 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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If you have been following along with me for a while, you might remember that I make some sort of gift for my family beach trip every year. I've made tied dyed beach towels, beach tote bags, placemat sets and other things that I don't even remember. This year I've decided to make personalized etched glasses. My friend gave me a bottle of etching cream months ago that I've never used. I just needed to create some masks with my Cricut and give it a try. I picked up a couple of cheap glasses from Dollar Tree and played with it yesterday. I did 3 designs to test the ideas and to also test the etching time. After you put the mask on the glass you spread the cream over the etching area you just wait a few minutes, remove the excess cream, wash it off and remove the mask. It couldn't be easier. I tested 3 etching times, left to right, 5, 7 and 10 minutes. There really isn't much difference so I'll probably go with 10 minutes. I've ordered the glasses that I want and they will be in soon. I might start cutting the masks this weekend for the 14 glasses that I need to make.  In other news, I finished the poncho yesterday! I need to block it and then I'll share more information and photos. You can see that I have a lot of yarn leftover so I'm searching for a nice scarf pattern that I can make. I'm a little sad to see this project done. It was so much fun to work on. I started in in Tucson in January so it didn't take long at all.
This weekend I will get Oak Moth bound and get 2 veterans quilts loaded and started on the longarm.  There wasn't much time but I needed to get mug rugs made for quilt club tonight. We are having a mug rug swap for our Christmas program.  The batik one started with this bin of skinny strips that are left over from a recent veterans quilt. Finding the purple for the border took the most time. Also, binding a little project like this is kind of a pain.  The second one started with a search through another magical mystery drawer where I found this sun printed fabric. It was printed from a lacy thrifted curtain panel.  I freemotion quilted around the motifs to finish this one up pretty quickly.
Tomorrow or Thursday I'll share the one that I receive.  Well, I did finish the last batch of potholders and I promise that I will not be making more when I get home in September. These are the last 13. I use my own pattern that you can find here. My brother said that he hoped that I had enough for him to have a few. LOL!  I gave 3 away before I started these and there are 60 in these stacks so I've made a total of 63. That's just crazy but it was fun. They are a perfect project for when you aren't in the mood for a big project and they use quite a bit of fabric.
I'm all set for Christmas gifts. We leave for our trip tomorrow and it's a 2 day drive. On Friday we will take a detour a few miles in Massachusetts to visit the New England Quilt Museum to see an exhibit of Paula Nadelstern quilts. I'll post again this weekend and try to share some photos from the exhibit. I will be posting on vacation as I work on the farm quilt.  This weekend I started thinking about packing for vacation and the first task was to make some more lotion bars. I knew I needed one or 2 for the trip and I was totally out. I used this really easy recipe. Lotion is so easy and inexpensive to make that I never buy it anymore. This took maybe 30 minutes if you include the clean up.  Well, while I was there I figured I might as well make another batch of cream lotion. My lotion doesn't have preservatives so I store it in the refrigerator until I need it. It lasts months in the fridge and it probably costs a couple of dollars for 5 bottles. I was going to move onto something else at that point but I assessed my soap and lotion supplies and realized that I needed to use some oils before they went rancid.  Might as well spend the day in the basement and make some soap. I made 2 big batches and used up all of the most temperamental oils. I usually do 3 batches but 2 was plenty for now. These will be removed from the molds today and then set on a shelf to cure for 6 - 8 weeks. That finished off Saturday. On Sunday I did the routine bug spraying at home and at Mom's and then we visited my brother.  I finally started doing a little packing for the trip and one of my priorities is my chocolate stash for the month.
Over the next two days I'll finish up the potholders (for good) and share the last 2 veterans quilts. We leave Thursday morning.  Yesterday I jumped in to screen the tea towel gifts. I centered the design by marking the towels with lines using washable markers. I matched them up to marks that I put in the sides of the screen frame. You can see that I didn't apply the design centered on the frame. I'll see how well I did in a couple of days.  I dyed the 4 tea towels along with some shirts.  I planned to finish quilting both veterans quilts but I only got through one. I overdid it with my weights in my morning exercise and my shoulder wasn't interested in quilting very long. I'll finish this today.  There was plenty of time left for the last 6 potholders! I think these are my favorites. This give me a total of 47 but I'm thinking of making a few more. I have some time before we leave for vacation and I don't really want to start anything else. It doesn't matter how many I make, it's always good to have a gift stash.  I looked out the front door before dinner and saw that two of the deer have made themselves very comfortable in the front yard.
Today I'll wash out the dyed things, finish the second veterans quilt and maybe plan some tea towels to take to Maine as gifts.  Yesterday I got all of my energy back and was ready to get on with chores and projects. I started the day with laundry and that reminded me that we needed to clear the dryer vent tube. In our house the dryer is almost in the middle of the house and the tube has a couple of angles in it. Periodically we have to disconnect it and blow it out with the leaf blower. It's kind of fun. But this time we discovered the dryer itself was blocked. We unplugged it, pulled it out, removed two back panels and removed a phenomenal amount of lint! I think I could have jam packed a quart jar full of lint. It was a big mess but the dryer works much better now and it didn't cost any money. We've had some expenses pile up lately with a new water heater, new TV and new vacuum cleaner so I really didn't want to buy a new dryer. I was happy to get back to the potholders and I finished these 8. I have 41 finished and 6 more cut out but I could see myself making more. They are just a good project for my current mindspace and I'm using up a good bit of fabric. For the lining and pockets I can use some fabrics that really aren't great for any other projects.  I did do some other things too. I had 2 veterans quilts ready for quilting so I got them loaded.  I got the bobbins wound, tension set and a couple of rows quilted. I'll be back on this today.  Then just before dinner I got an idea for a gift. We're visiting some friends in Beaufort, SC in September and she refers to the place as Skeeter Haven. I decided that I could screen print some tea towels for them (her). I'm going to work on these today too. I think I'm going to use Dye Magnet so I can print before I dye and the image will come out during the dye process.
The Cricut is so much fun for this kind of project. It took me just a few minutes to find that cute mosquito in the library and then add the text. I don't have to go anywhere so I should be able to get on with all of my projects.  Yesterday was a total recovery day. I was tired! It was a good day to just hang out in my quiet sewing room. I had started these potholders (4 of each fabric) last week and I finished them off yesterday. The ditsy flower print is fabric left over from a quilt back. The other is a sunprint that I created specifically for potholders.  This stencil and the chalk pad have really helped. I could quilt these with any variety of "patterns" but the straight lines are easiest....and they are potholder, afterall.  The chalk lines don't rub off easily but they will as people use them.  I got 8 more quilted and pinned and ready to stitch around.
Today I think I'll try to load a couple of veterans quilts. I don't have many to be quilted but I want to get them done before we leave for Maine.  Yesterday I didn't get a lot of sewing done. I had chores and hat to get some x-rays and our friends got their house sale activities done so we actually got to spent some time with them. But after dinner I got 10 more potholders done. I'm over half done with them! I really love these made with the Paula Nadelstern mandalas.
Today I'll be getting ready for Ella's craft camp that starts tomorrow!  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.
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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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