Tuesday was primary day in Virginia so I spent the day working as an elections officer. We have a nice group of people in our precinct so the day is really pleasant even if it's brutally long. We have to be there at 5:00 am and don't get to leave until about 8:00 pm. We had about 25% turnout, which was higher than I expected and it was fun to see some of my neighbors, friends and former co-workers. Since football season ended I haven't been watching TV so haven't been crocheting as much. But I do a little here and there and eventually finished this shawl for donation. This is the third time I've made this shawl using Ice Cream Cotton Blend yarn. It's a discontinued yarn and great to work with. I don't love the color pooling but it's going to be incredibly comfortable for someone in assisted living or a nursing home. I have yarn to make one more. I'm making some progress on the baby blanket too. I like the subtle stripes from this yarn.
Mom and I went to the Mid-Atlantic quilt show Friday and went to meet her new Great Granddaughter Saturday. It was a fun trip and we really enjoyed the quilts at the show. Between Thursday and yesterday I was able to kick off March with 4 more veterans quilts. This one was made by Peg. This one was made by Ann. They were both quilted quickly with this fern or banana peel motif and turquoise thread. I even finished off a cone of thread with this quilt. Quilt #3 was made by Clara. She's quite the prolific piecer. It was quilted with loops and stars. I don't know who made this one but I like it a lot. I quilted it with this free-motion fan motif. I hadn't use this in a long time. I need to get it back in rotation because I like it a lot.
I have 2 more to get quilted before the meeting next week. They are on the frame, basted and ready. Tomorrow I'll be working the primary election so I don't expect I'll have anything to post Wednesday. I almost forgot to get the final photos of Red Sunset! I had a nice opportunity yesterday to go outside and get the official photos. This quilt was made to replace one on the guest bed that's now too short since I added a foam topper to the mattress. I started this in the summer of 2022. The back is a hand dyed mandala that shows off the quilting nicely.
I have a project page here that has lots of close up photos of the quilting if you aren't already tired of seeing the photos on the previous blog posts. It was a weekend of good progress! Most importantly I finished this set of placemats and they are ready to be delivered Friday. I was very lucky to have these 2 fabrics in my stash because my nephew's wife wanted all grays. The really needed the black to make them big enough and to keep them from being too boring. I quilted them with straight line quilting on the longarm. I like to quilt placemats densely because they don't wrinkle up so much in the wash when they are quilted densely. Straight lines are easy and fast on the longarm and I can get 6 of them quilted in less than an hour. I was really stymied on the binding on these. I had barely enough fabric to make them and I felt they were a little small. I could only fix it with a wide binding. It took me a bit to figure out how to do it. I cut a 2" strip and pressed one edge under 1/4". I sewed the unfolded edge to the back and then folded the binding to the front like normal. Worked like a charm! Usually I dye napkins to go with the placemats but my black dye doesn't really go well with commercial black so I cheated and bought some napkins from Amazon. The next thing I accomplished was hemming some pants for Chris. I wasn't the only person in this house in desperate need of new clothes. I sent him to the mall Friday and then hemmed pants for the first time in years! We both looked reasonably presentable at the funeral Saturday. The service was lovely and it was nice to catch up with friends. On Sunday I got busy quilting the other 12 placemats. I did the Tucson placemats in straight lines and the kind-of-ugly patchwork placemats with all-over leaves. I will try to get these bound this week and then I just have to dye napkins to match.
Today, though, is an all-errand day. I have my training to work the primary voting precinct and then a bunch of errands and an evening meeting. I'll get back to the sewing room tomorrow. Two more veterans quilts are done! Both of these were made by Peg. I think she was working through brown and gold scraps for these. Whenever I get a quilt with any sort of autumnal feel I like to quilt it in all-over leaves. I did that on both of these quilts and I love the effect. I have 4 more (2 sets) left to do before the next meeting. I have 2 other quilts but they don't have mates yet. Before I do the last 4 I will quilt all of the placemats and do a small quilt for a friend. Speaking of placemats, I got this set quilted and they are ready for binding. But first, today I have to hem some new pants for Chris. We have a funeral to attend tomorrow and we both desperately needed some new "nice" clothes. I did my shopping last week. This funeral is the most expensive funeral we've attended. LOL! It's for the parent of one of Chris' high school friends so it will be nice to catch up with friends. There's only one parent left in his high school friend group now and she's 94.
The rest of the weekend will have a placemat theme. I hope you have a great weekend. It was a very productive weekend. I got the binding on Red Sunset and that should have been the focus of today's post. But I couldn't photograph it. I do my photographs on the back deck and it's got some old furniture on it that's to be discarded this week. Once the deck is cleared this week I'll get all of the Red Sunset photos taken to share here. Meanwhile, I got 4 more veterans quilts quilted. That's 12 so far for 2024 and I have 6 or 8 more in the closet to be quilted. I also have a quilt for a friend to quilt and the big blue quilt waiting it's turn too. At the meeting last week people were bringing quilt top after quilt top so I don't know who made some of them. That's the case with this one. It's a very clever way to use a small amount of a novelty fabric. I like this quilt a lot. This one was made by Ann. It was meant to be even more scrappy but she said that she rearranged the pieces to have the center stars. She used the extra points for her top and bottom borders. This one was made by Glenda (Mom) and she's been working through her string bin. She started with a 2 foot trash can stuffed to overflowing and, after several quilts, she only has a few inches of strings left in the bin. I love the color palette for this string quilt made by Ellen.
More quilting ahead! Here are the other 2 quilts that Sharon made. I got them quilted yesterday after I went out to run a bunch of errands. I like all 4 quilts that she made with this pattern but this is probably my favorite. Here's the last one. They are both quilted with the Woven Wind pantograph. I have really gotten my money's worth out of this pantograph. Next I'm starting on quilts with blue backs and I have these two basted and ready to quilt today.
This weekend I hope to get 4 more veterans quilts quilted, get Red Sunset bound and get some placemats started. We had our quilt club meeting Tuesday night and I sped through Tuesday to get 2 more veterans quilts done so I could deliver them back to the quilt maker, Sharon, at the meeting. This pattern has a couple of names but I know it as chandelier. She actually made 4 quilts in this pattern and they are all beautiful. The other 2 are next up on the longarm, hopefully today. This is the Dwirling pattern that I learned from The Pajama Quilter. When I first got my longarm years ago I found her beginner quilting videos and learned lots of fun easy quilting patterns. I'm sure someone else had a tutorial for this type of quilting. It's fun and fast. I brought home a lot of new tops to quilt and have 14 more ready for quilting! I better get busy!
I had a little backlog of veterans quilts while I was quilting Red Sunset. I decided to focus on them and get as many done as I could before our meeting last night. Here are the first 4 for 2024. This one was pieced by Clara. She's been a top-making machine lately! There's such a huge need and we will never keep up with the need at the VA hospital. But every quilt helps! This looks like a "Betsy quilt" so I'm assuming that she made it. This one and the next one, both, came from Estelle. I believe that one of these was an unquilted top that was in a donation bag and I think she made one. This one is super soft flannel. Someone is going to love it. All of these are quilted with this fan motif. I needed to quilt them fast and this is one of my fastest pantographs.
There are still more left to do! We have friends who spend every winter in Tucson and they have been raving about the place for years. I'm not a huge desert landscape fan but this year we were ready to escape the Virginia winter and go anywhere warm. It was time to give Tucson a try and boy was it worth it! The Sonoran Desert is spectacular and it's particularly spectacular in this region where they actually get some regular rain. I am now totally fascinated by the saguaro cactus and I really love that we don't know a lot about them. Supposedly, if they have arms they are over 100 years old, but they don't know for sure. There are no tree rings to count. Before I get into the vacation week I want to tell you about my two celebrity sightings! The first was when we left Richmond on a 6am flight. We were standing in the Delta check in line and we saw a man and woman get in the Sky Priority line. The man looked like an aging rapper and I didn't recognize him at first but as soon as I heard his voice I knew it was David Bromstad from HGTVs My Lottery Dream Home. No one bothered him and he seemed as nice as he is on TV. I assume he was in Richmond filming. The next one was at Tanque Verde Ranch. We went horseback riding one evening and our friends were showing us around the ranch before our ride. I was surprised to see that there was some sort of quilting event going on there. As we walked through one area there were 2 men sitting at table talking with some of the quilters. It was Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably! I had not paid to be at the conference so I didn't feel it was appropriate to speak to them but I thought it was funny since I had just finished the blue quilt top that was from one of his books. In case you are interested, the retreat was sponsored my Madeline Island School or the Arts. They have retreats in Arizona, Minnesota and Maine. Back to the trip. We had 4 absolutely fabulous sunny days with temperatures in the upper 70's and we took full advantage hiking every day. There are so many hiking opportunities in that area. We hiked in the Ventana Canyon, Sabino Canyon and East and West Saguaro National Park. This photo was in Ventana Canyon. That was out longest hike of about 6 miles, straight up and straight down. It was a great workout. The last 2 days were cooler but still lovely and a nice break from gray Virginia. Today, though, Virginia is bright and sunny and almost 60. We went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and got to see the raptor show. There's a hummingbird exhibit there too but we saw more hummingbirds at our friend's condo than we saw in the Museum enclosure. I expect that we were there at the wrong time of day. At the Tanque Verde Ranch we went horseback riding. I haven't been on a horse since I was about 9 at 4H camp so I was a little unsure. I had a chat with Cimarron beforehand to explain that the ride was all on him and that I was just going to focus on not falling off. Laurie had Elvis and he was a little more of a handful so I was grateful for Cimarron. He's very comfortable leading ignormat riders around. It was a beautiful ride and I got over my apprehension very quickly. By the end I was hardly paying attention to the horse and just enjoying the great views. That was the day we saw Kaffe Fassett. During the down times we played a lot of tug with our new friend, Jammer. Jammer is an incredibly well-behaved dog. She doesn't beg or counter surf but we learned that she apparently has a jones for ear plugs. I sleep with earplugs and I put them on a little tray by the bed in the mornings. One night I noticed one missing but didn't think anything of it. I assumed it got accidentally thrown out, but just in case, I tried to keep the bedroom door closed. I opened a new pack and then I had 3 earplugs on the tray until the day we came home and all three were gone. I had accidentally left the door open. Then we were pretty sure that Jammer had developed an addiction. I was worried that it would cause her trouble. Bill and Laurie were not. Sure enough, over the next 2 days were were relieved by reports of fluorescent orange poo pellets. While we were there we also visited Biosphere 2. I didn't get any photos, the weather was awful and, frankly, I didn't think about it. The whole Biosphere 2 experiment fascinated me when it was going on and when it all collapsed so I was excited to actually see the place. If you are interested, the Wikipedia article on it is pretty darned entertaining. Today it's owned and managed by the University of Arizona and there's one significant experiment going on there, Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO) where they are studying how volcanic rock evolves into fertile soil. All of other experiments referenced in the tour seemed to be halted. You can actually download the Biosphere app and take the tour virtually. What struck me the most about it was the size. It's not nearly as big as I expected and the idea of putting something like a dozen different plant and natural ecosystems inside, in essence, 3 buildings seems ill-advised in hindsight. Of course, we know it didn't really work but I'm sure there were good lessons learned for science anyway. The tour really glosses over the Biosphere experience for the residents and doesn't actually reference any real research that they were doing while living there. I think they were having enough trouble surviving and producing food. It was worth the trip though. I've always wanted to see it. The drive around Oracle was beautiful and we stopped by Catalina State Park. We would like to hike that area someday too. I did get to visit a local quilt shop and a yarn shop. I bought some cactus-themed fabric to make some memento placemats. I forgot to photograph the fabric but I'll get it later this week. During the flights and little down time, I worked on chemo hats. Hats are the perfect travel project and I finished the 4 chemo hats on the front. The dark blue one is a hat I finished a couple of weeks ago when I was at a doctor visit with Mom. All of these are made with a really soft polyester yarn, Feels Like Butta by Lion Brand and whatever the Hobby Lobby equivalent is.
It's good to be back home and to have humidity again! I've never been so constantly thirsty and dry but we really enjoyed it and are looking forward to going back. |
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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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