This was supposed to be my beach project! Last month I made this set of placemats to match some ice dyed napkins. I had another set of ice dyed napkins that I wanted to make placemats for. I decided that I would take them with me for my beach sewing project. I got all of my strips cut out and arranged the way I wanted them. I was listening to a good book and the next thing I knew I had 4 placemats sewn together! Yesterday I got the binding done and this project is complete! Here's the placemat with a napkin half open. I love how these turned out and I think this set will go in the gift closet for future gifting.
I've decided that I will take the Antelope Canyon wedding quilt to the beach to cut out. By the time you read this I should be in the road. I may or may not post again before Monday. My first 2 veterans quilts of 2022 are done! This the second set of quilts I've made with this star block and I'm sure I'll make more. These 2 quilts started with scraps of yellows/gold/oranges and 2 chunks of blue fabrics left over from other projects. This particular blue is a remnant from a hand dyed quilt back. Both quilts are 48" x 60" I picked binding for these quilts solely based on what I had available. On the first quilt I had enough of the background for the binding. The second one has some orange binding that was supposed to be for another quilt that I never used. I think the orange binding turned out to be a nice finish. To me these are "beachy" quilts. I was at the beach when I cut them out and the colors remind me of a sunny day lounging on the beach. I picked this pantograph because I think it is reminiscent of water and wind.
I hope someone will find comfort with them. The Summer Sunset quilt is officially done! It's bound, washed, labeled and ready to use. It's too heave for a summer quilt but it will be a great quilt for September and October. In fact, this might be the quilt that we take to Maine in August. I do bring all of my own bedding because of my allergies. In the end I'm happy with the finished quilt. I was disappointed by the pattern but I worked around the pattern issues by quilting it with a pantograph instead of doing any custom quilting. If you want to see more photos check it out here. The back is ice dyed cotton sateen.
I am very happy to have my first quilt project of 2022 done! I'm so glad I decided to turn that wall hanging into a tree skirt. I think it's going to look great under my Christmas tree with my collection of blown glass ornaments. It finished to 40.5" in diameter. I sliced the quilt through a star point so that the center front of the skirt will be a star point. I am not going to mention the pattern because, frankly, I'm not happy with it. There's so much bulk in the seams that it's really difficult to quilt. But, in the end, it worked out great. I used 2 buttons for a closure. The backing is a piece of the Summer Sunset gradient that was the source of the palette for this quilt (and the matching large bed quilt that's next up to be quilted.) The star part is quilted stitch-in-the-ditch around the color sections (not ever single piece). The background sections are quilted with pebbles and solar flare effects. I used Superior Highlights and Bottom Line for the quilting. I love Renee's Amazing Rays for drawing giant circles. Next up is the queen size Star. This one will be for my bed. The foundation fabric is intended to be left in but since the quilt is already so bulky I've decided to remove the papers. That will take a week or so but meanwhile I have the back ready. I ice dyed this last week for the backing of the quilt. It's cotton sateen so it has a beautiful sheen to it. I intend for this quilt to be reversible.
I had a really productive weekend and it started with finishing these placemats and I love them! This started with 4 ice dyed placemats. I have 4 more in a slightly different colorway and I'll make another set to go with them next. I'm wanting to make a strip pieced wall hanging for my nephew and I want to do it on the longarm so I decided to use this project to practice longarm piecing. I started with a bunch of fabrics that "matched" the napkin and cut then into 1.5" strips and sub-cut into bits. Then I spent an afternoon piecing all the bits into strips. I made the strips about 40" so I could get 2 placemats out of 2 sets of strips. That's also about how long the strips for the wall hanging will be so this was a good practice length. I loaded my backing and batting and used the channel locks and basted rows about 5" apart so I could keep an eye on my progress and make sure that I stayed straight. I used the channel locks to stitch the rows and it was surprisingly easy! I got the two panels quilted in just a couple of hours! Then I cut out and bound the placemats and the project was all done! I'm keeping this set. When I make the next set I'll probably put those in the gift closet. I also found another vulture! I was cleaning the guest bathroom because we were having company last night and I saw that I missed one of my vulture pieces. My friend, Lora made this one for me. The reason we had company is that he and Chris headed out this morning for a ski trip. He brought out his luggage and asked if I could create a handle for him because the airlines broke the handle on his bag. This is why our sewing/craft rooms are packed with CRAP (Creative Resources and Projects). Because we never know when we might need something. I cut that latch off a trashed tote/carrier and the hemostat that I use in dyeing helped me stuff the padded handle. He was impressed. I'm not placing any bets on whether this thing actually makes it home. He's the traveler that always leaves at least one thing behind.
Late last night I also finished the tree skirt but I'll share that later. I just didn't want to edit any more photos today. I also got a bee in my bonnet to make us new bathrobes so I'll work on that this week along with the other set of placemats. I don't think this week will be quite as productive but it should still be good! Today is a big day in the blog. I'm going to share the finished vulture quilt and all of my vulture art! I will also explain how I came to love vultures. Let's start with the quilt. I sooo love this quilt! Anne made this for me for my 60th birthday. The original quilt ended at the tan stamped border. I needed it a little bigger for our bed so I asked her if I could add another border and that's what I did. It took me much too long but now this quilt is on our bed and we are sleeping under the protective eyes of vultures. The quilt is now about 92" square. Anne got the pattern for the vulture blocks from Sally Trude's blog. Sally makes so many great pieced animal blocks and is a very prolific quilter when her feline owners allow. I decided to use a reversible technique to add the borders. Mom and I took a class from Sharon Pederson many years ago and I use the techniques that she teaches in her book. I bet my Mom has made at least 2 dozen quilts using the reversible technique. I stopped once I got the longarm but it was the way to go for this project. If you notice, each large vulture block has a 2-tone frame. Those frames are made with my Color Wheel fabrics so I knew that I could match those elements of the quilt perfectly and I decided to reference those frames in the border. Each corner of the border uses the 2 colors from the frame in the opposite corner. She had given me all of her stamping leftover bits and there were 4 that were perfect to use in the corners. By the way, she carved all the stamps and printed the tan border fabric. At her local quilt shop we were able to find more of the backing fabric that she used. I dyed a dark brown for the reversible sashing strips. All in all, I'm pleased with the added border. Now, before I share all of my vulture art I'll explain how I developed my love, or maybe just strong appreciation, for vultures. When we first moved to Montpelier, VA in 1998 I had not lived in a rural setting for a very long time. So here I was on 10 acres feeling like I was out in the middle of nowhere. I just wasn't accustomed to so much nature. Of course, now I feel like I want to be in the middle of 100 acres! But 24 years ago, nature intimidated me. One day we saw that a huge, probably pregnant, beaver had died on the edge of the pond. It completely freaked me out and I kept bugging Chris to "do something about it". He's a nature guy, so he ignored me. Well 2 days later I look out the window and there's a wake of vultures feeding on the beaver. For the first day it kind of creeped me out but by day 3 I realized that I had just witnessed the miracle of nature's vacuum cleaner. There wasn't one tiny bit of that beaver left to pollute our pond. I was grateful and impressed! There have been many times over the years that the vultures have come around to clean up one mess or another. After that I officially declared the vulture as my favorite bird. I didn't take my vulture fascination anywhere until I was on Facebook one day and saw a needle felting artist making this. I lost my mind over the detail that she put into each feather. I messaged her immediately and bought it before she even finished it. I immediately took it the a framer and it hangs in our downstairs hallway keeping a watchful eye on anyone going to the bathroom. Then I added a vulture block to my mosaic wall to watch over me while I'm quilting. Then my friends got wind of my vulture obsession and things started getting out of control. For my 60th birthday Anne made the quilt for me and our friends from England commissioned this piece from a local artist that they know. Her instagram page is worth checking out. Anne has also give me these festive gifts. What's Christmas without a vulture ornament? It's very sparkly! The vulture puzzle is really cool. My friend, Lora, is a collage artist and painter and she's made me several vulture themed pieces of art. Two are Christmas paintings. The collage vulture is hanging in the upstairs hallway and the stamped piece (that she carved) is on the mantle with the vulture puzzle.
I know. It's a little "out there" but the good news is that I'll never be inundated with themed vulture art because there just isn't a lot of it around. Imagine what my house would look like if I said I loved frogs or pigs? It's better this way. There was a lot of good football this past weekend and we had friends over both days to watch the games. that means that I did a mot more crochet than quilting. I was able to get this project done! This is a pretty big cape and that's what I was going for. I have to be careful and not make all of my donation shawls and capes in essentially child size to fit me. (Yes, I do shop sometimes in the boys department. It's a good place for short people.) Anyway, back to the shawl. The yarn is Mandala Tweed and I used 2 cakes of it. It's 100% acrylic and I used a J hook. The pattern was from Etsy. It's a fine pattern and I think this style is perfect for a wheelchair shawl but the yoke is all back loop single crochet and it took FOREVER! I also think that this pattern has some math errors on the increase rows but we'll assume operator error for now. The yoke has all of the increases and once you start the shell pattern it's straight and goes really fast. I stitched until I ran out of yarn because I don't like leftovers. I am thinking that I might try to recalculate the pattern increases and rows using half double crochet so it will go faster. One the yoke is set you can do almost anything for the lower half. Here are a couple of close ups of the buttons and stitches. I love the buttons with this yarn . I have a pretty phenomenal button collection that I was glad to finally use again. The big blanket is coming along really well too. I think I have enough yarn to do 3 more white sections and then it will be about 60" long. This is turning into a surprisingly nice blanket! You will notice that there isn't an update on the dark blue duster. That project is not working out well. The dark speckled yarn with the fancy stitches isn't a good combo and it's just annoying to work on. I've found a couple of other patterns that I think might work better but I'm also pondering skipping to a summer top pattern for my first garment and work on the duster in the summer. By the time I would get the duster done it would be time to put it away. But I can only work on the heavy blanket for so long before my hands get fatigued so I pulled out this yarn that I bought on clearance in June (for $1.24/skein!) and started a corner to corner. I have 7 skeins so I will either do 2 wheelchair blankets or one dialysis/chemo blanket. This yarn is so soft and easy to work with and I like how it's looking in corner-to-corner.
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. |
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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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April 2024
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