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How's that for a confusing title? Let me see if I can sort it out. Last year Paula Nadelstern contacted me about a book she was writing. She wanted to include the sample quilts that I had made for her and wondered if I'd like to do another. The specific direction for this quilt was "simple quilts, complex fabrics". Use a very simple pattern with complex fabrics and see what happens.  Pleiades was the result of my efforts and I've been waiting over a year to share this quilt! You can read all about it on the gallery page. I'm able to share it now because the book is finally out.  I first took a class from Paula about 10 years ago at Houston. I was immediately hooked and I was very impressed with her as a teacher. She's very thorough, calm and supportive and she makes sure to spend some individual time with every student....even in classes of 25 students. Her books are just as good and I especially love this new one, Fabricadabra. This isn't a pattern book. It's a technique book. It's for those who love the kaleidoscope effect but have found the previous books to be a bit overwhelming. In this book Paula shows you how to make spectacular quilts combining simple shapes with complex fabrics. She shows you how to see and buy fabric and then the basics of cutting and construction. There's a gallery of over 35 quilts with diagrams to show you the piecing structure. You can make any of the quilts in this book.  This butterfly quilt is one of my favorites in the book. Each butterfly half is only one piece of fabric.  It's very exciting to see some of my own quilts in the book!   Here it is finally done!* If you want to read the backstory and see the detail photos you can read all about in on the Non Unus Pluma page. I made this quilt specifically to hang here in our bedroom.  The color inspiration was from this collection of Poole Pottery planet plates that I bought when I was working in London in 2002. We still had Pluto as a planet back then!
* Did you notice the asterisk? I have to be totally honest and say that this quilt might not be done. The center poofs a little and it's bugging me. I'm going to steam it this weekend before it hangs in the Montpelier Center for the Arts. After I get it back at the end of September I may add some more quilting. I finished this over a week ago but completely forgot to share it!  This is my second QOV for 2016 and it finished to about 70 x 90. You can see more detail shots on my Quilt Gallery.
This weekend I had 2 days of sewing with my Country School friends. I finished the QOV top that I shared Saturday and a veterans top from the leftovers. I was so excited to start my Rainbow quilt Saturday. I didn't get any photos but I'll pull the blocks out in a few days to share. But the biggest news is finishing this!  So glad to have this one done! Read all about it and see the surprise back in the gallery.  In other news, here are the Eastern Phoebe babies living above our front door.
 It's done! I officially have 2 finishes for April. It may look familiar because I made my Shaken, Not Stirred quilt with the same pattern last year. My quilt club helped by making most of the blocks.  I'll admit that my favorite part is the spiral ice dyed back. I like making the tie dyed backs and then centering them on the longarm. If I get my act together I'll have an updated tutorial tomorrow for how I do that. If you want to see more details of this quilt check it out here.
If you need a custom dyed quilt back for your quilt contact me. I can make them in any color combination.  Black Swan 96" Square It’s done and I love it. It started life as “The Ugly Quilt” but now that it’s done it’s no longer ugly. It's also square, it's the photo that's crooked.  This is one of 3 quilts that I made in the HSTeria Quilt Along in 2014. I wanted to explore layouts using half square triangles and if you look back through those posts you will find lots of HST quilt layouts, including this one. This quilt was born of a need to reduce some fabrics in my stash. A year or so before I started this Dharma Trading stopped making my favorite black dye. That send me on a mission to mix my own black dye recipe and after 60 tries I finally got one. But that meant that I had 59 fat quarters of a lot of failures in dark colors from blues to greens to browns to purples. All of the dark fabrics in this quilt are from that recipe testing. The bright colors are my “waste” fabrics. They are strips of muslin that I use in dyeing my gradients. They catch excess dye on the edge of the bin. I love these fabrics and used them once before in my Catena quilt. When I started quilting this one I had just finished Lura’s Choice that took months to quilt. I knew that I was going to use this one on my bed and I wanted to quilt it quickly. I don't quilt every day so the fact that this took less than a month means it was very fast to quilt. I used Superior Rainbows thread in the dark blocks with So Fine in the bobbin using a continuous curve pattern. The feathered ferns in the color blocks is Magnifico with orange So Fine in the bobbin. The batting is Quilter’s Dream Blend in black. Black batting was a must in this one! The backing is a hand dyed black texture. The orange thread on the feathered ferns shows up great. In the border triangles I stitched the 2 rows in opposite directions.  This is a BIG quilt! Here it is on the queen size guest bed before washing.  After washing it shrunk about 6” which is a good thing! It’s nice and soft and crinkly now.
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In Bloglovin you need to search "Colorways By Vicki Welsh" to find the blog. About Vicki
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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