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As a refresher, I'm making a group of small cuddle quilts from some dye sample fat quarters that have been languishing in my sewing room for years. Many years. From the Heart uses these 27" x 36" as cuddle quilts for kids getting cancer treatment. They aren't meant to be blankets. More like "blankies". I've made and delivered 8 so far and these 4 will make 12. I have enough fat quarters to make about 28 of them. They aren't all playful colors so some will be donated as wheelchair blankets, which are the same size.  Because they are 36" long, I can use standard fabric for the backing so I'm using this as an opportunity to clear some yardage from the stash too. I try to coordinate the back to the tops so that I can use the extra backing fabric for the binding. This set of quilts started with this batik. I bought 5 yards of it at a quilt show many years ago and, I think I remember that it was a bargain fabric. I think I thought of it as backing fabric but I've never used it until now. Each of the 4 quilts have this as the backing and binding. Here are the 4 little quilts.
They wanted bright quilts and that's what they are getting! The two photos below show the quilting a little better than on the quilts. I will not be using these for my botanical class practice anymore. I determined that these need to be as soft and cuddly as possible so dense quilting isn't optimal.    Next up is this baby quilt that Mom made. It's for my cousin's son and has a cool story about it. One I get this quilted I'll tell the whole background. I'm going to get the backing dyed today if I can settle on a color. I hope to get it quilted this weekend so I can get it to Mom Tuesday.
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 My second version of ths shawl is complete! From The Heart organization specifically requests wrap around shawls for donation to assisted living and nursing home facilities. The shawl that seems to be most popular is a free one by Susan Coes. That one is OK but I wanted more wedges. Then I found this one by Carrie Penny. That was great except that I wanted a neckline so that the shawl set more forward on the body. I also thought that it wasn't necessary to keep increasing for the full length. I melded what I learned from those two and created my own pattern that also happens to be pretty fast to stitch up.  I also wanted it to have a bit of a decorative edge and a single crochet neck edge for a little nroe neck stability. I have written up the "pattern" and you can download it here.
I am not a pattern writer and it has not been tested so try it at your own risk! If you find errors please let me know and I'll fix it. Once you get going it's really simple and it's easy to make up for an missed increase on the next row so you don't have to frog much. If you do try it out please let me know if there's anything I can do to make the pattern more understandable.  I got the binding on the 4 lap quilts so I can deliver them to Beth, the From The Heart contact, tomorrow. These quilts finish at 27 x 36. It's the size the asked for for a children's cancer camp and I hope this small size is really what they need. They are fun little quilts to make and I'm so happy to be using up these fabrics and lots of batting scraps. This makes 8 finished ones and I have 7 more ready for quilting. The goal is to make 30 because that's how many batting pieces that I have and it will use all of a bin of dye testing fat quarters.  I used this set of quilts to practice what I'm learning in the Blooming Botanicals class. This is the first flower and leaf motif that I practiced. I made the flowers big on this one. It was also nice to use some pink thread from my stash. I never have the opportunity to use pink in my own quilting and certainly not for the veterans quilts. I'm using the thread stash too!  There are two quilts in pink and purple. I practiced a daisy and wavy leaf on this one.  The third quilt is turquoise and pink and I practiced an oak leaf with a flower with a dogwood-like petal. On this one I added side view flowers and buds.  For the last one I did a corner to corner leaf motif. This one went really fast.
I hope there are 4 children who will love these little quilts. Now I'm going to take a break to make a new set of placemats and quilt a quilt for a friend. Then I'll be back to the lap quilts. I'm linking up to Midweek Makers  When I left off last week I was starting to make some hats with the leftover blanket yarn. I ran it double with another 4 weight yarn to make it equivalent with a bulky weight. This has become my go to masculine winter hat for donation. I ran out of the green (halleluiah) on the third hat and I found some leftover brown to finish it off. I got one medium and 2 large hats and they will go in a bag for donation next winter.  We had our sewing retreat days with our quilt club Friday and Saturday and I made great progress on a new veterans quilt. I have half of the blocks made so I'll get this one wrapped up next month and another one started. I really like this pattern a lot. The blocks are made as 9-patches and they are all made the same. The pattern comes in by setting every other block upside down.  All of the half square triangle blocks are sewn and sorted into 9-patch sets so the rest of the sewing should go pretty quickly next month.  Saturday evening I put together another of the little lap quilts. I thought this would be too obnoxiously bright but I actually like it a lot. A friend gave me some vintage Laurel Burch fabrics to use for backing for more of the little lap quilts. These bright fabrics will look great on the Laurel Burch fabric.  Yesterday I finished quilting these 4 lap quilts. I used these to practice my botanical motifs from the quilting class I'm taking. I got the quilts trimmed and the binding cut so I should be able to get these 4 little quilts done pretty quickly. When they are done I'll show some close ups of the quilting motifs. I'm trying to pick pretty backing fabrics for these quilts so that if the kids don't like the front of the quilts they can flip it over and use the pretty backside as the front.
This week is a busy week so the only goal I'm setting is to get these 4 quilts bound by Thursday. Sometimes someone from From The Heart comes to our stitching group and she's happy to take the donated items back to HQ. If I can get them done and she attends it will save me a 45 minute round trip.  The purpose of this blanket was to use up to skeins of Lion Brand Pound of Love yarn and that's what I did. I admit that after making it I like the yarn better but there's something really daunting about these giant skeins of yarn. I prefer smaller skeins although I know that the price is best on the larger skeins.  How do I know the price is better on the giant skeins? Well, I sat down earlier this week and did the math. I looked up as many of the "everyday" yarns as I could think of and calculated a price per yard. I calculated both the base price and also the most common sale prices. This chart is sorted by the sale price. There are a lot of these that I have never used but the cost analysis was an interesting exercise. For other "specialty" yarns like cakes, anti-pilling and blends, I consider a price of less than .02 per yard to be a good deal and that's how I handle toe barrage of "great deal" emails that I get every day. I did order a skein go the Herrschners Worsted 8. The price is really good and they have tons of colors. I hope I like working with it and that it washes well.  This blanket will be donated to From The Heart, probably for a chemo or dialysis patient. Here are all of the specifics: Blanket finished size: 47 x 52 (It's a little too wide, I should have made it closer to the size of this one but I made it wider because I thought I had more yarn. I wish it was closer to 40 x 60 but it will be fine as it is.) Pattern: Sober Granny by Christa of The Secret Yarnery - she has excellent tutorials and patterns, did not do the border J (6 mm) hook, but probably should have used a K Cast on 35 sets of 4 + 2 (30 would have been optimal) Crochet alternating 7 rows in dark green and 9 rows in light green, beginning and ending in dark green. I quit when I ran out of dark green. Last row: CH3, 2 DC in 1st SC from previous row * SC in CH2 space from previous row, 3 DC in SC from previous row* SC in last CH2 space The pattern makes great texture and it's nice mindless stitching.  I want all of this yarn gone so I took the leftover dark green and added it to this scrappy blanket that will either be a wheelchair blanket or pet blanket, depending on it's ugliness factor when it's done. I actually think it looks kind of fun at this point.  I have more of the light green left so I'm doubling it up with some tan yarn and making some men's winter beanies to stock up for next year. This pattern goes really fast so I should have the green yarn finished off by Monday.
Tomorrow and Saturday are sewing days with quilt club so I'll be starting a new veterans quilt. Today I have lots of computer work to do but I hope to get a little quilting practice in this afternoon. But it's also sunny and warm so the outside is calling....
My primary focus this week is to find a new lawn mowing service so I'm making lots of calls and meeting people. But in between that and making bread I got 2 more of the little lap quilt tops made.  These two will go with the plaid one I shared a few days ago with this stripe fabric for the back. I found out that I have a stack of black-on-white fabrics in the dye studio that I intended to overdye. Now I'm finally doing it and will use them for backs for these child lap quilts or adult wheelchair blankets. These will go in the to-be-quilted closet. that makes 14 tops so far. 4 have been finished and delivered, 4 are being quilted and 6 are in the closet. The next group will be eyeball searing bright.
A perfect weekend would have ended in the Eagles winning the Super Bowl but that was not to be. Both teams played great but KC won in the end. I've no complaints because I was entertained by a fun season and the SB game itself was exciting and fun to watch with Chris and some friends. It was all good and now I have my Sunday's back for a few months. In other news, do you remember my quilts for Paula Nadelstern's new fabric line? You can see them here and here. Well the fabrics are now in the shop and Benartex has published the Lookbook. The other quilts in the Lookbook are spectacular! Please check them out. If you are interested in the fabrics, they are in several online stores and you can find them by searching "Needle Stars Benartex". I found the best price at Hancock's of Paducah. I'm not affiliated, I just spent some time shopping around.
I honestly didn't get a lot accomplished this weekend. But I did get one more lap quilt top made and another cut out and ready to sew. Each one takes a little more than an hour, start to finish, if I don't cut the fabric wrong. I didn't practice my botanical quilting at all! I must rectify that soon.
Instead of sewing or quilting Saturday we picked up the last load of wood from Becky's, Chris chopped it and I stacked it. This whole pile is only 1 tree! It's probably about a third of what we will use in a winter so we still have lots of work to do to find and harvest more wood. This particular tree fell during Thanksgiving weekend and we were happy to get it.  Saturday I had done my normal exercise, hauled woods with Chris and then stacked wood. After that all I wanted to do was sit in my chair and crochet and that's exactly what happened. I'm 4 balls in on this blanket and have 3 to go.
 This is not one week's worth of work. I've been working on these off and on for a few weeks. It just didn't seem post worthy until I had a few to share. I've been looking for a good beanie pattern that I could use to make chemo hats for men. Honestly, the only thing that makes a hat a chemo hat vs a regular hat is the yarn used. Bald, sensitive heads want soft yarns. One of my favorites is Feels Like Butta by Lion Brand but all the major yarn makers have an equivalent chain-spun polyester yarn that's exactly like FLB. I found the Avery Brimless Beanie and gave it a try with some FLB. I started in blue and realized that I didn't have enough so I added some black and finished off with the blue. The stitches are half double crochet, herringbone half double and extended single. I think it's the combo of the special stitches that makes this a pretty classy beanie. It also looks and fits great on a man. After making this one I wanted to try another yarn.  Mandala Ombre is a very soft yarn and it's always in stock at my local Wal-Mart stores. It's really soft and I like it for baby blankets and it's great for soft hats too. I picked up 2 balls. The color Cool made these two hats, both from the same ball of yarn.  These two hats are from the color Mantra. I think they all have a nice masculine look.  I had little bits of yarn left from the other hats and I was able to get one more done. It had lots of ends to weave in but, being scrappy, it's my favorite.  Today I'm taking a friend for surgery and have my hat crochet bag and some gray FLB yarn to work on some more. I've made enough of them now that I have the pattern memorized. After I get my friend home I will drop these off at From The Heart since it's only a couple of miles from her house.  I'm slowly working on the placemats and have been watching my quilting classes in the evening. I need to get to the basement for some more practice Thursday and Friday. I've also been stacking wood. A friend had a big oak fall in the woods on her property and Chris has been harvesting the wood. I help him haul the wood out to the truck and after he splits it I do the stacking. It's pretty good exercise. We were both a little sore last night after bringing home this new load. It was a big tree and we have a couple more loads of wood to bring home for next year's fires. Then we will be on the search for more!
 This weekend was great weather for staying inside and quilting. I kicked off my weekend by quilting two more lap quilts for donation. You might remember that I said I was going to use the lap quilts as my practice quilts for my botanicals quilting class. Well, I just couldn't put leaves and flowers on quilts with a fish print backing. I had 3 yards of this fish print and that meant that was enough for 3 quilts but when I was getting ready to load the quilts I realized that the fish would be swimming in the wrong direction so I had to turn the quilt tops and that limited me to 2 quilts, which wasn't a problem. I can use the extra top on another backing fabric.  Free motion waves were the right answer for these 2 quilts and I think they turned out really cute. I expect that the charity will allocate these to be kid's quilts.  I originally bought that fish fabric to make a quilt for Chris but I was never really inspired to use it. Now with the 2 lap quilts done I had one yard of the fabric left and decided to start some placemats so that he will at least get SOMETHING from the fabric. I was even able to use 2 more fat quarters from that bin of tester fat quarters for the yellow and gold accent pieces. The dark blue was a 1+ yard piece from my stash and I had enough for the edges and binding. I'll work on these a little at a time and might have them done in a week or so. I had enough fabric to make 8 of them so I'll probably send 4 to my nephew who also had the fishing "disease", as they call it.  I was getting ready to start making some more lap quilt tops and that required me to move this mending project for the 50th time. Instead of moving the pile again it seemed time to actually do the mending. I dyed a vintage tablecloth and napkins in 2015. You can see them on this page if you scroll down to the "Other Projects" section. I am still very proud of that project and use the tablecloth and napkins once or twice a year. They don't get a ton of wear but they are old and are showing their age. The napkins, especially, won't survive that much longer. The edges are wearing and the ladder hem stitching is ripping. I can't do anything about the frayed edges but I can do a quick fix of the broken ladders - by machine, of course. I'm not about to do hand stitching.  I played around with my machine stitches until I found a stitch that was good enough and then dug through my vast thread stash and found a perfect match.  It's not perfect but it's serviceable and my guests won't notice. I'm sure of that! At least, for now, they are back in the drawer and off my sewing table. I can start some more lap quilt tops.  I did get on with practicing my botanical quilting and forgot to take photos of the first 2 quilts. I have the third one set and ready to go as soon as I decide on exactly what I want to practice next.
I also did a good amount of crochet this weekend too and I'll share my progress on that later in the week. I was too lazy to take any more photos last night while I was writing this post.  I'm officially caught up on veterans quilts for 2 weeks. I know I'll get more at the meeting on the 14th but for the next 2 weeks I can work on the lap quilts and practice the quilting from my online class. This quilt was made by Mom and has a good story.  My Mom and I (but mostly Mom) have been working on my Great Grandmother's UFOs. One of her UFOs was a bunch of arcs to make a double wedding ring quilt. They weren't really shaped consistently enough to make a DWR so she brain-stormed with Becky at sewing one weekend and they came up with this idea and I think it looks great! She has tons of the arcs left and is using some to make a baby quilt for my cousin's first grand-child.  The final veterans quilt is my 7th for the year. This will be the last for a while because the next one that I'm working on will take February and March sewing days to get it done. I'm cool with that. My goal is to make 10 veterans each year and I've already made 7 so I'm way ahead of schedule. I'll make plenty more before the year is out. I've also been piecing more lap quilt tops. The multi-colored one is the last one it the previous purple-centric. Next I pulled the fish fabric and I have enough of it to back 3 lap quilts. I did 2 in the diagonal blocks and one in the blue squares with gold centers.  Yesterday I had an hour in the morning and decided to load these 2 for quilting and I actually got them loaded and quilted within one hour! In the afternoon I had an hour before dinner and I got started on the binding and got them totally finished in 45 minutes. These little quilts are going to be so much fun to make. I'll see what the charity thinks about them when I deliver the first batch.  The reason I started with these 2 quilts is that I knew that I wanted to donate them as wheelchair blankets and they aren't really candidates for floral quilting. My quickie wavy crosshatch was perfect for them.
This weekend I plan to do lots more piecing and quilting of the lap quilts. But if I get distracted by something else I'll do that too. I hope you have a great weekend. I'm linking up to Finished or Not Friday. |
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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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