It was sewing weekend with my quilt club and that means I worked on a veterans quilt. This time I made blocks using scraps from all of my Paula Nadelstern projects. I love string blocks! The veterans quilts are 48 x 60 so I make my blocks to finish 8" x 10" so that I get 3 diamonds across and down. These were easy to sew and I got all the blocks done by the time we wrapped up Saturday afternoon. But with this approach you have to be careful to do half of the blocks angled left to right and half the other way. I was so close to being done that I decided to keep going when I got home. I trimmed and layed out all the blocks and got this. Oops! That was enough for Saturday. Yesterday Chris left for a bucket list trip to Alaska to go fishing and my friend Kim came over to hang out and sew for a few days. The first thing I did was make a new block and get this top put together. I love it! It's in the to-be-quilted closet awaiting it's turn on the longarm. Kim is working on a quilt project of her own. This one is called Scrapbooking or something like that. I'll show you when there are more blocks but I think it's going to be really cute. After I finished my quilt top I didn't really want to dig into something else so I decided to clear out the bags of batting scraps. I had enough for 7 pet beds to donate to Richmond Animal League. The are all different sizes because I use whatever fabric I get for free and make as big a bed as I can from the fabric. Different sizes for different animals.
That's one more item checked off my July goals list! Today Kim is going to work on her quilt more and I'm not sure what I'm doing but I might start planning my project(s) for Maine or I might start some placemats for my brother. The Goldfinch quilting will come this weekend after Kim leaves. The holiday weekend was very productive for me! Aside from Mom's quilt, I also wrapped up this blanket. In all fairness, it was close to being done. The blanket is square, the narrow top is due to the camera angle. I intended this one to be a donation baby blanket but I think it ended up being a bit big at 34 x 44. I'll donate it and I'm confident that they will find the perfect home for it. I love how it turned out. The pattern is Woodland Heather Baby Blanket. It's free from Daisy Farm Crafts. I used Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn and an I (5.5mm) hook and cast on 95 stitches. The resulting blanket is sturdy (from the stitch) and very soft. Now I can start new projects! First up is a baby blanket for my new Great Niece arriving in November. I'm making another Daisy Farm Crafts pattern called Even Squares Baby Blanket. My niece picked the colors on the left and I'm trying Brava Worsted for the first time for this project. So far, so good. It's really soft. I worked up a swatch testing 3 stitches. The bottom row uses the stitches from the pattern. The middle row is double crochet and the top row is half double crochet. I like the half double crochet best so that's what I'm using. I mentioned before that I was not going to finish the tank top that I was working on so I put that project in time out until I think of something else to make with the yarn. Instead I started the project that I really wanted to do anyway. This will be another hexagon cardigan. I gave Mom the blue one so this one will be for me. When I did the last one it worked really well to make both halves at the same time so I'm doing that again.
I still have the big blanket going so will alternate these 3, switching each evening and they should keep me busy for several weeks. With the Goldfinch top done I needed to work on something quick and fun. I also needed to make some postcards for the guys in my life. They started with these fabrics. They are leftovers from the backing of my Corona Cats quilt. It was a wide panel called Stargazers. I don't know if it's still available but it's a super cool fabric and I saved every little scrap knowing that I eventually wanted to use it in postcards. I've played around with a couple of ideas over the past year or so but nothing really stuck until the recent "news" talk about UFO reports. The idea started to percolate and had to come together quickly since one card needed to be in the mail by today. I played around with a spaceship idea but that seemed to be too complex, then I thought about Martians! I found a free clipart image online and resized it to fit my cards. I traced around the image on Contact paper and then cut it out. I adhered the Contact paper to a silk screen and screened all of my little green Martians. The next task was to add the eyes and I needed a stencil for that. I stuck clear Contact paper to both sides of the printed image so that the paper wouldn't get destroyed with the wet paint before I could finish all of the cards. I cut out the eyes and the cut away the top of the head, each side of the neck and part of the hand. I used the cutaway sections to line up the stencil perfectly. As long as I didn't see any green around the edges I knew it was lined up correctly. Then I could use a pounce sponge to do the eyes. I wiped the back of the stencil clean after every use so that my edges would stay crisp. All that was left was to fuse on a back and serge the edges.
These cards make me so happy! Next on my list is to get back to quilting my Mom's quilt. I'm allowing myself a week and a half to get it done and then I'll quilt the Goldfinch. I mentioned last week that I had a second pair of old hiking pants th recycle and I did it this past weekend. I had to buy cording to make the straps. I got the new backpack finished Monday night. This one is for our friend, Ian. He's taller than me so I didn't make this one adjustable. The full size pack will fit him great. I'll give it to him when he and Laura join us in Maine. I worked very diligently Monday to get another block made. I think this one has the most pieces. To get an idea of scale you can see a straight pin in the peach colored piece near the top. There are a lot of tiny pieces in this one. I'm a little worried about how I'll quilt this with all the bulk in the seams. Seven more blocks to go.
Settle in, this is going to be a long one. The backstory is that I like to use a lightweight backpack when hiking. I just want to carry some water, my phone for photos, some snacks and some small supplies, like bandaids. I've been using this purple pack that I picked up from Quilter's Apothecary several years ago. It's very lightweight and I've shortened it to the length that I like. But it's not really made for the wear of hiking and I've had to do a few repairs. I've been shopping for a couple of years for a replacement but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. Most of the commercial ones are heavier and bigger than I need. At the same time, I've needed some new hiking pants. I have 2 pair of these REI Convertible Sahara pants that I love but they just don't fit anymore. The pants wear like iron and are still in good shape. I was going to donate the old ones but I had made some alterations and didn't think they would fit anyone. Then the idea struck to use the lightweight fabric from these pants to make a new backpack. I had a few features that I wanted in a custom backpack: - a pocket on the outside for my phone so that I could get at my phone easily without taking off the pack - a way to keep my water bottle vertical because I had an incident last summer with a bottle laying sideways. I didn't notice the bottle was leaking until my rear was soaked. - an inside zipper pocket to keep my id, tissues, Benadryl and other smalls In the left photo above, the purple pack is against an unzipped pant leg. I was able to cut the body pieces from the legs and used the hem as the top casing for the pack. This is one of the body pieces. The yellow pins mark the finished size that I wanted but I had an idea that I could make an option for a pack that would convert to a larger size. First I had to do a lot of seam ripping and, let me tell you, these pants are made REALLY well and it takes some work to take them apart. I cannot overestimate the time I put into this project. It's insane. I spent a lot of time figuring out the best parts to use for my elements and exactly how I wanted them placed. - the upper right is the cell phone pocket made from one of the hip pockets with an extension added. - The upper left is the other hip pocket. Can you see that it has a little pocket stitched on the inside? It's the perfect size for a few bandaids! - The large piece will be a sleeve for the water bottle. In the end it needed to be about 12" long. I used the fabric that I had available, hence the seam and hem folds. - The two pieces on the right are shoulder straps for padding. They are made from the waistband. First up was the cell phone pocket. It's a simple patch pocket on the outside of the bag. The bottom of the bag is marked by the red arrow on the left side so this pocket is placed with the zipper on my left side for easy access. It's on an angle so that the phone will naturally sit back in the pocket, away from the zipper opening, that will keep pressure off the zipper and keep it from opening accidentally. On the inside I sewed the water bottle sleeve into the right side seam. The smalls pocket is placed about midway down the pack. That will keep the bulk of the zipper and flap from interfering with the drawstring closure and it's high enough to be out of the way of snacks and things in the bottom of the pack. I don't have photos of the steps of the rest of the construction because it took a lot of thought to get the right order and I was on a time crunch to finish it so I could use it yesterday. But I did something really complex with the bottom of the bag. It has a zipper sewn into a pleat and there's extra length if it's needed. Here's the outside of the bag and that cell phone pocket worked perfectly on our hike yesterday. I was able to easily access my phone and put it back in the pocket and zip it up, all without taking off the bag. This little Velcro tab came from the hem of the pants. On the pants it covered the end of the zipper and I used it for the same purpose here. It covers the zipper pull at the bottom of the bag to keep the zipper from opening accidentally. With the zipper open the extra length give me more packing space if I need it. Everything, except the cording, came from one pair of pants. Here's what it looks like on the inside with the water bottle in it's sleeve. The sleeve worked perfectly on the hike! Chris took this photo for me at the end of the hike. I am thrilled with my new backpack and with the new REI Sahara pants that I bought. In it I have a water bottle, snacks and a light weight jacket. It was very comfortable for 3+ hours. We hiked the Ragged Mountain Trail near Charlottesville, VA and it was a beautiful day for a hike. The trail is 6.7 miles around a beautiful reservoir. We saw some geese on the lake. But the real treat was finding 3 wood carvings along the trail. We think these owls are pretty new. One of our friends who hikes this trail had not seen this one before. The nose on the mama bear of this sculpture had fallen off so Chris held it on for me to get a photo. The mountain man was the last surprise on the trail.
I mentioned at the beginning that I had TWO pair of pants so I'm planning to make another of these packs to give to a friend. The first one seemed to take about 50 hours. The second should go a little faster because now I know which parts I want to use and I now know how to put it together. Since I have backpack mess spread out in the sewing room I'll probably get that done before I get back to the Goldfinch. I didn't get a ton of things done this weekend but I did finish the firefighter quilt! You can see lots of photos and read all about it here.
I tried to spend a lot of time outside this weekend. I did lots of weeding and got some sun on Saturday. On Sunday I went for a long walk and then Chris and I trimmed the edge of our property against the road. We got notice that repaving our private road is happening this week so we needed to cut the jungle back a bit. The weather was just perfect for being outside this weekend. I did not start the Goldfinch quilt because I forgot to dye 3 fabrics that I need. I also didn't get two more veterans quilts loaded but that will happen today or tomorrow. I wanted a bright Spring-like card for Mother's Day this year and I found this idea while wandering around the web. It's not original. I just love the simplicity of the egg shapes for the birds. My free-motion stitching skills aren't great so I always stitch around at least 2 times to help hide the mishaps. One of the nice things about sewing fabric postcards is that you don't have to worry about tying off thread. The fused backing fabric holds everything in place. I made 8 of these cards because I also have a bunch of May and June birthdays. I like my little flocks.
I should have gotten lots more done in the past 2 days but we had a big laundry mishap that took us most of Monday to clean up. Several days ago we heard a loud thump, as if something had fallen. We looked (almost) everywhere and couldn't find it. Yesterday when I went to do laundry I discovered the source of the noise. A brand new Costco-sized container of laundry detergent had fallen off the dryer into the laundry basket full of clothes. That wouldn't have been a big problem except that the cap on the bottle cracked on the way down. All of the clothes in the basket were totally soaked in detergent and it ran out of the laundry basket on the floor and some even soaked into the carpet. The clean up was REALLY clean! There was so much soap that I had to take all the laundry outside and use the garden hose to get out as much as possible before I could but them through the wash in small loads with super size amounts of water. I'm so glad I have a traditional washing machine. I'd still be trying to get all the soap out with a HE washer. This story is going to be funny in a couple of week but I can promise you that there isn't a dirty piece of clothing, dirty towel or dirty rug anywhere in my house. Yesterday I got back to my projects. I got all of the soap unmolded and set out to cure. There's actually another shelf above what's shown in the photo. Not only are my clothes clean, my body will stay clean too! Then I could get back to the sewing room, plug in my audiobook and finish off the placemats. These are Mom's. She wanted 4 individual placemats instead of a set of 4. I didn't set out to do something seasonal but that's kind of how it worked out. Today I will dye a napkin for the purple one and then these will be ready to be gifted. Then I got the binding on the last pair that I made for myself. The napkins for this set match in color but not in design. The other one has a lacy edge. It doesn't matter, each one matches and it's a nice new set. So how many placemats do I have? I store them in this old desk/cabinet that Chris refinished probably 30 years ago. I did a rough count and there are about 100 placemats in here. I think I need to go through and remove the ones that I don't use much anymore. I see a few sets that I probably haven't used in years. Since most of them started as scraps and waste, I think I can relegate a few to the rag bin. Then I looked over and saw that there were more on the other side! These are the holiday ones. That brings my total to about 120. I think I could go all year and never use one twice.
That's a little crazy. 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. I took a quick little trip out of town Monday and Tuesday but I got these new placemats mostly done before I left town and finished them up last night. That's one more gift set for the family beach trip. This set started with these 4 overdyed napkins from my big bin of overdyed napkins. I pulled these out and challenged myself to make a set of placemats that would work with them. When I did my big sun printing extravaganza last summer (read about it here and here), I created quite the stockpile of sun prints and I think I've only used one so far! I started my search for a focus fabric there and found two fat quarters of this big leaf print. That was going to be just enough for 4 placemats. The side pieces are from an overdyed commercial black and white fabric. I had enough of it to use for the back too. That fabric had been in my stash a very long time and I'm glad it hung around just for this project. I started quilting in the edge borders with this overlapping wavy line and I intended to use it over the whole placemat. But once I saw it, I didn't like it. I was not going to take it out so I did this quilting in all of the edges. You can barely see it anyway. I thought a grid might be better on the leaf print and I was right. I think it took a little over an hour to quilt all 4 of them.
It's nice to have a focus fabric like this because there's no need for doing a lot of piecing. Let the focus fabric shine and make the rest simple. Next I'll make a set specifically for Mom. She said she would prefer 4 different placemats, rather than a set of 4. That will be a great place to use some of the special sun print fabrics that I have. Most are one-of-a-kind so there will be just enough for one placemat. I'll start those and will get one of Mom's quilts loaded and start quilting tomorrow. |
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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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May 2024
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