Saturday I was totally focused on getting the quilt top done and I finished it right before lunch. My camera would do the magic reshaping thing this time. It kept wanting to crop to the inner black border. You'll have to just look at this skewed version. I don't know when I'll get around to quilting it. I need to dye a backing first but it will be done before August for sure. It will finish about 75 x 85. After lunch I went for a walk to the other side (sound side) of the island and found a lovely little park with a hiking trail. At one corner there was a pier that provided a beautiful view of the sound. You can even walk right off the pier into the water for a swim. On the way back I came across my first beach bunny..... After my walk I was about to pack up my sewing stuff but started thinking about what to do with the leftover bits. I really don't want to add these to my stash. Within an hour I had a table runner. I think there's just enough fabric left to make a hanging sleeve for the quilt. I have to go back to Hobby Lobby this week and get some more of the red fabric for binding for both projects. We packed up and headed home Sunday morning. I spotted this house on the way out. I bet some really nice people live here!
I have so much dyeing to do this week and will get to start a new crochet garment project. But the most important project is the bear that I'll be making from a vintage quilt. That has to be done by Thursday! The miracle isn't about finishing my quilt. The miracle is that I woke up early enough to see the sunrise! This NEVER happens. I'm not an early morning girl but yesterday something woke me and I'm glad it did. I spent most of my creative time yesterday working on the quilt and I made great progress. I only have 3 borders left to do and there's no reason I can't get them done today. There's a 2" black, 1" orange and 6" print. No block piecing required. I also learned that my new cell phone camera has a wonderful trick. I took this photo with the quilt on the floor and me standing above at an angle. The camera popped up a yellow rhomboid outlining the quilt so, just for fun, I clicked that to see what would happen. This happened! This little feature is going to save me a lot of editing time in the future! Today is our last day and my goal is to finish this quilt top and take a walk. Off and on, all week, I've been working on the baby quilt. It was all I had to work on last night and I'm close to the body of the blanket being done. Then I just have to do the border. FYI, this is an awful photo. The blanket is white. Here's a close up of the stitch pattern. Kim and I have also spent a lot of time looking for my next crochet garment project. I think I have it narrowed down to a couple of projects. I'll figure it out when I get home and can peruse the yarn options. The weather word for yesterday and today is WINDY which you can see from the surf. When I went for my walk I walked into the wind so that the walk back would be easier. I walked farther than I planned because I wanted to see the wind surfers that were way ahead of me. I haven't decided it I admire them or if I think they were crazy. Maybe both!
We're leaving tomorrow so I'll have a final update Monday. It's been a great week. We've both relaxed a lot and have had a great week finishing procrastination projects. I was so close to finishing the sweater that I just had to power through and get it done yesterday. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. It fits well and I know I will use it a lot next fall and winter. It's too late to use it now because this is a very warm sweater. Here are a few notes: Pattern is a YouTube tutorial from LaDria LaVey. The hexi cardi is very popular right now and there are dozens of version on YouTube and other sources but I thought hers was a little more stylish than some of the others. The yarn is Jeans from Lion Brand. It's a 4 weight acrylic and very soft. It's a little splitty and this dark mottled colorway is a little hard to see stitches. I tried a couple of other patterns with this yarn first but got frustrated trying to see stitches. A granny style cardi was a perfect solution. I used a J-6mm hook. I made a number of adjustments as I went along to alter for size and sleeve length. With this pattern, changes are easy to do on the fly. The front edge has bobbles and I used my trim stitches to draw the front edge up a little. Again, it was easy to adjust on the fly. Now I can go home this weekend and look through my little stash of garment yarn and pick something new to make. While here, I have the baby quilt to get back to. But that's not all! I also made some good progress on the firefighter quilt. The pinwheel borders are together. I need to do some measuring and make some coping borders so that these will fit. It was late enough last night when I finished these that I thought it was a little late to be doing math. This will be my project for today. But it wasn't all inside work. I didn't take as long a walk yesterday but we did get out for a walk on the beach once and went out other times just to feel the sand. It was warmer, about 70 but the wind has really kicked up. For exercise, it was yoga day. Today it's supposed to be about 72 with pretty high winds. I am planning for a long walk in between quilt sewing sessions.
It was a great day! Yesterday we had a high of 69 but not so much sun. It still made for a more pleasant walk. I headed east this time toward the pier. It was about an hour to the piece and back. There were lots of shore birds and gulls out today. I love watching the fast moving shore birds on the surf. I was a little surprised that my camera caught this one as well as it did because it was really booking. If this guy looks annoyed it's because he should be. There were 3 young women on the beach who thought it would be a good idea to offer one of the gulls a chip. Of course about 15 of them flew in, scared the women and they screamed and chased the gulls away. This one landed right in front of me without a snack. He was indignant. It was a great sewing and crochet day as well. I got all of the pinwheel blocks made so today I will cut the background pieces for the pinwheel border. After the pinwheels there will be a narrow black border and a narrow orange border before the last border of the fabric at the top. It's coming together nicely I think. The hexagon sweater is making great progress! I got the back seam done and wove in a couple dozen ends and I've started the bottom hem. I am going to really love this sweater and look forward to wearing it in the fall. I know I'm a little lates to wear it this season.
I would say that I'm confident that I can finish both of these before I leave Sunday but I don't want to jinx myself. So I'll just say that it's possible to finish both of these before Sunday. Depending on whether you are following Kim's weather app or mine, the high yesterday was either 59 or 63. It was a beautiful day and I got in a long walk to the West end of the island and from here I could see over to Hammocks Beach State Park, which, I think, is only accessible by kayak or boat. I probably looked ridiculous on the beach because I decided that a 2 hours walk was the perfect opportunity to test out my new hiking boots. But at the beach no one really cares. The boots performed great with no rubbed spots on my feet or ankles. I'll need a few more test runs before we go to Maine in August. Most everyone was bundled up pretty good on the beach but there was one family in shorts and swimsuits. I'd bet money that they were Canadians. I cheered them on. I thought I'd share a couple of photos of our set up here. This is the place where we are staying. On Emerald Isle, about half the houses are duplexes and ours is one. We are in the unit on the West side, closest to the camera. The couple on the other side is from Massachusetts. It's a very comfortable house with great natural light. Being West facing I expect that this unit is pretty hot in July and August. We picked this house because it had such a nice sewing table! Yesterday Kim finished the red jacket that you see hanging on the back of one of the chairs and she undid the ribbing and a few rows on her white sweater, to shorten it. The raveled yarn made a pretty wool waterfall. She helped me fit my hexagon sweater Monday so I finished off the body yesterday morning and will seam the back and start the ribbing today. It's very possible that I can finish this sweater before we leave. That would be really nice. I've decided that this is my before breakfast project. After breakfast I got back to the quilt and made the 4 corner pinwheels. Here you can see the firefighter themed fabric that will be the background for the pinwheel border. The 14 small pinwheels are cut out and I've start sewing them together. I should be able to finish those blocks today. On my walk yesterday I decided to "shop" for the house I would want and I picked this one. I love all the big windows and I can't imagine what it would cost. Certainly more than we could afford! But a girl can dream.
I've been putting this quilt off for a couple of years mostly because I just don't like working with panels. It drives me batty that they are never printed even close to square. But now I have a deadline (August) to get this one done so it's the only sewing project that I brought on vacation. After several tries, this is the layout that I decided on. The fabrics in this rendering are just random ones from EQ. You will see the real ones as the week goes on. Yesterday I got started with the center of the quilt and today I'll start making the pinwheel blocks. So far, so good. It was pretty gray and quite cold all day yesterday but the son came out in the evening just in time to get this photo. Not a bad way to end the day!
Lately I've been thinking a lot about why I don't sew so much when I am home. I find myself heading to my crochet chair when I have time to make. Yesterday while ironing fabric for the shop I finally figured it out. My fabric shop activities have taken over my sewing room. I might start on a project but about half way through I have to stop, clear everything off and iron and package fabric. It makes me not want to start anything. While I am on vacation next week I'm going to give some thought to how I might rearrange my sewing room to better separate my business and sewing activities so they can coexist better. But when I'm away from home with a sewing machine I get lots done! That was the case this weekend. We had sewing club Friday and Saturday. On Friday I got this veterans quilt top done that I started last month. Working with all the seams on the 4" HST blocks is kind of a PITA but I can't stop using them because I like the results so much. I don't know where I saw this quilt. I'm certain it wasn't an original idea but I'm glad I mocked it up in EQ so that I could make one. This is the block. What makes it work is that every other block is turned upside down. For this quilt I made 40 blocks for a finished size of 48" x 60". I finished that on Friday after lunch and I immediately started in on the next kit. Once I pulled out all of the pieces I realized that I had cut enough for 2 quilts! That seems a little overly ambitious but I'll roll with it. I started off by making the 24 square-in-a-square blocks and had to finish them up Saturday morning. By the end of Saturday I had made 4 blocks and sewn the first row with sashing. I'll probably continue to make blocks and rows in chunks so that I don't get too bored with one step. They actually go together pretty quickly. When I got home Saturday I was putting everything away from the first top and counted the leftover blocks . I had 32, just enough for 4 placemats. The universe had spoken so before dinner I pulled out more of the gray backing scraps and got these pieced in no time. I may try to get them quilted this week too. I'll do them on the longarm so it will go faster. Later I'll need to dye matching napkins but there's no rush. I also need to get the baby quilt quilted this week too. I got the purple dyed for the backing. I was trying to match the purple in that top ring and I think I cam pretty darned close!
So my goal is to spend my week with the longarm while I get my sewing projects ready to head to the beach on Sunday. I'm so happy to be quilting again and getting back into the quilting groove is always easiest bu doing some veterans quilts. I finished quilting them this weekend and then spent Monday and Tuesday finishing the bindings. This one is a Chandelier Quilt. I found instructions on YouTube from Missouri Star. I worked up mine with smaller blocks that those used in the instructions. I worked up the design in EQ so that I could get the finished quilt to the right size of 48 x 60. When I cut out these kits I had enough fabric to make 2 of them. I switched the placement of red and blue blocks so that the two quilts are a little different. The blue background fabric is all leftovers from dyed backing fabric used on previous veterans quilts. When I trim up the quilts I always have some chunks of backing fabric leftover. I got through a little of that stash in these 2 quilts. Here's a little close up so you can see the on-point block. This is the third quilt that I finished this week. It's also set on point with a simple Friendship Star block. The block finished at 9" square and I think the sashing is 2" finished. Here's a close up of the blocks where you can see that the star elements are all fussy cut from a symmetry print. These fabrics will be in stores in February or March. They are all designed by Paula Nadelstern and, IMHO, these dotty fabrics are magical. The last quilt finished this week is this string quilt that I absolutely love. I think I wouldn't mind having one of these in queen size for our bed. It was so easy to make because I designed it to purposely avoid having to match any seams except for the center seam of each block. Here are 4 blocks. Each block finishes at 8" x 10". I cut foundations about 9 " x 11" and then trimmed them after all of the string piecing was done. The printed fabrics are cut 1.5" wide with a few chunky pieces for corners. The black is cut in a variety of widths from 1.5" to 3". This is the second or 3rd quilt that I've made with a rectangle string block and I have at least 2 more kits cut out using this method. Next up is a quilt that I'm quilting for Mom. She's been waiting a long time for this one and it's finally time to tackle it. I'll take a few days to play with a few ideas and then I'll jump in.
I'm linking up to Meadow Mist Designs Favorite Finish of the Month It seems that I got the longarm timed properly! I got 2 quilts quilted this week and one of them was this one that I made. Of course it's a veterans quilt and I got it bound last night to be my first finish of 2023. The quilting is a simple wavy crosshatch. This is probably the third double 4-patch quilt that I've made as a veterans quilt. The gold fabric is the leftovers from a veterans quilt back. The little squares are cut from leftover symmetry fabrics and the larger pieces are from a Paula Nadelstern fabric from several years ago. It's one of my favorite of all of her fabrics. I quilt the veterans quails two at a time and this is the other one that I quilted at the same time. Becky made this one as part of one of Barbara Brackman's quilt-alongs. I got my chandelier quilts basted and they are ready for quilting but that won't happen today. By the time this posts Mom and I will be on a long day trip to Martinsville, VA. It's about 3 1/2 hours each way so it's going to be a long day. Since I won't have any progress on anything today I'll have a crochet update to post about tomorrow. This weekend I hope to get the chandelier quilts quilted and bound. After that I have 3 more veterans quilts waiting for quilting and I expect I'll pick up more of them at the meeting Tuesday.
Laura left us today. We had a great visit and already miss her but she wants to get home to her family, especially the 3 grandkids. Today I will get back in the sewing room working on the Christmas postcards and my annual sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern. I've been given permission to share my progress with black and white photos. Here are the fabrics all washed and ready to cut. I'm excited to work with them.
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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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