 I can't share my two biggest projects right now but I did get caught up on veterans quilts and finished quilting this one by Karen and also finished one of mine. I thought the meeting was last night but one of my friends corrected me. The meeting is next week! So I'm ahead.  I quilted this one in all-over leaves. That seemed to go well with the fabrics.  These are the t-shirts that I dyed for Eli and Ella. I hope to deliver them this weekend. I'm really pleased with how these turned out.
Today is dyeing day so I don't know if I'll have anything to share tomorrow, unless the weather is good enough to get photos of the big blue quilt.  I was just having too much fun working on the houses and I just had to finish them. I don't have any idea who will be the eventual owner of this quilt but I absolutely love it and had so much fun making it. The purple gradient background looks exactly the way I wanted.  You know how I am about scraps.... I was really good and I diligently put all of the scraps in the trash but now I keep looking at that pretty pile and I don't think I have leave them there. I think there might be some new postcards in my future. I certainly don't need to start another quilt right now so postcards might be a good project.  During my dyeing last week I also dyed this shirt as a special request from Chris. He has a shirt like this and wears it to his fraternity reunions. One of his friends has been coveting it for years so Chris asked me to dye one for him. It pains my Hokie heart to dye anything in UVA colors but I'll do it for Chris.
As I'm writing this, I realize that I forgot to get a photo of the big blue quilt off the frame. I did finish quilting it so I'll have a photo Wednesday and maybe I will have started quilting it.  I have some work friends that I get together with each month and we've been getting together at least since I retired 13 years ago. Every Christmas I like to make gifts for them and this year I chose dyed beach towels. I get my beach towels from Dharma Trading. They dye beautifully and are very soft. I used to always dye beach towels in a spiral design but I'm kind of tired of that so this year I decided to do something more organic and, honestly, it took just as long! I love the effect and might order some more towels to do some for myself. I each of my friend to tell me their 2 favorite colors and that's the guidance I used for the colors. I delivered two of them last night and will deliver the others next week.  I also dyed one for June. June works for Hanover County and she is the person who "manages" our group and she is the NICEST person in the world. She loves the color red because it's the color of her college sorority so I made her a red stripe beach towel. I have 4 more beach towels to dye for my SIL's grandkids and then I'll be all done with Christmas making. Chris and I don't exchange gifts but conveniently we are getting a new printer and new water filtration system for our "gifts" this year.  Yesterday I also got 2 more veterans quilts loaded and one of them done. I hope to finish off this one this afternoon. After that I have one more pair and I'll be done for the rest of the year! I might get one of my big quilts loaded and started.
Today I'm going to do something that I've never done before, participate in a medical trial. It's for a blood test for cancer screening. It's already commercially available but they will have to have a pretty extensive trial to prove it works for insurance to cover the cost. All I have to do is give blood and I get the test for free and they follow me for 3 years. That's it. If you are interested you could probably find a trial near you. It's being done nationwide in the US and they are enrolling thousands of people over the age of 50. It's a very expensive test and this is an opportunity to get it free. It's also being run in the UK by the NHS.  Here it is, all together! The papers are all removed and it's ready for quilting. I have not figured out how to quilt this yet so I'll take a week off to ponder it. There are areas in this quilt where I think there are probably 20 layers. Forget trying to sew through that, you would have to hammer a nail through it. I think my "quilting" will be very rudimentary for the purpose of stabilizing.  Here's a close up of the eye area to give you an idea of how small some of the pieces are.  My best tool for these blocks were these clips. I remember when they came out and thought they were just another trendy sewing notion that I did not need. I eventually bought some and, like everyone else, I now consider them a necessity.  I got my mess cleaned up  and all of the fabrics put away and I'm very ready to start some new easy projects.  I need some new masculine birthday postcards so I pulled this fabric that was leftover from the Corona Cats quilt back. I can't wait to get them done and share them. They are hilarious.  Today, during my normal dyeing schedule, I'll be dyeing some new sleeveless tshirts for myself.
During last week's session I dyed 3 maternity tshirts and a baby onesie for my nephew's wife. She should have them by now. I hope she loves them and that they fit. If you want to dye some, I found the white shirts at Mother Bee maternity. It took 4 test tries but I finally nailed the ombre effect. The actual color of the shirt is brighter than in the photo.  In other news, we cut down the Dogwood that I've been looking at outside my sewing room for over 20 years. It used to be full of spectacular pink blooms every Spring but it started dying off a couple of years ago. It was now time to add it to the woodpile for winter fires. I need to figure out what to put in it's place.
 The day that I was tying up all of the tshirts I noticed the rest of the stack of tea towels that I had been dyeing before. There were 16 towels left and I decided to dye all of them. Eight of them were tied and I just used whatever leftover dyes I had from the tshirts. There was no planning at all and I'm really happy with the results. I will absolutely tie dye more and almost wish I had tie dyed all 16 of the ones I had. But I decided to use the Color Magnet on the last 8 to make some more gift sets that weren't seasonal. Of all 16 the top one is my favorite of the bunch but I'm not unhappy with any of them. Here they are...  These 2 are pretty spectacular too!   This last one is pretty cool too. Here are the 4 sets that I screen printed with Color Magnet. On a couple of them I did overall designs instead of just edge designs and I think they turned out nice. All of them were done quickly without a lot of thought. I delivered one set last night as a housewarming gift for my college roommate's Mom and some of the others are already designated for gifts but I'm keeping a couple of the tie dyes for myself!      These are my last gifts for Christmas and I even have them done a few days early! All of these are for my SIL's daughter's families. There are 2 daughters and they each have 2 kids. We are happy to be included in a lot of their family events. I don't other kids in my life and these 4 are a lot of fun. The first part of the gifts are family shirts. Both daughters went to JMU so each member of each family gets a JMU shirt in purple and gold. Working with complementary colors is always risky because when they blend you just get brown. There's a little brown in these but I did pretty good keeping the colors separated.  Each of the kids get 2 more shirts. Eli and Ella are the ones I see most often because they live locally. They go to a school that has Seattle Seahawks colors so their Dad suggested shirts for school spirit days.  These are their other 2 shirts and I suppose you can figure out which shirt is for which kid.  Lincoln is the youngest of the 4 kids. I think he's 3 and he said he likes green and blue so that's what he got.  Sawyer is the oldest of the 3 boys and his school colors are navy and white. He was also the only one of the kids that said he liked bright colors so I had some fun on his second shirt. My favorite of all the shirts is the navy and white one.  All that's left is the gift wrapping!
I also dyed 16 more tea towels but I didn't get in the sewing room to iron them today. I had to do some shopping this morning after a productive visit to the chiropractor. Then I spent the afternoon baking bread and testing out a new cookie recipe. I'll iron the towels today and have them to share tomorrow. Before we get to the photos I want to answer 2 questions from yesterday. About the glass ornaments. I've been collecting them at least 20 years. I usually pick them up on vacations. Pretty much every tourist gift shop has blown glass ornaments. But another great source for them is Etsy. I've bought some of my most unique ones from Etsy. But before you go there, make a cup of coffee and get comfortable, you are going to be there a while! About tie dyeing shirts on commission. Sorry, I do not do that. Honestly, I don't really enjoy tie dyeing that much. I do it because the shirts make great gifts and people seem to love them. Heck, I like wearing them. I just don't love making them so I only do it when I'm in the mood. But if you want commission shirts I'd also point you to Etsy. There are tons of tie dyers there that do custom dyeing.  Tie dyeing actually takes me a long time. I have a lot of angst about color selection and placement. I did get some color advice from the parents for this group of shirts which made things easier. With 3 boys the responses were mostly green and blue. I did get to do a couple of rainbow ones and I got to do some pink and purple for Ella.  This tray also has 3 tea towels. Those are the long ones and the spiral in the upper let corner. I didn't really pick colors for the towels, I just used whatever was left over. I think the two rainbows at the bottom might actually be tea towels too.
I finished off the day with the JMU shirts and, frankly, I'm worried about them a bit. My color recipes sometimes don't translate perfectly to tie dyeing or immersion dyeing. These are looking a little too blue (instead of dark purple). I am holding out hope because the blue used does wash out a lot so they still might turn the right shade of purple. Fingers crossed!  Dyeing all of that took about 4 hours and I was beat when I was done. Today I'm happy to head off to my quilt club for our monthly sewing weekend. I'm working on a chandelier quilt top this weekend. I think there might even be 2 quilt kits in this one.
For the rest of the weekend my main goal is to get the December birthday postcards made and in the mail Monday morning. One of them is already a week late.  I worked on the pink doll dress yesterday and proceeded to sew the wrong skirt to the wrong bodice (it's a reversible dress). these things are hard to make so I wasn't about to take it apart. Instead I walked away for the evening. I've figured out a solution and it will be just as pretty (if you like fluorescent pink). I'll get it finished this afternoon, I think. Meanwhile, the tie dyeing that I did last week for the boys is done! It took almost 3 days of soaking to process these blue dyes. Each of the 3 boys gets a spider shirt because they all love Spiderman. The oldest boy loves blue so his second shirt is a blue spiral and it's probably the best spiral I've ever made.  The two younger boys each get shirts like these. They both love red and blue.  Ella's brother is Eli. I see a lot more of these 2 so I did 2 more shirts for him. These were done with Dye Magnet and stamps and stencils.  This is all that I have left to do on Chris' blanket! It might get done during the Eagles game tonight, especially of the Eagles don't play well. When it's done it will have almost 3000 yards of yarn in it!
Before I get into the birthday gifts I have to tell you that last evening my quilt club met as a big group for the first time in MONTHS and IT WAS AWESOME! We had a real program and real show and tell and lots of catching up chatter. It was a much better time than the 2 days Chris and I have spent burying he phone line (about 300') because the phone company couldn't be bothered. If you don't have Centurylink for your phone service you are blessed. They must have the worst customer service of any company in the world in any category.  Now, on to Eli. Eli is brother to Ella (recipient of couture doll clothes). He's turning 4 this weekend and he's all boy. I decided to dye some shirts for and hopefully he'll like one or more of these. I'm especially thrilled with the spiral. The two in the back were dyed using Color Magnet and stencils.  I had leftover fabric from his pillowcase so I made a gift bag for the shirts. Cookie Monster is his favorite Muppet. The bag is lined in turquoise.  I was rummaging around the sewing room looking for something to use as the drawstring and I spied the clothesline that I usually wrap with fabric for coasters and bowls. I decided to see if it could be dyed. It turns out that it can! I put lots of Fray Check and glue in the knots so that they don't come apart in use.
Mom and I will go to his party Saturday afternoon. Not sure if I'll survive a party full of 4 year old's but I'll give it my best shot. Mom and I might need to stop at a bar on the way home to recover. Today is "dyeing day" and that reminded me to share a new top that I dyed for myself last week.  This is a top that I dyed a couple of years ago. It's the Flower Power Top from Dharma Trading. It's got several things going for it that I love. It's soft cotton knit, it's very comfortable, it's manchine washable and it's long enough to completely cover my hiney. I love wearing it with cropped leggings. The only thing I don't love about it is the sleeve but that's a minor complaint. This year I ordered a couple more with great plans to get them dyed and they have been sitting on the shelf for over a month. I finally got motivated last week.  Last Tuesday I was invited on a road trip to the Virginia Quilt Museum and I didn't have to drive. I took along one of the tops, a bag of glass florist marbles and my waxed sinew. In the car I wrapped marbles in the lower half of the top. I did not tie each individual marble. I just wrap each one a few times and pull tight. That hold the marble in well enough.  I usually do low water immersion but I wanted the color in this top to be smooth solid so I did a full immersion dye and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. What I love about Dharma clothing is that the thread used for construction is cotton so it dyes too.  It took a lot less time that I expected to tie this dress and I'm glad I remembered that I had it to work on during the car ride. Now I need a design idea for the second one that I bought.  There's a little shop across from the Viginia Quilt Museum that sells kind of Bohemian clothing. I usually find something that I "need" in there. One of the things I needed this time was this tshirt that seemed to have been made for me! If you need one you can get it from Tie Dye Dan, a business in Harrisonburg.
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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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