cane Glendening. I've been wanting to do another and this is finally the year, 10 years later. I wanted this version to be an applique version. This photo shows how I start my cards. I always start by cutting some sample fabrics to size and arranging then on a " x 6" piece of backing fabric until I get something that I like. I think it took 3 evenings to cut all of the leaves and berries. I cut them from pre-fused fabric. I made cardstock templates for the leaves and traced them on the paper backing of the fused fabric and then cut them out. There were 120 leave parts and 90 free-form cut berries. Before I cut the berries I removed the fusible backing paper because removing paper from the tiny berries would have been a pain. I had not intended to make them sparkly but when I started stitching the leaves I realized that they need more than simple straight stitching, like yesterday's birds. Couching Razzle thread seemed to be the right idea. For the berries I just free-motion stitched around them with a dark red thread. I serge the edge of my postcards and I felt that I needed some sparkle to the edges of these cards. On the serger I can run two (or more) threads through the loopers. I picked a red metallic and a red shiny acrylic for the upper looper. When I need to run a slippery thread I often set the cone in a cup of rice and that keeps the thread from sliding down and getting caught under the wound thread at the bottom of the cone. I've had this same cup of black rice sitting in my sewing room at least 10 years. I made 30 of these so now I have a total of 56. One more set to finish up today!
The first of the three sets of Christmas postcards are done! I've been wanting to do a bird postcard for a while but just hadn't found the right bird, until a few weeks ago. Just to be totally transparent, and I've said this before, my postcards are almost never original ideas. I have a germ of an idea but I search the internet for images that I can use. This card started with the Merry Christmas ribbon so I searched for a bird that would work with the rustic palette that I wanted to use. Once I had an image I could resize it in Gimp to get it to the size I needed. Then I was able to trace templates from that. After that it was just a lot of cutting and stitching and then a serged edge. Right before I serged the edges I painted a black eye on each one. I had some suggestions to add a white dot to the eye but I felt that took away from the rustic look of the cards. I made 26 of these cards. I think I'll be addressing all of the Christmas cards by this weekend!
Kim and I had a great week at the river with Anne and Weesie. We all made a lot of progress on our projects and I think we wore Weesie out. Anne said she slept the whole day after I left. One of the projects that I worked on was this crochet cape. I finished it Sunday while I was watching football and I started another one. From The Heart put out a call for wheelchair capes. I had one already finished, this one is the second and I'll try to get one more finished before I deliver in a couple of weeks. This cape works up really quick. This is a "pattern" that I made from combining some other patterns and the directions are here. The yarn is Lion Brand Mandala Ombre and I think it makes a pretty cape. I accomplished all of the stitching on the postcards that I could while at the river and I did some of the finishing this weekend. I had to stitch the berries at home because I didn't take any red metallic threads with me. The color I used here is kind of a copper color. I wish I had used a more textured background with these but it's too late for that! This is the stitching that I got done on the other two designs. The trees will get some crystal but I'll add those after I stitch the edges. I got the birds outlined and the ribbon added. Yesterday my birds got painted eyes and what a difference that makes! Now I'm ready to fuse the backs and serge the edges. The end is in sight! I also brought home a little toy to play with for the next few months. Anne bought this Sashiko machine secondhand in the Spring. She will be out of town for a few months so she let me bring it home to play with until she returns. It's a really interesting machine. There's no top thread, only a bobbin. It may look like a sewing machine but it doesn't work like one at all. This is what the stitching looks like. You can adjust the size of the stitches and spaces separately. I'm not allowing myself to play with it until the Christmas postcards are all in the mail.
This week I will get the cards finished and I want to get 4 veterans quilts quilted. |
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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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October 2024
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