We spent a good part of yesterday moving the last of the furniture that we needed to move. One piece was big and heavy but we got it down without either of us getting hurt. Downstairs is easier than upstairs so we had that going for us! Now I'm down to getting drawers and cabinets reorganized and then I can start looking for a bed for the former office. Things are getting done! On the crochet front I got a little done this week. It's been a little warm to even think about crochet but I added a few rows to the blue blanket. I also added a few rows to the baby blanket. I think I was able to do 2 nights on each blanket. I almost bought some sale yarn this week but I made myself look at my stash first and that helped me avoid that purchase. In between moving chores I finished cutting batting for the potholders and got 11 of them finished! These come together really fast. I'm binge watching Money for Nothing (a BBC show) on YouTube while I stitch.
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I didn't get a lot of sewing done yesterday. We spent the morning moving out a 30 year old sofa bed, end tables and coffee table. They were old but still in perfect condition. We found a charity that was thrilled to receive it. I'm always glad when things can avoid the dump a little longer. We have one more piece of furniture to move downstairs and it's going to be the hardest to move. We may attempt it today. Later in the afternoon our friends arrived to move into the guest house. I also got to deliver 42 veterans quilts to our VA contact. I love delivery days! I did get a couple of hours in the sewing room and finished cutting out the fabric parts of the potholder kits. All I have left to cut are the pocket batting pieces and then I'll set down for some serious sewing.
I didn't get a ton done yesterday. I had an appointment in the morning and visited a friend in the afternoon. In between I got 10 more potholder kits cut out. the ones made from the mandala fabrics are going to be really cool. I'll cut out some more before I start to do some sewing. I was thinking about things while I was cutting and I had an epiphany. I've always marked the potholder quilting lines with a ruler and chalk wheel. Then I remembered that I had a set of stencils that would allow me to mark them a lot faster. This is really going to speed up construction. It's full summer here so I thought it would be fun to do some ice dyeing this weekend. After my appointment I stopped by Walmart to pick up some tshirts to dye and Friday I'll fold some fabrics. One thing I want to dye is quilt back for the houses quilt. I think this will make for a fun weekend.
I've decided that my friends Christmas gift this year will be potholders. I haven't made them in a while and I have a new HUGE supply of Insulbrite. I really just started making these 4 for my friend. This is my own pattern that you can find here. Then I looked over to the cutting table and, since I had everything out, I thought I might as well start on Christmas gifts. It will be a great project to work on between now and our trip in August. I don't want to start a quilt and I could come back for vacation with half of my Christmas tasks done. I've got a lot of Insulbrite cut and this many potholder kits cut out. There are lots more kits to cut and all of the cotton batting. These are the ones I'm working on now. I think I'll cut straight for a few days and then get going on the sewing. I'm trying to make a wide variety and am taking some fabrics from each of my little (or big) stashes. It's fun to make these little projects. I'm trying to channel my inner Patty and her massive tote-making binge.
Two more veterans quilts ready for delivery! This is such a simple quilt to make but I love how it looks and I've made it several times. I have it as a "pattern" that I called Regiment. But it's really simply 20 Churn Dash blocks. I've made this one 3 times before and I'm sure I'll make it again. It's easy, fast and looks good. I used one of my new pantographs on this one. It's called macrame and I love how it looks. The second one is the batik string quilt. This one was made with all scrap strings and I love how it turned out. I've made this one 4 times before. I lost one of the photos. I have 2 more kits ready to go! I quilt these free motion in diagonal lines parallel to the piecing. I can quilt one of these in about 45 minutes.
I'm glad to get these 2 done to add to the delivery that I'm going to make this week. It will have about 30 quilts for teh veterans! It was quite a busy weekend around here. It was also standard July hot so I stayed inside as much as possible. I got 4 veterans quilts quilted. Two are mine and I'll share those tomorrow. These two were made by other members. This on was made by Glenda (Mom) and I quilted it with one of my new pantographs. This one was made by betsy. She said it's a traditional Amish pattern. All of her quilts are really striking like this one. I decided on Woven Wind for this one because it gives kind of a fan effect that seemed a good fit for this quilt. On Sunday I spent the whole day with the Cricut making postcards. I can't share them yet until at least one of them arrives at its mail destination. For now I can say that it was a good learning day and it's a really fun machine with so many possibilities. I need to order the fabric blade. The other big job for the weekend was getting the guest house ready for friends who are moving in while they are between homes. Its' also part of the whole house reorg that shutting the business set off. Job #1 was getting this sofa bed out of the office, downstairs and over to the guest house. It's really heavy so we waited until a friend was here to help out. We discovered a moving hack where we could back up the truck to the house porch to load the sofa and then drive it to the guest house porch (about 15 feet) to unload it directly on that porch. It saved them lots of carrying up and down steps. Maybe this sofa will actually be used now! It's got to be 15 years old and it's in pristine condition. In this photo, to the right of the door is a narrow stairway to the loft. The story behind the guest house is that it was here when we moved here and it was a dump. It was filthy and disgusting. It didn't have AC or heat, aside from space heaters and it was not finished well. We invested a lot to finish it because we thought we would have a lot of visitors. My Mom stayed here for a few months and a couple of friends have stayed here between moves but otherwise, it hasn't been used all that much. That's one reason we did Airbnb for about 10 years. It was nice to have it used and we met some cool people. It was fun until Airbnb started treating hosts horribly. We shut it down after Airbnb initiated their Covid rules. All that to say that I'm really excited that it's about to be used again for a few month. My college roommate and her husband will be staying here off and on until they find their new forever home. They have a vacation home at "the river" and they have lots of traveling planned but hopefully they will be here a lot too. This is looking from the front door to the little kitchen. It's small but adequate. To the left by the kitchen is the bedroom. The bedroom is surprisingly spacious. This furniture is the first furniture that we bought when we got married. Nothing in the guest house is stylish but it's comfortable. The bathroom is off the bedroom and is just big enough. It has a pretty massive closet too. This is where I was storing the big rolls of batting for the veterans quilts. I've had to move those into the house and, at the moment, they are in the living room. I'm going to need to find a better solution for that! After Cheryl and Steve move, I'll be able to take this space over again. When we moved here, this loft was just an attic that was accessed from the outside. There were steps attached to the side of the house and they were falling off. When we decided to fix this place (instead of tearing it down), we added stairs inside and made it a usable loft. We recently had to have the drywall here repaired and Chris repainted. It's really cute in this space when the beds are made with all of the colorful quilts. The space is big enough for 4 twin beds.
If we had built this house I would have never even considered a guest house. It's a luxury for sure but has plenty of extra expenses, like and additional HVAC system. But, at times like now, I'm glad we have it. Cheryl and Steve will move in Thursday and, after this weekend, we are ready for them! I didn't take my crochet blankets to the river with me so I've only had one night each to work on them. Now I know that I do about 2 rows at a time in the evenings. I'm fine with that progress. These are donation project just dome to keep my hand busy in the evenings. For travel, I generally take my hat bag. I made a lot of progress on the blue hat at the river. Just a few more rows and it will be ready to seam. I have to work on this during the day because it's just so hard to see the stitches with this yarn. I love the look of it but hate working with it. In the evenings there I started a new man's chemo hat. Both of these hat will be ultimately donated and I'll be really happy to see the end of that blue yarn. It's really best for stitches like granny stitches where you stitch into a chain space or other hole. Stitching into previous row stitches is hard for eyes full of floaters.
Not much happened yesterday so I just have a quick post to share that I got the Cricut set up and cut a couple of projects. This is the first project that they have you do as soon as you set it up. It's removable so this cheap dresser will not be ruined. Then I wanted to try an iron-on motif because when Ella visits for craft camp we have t-shirts to decorate. This t-shirt used to have an iron-on design on it but it all flaked off. I replaced it with this design from the Cricut library. It was all very easy!
Next I will work on some birthday cards and then I want to do some screen printing and fabric cutting. I need to order a different blade for the fabric. That's all I have from yesterday. This weekend will be about getting the rest of the veterans quilts quilted and getting 2 of mine bound.....hopefully. For all of my friends in the USA, Happy independence Day! It's my favorite holiday, followed closely by Thanksgiving. We don't have any significant plans. Chris has a friend visiting to go fishing and I'll be quilting and playing with my new Cricut machine. I have to get comfortable with it before Ella arrives for "craft camp" in 2 weeks. Today I'm sharing what I was actually doing the past 3 days. My posts were a collection of things I had finished/worked on the past week or so and just had not posted yet. I was at the river playing with my best doggie, Ouiser, and visiting my best friend. it was great to get away for a few days. She's beautiful and still has a little puppy craziness in her. It was fun. But it wasn't all playing with Weesie. On the project front, Anne worked on the coolest project ever. She loves denim jackets and buys them at thrift shops all the time. She's been wanting to make this one for a while and it turned out great! She got the embroidered organza at a high end fabric store here in Richmond and it's just perfect for this treatment. Here's the front. You can see that she scattered some fused butterflies after she finished sewing the inserts. She also gave me Cricut lessons! I cut my first image on freezer paper to use as a painting mask. She bought these plain rugs at Walmart for me to play with. She likes skulls and skeletons so I made this one for her. Then I made this one for the guest house. Our friends are moving in for a few months while they search for their next house. I learned that spray painting doesn't work so well. Even with it taped off there's overspray. Stippling will work best but I'm quite happy with this result for my first try. We had a storm Sunday night and Monday was absolutely perfect. I sat outside with some yarn and a hook for a while and watched the river. before I arrived she had put out her crab pots so Monday night we had my favorite dinner. The short visit wrapped up with a perfect sunset. I'm back home and got my Cricut set up and will be playing with it a little today and more this weekend.
Last week, for the first time in a month, I decided to dye some fabric. It was nice to be back mixing dyes without much of a plan. The primary reason for the session was to dye a bolt of backing fabric for veterans quilts. These should keep me and Brenda stocked for a couple of months. I also dyed some kids' tshirts. I made the mistake of buying 50% poly shirts but that will work out OK. My young friend, Ella, is coming to stay with me a few days for a craft camp and we are going to get the Cricut busy putting things on these shirts for her and her brother. I also decided to dye some new Dharma primary colors. This one is called Raven Black. It's not black, but it's a nice blue. I'm sure I'll use up the rest of the small container but I won't order this one again. I have a recipe for a color like this. The other two colors I tested are Atomic Fireball and Blue Abyss. I mixed the red too weak but, even so, it's not red. It's more like orange and I have a recipe close enough to this color. The blue is a beautiful blue and I have a blue close to this too. I will use the rest of these dyes but I'm not sure I'd order more of them. This image right here is one reason that I'm happy to not be selling fabric anymore. Reasonably often there are "trash threads" in the fabric. I wouldn't sell fabric like this. Sometimes I can pull the threads out but sometimes I'd have to re-dye a piece. This one isn't so bad but when there's a white thread on a dark fabric, it really shows. For my own quilts, it doesn't matter. I can cut around it if I need. But it's sure annoying! I also did a few parfait dyes. This was the first kind of dyeing that Anne and I ever did. I like all the texture that comes from this technique. Here's a tutorial that I found if you want to try it out.
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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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July 2024
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