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In between this rabbit hole of the cat postcards, there have been some football games so I've been steadily making progress on my applique blocks. I seem to have a routine where I alternate 4 flower blocks and 4 moon blocks. That seems to keep both projects moving along and keeps the boredom down. Last night while watching my Hokies choke, I finished the 4th of the latest Loony Moony blocks.  It will be a long time before I get bored with this project.  This is my favorite fabric of this group. I just love how the gray-blue weaves across the middle of the moon. If you want to do a moon project yourself, I've added tons of new Shibori fabrics in the shop, including a Stash Pack of fat eighths.  I just had to lay out the blocks that I've finished so far. This is about a third of the total number of blocks that I have prepared.
Love. Yay, it's Country School sewing weekend! Today and tomorrow I'll be sewing with my friends and working on my Indonesian Batik quilt. I might even have the top together by Monday. I also hope to get my Antelope Canyon quilt loaded and basted and read for some easy overall quilting. Meanwhile, I've made more Loony Moony blocks! These are so much fun to stitch.  My cold is clearing up and I plan to have a fun weekend. I hope you have a great weekend too!
I'm still rolling my eyes at myself for starting TWO hand applique projects. Part of me wonders what I was thinking. But the other part of me is happy to have some variety. I tend to do 2 or 3 vintage flowers and then switch and do 2 or 3 moons. Here's where I am on the moons.  Here are the 4 most recent ones.  I finally have enough of them done that you can get an idea of how they will looks with a gradient background effect.
I'm in love! Lots more to do.  In the evenings after a day of dyeing or ironing I'm pretty much out of energy so it makes for some great hand sewing time. I alternate between moons and flowers and am slowly making progress on both. Here are the 4 most recent moons. Every time I finish one I think that one is my favorite. They are all favorites.  Here are the 9 that I've finished so far. I soooooo love these!
I may not post the next 2 days because I know I won't be doing anything particularly creative. I'll be back Saturday with another great customer project. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are dyeing days so the amount of sewing (or anything else) happening on those days is about zero. But Chris is away for a couple of days on a fishing trip so I had 2 nights free to myself and set a goal of clearing away the moon mess. Last night about 11:00 I got the last one made.  I don't have a specific number of moons that I wanted to make. I just made one from every piece of shibori that I had. These photos are some of my favorites.  Every time I dye shibori for the shop I add a fat eighth to each pole for my own stash. I definitely dye mostly blue because that's what people want to buy. But I've gotten lots of other color combinations too.  I double dye all of my shibori fabric. I dye once in the darkest color and then spread the fabric out on the pole a bit and dye in the second color. I get a bonus third color where those two blend. I think double dyeing makes it even more interesting.  That orange and black one in the middle is my favorite of all of them. I did fussy cut several of them to get the colors where I wanted them. The one in the upper left corner is a prime example of that. It did waste a bit of fabric but it's not like I was actually using this fabric before I cut these out.  Here's the final stack. I think I have about 60 of them. I don't know if that too many or not enough because I haven't decided on a final quilt size. I'll just make blocks until I get tired of them. I'll be dyeing lots more shibori so I can always get more moons whenever I need them. Now I just need to settle on the block size and cut the backgrounds.
 I'm still not doing any longarming but I'm glad to have my 2 applique projects to work on in the evenings. My arm is getting better and I finally made it to the doctor this week and have a diagnosis of coracobrachialis strain. She's given me some additional stretching exercises but it's just taking time. But I'm doing my dyeing during the day, ironing with my left arm and doing applique so everything is good! I've gotten 4 moons done!  When Estelle cut out the backgrounds for me we decided on 10" squares because I didn't know how big I wanted the background blocks and with 10" I could get 4 out of each row. Now that I have some done I can place them together to see how far apart I want the circles. In this photo they are 3" apart and that might work. Maybe closer. What do you think? I'm about ready to cut more backgrounds so I need to make a decision.  How abut these little stitches? The first time I tried hand applique I showed it to Dot Holloway, a member of our quilt club. Dot's applique was so good that she had a quilt displayed in the Virginia Museum of Fine Art at one point. She said "no" to my big stitches and started teaching me how to make better stitches. We've since lost Dot and now Becky Brown has become the club applique teacher. There's nothing better to learn on than circles. No points and no "v"s. These come together quickly as long as I have my 3.5 reading glasses on!  Meanwhile back in the sewing room I'm still making circles. I really want to get these wrapped up this week so I can put all of this away.  That's a nice stack of moons!
Yep, that's what I'm calling this new quilt. Because I'm determined to drive myself insane with some of these quilt ideas that I pursue and it might as well be this one that takes me over the edge.  Every time I dye new shibori fabrics for the shop I add a fat eight on each pole for my personal collection. I've created quite an impressive collection of fabric and, so far, have only used them in Lura's Choice quilt and that was a few years ago. I've been wanting to do a quilt with appliqued circles and now is as good a time as any to start. I began by dyeing a selection of black/shades of gray fabrics and cut out some chunks of shibori for the moons.  Estelle kindly came over this weekend and cut some square out for me so I could get started. (By the way, my arm is finally MUCH better! I can drink with the glass in my right hand. That's big!)  I used the Go! Cutter to cut out some fusible applique sheets. I'm using a 5" circle simply because that's the largest Go! die that I have. While Estelle cut I fused these to the back of my shibori chunks.  I'm working on another post to show you how I shaped the circles but here's the first one. Man, I love these fabrics!  I made a little paper template to help me position the moon in the center of the block. Later, when I put the quilt together, I'll cut these blocks down to a smaller size. I know I'm not going to use the blocks this big but until I can get several done and see them together I won't know what size I want.  After the moon is centered on the fabric I tack it to the back with some Mistyfuse. I seriously love the moodiness of the background fabric. This quilt will basically use a combination of the Black and Gray Skies Gradients.  OK, I know this basically looks the same but in this photo it's actually stitched! On another block I'll show you the back and the tiny stitches that Becky taught me to stitch. I did the first block just to make sure I enjoyed it and want to continue. Who was I kidding? It's tedious and there are dozens of them to do. Of course I'll continue!  The last step in setting up this project was to put together a dedicated sewing kit with the needles, scissors, Bottom Line threads (because that's what I have), magnifying glasses and a folder. I"m ready to go!
I still have lots of the circles to prepare (for this and the other applique project) and I'm slowly working on these a bit each day. But I'm ready to start stitching the second block and I think it's pretty stunning....if I do say so myself. |
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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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