 My weekend got off to a great start with my quilt club. We sewed together Friday and Saturday and I worked on my next veterans quilts. Months ago I cut a bunch of kits and this was the one I pulled to work on next. I cut enough for 2 identical quilts. Right now I'm in block mode and am sewing them into rows as I go. I need a total of 8 rows. I have 5 done and 3 more to go and then I can out it all together.  But, for now, it's all packed away until our June sewing days. I may be able to finish both tops that weekend.   The rest of the weekend I made some good progress quilting the firefighter quilt. My original plan was to quilt it in black but I realized that black thread would kind of ruin my gradient black. I switched to red thread and I'm so glad I did. The red looks much better from the back and the front.  I stitched in the ditch all of the borders and all I have left to do is the quilting in the black border and the outside border.  I also have the table runner left to do. it will not fit on the backing I have loaded so I'll find something and get this quilted as soon as the big quilt is done. Might as well bind both at the same time.  Finally, all of the vacation gift placemats are officially done with the dyeing of this napkin to match one of Mom's placemats. They are all packed and ready to take to the beach.
This week I want to finish quilting the firefighter quilt and then I'll spend most of the week getting things ready for the beach. I also have voter precinct training Thursday and I have to buy a new microwave. Ours decided to revert to being just a very large clock.
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There are lots of photos from this busy weekend. For once, I think I got more done than I planned.  I try to exercise every day and my exercise one day was stacking the front row of wood. It was good exercise for sure. Chris brought home another truckload of logs and he hand split every piece of the wood in these stacks. That was even better exercise that I'm not capable of. I'd say that we are officially ready for next winter and it was nice to get this work done before it gets too hot. Do you think that my stacking methods say anything about my personality?  This is all the soap that I made last Thursday. I think I calculated that it's 10.5 pounds (of oils, it doesn't include the water). They will be ready to remove from the molds today or tomorrow and then will cure for 6 weeks.  I love these silicone molds. They make the unmolding process so easy. I have them in a lot of different shapes and even have this mold that makes 1" squares. I use these little soaps for travel. They are small enough that I don't mind leaving the wet leftovers in the hotel.  Does this look familiar? I quilted one just like it in March. I wrote all about these special quilts in this post. Since the fabrics are heirloom, she decided to make an extra one just in case there's another baby in the family in the future.  I quilted this one exactly the same as the last one. I got it finished late Friday so that I could give it to her when we went to an arts festival on Saturday. Saturday was a perfect weather day to walk around and arts festival. There were lots of beautiful things there but I was able to avoid bringing anything new into my already overstuffed house.  Saturday morning I sewed all of the placemats that I cut out Wednesday and I was able to get them loaded and the quilting started Saturday night. I finished off the quilting Sunday morning and got 8 of them bound and finished by the end of the day. I have 2 more to bind and 1 left to quilt and bind. When I quilt them I don't worry too much about the backing. I try to use up older fabrics from my stash and was very happy to use this metallic printed fabric that's been around for years and that I'll never use in a quilt. My batting is flannel from old sheets. It's just the right "heft" for a placemat but not too fluffy. They don't' draw up as much in the wash either.  The first set I finished is the fish print set. I'm so glad I found these prints and finally did something with them. The shibori fabric has been in the stash for a long time too. These fabrics were clearly meant to be together. I still need to dye napkins for these and will do that this week.  Here are all the sets that are on offer to my family. I decided to let the ladies make the selections and I texted them this photo yesterday. I had their selections within an hour. My oldest brother's wife picked the leaf ones, the youngest brother's wife picked the turquoise birds, my niece picked the pink/purple stripes and my nephew's wife picked the fish print. I knew she would pick one of the fish prints. The other fish fabric ones will go to a friend of Chris' that he deep sea fishes with every year.  I finished 2 of the 3 sets that I cut out for myself. Each of these are sets of 2, limited by the size of the focus fabric that I had to work with. The focus fabric of this set is a glue resist fabric that I dyed the very first time I dyed in 2008 when my friend made me dye fabric. I've always loved this fabric and was "saving" it. I had 2 previously dyed napkins in my stash that worked perfectly with these.  I finished off the weekend with this set made from a fabric dyed using dextrin resist. They are already in use at our kitchen island, where we eat all of our meals.
I have one set left to bind and have one of Mom's left to quilt and bind. Then I realized that I need to make a set for my middle brother. He and his wife don't go to the beach but the still "need" a set. I don't think she would like either of the sets that I have left but I have an idea for some that I think she will like. I'll probably work on those after vacation. This cold (or whatever) has been supremely annoying and the most annoying part has been my low energy level. Chris (and even my doctor) has had the same complaint. But that all changed yesterday. While I still have a little sinus symptoms left my energy is back. For the first time in 2 weeks I did my full exercise routine yesterday and I didn't even want a nap afterwards.  Then I got busy dyeing fabric. After that I did some laundry and still had some energy left.  So I went outside and stacked wood. I still have more to do but Chris has to replace some supports for the next row. Otherwise, I would have finished that last little bit. In this area we fill 4 rows and this one is row #2.  After dinner I started quilting the veterans quilts that I loaded Tuesday. I'm using the square spiral pantograph because that's the one that was on the machine and it's a fast one. I have about 10 veterans quilts to quilt so they are all going to get some sort of fast treatment. After I finish those I have a baby quilt for Mom, the fireman quilt, a large fundraiser quilt for quilt club, Mom's big quilt that's half done and the big Judy Neimeyer quilt that I pieced last year. There's a big backlog so I'm going to try to focus on quilting for a while and get through a lot of these quilts.
Today I'll try to finish this pair and get the next ones loaded before I head off to have drinks with two friends. It's a beautiful sunny day here so I'm going to plan to go out and get a little vitamin D around noon.  I am so excited to share this little project. It's got a backstory so have a seat and I'll tell you all about it. My Mom's Grandmother, Flora, was a quilter and we got all of her UFOs. I've quilted many of her tops and those have been gifted to various family member in Mom's generation. Mom has made several quilts from her blocks and I've made a few myself. My favorite project is this one, where I saved the quilt she made for me using blocks from her UFO pile. This is another of the Flora quilts. It is a baby quilt for my cousin's first grandchild. There's probably a good chance that this might be her only grandchild.  Flora was best known for her double wedding ring quilts. She made them for every newly married couple. When she died in 1968 she left a pile of arcs. Mom has tried over and over to fit them together for a DWR quilt but the arcs weren't consistent sizes. After a group discussion in quilt club, she decided to applique them to blocks. She's made two veterans quilts with them and still had lots left over. Once we found out about the new family arrival coming in May, she decided to make a baby quilt with them. She folded under the raw edges of each arc and appliqued them to a square of fabric. I think it made a great design.  I was a little stressed about quilting it but I needed to get it done before I leave for the beach Sunday. There's nothing like a deadline to make you stop dithering and get to quilting. I haven't had an opportunity to quilt feathers in a while so I had a great time quilting this little quilt.  Mom's mother's, my Grandma Dove, favorite color was light purple so I dyed the back to match the light purple colors in the blocks. So when the baby receives this gift it will be labeled that it was made by his/her Great-great-great Grandmother, Great-Grandaunt and First Cousin twice removed. I think that's pretty cool. We hope that the baby will actually use the quilt and not put it away to "save" it. There's another project for the baby that I'm doing and I'll have that to share in a couple of weeks, I hope.  In other news, I got the binding on the placemats! I still have to dye some matching napkins so I'll save this project to save until the napkins are also done.
I'm packing projects for the beach getting ready to leave Sunday. I'll be back on Monday with a beach report. We aren't expecting really great weather so there should be lots of sewing and crochet with a great view.  I spent a lot of hours the past few days getting a presentation ready for my quilt club. I try to commit to doing one program each year and this year I put together a presentation of some of the veterans quilts that we have made, hopefully to give people ideas for new quilts. I did the presentation last night and if you have time to kill and want to see some of our veterans quilts, you can see the presentation here. After I ran through it in the morning I had a few hours free and decided to load and quilt the newest placemats. I'm so glad to finally have my machine adjusted because it quilted with the trilobal polyester threads perfectly! I'm also really comfortable doing any adjustment on my machine now so it should never be frustrating again. I found a leftover backing strip that was the perfect width for me to be able to load and quilt all 4 placemats at the same time. I've mentioned this before, but I'll say again that I use old (clean) flannel sheeting for the batting on placemats. I don't like my placemats to be puffy. I want them beefy and flat. The flannel works perfectly and I have a closet shelf of flannel available for free.  I started with ruler work in the chevron. I just love ruler work. It's my comfort blanket of quilting.  My other quilting crutch is free-motion filler so I decided to do fillers in the gray background. I did a different filler on each placemat. This is the first one and it's one that I turn to often.  The second one is this one that's called coffee bean. It's a lot of fun to stitch.  The third design is one that I've never done before but it was a lot of fun to quilt. You stitch the line first and then do the crossing stitch back and forth. Super fast.  This was the last one and my least favorite. Placemats are so perfect for practicing because any crappy quilting will likely be covered by a plate or spaghetti stain. Today I will load and start quilting the baby quilt and will try to get these trimmed and pick a binding fabric. In a few weeks I'll dye some napkins to match.  On Monday I went to Hobby Lobby to look for some fabric for a quilt project that I'm going to take on vacation. I actually did buy 3 yards of fabric (at 40% off) but a stroll through the yarn aisle revealed that they were having a 75% clearance! This even usually happens in June but, for whatever reason, it's in March this year. Last year I only bought 2 different yarns but I got a few more this year. The big pile on the left is a yarn that's exactly like Lion Brand Feels Like Butta. It's perfect for chemo hats and it was .99 a skein. I got all of it except white and gray because I have plenty of those colors. The red and blue are acrylics for donation blankets. The 2 in front are a 1 weight. I want to try crocheting with a 1 weight yarn but it's often kind of expensive and I think my chance of success is 50/50. These were only $2.50 so if the project is a fail I won't feel so bad.
No more yarn needed! I did finish another of the big blankets. I'll try to get a photo today to share tomorrow.  Mulching season has commenced and I started working on that this week. I got the first truckload done and finished all the beds near the house. I've got to say that this is some really good exercise. If the weather is as nice as projected, I hope to get a couple more truckloads done this weekend.  When I work outside in the cold I have this one particular fleece jacket that I wear. A friend had put in it the donation bag when she was stay with us. It was just what I needed for working outside so I kept it. But when I'm working outside I like to listen to my books and this jacket only has the standard front pockets that are perfect for tipping the phone out on the ground. I decided to sew a quick phone pocket to the inside. I took the shortest zipper I could find (hot pink) and the fabric on the top of the scrap bin (orange) and cobbled together this pocket that functioned perfectly while I was spreading mulch. It goes much faster with a good book.  On the making front, I did finish the wheelchair shawl and I should have it posted tomorrow with some rudimentary instructions. I also got this quilt quilted for Becky. Becky and Rich gave us access to a ton of wood for our fire next winter so I wanted to quilt this quilt for her. It's for her nephew's son. He's 13 and I think he will love the bold graphic nature of it.  I quilted with the Square Spiral pantograph that I just love to do on masculine and graphic quilts. I almost finished off a cone of Superior Rainbows with this one.
Tomorrow we are expecting a lot of rain so I'll be at my brother's house helping him tile a backsplash. He needs my glass tile saw so he had to take my assistance as part of the deal. It should be fun since we both know probably about half what we need to for this to be successful. Cue the profanity.  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  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. 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. |
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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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