 I did a little bit of beach packing yesterday but I also got these 2 placemats done. Honestly, I was pretty tired all day. I always exercise as soon as I get up in the morning and I exercise to YouTube videos. The one I picked for yesterday was HARD and it kind of wore me out for the rest of the day. But I still got packing and laundry done along with these 2 placemats.
These placemats started with the fabric in the middle. It was the very last bit of a shibori fabric that I dyed several years ago. I love making placemats and I have a big stash of dyed napkins. A friend gets a lot of donated fabric and sometimes people include linen napkins. Her charities can't use them so she passes them on to me. I dye them in leftover dyes and eventually match them up with some fabric for placemats. I have at least 100 placemats in my own collection that we use so I don't need more. These will go to Mom. She plays bingo at the local YMCA and they take donated prizes. She can donate these for one of the prizes the next time she goes. This might be my last finish of the month. Today we will go visit my brother and then I'll run errands for the beach. Tomorrow is packing and baking day. I'll make make bread and cookies for the beach.
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 I didn't post anything yesterday because it would have just been another photo of this quilt on the longarm and even I was bored with that. But now it's finished! This quilt is about 95" square. It was pieced by members if out quilt club and I think this will be the 2026 quilt that we donate to the Montpelier Center....unless someone has some other plan for it. All I really know is that my part is done! If it becomes a raffle quilt I'll have to buy tickets because it looks great in my new guest bedroom.  When I was given the quilt top, I was determined to custom quilt it. I hadn't done any significant custom quilting, like cross-hatching and feathers, in a long time. But once I really looked at it I wasn't sure that was a good idea. I consulted with my friend, Denise, who is a master quilter. She does the most beautiful custom quilting. She agreed that, on this batik, that the quilting would not show and recommended a pretty pantograph that would look good on the back. She was right. You can only see the quilting on the front in just the right light. Once this quilt is washed, you won't be able to see it at all.  But it shows beautifully on the back! The color of the back is darker than this photo and a much prettier blue. The camera insisted that it become gray. I like this leafy pantograph a lot. I don't use it much because it's a lot of work but it was worth it for this quilt. I'm happy to have this one done and I can return it to the group next month.  We are getting ready to leave for the family beach week Sunday. I didn't want to start anything new or big so I've pulled out the placemat tops that I made at the beach in April and I'll get started quilting on them today. After today I'll mostly be working on beach prep errands and tasks.
 Yesterday I was able to finish up all of the dyed t-shirts and tea towels. These 4 toddler shirts are for my Grand-niece and were done with the Cricut and heat transfer vinyl. The puppy is glow in the dark! The elephant and owl were pretty complex and I'm thrilled with how they turned out. The happy camper one was a great idea but the shirt needed to be darker for better contrast. I do like the tie-dye look vinyls that I found for the elephant and happy camper. It just works best with the black outline on the elephant.  This is the last one of the 10 that I made for her and it was the most complex because it involved 3 screen printing layers. It did not turn out great but I learned a lot. They can use this one to wash the car or something.  Then I did these shirts for my brother. I like dyeing shirts for him because I can use up my leftover dark dyes. This screen has been holding up great for a couple of years so far and this is the best printing result that I've ever gotten on them.  To do the screen printing, I cut the design on permanent vinyl on the Cricut and adhere it to the back of my screen. The designs come straight out of the Cricut library.  Here's one batch of tea towels that were screen printed with Color Magnet before I dyed them so these were finished in one dyeing step. There are two of each design.  These are the ones that I screen printed yesterday. The colors aren't quite accurate because of the lighting in my basement, but you get the idea. I have one more pair dyed that haven't been printed yet but they will get done another time. I have plenty for gift needs at the moment. That was all a pretty full day's work!  In other news, on Sunday I made my third loaf of sourdough bread. My second loaf went to my Mom. For this one I substituted sorghum and oat flours for the rice flour. It tastes closer to a whole wheat bread as I remember it.
Today I will get back to quilting the big quilt and start heat setting all the screen printed items.  Seashore Postcard This is my Mother's Day postcard plus the card for summer birthdays. Mother's Day this year is one week before our beach trip so I wanted to make a card for her in anticipation. I usually do something with a flower theme but I decided do dig into my Shibori stash for inspiration this time.  The only stitching was to couch down the yarn. The bird tracks came courtesy of the Cricut. I had a purple metallic that was perfect.  I was able to get 7 cards from the 2 fat eighths of Shibori and I had just enough of the purple vinyl to cut 7 sets of bird tracks so these cards were meant to be! There's plenty of the cream yarn leftover for another project.  Here are all 7 together. Mom got hers and my niece will get one later this week.
 I didn't actually do anything crafty yesterday except buying more yarn at Joann's. It looks like they have finished stocking warehouse yarn because the inventory was way down from last weekend. It looks like the yarn is going to stay at 50% off until the end, or near the end. I picked up some Lion Brand Basic Stitch because it's one of my favorite yarns and you can't beat this sale price. The rest of the day was running errands with Mom and I wasn't in the mood to quilt when I got home. So today I'll share some crochet and these little shirts that I dyed earlier on the week. There's more to share but these are the ones that are done so far. These are 2T/3T t-shirts for my Grand-Niece. The skull is for Halloween and, besides, she loves yellow and orange. I'm really happy with the spiral.  I shared the update on my scarf a couple of days ago so I thought it was time to catch up my mo two other projects. This is a donation blanket and I'm about halfway through it.  I like having a shawl going all the time so this is my third project. This is a new pattern for me and I'll share it when I'm done. I really like it and it's fun to crochet. I am certain that I will use this one over and over.
This weekend I have loads more firewood to stack and a giant quilt to quilt. I also need to start doing some screen printing on some of the things I've dyed. It should be a fun weekend.  The last 2 days have been a little busy with other things. It's our month to mow the shared dock area on the community lake and we picked up a load of wood for next winter. Chris had already split one load and I got that stacked. You can see the new wood on the left. We have 4 rows to fill up before next winter. We have one more load to pick up from this source and then Chris is helping another friend fell some trees this weekend. When you live in a rural area, firewood always seems to come available.  Inside, I baked another loaf of sourdough, have been repeatedly soaking all the dyed fabric and shirts, and I got the big quilt loaded and basted.  I decided on this pantograph. It's the most complex one that I have and I don't use it often. But I feel like the motif really goes with with the batik fabrics.  It's not going to show well on the front but I picked this design for how I thought it would look on the back. I'm using a dark green thread and hope that the eventual recipient will see this as a 2-sided quilt. It's going to take a week or so to quilt but I think it will be pretty once it's done.
Today I'm running errands with Mom so I don't know that I'll get anything else done but I should have the weekend to catch up and make some good progress on this quilt.  It has been several weeks since I've dyed anything so it was fun to be back dyeing yesterday. I dyed some quilt backs for veterans quilts, lots of t-shirts and tea towels and, most importantly, some blue samples. I'm trying for a blue that's as close as possible to the blue in the new guest room headboard. I plan to dye the fabrics for that quilt as soon as we get back from the beach so I can cut it all out before we leave for Maine in August.  After that we checked in on the birds. The Bluebirds will be ready to leave soon! This is the last time we will check in on them.  We have determined that these are Chickadees, not Tufted Titmouses! Two Chickadees were flying around while we checked the box. Chris did some research when we got back inside and it seems that Google Image search got the original identification wrong!  The other thing that I've worked on the past few days is this scarf. I'm making it with the leftover yarn from the poncho. I don't think it will use all the yarn but I should only be left with one ball. It has taken me to this point to get the 4 rows in my head and to get comfortable.
Today I'll wash out the fabrics and, hopefully, get the big quilt loaded and basted. We had a break in the rain yesterday afternoon so I was able to get outside and etch the glasses. Thanks to some practice, I got all 15 done without any mistakes. Each glass had a beach umbrella and the name in a fun font. I like them. Chris likes them. we're good.  It's pretty impossible to take photos of etched glasses but there are 15 in total. The hardest part of today was removing all the tape and vinyl without breaking any of the glasses.  I packed them up in the original packing and added a name card so they will be easy to distribute.  Here they are, ready to go almost 2 weeks early! This is a great affordable gift. I'm sure I'll do this again. They would be cool for a holiday gift, wedding party gifts or to celebrate a specific event. I found the glasses on Amazon and they are a very nice quality.  I even had time left to get all of my deying ready for today. This brings back memories! The cool part is that I don't have to photograph and list any of these items.
Today is dyeing day!  Look what I made! It might not look like much compared to "real" bread, but for gluten free, I think it looks amazing. It's my first gluten-free sourdough. I make some acceptable gluten-free breads from the Aran Goyoaga cookbooks but, this is just a little better. She has sourdough instructions in her cookbooks but I didn't have the nerve to give it a try. I really needed this class to get the confidence to work with sourdough. The class was at Hobby Hill Farm in Powhatan, VA. She offers dozens of different cooking classes. We're lucky to have this resource in our area. I even got a few tips that I think will help me with my other breads.  If you bake gluten free you will know that getting this kind of texture on the inside is almost a miracle. I will make more this week to see how I do on my own and I need to make some for Mom. That took up most of Saturday. I admit that, on the way home, I stopped by the other Joann in my area and they had TONS of yarn left. About half of it was Big Twist and Red Heart, yarns I don't use. But I did find some Lion Brand Basic Stitch in one color for a donation blanket. There was a Homeland color that I also liked but I feel like I have plenty of yarn.  Late Saturday I got busy getting the glasses ready for etching. Sunday was rainy so I might not get these etched before Tuesday. But the hard parts are done! Next I worked on my Mother's Day postcard but I won't share that until Monday.  Late Sunday I started getting some things ready for a big dyeing day. I started with the things that I wanted to screen print with Dye Magnet. I'm doing a lot of tea towels so that I can have a supply ready in the gift closet.  Then I did a few toddler t-shirts for my great-niece. Today I'll finish getting all my dyeing things ready and maybe have a dyeing day tomorrow.  This weekend I checked on the baby birds. These are the Eastern Bluebirds and there are 6 of them packed in here.  These are 6 hungry Tufted Titmouses.
 I'm planning to do some dyeing next week so I decided to do a little planning today. One of the things I want to do is to make some tea towel sets to stock in the gift closet. I have several screens that I like but I decided to look in the Cricut library for something new. I think this one will be really cute on towels. I'll do some with Color Magnet before dyeing and then some more I'll screen print after dyeing.  This is going to be a somewhat complex 3-color design for a toddler t-shirt.  Then I had to settle on a design for the beach gifts. I'm etching personalized glasses. I started with something more formal looking but after pondering it for a few days, I realized that I needed something more beachy.  I got all 15 masks cut, now come the hardest task of sticking the masks to the glasses and keeping the design straight. I'll work on these this weekend.  Finally, I've been pondering this quilt for a few days and yesterday I had an email consultation with the best quilter in our quilt club. This will be a fundraiser quilt that will likely raise somewhere around $700 - 1000. Before I really looked at it, I fully intended to do some custom quilting on it but we both agree that the quilting isn't going to show up at all. So I'm going to pick a very pretty pantograph and start quilting this one very soon.
Today, though, I will be taking a gluten-free sourdough baking class. That should be interesting! |
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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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