 Yesterday was dyeing day but it was also "finish the stars" day. I got the last 2 rows of stars quilted and I've taken this quilt off until I finish my botanicals quilting class in a few weeks. This weekend I hope to get 2 veterans quilts quilted and then get started on some of the small lap quilts. I'll use them to practice my botanical quilting before I get back to this quilt.  I think you can see the quilting in the stars on this block.  Last night I got the rest of my scrap batting pieced and cut for the lap quilts. I think I have batting for over 20 quilts and that's plenty to get me started. It sure did clear up a lot of space on my batting shelves in the basement.
Today is my knit/crochet group at the library so I'll have a crochet project update tomorrow.
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Yesterday was mostly an errand day is it worked out like most errand days. I need a new phone and made my second trip to Best Buy to get one. Picked one out and now I get to go back next week to get it because they didn't have it in stock. . Then I went to DSW to get some new sneakers. I came home with new hiking boots but no sneakers. Then I went to Kroger to use a gift card and proceeded to use my debit card at checkout instead! It was a typical errand day with varying rates of success. I am pretty excited about the hiking boots though. I've been shopping for them since September. I can't wait to go try them out. Before and after shopping I actually got some sewing and quilting done.'  The little lap quilts are going to come together so fast! Between Wednesday evening and yesterday morning I finished 3 more tops. These 4 will be for the butterfly print fabric as backing. I can already tell that I'm just going to power through these tops. Who knows when they will get quilted but they are way too much fun to piece. I'll probably try to gather some of my batting options this weekend and pair up some batting with each set of quilt top/backs.  After running errands I got to spend some time in the basement washing out fabrics and quilting 8 more stars. I think I'm 1/3 done with the star motifs and borders. I'm going to have to get cracking coming up with my plan for quilting the green areas.
These 2 projects are basically my plans for the weekend after I meet up with some friends this evening. I hope you have a fun weekend doing whatever you love doing.  I think I showed you this photo last week. It's a quilt that Mom made and I've had it here ready to quilt for a couple (or a few) months. I got it loaded last week and had been pondering design ideas for a few days. I knew that the quilting in the print fabrics would not show so I just needed something kind of simple there. Mom wants me to do something in the green to "tone it down". I think I want to do a design that ignores the sashing and I don't want to do too much quilting so that it stays soft to use as a bed quilt. I'm still pondering that. No quilting is going to show up on that batting fabric either so the quilting design doesn't need to consider what it will look like on the back. That fabric is one that I purchased for another quilt but I didn't like it. It works for Mom's quilt really well and it will hide every conceivable quilting mistake.  Before I commenced quilting the stars and border I opted to add some extra basting in the green areas so that I don't distort it too much with the quilting I was about to do. As I usually do when I'm undecided, I go to my comfort zone where life is all about ruler work. For this piecing technique Mom presses her seams open so stitch-in-the-ditch wasn't an option. I also didn't want to build up a lot of stitches in the center so I started with a little circle and am doing some simple ruler work patterns in each petal.  Now that I've done a few of them, this goes along pretty quickly. that's good because I've only finished 4 of 36 so far.  The outside border is a simple piano key and I'll do it as I roll the quilt forward. I expect to have some quality quilting time between today and Monday.
Maybe by then I'll have figured out something for the green areas. You are welcome to shout out ideas in the comments of you want. If all goes well today, I'll have a new phone by this evening. I've dropped mine so many times that it sometimes doesn't like connecting to bluetooth or the wifi. I think it's time for a replacement.  My big accomplishment of the past 2 days was getting Groovy 3 quilted. It took 8 long passes and I only had one thread break. Now I just need to trim it and get it bound and I can take in on vacation. The fabric for the binding is soaking but I will be able to cut and bind Monday.  While Groovy 3 was the biggest accomplishment, my proudest accomplishment is that I did a little cobbling in the old fashioned sense of the word. These are my favorite sandals. I've had them several years and, because of last year's foot injury, I didn't get to wear them at all. Now I can wear them and the last time I did the strap broke on both shoes in the same place. (See the red arrow.) ANNOYING. I could take them to have them properly repaired by a real cobbler but I wouldn't get them back before vacation so I decided to see if I could fix them myself. First I got some old sandals and some upholstery thread and experiment to see if my Juki machine would sew through them. It worked brilliantly with a Jeans size 16 needle.  Next I was off to Hobby Lobby for a $4.50 spool of dark upholstery thread and in 15 minutes I had them sewn back together. It's not a perfect match but no one will notice.  You can see on the inside how the original seam failed. Hopefully the triangle stitching will be strong enough to hold it for another year or 2.
Mom finally got her birthday card yesterday so I'll have that to share with you tomorrow and then we will head to the river for the weekend.  Before I could start quilting Groovy I had to first dye a backing. I used cotton sateen and dyed it with the colors of the Oasis gradient. I feel like it complements the quilt really nicely. It took me three attempts to get it loaded correctly. First there was a pleat then I didn't get the quilt centered well enough. It's been so long since I quilted a really big quilt that I forgot some of my own tips. But I eventually got there.  I thought this Star Swirl panto had kind of a hippie look to it so that's what I chose and I'm showing it off with lime green thread. This is going to be a fun one.  I've also been working on another little project. Last week I found a bag of polyfil and decided that I needed to use it up. I remembered seeing that From The Heart takes seatbelt port pillows and thought I could make a few. I cut out scraps of fabric and got some hook and loop tape from Hobby Lobby for $1/yard. I had enough polyfil to make 28 port pillows!  It's such a simple project that you can make one in about 10 minutes. I did make one change and used 2 attachment tapes instead of one so it would sit more securely on the seatbelt.
These were very satisfying to make but I'm done with them for now. This week will be focused on getting Groovy made so that I can take it on vacation to use.  I hope your weekend was as good as mine! We had sewing days Friday and Saturday and in between I worked on my nephew's wall hanging and made really good progress on all fronts. I took 2 kits to sewing and finished both! Each is based on a panel and I have no idea where these panels came from. I don't enjoy working with panels because they are never square but I do see the appeal. I got two quilt tops made in 2 days! I used a lot of leftovers to finish them so I didn't have a ton of options for coordinating fabrics. This one was really awkward because the orientation is landscape and it was almost to our max width for the quilts so I just had to add strips to the top and bottom to bring it to 60" long. It will have a blue binding.  I added some hand dyed borders to this one to bring it up to size. I'm really please with both of them. It doesn't look it, but both are 48" x 60". The rest of the weekend was spent working on the wall hanging.  After sewing Friday I came home and cut all of the 1" strips for the wall hanging.  I spent Saturday afternoon and evening Preparing the backing and batting. I decided to mark my pattern right on the batting with washable markers. I'll mark the spike lines to follow and will align the middle seam of the strip on the spike lines. I marked the top and bottom edges so that the print part of strips do not run off the edge of the quilt.  I marked the spike lines and then arranged some strips to see if I liked it.  I made a couple of changes to my spike lines and I was ready to go!  I got started quilting/piecing yesterday and I'm 30% done. I sure love the channel locks!
Pretty much every update this week will be on this quilt. I want it done with the sleeve attached by Friday night!  I did my best to make this a complicated and long project but successfully talked myself off that ledge every time. The quilting is done so it's time to cut it into a tree skirt. The binding fabric is being dyed as I write this so I might get this finished next week.  My first going-to-far ledge was a plan to stitch in the ditch EVERY seam in the pieced blocks. If I did that I'd still be quilting this at Christmas. I talked myself into just quilting around each color group and that, frankly, was just right. It would be nice if this think kept some amount of drape to it and stitching ever seam would make it stiff as a board. You can see where I stitched for the opening. I'm cutting it open in the middle of a star point because I want a star point as the center front of the tree skirt.  I practiced a bunch of feather motifs for the background until I realized that feathers don't go with this quilt at all. Simple (and fast) sunburst effects was the ticket to get this one wrapped up in an afternoon.
Next I'll prepare a back for the test flip and sew placemats and I'll get started on those. From my perspective it's actually done! I am so glad I don't have to bind it.  This was my main goal for the weekend and I got it done Saturday afternoon. Here it is on a queen size bed. It's a nice big quilt and I absolutely love the rainbow rings. I think my friend did an amazing job piecing it. She used the Accuquilt DWR die to make this quilt.  Here's a close up of the quilting. I wanted it to be reasonably simple and sparse so that the quilt would be comfortable on a bed. Thanks again to Cindy P. for sending me a photo of one that she and her sister made because it gave me the idea for the block quilting.  I used 3 rulers for the motifs. The Lily Lines rulers from Bethanne Nemesch are so versatile. There are so many great curve shapes on each ruler.  For the main motif I used this heart ruler for the large petals. I use this ruler a lot and it's a shame that it's no longer available but Bethanne's rulers have very similar curves.  For the little petals I used a circle ruler. I have an entire set of circles and ovals from Quilter's Apothecary. It was expensive but I use them a lot and not just for quilting. I used them a lot when I was working on the mosaic wall and I use them for cutting templates all the time. I was able to quilt a continuous path across the quilt without having to stop except when I ran out of thread. The thread I used for the whole quilt was Superior So Fine. I sued a pale gray on the back and medium gray on front.  It's all packed up and ready for my friend's husband to pick up this week and take back to her for miles of bias binding.  To keep myself from procrastinating longer I spent some time Sunday loading this to quilt next.  I've got an outside circle based for the tree skirt edge so that I don't waste time quilting the corner.  I've also stitched the center that will be cut out (the larger circle). Several people commented about the travesty of cutting this quilt up for a tree skirt but you can see the issue here. This quilt has so many seams coming together in the center that it would be almost impossible to quilt without breaking needles or throwing the machine out of timing. Frankly, It's just a bad design and it has really made me appreciate the way that Judy Neimeyer designs her patterns. She pays very close attention to areas where seams might pile up. By making this into a tree skirt instead of a wall hanging it will now actually get done!
Remember that I still have a queen size bed version of this quilt to do and I promise to leave it whole.  Remember when I said that I only quilt for an hour at a time? Well, I broke that yesterday and quilted for over 2 hours. I was listening to a good book and I was on a roll so I kept going and now I'm halfway through the DWR quilt! I'm expecting to have this wrapped up this weekend. I was going to work on vulture borders in the evening but I was kind of tired and decided to sit and crochet instead.  I've been working on the shawl and afghan. I'm at a holding spot with the dark blue duster. I'm finding that the yarn color that I picked is difficult to work with in the required stitches so I'm in search of another pattern for that yarn. This shawl will likely be wrapped up pretty soon. I'm going to keep going until I run out of yarn. I think it will be a good wheelchair shawl. The single crochet section at the top increases over the shoulders and will have a 2 button closure. The patterns section goes straight down. I like how this will look but I'm not inclined to make it again. That collar section took forever in back loop single crochet. I might do some math and figure out if I can do it in half double crochet instead or I'll just try another pattern. I really prefer double crochet for donation items.  The super bulky afghan is half done. This one is going fast. It's folded over here so it's twice this wide. I like how the pattern is looking. This is my first blanket in super bulky and I will probably not be inclined to use that weight much. I find it a little fatiguing on my hands. But the up side is that it works up really fast.
These, and the vulture quilt, are my projects for the rest of the week. But today is dyeing day so I'm not sure I'll get much of anything done today.  I'm a slow quilter. I only quilt about an hour a day on days that I do quilt. I got some quilting in Friday and Saturday on the DWR and I'm 25% done. I love how it's looking and I taught myself something new!  The motif in the center is done with 2 rulers. I start it in a corner, move to the center and then work the rest of the petals. From a distance you rea;;y don't notice the thread build up so much but I didn't like it and I needed to figure out a new way to do it.  It's hard to see my purple lines to mark the center. I realized that I could work the outside petals by stopping just short of the center.  After the third petal I go to the center and work the small petals and them back out to work the last side of the large petals.  This is super close and no one will be looking at it this close, but that's a big difference in my opinion. The second row went pretty fast. I hope to get back down there tonight to do more. If not, I'll certainly be quilting on it tomorrow.  Upstairs I'm adding borders to the vulture quilt. If you look near the bottom you can see the dark brown fabric that I dyed for the sashing. I picked dark brown to pull the dark brown out of the bird feet and feathers. Ever corner will be stripes like these in the colors of the frame diagonally opposite. So on the right side there will be blue and red pieces at the top and turquoise and yellow pieces at the bottom. I haven't decided on the corners yet but I do have some scraps of her stamped borders that I can do something with.
There was a lot of football so there was also a lot of crochet. I forgot to take photos but I'll get some before Wednesday's post. I'm making great progress on 2 of the projects. |
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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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