 I needed sympathy cards. A normal person goes to the store, buys the cards and mails them. It takes about an hour. My approach is to decide on some new technique or pull out some new product and take an entire day making 2 postcards. I don't regret it for a minute. The fabric and gold butterflies, both, wer cut on the Cricut. I added free-motion stitching to the fabric butterflies and crystals to the vinyl butterflies.  The technique was to learn how to cut fabric on the Cricut. Of course, I didn't look up any tutorials or anything. I had a lot of failures but I'm closer to knowing what to do. I needed to figure this out before I start working on the Christmas cards. One of the main reasons I bought this tool was to help with Christmas cards.  The original design plan was to do a card with the gold ffused on top of the fabric. I absolutely hated the look of it so instead I got two different cards and I'm much happier with the end results.
I still need more practice cutting fabric but I made good progress in testing out the blades, mats and settings. I didn't accomplish anything else yesterday so I'll see if I can get that quilt loaded today between a chiropractor appointment and the chimney repair people being here.
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 During the football game Monday night I finished the shawl that I started on the drive home. I still have to put a button on it but I'll wait on that until I finish 2 more shawls.  Why 2 more? Well, it's coming into winter and From The Heart is always asking for shawls. This one comes together really quickly and I have enough of the same yarn to make 2 more. I started a new one yesterday afternoon so I could take it to quilt club to work on a little. I spent some time yesterday getting my crochet projects in order. I unraveled a vest that I was making and not enjoying.  I might be pretty close to done with the big blanket. I got this far on vacation. The plan was to finish continue until I added a final section of dark blue. That will make the blanket 46 x 60.  But I had a little problem. The ball of navy yarn is the last of the navy in the blanket and it's not enough for another section. It turns out that Lion Brand Pound of Love doesn't come in navy anymore. But I came home and found this navy blue yarn in my stash and I think it will be fine. I'll do the whole section in the new yarn so the transition between the two shouldn't show up too badly. Now I have enough yarn to make this blanket 72" long if I want and I'm kind of inclined to do that. For those of you making donation blankets, do you have an opinion on the size?  I also unpacked these 2 hats that I finished on vacation. The one on the left is a man's chemo hat and the one on the right is a kid's hat. I'm going to be really happy to see the end of this tweedy yarn!  I decided to switch over to making some winter hats and pulled out my bulky and super bulky yarns.
I'm going to start with the super bulky yarns and this speedy pattern. I've made a lot of these caps and they actually look pretty good. I should be able to get 5 hats out of these yarns.
It's nice to have an organized plan so I don't have to think about what to work on for a few weeks.  It was kind of a nightmare getting here, but this blanket is finally done and it turned out great!  On the way up to maine I thought I was about 75% done with the blanket but, in the car, I noticed that the top was wider than the bottom. At some point I changed from an H size hook to an I size hook. I had to rip it back to the blue arrow. It was the equivalent of more than 1 skein of yarn.  I'm glad I did because now it's perfectly 36" square and it's a really sweet blanket.  The border really adds a lot to the personality of the blanket and it's a very easy border. There's a row of single crochet, 2 rows of V stitches, a row of granny stitches and a ruffle of chains and single crochet. I made this blanket once before and I'm sure I'll make it again. This one will be donated.
Yarn: Yarn Bee Sweet Delight, 3 weight, 340 yards/skein and I used 3 for the body and about 1/2 for the border. Pattern: Vintage Inspired Fan Stitch blanket by Blossom Crochet Hook Size H, 5.0mm  Well, I did finish the last batch of potholders and I promise that I will not be making more when I get home in September. These are the last 13. I use my own pattern that you can find here. My brother said that he hoped that I had enough for him to have a few. LOL!  I gave 3 away before I started these and there are 60 in these stacks so I've made a total of 63. That's just crazy but it was fun. They are a perfect project for when you aren't in the mood for a big project and they use quite a bit of fabric.
I'm all set for Christmas gifts. We leave for our trip tomorrow and it's a 2 day drive. On Friday we will take a detour a few miles in Massachusetts to visit the New England Quilt Museum to see an exhibit of Paula Nadelstern quilts. I'll post again this weekend and try to share some photos from the exhibit. I will be posting on vacation as I work on the farm quilt.  I'm very excited to leave for vacation with no veterans quilts in the closet to be quilted! I finished these two and Brenda has picked them up, with 3 others, to deliver back to the quilters. This one was made by Becky. She's made a couple of them like this. Trip Around the World is a great pattern for playing around with color and value.  This one was made by Peg and I think someone is going to love all of this brightness! She also made the blue and white log cabin from a few posts ago.  I had a lot of trouble settling on a thread color. In the end I decided in a shiny grey. After I quilted the first pass, I wasn't really happy with the thread color but I have a rule that I will not rip out for thread color. I kept going. After the third pass I fell in love with it. I now love the gray thread and I hope Peg will too.
This makes 47 veterans quilts that I've quilted so far this year and that doesn't include 8 of my own quilts. I sure have a lot more time since I retired the fabric business!  One of the main reasons that I got the Cricut was to do some screen printing and I decided to start off with some tea towels. Tea towels are such a great gift. They are easy to make and so useful. People aren't as sensitive to the colors and patterns because they are just going to use them to clean up messes. My friend recommended ORACAL 651 vinyl for screen printing and she was right. It transfers easy and stays stuck. I followed some instructions I found specific to the Cricut for the first set but switched to my normal screen printing method using a credit card, for the second set and got a much better result, as you will see.  I screenprint Color Magnet onto the towel before it's dyed. The printed areas absorb a lot more dye than the rest of the towel to create the image. This set was created for friend we will visit in Beaufort SC in September. She refers to their home as Skeeter Haven.  Since their house is near the beach I went for beach glass colors. These did not turn out perfect but I don't think she will mind the mistakes too much.  The first ones were so quick to make that I decided to make some for our Maine hosts. This image is straight from the Cricut library.  I made 6 so I can give each person 2. They might also get potholders!
Speaking of potholders, I have 5 left to make and I'll be totally done. But today I'll be working on the last 2 veterans quilts. It's too hot to do anything outside.  Two more veterans quilts ready for delivery! This is such a simple quilt to make but I love how it looks and I've made it several times. I have it as a "pattern" that I called Regiment. But it's really simply 20 Churn Dash blocks. I've made this one 3 times before and I'm sure I'll make it again. It's easy, fast and looks good.  I used one of my new pantographs on this one. It's called macrame and I love how it looks.  The second one is the batik string quilt. This one was made with all scrap strings and I love how it turned out. I've made this one 4 times before. I lost one of the photos. I have 2 more kits ready to go!
I quilt these free motion in diagonal lines parallel to the piecing. I can quilt one of these in about 45 minutes.
I'm glad to get these 2 done to add to the delivery that I'm going to make this week. It will have about 30 quilts for teh veterans!
I had these 2 veterans quilts quilted last month and I finally got around to quilting them. I have made this "pattern" before and I like it a lot.  The effect is supposed to be like this with the mitered side borders to enhance the woven effect. I did that on these 2 quilts but I don't think there is enough contrast between the fabrics I chose for these quilts. They still look good but the next time I'll pick better fabrics.  These are quilted with my standard stars and ribbons pantograph.  After that last batch of quilts I decided that I needed a couple of new pantograph, I found Macrame and Becker's Shooting Star at Urban Elementz. It's very cool that you can pick a pantograph and, for just a couple of dollars, have it printed a custom size. I sized these up larger to get more width per pass. On the veterans quilts, speed matters!  I used the Macrame pattern on my brown batik quilt and I really like it a lot. I'll get the binding on this one later this week.
 Yesterday was mostly about doing some of my business shut-down admin tasks but I did get one of the single veterans quilts loaded and quilted. This one was made by Gwendolyn and I like it a lot. I lvoe the turquoise with the brown.  In this close up photo you can see that it has a camping theme. I used the square spiral pantograph. The next quilt will use the same pantograph and thread to make things more efficient. Then I'll switch to another pantograph for the last 3 quilts.
I'm glad tomorrow is audiobook day because I won't have anything else to post. Today I go to a foot doctor and then I'm going to do a little furniture shopping.  Two more veterans quilts are quilted! I'm not positive, but I think these were made by Margaret.   I quilted these with the stars and ribbons pantograph and red thread. I have really gotten my money's worth out of this panto. I decided I was a little bored with it so I treated myself to two new pantographs this weekend. I'm looking forward to having something a little different to quilt when they arrive.  The next two are loaded and I've started the quilting. They will be done by the end of the week.  Here's a little side project I've worked on the past couple of days.
We buy the veterans backing fabric by the bolt. I cut it in 2 yard lengths and each of those pieces is enough for 2 quilts. The bolt is 15 yards so there's always a yard left over. I can cut those pieces in half and stitch them back together in a different orientation and get a backing big enough for 1 quilt. I had a stack of "ends" and got them all fixed up to make 6 single quilt backs. Now I'm going to go through that stack of batting strips (left over from quilting other veterans quilts) and piece them together to make batting for the singles. It will be like getting 6 free quilts quilted. I'm going to try to use these for the next few quilts. |
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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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