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Thank you to Cheryl B-J for sending us these two lovely quilts for our veterans quilt project! I got the quilting finished Tuesday so I could take them to the meeting Tuesday night and got two volunteers to do the binding. These will be ready for our veterans soon!  Quilts based on 12"blocks always seem to make really nice quilts and these are no exception.  I quilted both with my favorite patriotic star and ribbon motif. I've probably quilted that pantograph about 100 times! I might need to start looking for a new patriotic pantograph just to have something new and different.
We gladly accept donated tops for our project. The optimal size is 48" x 60". Since most of these go to cancer and dialysis patients, this is the perfect size for them to take with them when they are getting treatments. You can contact me if you want to donate a top and I'll give you the details.
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 Who knew that orange could be a neutral? This is my last finish before vacation. This is also a veterans quilt and I love it.  I really enjoy making these quilts. I can piece a top in one weekend if I have the strings and foundations already cut. You just have to remember that half the blocks need to have the diagonal in the opposite direction.  I didn't pay attention to my block count when I made this quilt so I had to remake one block. I know that orange isn't appealing to everyone but it's my happy color and I love it in this quilt.  In between travel preps, Chris and I got in some kayaking one evening. It was beautiful out on the lake.
We leave today for a 2-day drive to Maine. I probably won't post again until Monday.  It may look like one quilt here but you'll see below that I made 2 identical quilts. I cut out veterans quilt kits all at one time and they usually hold me for a year or more. I had enough of these fabrics to make 2. I worked on piecing them over 3 months of quilt club sewing days and got them quilted and bound this weekend. I really like the look of this quilt and will likely make more in the future.  See, I did make 2!  I also got 4 quilts ready for the quilt exhibit in September. One of them is Mom's. Three of them needed labels and 2 needed sleeves. Luckily, I had 4 hanging rods just the right size! I really wanted to get these ready before I leave so I didn't have to worry about if after vacation.
Otherwise, it's just laundry, packing and a little evening crochet going on here this week. Neither Mom or I wanted to talk about or do anything related to her move yesterday. She got a day of rest and I got a day of yarn and thread.  Yesterday afternoon I went to crochet with the local library group. I finished a winter hat that I started last month and then added the leftover yarn to my scrappy blanket. Whatever project I finish I add the leftover yarn to this blanket. It can probably be donated as a wheelchair blanket whenever it gets finished. The most important thing is that I don't have scrap balls of yarn.  Then after dinner I got buys and got the veterans quilts quilted. I think I can get the last one loaded and quilted before we leave and might even be able to get one or more of them bound.....we'll see. I'm not making myself commit to it.  Gail left a comment on the last post asking if there's a pattern for this quilt so I thought I'd share my "pattern" here. It's just a simple sashed quilt that I mocked up in EQ. The blocks are 12" finished so they are based on a 4" grid. The red and white could be cut from jelly roll strips (2.5"). The sashing and borders are all 3" finished. Ignore my diagram, I also made the top and bottom borders 3".
Gail, I hope this is enough to help you draft it out yourself. It's pretty straight forward. I hope everyone had a great weekend! It was sewing weekend with my quilt club and that means I worked on a veterans quilt. This time I made blocks using scraps from all of my Paula Nadelstern projects. I love string blocks!  The veterans quilts are 48 x 60 so I make my blocks to finish 8" x 10" so that I get 3 diamonds across and down. These were easy to sew and I got all the blocks done by the time we wrapped up Saturday afternoon. But with this approach you have to be careful to do half of the blocks angled left to right and half the other way. I was so close to being done that I decided to keep going when I got home. I trimmed and layed out all the blocks and got this. Oops! That was enough for Saturday.  Yesterday Chris left for a bucket list trip to Alaska to go fishing and my friend Kim came over to hang out and sew for a few days. The first thing I did was make a new block and get this top put together. I love it! It's in the to-be-quilted closet awaiting it's turn on the longarm.  Kim is working on a quilt project of her own. This one is called Scrapbooking or something like that. I'll show you when there are more blocks but I think it's going to be really cute.  After I finished my quilt top I didn't really want to dig into something else so I decided to clear out the bags of batting scraps. I had enough for 7 pet beds to donate to Richmond Animal League. The are all different sizes because I use whatever fabric I get for free and make as big a bed as I can from the fabric. Different sizes for different animals.
That's one more item checked off my July goals list! Today Kim is going to work on her quilt more and I'm not sure what I'm doing but I might start planning my project(s) for Maine or I might start some placemats for my brother. The Goldfinch quilting will come this weekend after Kim leaves.  I really enjoy working the voting precinct on election days and this time we had a particularly great crew. Our chief was serving her first stint as chief and she was fabulously organized. Two of my former coworkers were also volunteers. There were only 2 downsides: I had to get up at 4 am and the day was SLOW. We have a small precinct anyway, at 1444 registered voters, and this was just a Republican House of Delegates primary with a very popular incumbent. We knew the turnout was going to be low and were expecting about 5%. In the end we got about 12%, not counting early and absentee voters. That's a good turnout but it was still slow! But, on the upside, I was able to finish one chemo hat, start and finish a man's winter hat and start one more. I don't like to waste time! I have some single skeins 4 weight yarns that I want to use and I'm finding that using 2 strands in my favorite bulky man's hat pattern is a great way to work through them. In November we should be much busier with Virginia Senate and Delegate elections.  I've been slowly plugging away at the crochet. I'm not doing a lot because I've been working on the Goldfinch and, frankly, it's kind of warm to be crocheting a big blanket. But I'm slowly making progress on this one. I'm on ball 5 of 7. I made this one a tad narrower than the others so it might not use all 7 balls.  I love how the baby blanket is looking. I just have one more white stripe section and then the border to do. This one is turning out a little big so it might be a toddler blanket. I'll let the charity decide but it should be done soon.  To be perfectly honest, one reason that I haven't been crocheting is that I'm avoiding this project. I work on my projects alternately and I dread working on this because I dont think I'm going to like it. My SIL had convinced me to finish it anyway but she' not here to stay on me and I've lost interest again. I've decided to shelve it for now and work on the one garment that I really want to make, another hexie cardigan for winter. I ordered the yarn I want to use and will get started as soon as it arrives. The new one will be dark purple and I'm giving the blue one to Mom. Now I'm excited to crochet again.  I also started last night on the next section of the Goldfinch.
 Most of my sewing time this weekend was at quilt club and I was able to finish these 2 veterans quilt tops. I've been working on them at sewing days since April. I'm really happy with them and for now they will hang in the to-be-quilted closet. But once they are quilted they will get red binding.  I also got 2 more veterans quilts quilted. This makes 6 for the month and that was my goal. For the next few weeks I'll work on some other projects on the longarm and give the veterans quilts a rest. Betsy made both of these quilts. She loves little pieces, red and reproduction fabrics and her quilts are always very graphic. This one is a double 4-patch.  The Woven Wind pantograph is a really easy and fast one.  This one is also Betsy's. This is the third one I quilted for her. She's very prolific!  This one is unique because the block is rectangular.  I also got in a little time on the Goldfinch quilt. This type of pattern isn't for everyone but I'm enjoying it so far.
But I'm taking another detour the next day or so. I'm going to try to get a hiking backpack made before we go on a long hike Wednesday. I'm making it from an old pair of hiking pants. I have a vague idea of what I want it to be but I have a lot of details to work out. I needed 3 more fabrics for the Goldfinch quilt and got them dyed Tuesday. While they were processing I didn't want to start something new so I decided to work on my goal to quilt 6 veterans quilts this month. Here are numbers 3 and 4.  This one was made by peg and she used a lot of scrappy blues for the pinwheel blocks. There's even a fabric with a shark print in there somewhere.  I don't remember who made this one but I like it. It's a great way to use some scrappy 16-patch blocks.  I quilted them with white thread mostly because I wanted to bring some white into the dark blue borders of the 16-patch quilt.
I have 2 more loaded and ready to quilt today. Tomorrow is our monthly quilt club sewing days so I want to have these done to return to people for binding. By Sunday I'll be working on the Goldfinch.  When I posted my may summary yesterday and revisited the placemats that I made for beach gifts, I realized that I forgot to share a couple of beach gifts that I received. My friend, Anne, dyed bandanas for everyone and use her Crircut to print them with a beach motif. I think she made about 2 dozen of them and that was a lot of work! Everyone loved them. The bandana blanks come from Dharma Trading so they dye really nice. I keep a bunch in supply. I use them when I'm hiking but I mostly use them as kitchen cleanup cloths. Anne taught me how great these are a kitchen towels.  Here's a close up of the sunbathing sloth. Super cute!  My youngest brother got a 3D printer for Christmas and has been having a great time playing with it. I had been low-key begging for him to make me something. I'd start the conversation off by negotiating high (a gun) and then I'd hit him up with something I would actually want, like a set of crochet hooks. He said that crochet hooks wouldn't come out smooth enough so he made me and Mom mini trashcans! The wheels even turn. He said it takes about 12 hours to make one blue section. I'm completely enamoured with it and, for now, it will hold my tools next to my sewing machine. But I think, ultimately, it's begging to be a thread catcher.  I haven't gotten a lot done this week. My friend, Laura, arrived here the day before we left for the beach and just left this morning so we've been having fun together. She did visit some other friends for a couple of days and I was able to get 2 more veterans quilts quilted.  Both of these are patriotic, which the hospital loves. I don't remember who made the first one but I'm pretty sure this one was made by Betsy.  White thread and the Ribbon Star pantograph finished these off nicely.
For the weekend I want to get started on the Goldfinch quilt, load 2 more veterans quilts and bind the firefighter quilt. If I can accomplish all that, I'll be a happy camper.  Our annual family beach vacation is, sadly, over. We had (almost) all of the family there with some of my best friends and got some great news. I'm going to be a Great Aunt of a little girl to be born in November. It will be Mom's first Great-Grandchild and everyone is beyond excited! What wasn't exciting was the weather. We had one beautiful beach day and one nice pool day. Otherwise it was gray and windy. I did get a daily walk on the beach for a free dermabrasion and a session of grounding. I also got to binge watch the last season of Mrs. Maisel, ate some fresh Mahi that Chris and James caught, read some books and played games.  On the way home Saturday we got in a fun visit to the Outer Banks Aquarium before heading home to unpack and do laundry. Beach week is always a great kick off to the summer.  I wasn't really in a maker mood last week. I was feeling more social. But I did get 3 chemo hats made. These could be "regular" hats but I use a super soft polyester yarn and, for that reason, donate them to specifically be chemo hats. Most of the yarn is Hobby Lobby yarn that I got on clearance for $1 a skein. I work with whatever colors I can get.  I started a 4th hat in the Divine Hat pattern. I ran out of the pale color and thought I had more at home. I didn't, so I'm finishing it off with the darker color. I hope it will look OK. I know that, at least, it will feel good on a sensitive scalp.  Yesterday, after Chris and I ran some errands and laundry was finished, I loaded 2 veterans quilts to get myself back in the groove.
This week I want to get the binding on the firefighter quilt and table runner and get started on the goldfinch quilt. Both need to be done before August 1. Depending on when you read this, there may still be time to enter all of the giveaways from last week. The winners will be announced Wednesday! |
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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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