 On Monday I shared two more comfort quilts Monday and I used this fish fabric and the backing fabric. I had a little of the fabric left over and I really hate having scraps. That meant that I needed to come up with a quick project to use it and placemats are one of my go-to projects. Chris is big into fishing, especially off-shore. I got this fabric with because the fish are pretty accurate and I thought I might make him a quilt. I was just never inspired to make a quilt with it. Placemats are a fine tradeoff. He can see his fish while he eats his dinner. I even used 2 fat quarters from that bin of fabric that I pulled out a couple of weeks ago. That's the yellow and gold trim. The ohter blue is a hand dyed piece from my stash and I used all of it too.  I make my placemats with flannel from old (but clean) flannel sheets as the batting. It adds just enough weight but doesn't make them fluffy. I also like quilting them pretty heavily so they don't need much ironing. I use a lot of straight line quilting because it's really fast but I wanted a little movement in the ocean and did overlapping wavy lines in the middle. It looks like a lot of work but it went really fast.  I even dyed napkins to match!  My scrap usage doesn't end with the front of the placemats. Especially when I make them for myself, I try to use my ugly fabrics for the backing. I remember giving some placemats to a friend and I use one of my "uglies" on the back. She sent me photos a few months later to show me how great the placemats looked in her new home. It was the ugly back that matched her decor! They didn't look ugly anymore.  I had enough fabric to make 8 for 2 sets of 4. I'll give the other est to my nephew because he loves fishing too.
This weekend I'll be back to practicing my quilting and making the lap quilts. On Sunday I will be totally focused on the Eagles and the Super Bowl and I'm likely to be a little loud. I'm linking up to Alycia's Finished Friday and Confessions of a Fabric Addict From an image point of view, this has to be the most boring post ever. There's a lot of white space in this post but we'll move on and see if I can answer all the questions I received on last week's post about making your own fusible batting tape. I think that the pre-packaged batting tape it wonderfully convenient but also insanely expensive. Depending on the number of pieces of batting, you could quickly go through $10 worth of tape to make one new batting. That's still less expensive than a new batt but making your own costs half as much. One question was about the kind of fusible I buy. I get a knit fusible because they fuse at lower temperatures. You do not want to press your batting with a super high heat iron. When Joann has their interfacings on sale half off you can't go wrong with Pellon Easy Knit. Pellon also has Fusi-Knit and that works fine too. Get whatever is least expensive.  For this little demo I'm using black and white batting so you can easily see the two pieces of batting. I start by overlapping the two batting edges a bit. I need to get these edges so that they will butt together flush.  Cut through both layers where they overlap and you will have a nice clean edge to fuse. The cut doesn't have to be perfectly straight. It can be slightly wavy. Pull out the two trimmed edges and add those to the "pet bed stuffing" bag.  The batting strips don't need to be any wider than 1.5". Feel both sides of the interfacing. The bumpy side is the glue side. Those are glue beads. Put that side against the batting. You will do this wrong at least once and then you will get to clean your iron. I set my iron on the Poly Blend setting and I leave the steam on. These knit interfacings don't need high heat. A high heat iron will melt the interfacing and your poly blend batting and then you can clean your iron again. Use very little pressure. Just let the steam do the work. Hold the iron over a section for 5 - 10 seconds and then move to the next section. When you hold the fused piece up you will quickly see any sections that need to be touched up.  That's all there is to it!  When I'm working on a big piece I just do it in sections. I cut and fuse whatever fits on the ironing board and make sure that the part that's hanging over has some overlap. Then I just roll up the fused section and finish if off.  Fifteen minutes of work and I had a whole new (free) batting for 2 more veterans quilts!  I need all the free batting I can get because my closet is full of veterans quilts to be quilted!  Then there are 2 rail fence quilts that I started at sewing this weekend. I'll get the strips pressed and cut this month and will get these tops put together next month.
I don't have any good project photos for today. Yesterday was spent doing a lot of chores (laundry, washing out fabrics) and making soup. I did get 2 quilting repairs done on the postage stamp and I removed it from the zippers last night. I'll get it trimmed and start the binding process soon. So for today I have a little tip to share about batting scraps. When I quilt the veterans quilts there's always about a 10 - 15" piece left over at the end of the batting. I save those. If I put 8 or so of them together I get 2 more veterans quilts quilted for "free". But sewing the scraps together takes a lot of time. I like the idea of the fusible batting tape but I'd need 2 packages for one pieced batting. Even at the Joann sale price that would be over $10 for each large batting piece that I make. I saw that tape and realized that it was just fusible knit interfacing cut into strips.  Recently Joann had interfacing on sale and I was able to get a bolt (10 yards) of Easy Knit for less than $30, including shipping. That seemed like a good option.  I took the interfacing off the bolt and folded it up so that I could cut it in 10 yard strips. I got 12 strips out of that $30 bolt! That would be the equivalent of 12 packages at $5.59 (if I could get it that cheap) for a total of 67.08, before tax and shipping. Cutting the bolt saves over $37!
This would be a great thing for a group of friends to do together. Buy the bolt and share the cost. Because of the veterans quilts I'll go through this pretty quickly, otherwise I'd share with my friends. This is going to save me tons of time. Given how much I spend on my hobbies it's nice to legitimately save money from time to time. I don't consider buying stash fabric and yarn on sale as actually "saving money". It's sewing weekend with my quilt club so I'll be sewing veterans quilt tops this weekend. I'm not sure I'll get much else done.
Done and delivered! It's no secret that I haven't liked this quilt. I started it with no purpose other than to use up a lot of green hand dyed fabrics. I showed a progress photo to my college roommate (who lives in the same county) and she fell in love with it. We delivered it this week and she was sending me these photos before we even got home 20 minutes later. As much as I have disliked this quilt, I admit that I love it on the dark wood bed. I'm happy, she's happy. It's all good.
You can read all about A Big Green Quilt and see more photos here. Starting with the scraps. I'm still procrastinating finishing the Summer Sunset quilt top. Instead I spent much of yesterday playing with scraps.  When you cut diamond shapes from fabric there are a lot of odd triangles left. I had just enough to crazy piece them together for 4 placemats. If you study them carefully you will be able to tell that the one on the loser left was the last one. I think they are fun. I'll probably quilt them with an orange/bronze color thread in straight lines. I have no idea when that might happen but it will likely be a week when I feel the need for a quick finish of anything.  With the last of the leftovers I patched up some postcards. These still need backs and edges but I can knock those out some evening soon. I will save one of these to send my SIL for her birthday. I still have the equivalent of about 18 fat quarters left over from that fabric. I'm pondering ideas for what to do with it. I might make Karen some placemats and I might make a veterans quilt or 2. I'm debating on whether I might want to order some more fabric on one of the darkest patterns for sashing. I might be able to dye a mottled dark brown that will work. My dyed black doesn't look good with it at all but the darkest brown in Coffee and Cocoa might work. I'll think on that later.  Today I'm supposed to be at the monthly sewing with my quilt club. I'm delayed because we have to wait around for someone to magically appear between 11 and 2 to give us a quote on some work. I hope I can at least get my station set up this afternoon for sewing tomorrow. But before I can go I had to "fix" my travel sewing machine. I've had this Janome Gem Gold for ages and it is a wonderful machine. I think I paid about $300 for it over 15 years ago. It's never been serviced and it sews like a dream. It has the best 1/4" foot of any machine that I own. The case is soft so anything that sticks out gets abused. On this machine, that's the thread holder. It broke over a year ago and held up pretty good with duct tape for a while. It finally gave up the ghost at the river last week. I have looked and there is a replacement part but I can't get the broken pieces from the old holder out and I'm not taking it to be repaired. It will cost more than the machine is worth and I've already bought a replacement travel machine ($75) when this one deicides to pass on to sewing machine heaven.  I rummaged around Anne's house and found a skewer in the kitchen. One piece of duct tape later and I was back in business. The problem came when I was packing up. I can't leave this thing taped to the back of the machine because it won't fit in the case. I pulled he tape off, packed up my skewer and decided to figure it out at home.  The fix was simple. I just needed to line the tape in the center so that it doesn't stick to the skewer. It can be removed for packing up and inserted for sewing.  I used the large thread cap for a base and, from the front, it doesn't look redneck at all. As long as I don't lose my skewer, I consider this a long term solution. I think the white duct tape classes it up a lot. In fact, I might even paint the skewer white and then no one will notice.
 The best part of this weekend (besides the beautiful weather) was being able to sew with my quilt club friends Friday and Saturday. I missed the January meeting and February was canceled for weather so I was really needing a fix. This is my project for sewing weekends for the moment. I've got all the blocks cut out and only 40ish left to sew together. I've been really iffy on this one but I'm feeling better about it now. Imagine that 2 of the 6" x 12" blocks makes 1 12" square block. That's how it will be constructed. It will be king size so if you look at this as the lower left corner is the center block you can see the gradation from light to dark in one quadrant. It will be 9 blocks by 9 blocks so there are 4 more columns to the left and 4 more rows below. All 4 corners will be dark and the center will be light. I think my friend will actually like it and not pretend to like it just because I made it. She's one of those people who would love a pile of sculpted garbage if she knew that you made it for her. She's absolutely batty for the postcards that I send to her. Green is her favorite color so that's why the green frames. I sure do love the effect of the waste fabrics in the windows of the green blocks!  After sitting on my backside for 2 days I needed some exercise. Chris has chopped a lot of wood so I got my workout in by stacking all of it. This is just the start of what we are gathering to put in for next winter. I also almost caught up on my videos for Bethanne Nemesch's feather quilting class. I'm on the one where we learn feathered wreaths, setting triangles and borders. I have NEVER been able to do a feathered center. These aren't "perfect" but they are perfect for me. This class was worth it just to learn to do these! I'm going to practice feathers on some of the veterans quilts that I have coming up. I really hate practicing on practice fabric. I need a purpose with my quilting. I prefer to practice on real quilts and I have a few good candidates in the veterans quilt stack.  Sunday morning I delivered 22 veterans quilts to our VA contact. She lives on the other side of the county from me so it's about 45 minutes to get there and back but I learned that she's moving about 5 minutes away next month. Future deliveries will be very easy. That trunk that they are stacked on belonged to my Grandmother. She gave it to me before I went to college and it's been everything from a coffee table, foot stool and end table for 40 years. It's now a suitcase rack for guests and display for finished veterans quilts.  After running errands Sunday afternoon I finally sat down to finish piecing the corners for the big star.  Then I started on the little star. That inside curve is a beast! But if I can get 4 done a day I'll be able to start putting the quilts together this weekend.
The weather this week is going to be pretty crummy so sewing seems the best plan of action. This weekend was sewing weekend with my quilt club.  These are the blocks that I'm working on and this is the layout from the book. I love making the blocks but I'm not loving the quilt so far. But I persevered and made even more blocks this weekend. I'm thinking of this quilt as a possible king size to gift to a friend who loves green.  The other quilters and I talked about some different options. One was to make a square block instead of the rectangle from the pattern. I laid these blocks out alternating the orientation of the block and arranging them in a light to dark gradient based on the green frames. If it becomes king sized then this would be 1/4 of the quilt with the lower left corner as the center.  This is sort of the same thing but in columns. I kind of like the columns. I then took both of these photos and roughly cropped and arranged them to see how it might look as a whole quilt.   I think this has some possibilities and I think I like the one in alternating squares better than the vertical stripes. What do you think?
I'm going to play around in EQ a bit. I'm getting to the point that I do need to know how many blocks I need to make. Although extra blocks can always be made into veterans quilts. This week I have a few more coaster sets to make and them I'll get on to working on the last Christmas gift that doesn't actually have to be done by Christmas. That sums up everything I did yesterday. It was time to get all the cat scraps off the cutting table and make some veterans quilt "kits".
I decided to make this one a little less scrappy and pulled only the cool colors. I even found a blue for the binding. Kit #1 done!  Then I wanted to do something different with the third Blockade set. I found this fabric (also by Paula Nadestern from an older collection). It's the fabric that I used for the background of my Pleiades quilt. I had exactly enough for the blocks and binding. See that little scrap on the right? That's all that was left from this piece of fabric. Clearly I'm living right! Kit #2 done.  Next up were the 2.5" squares. I'll do a simple double 4-patch. The dotty fabric is from a project that I had planned a long time ago and eventually lost interest. I cut the binding from the dots also. I have TONS black. It's Paula's Marbella black and it's one of the best black fabrics that I've ever seen. I stocked up when it came out.  This is basically how it's going to look and I'm happy enough with it. I have a lot more 2.5" squares so if I like this maybe I'll make another....or not. I'll deal with that later. Kit #3 done.  While I had everything out I figured I might as well deal with this. I did a very simple design in EQ and adjusted it so that I wouldn't have to cut any more of the pinwheel pieces out.  The background is the purple version of the same fabric that I used in kit #2. I have at least 3 yards of this fabric left. Kit #4 is done! I still have lots more 2.5" squares, a stack of 3.5" squares and scraps for crumb blocks but at this point I'm sick of cutting things out and I have a total of 8 veterans quilt kits cut out so I put all that away for later. I'm sure I'll find it in 5 years and wonder what I was thinking keeping all those bits and pieces!  While I was chatting on the phone with Mom I got a quarter of the blocks in kit 1 put together.
I'm really at a stand still on other quilt projects at the moment. There isn't anything that I'm particularly inspired to do. I want to focus on longarm quilting as soon as the mosaic wall (which is in next to the longarm) stops off gassing. I think I'll focus on longarm quilting for the next few weeks and piece these quilts during my break times. Maybe I'll come up with an idea for a new quilt in the mean time. For now I'm just glad to have a reasonably clean cutting table.  Yesterday was a day without any distractions so I got to spend a good 5 hours or more in the sewing room with my audiobook on. The scrap bin is almost empty! There are at least 3 veterans quilts in here. I'll need to cut some other fabrics to go with but I have drawers and drawers of hand dyed fabrics for that.  After I got tired of cutting I sat down to some sewing. I cut these blocks out while I was cutting the cats and there are enough blocks here for a veterans quilt. I'll start sewing this quilt together tomorrow.
I will also start cutting the cat background fabrics and, hopefully, start sewing it together this weekend. If the weather allows I want to grout my mosaic wall Sunday. Fingers crossed! I hope you have a great weekend. I find my days are really nice when I stay off any news sites on the internet. Yesterday was dyeing day so I didn't get a lot done except for dyeing. We've also spent a bit of time making sure we are stocked and able to stay in for over a week. We did take in my car for a recall repair since I don't need it and I figure the mechanics need all the work that they can get. I took along a Clorox wipe and wiped down the touched surfaces before I turned it over to them. I'll do the same when I pick it up. We went to Kroger after that. I felt a little silly wearing gloves and one of my homemade masks in the store but I'm glad I did. People were not being nearly as careful as they should. Some guy was coughing in the potato chip aisle. Of course a month ago I would have never noticed! Chris did a Costco run and it was clear that they have put much more thought into how they are handling controlling everything. Our local Food Lion is doing a nice job too of keeping people spaced apart. But it was good to see the stores well stocked so maybe the hoarders are done for now and everyone else can get their supplies.  Remember Monday when I was playing around with the penguin scraps and made the one sample postcard? I decided to play around with the rest of the scraps yesterday.  I just started sewing the scraps together into chunks that will be big enough for postcards.  I sewed and sewed until all of the scraps were stitched into chunks.  All those scraps made 16 card bases.  I made up a little stitch kit that I'll work through between crochet sessions in front of the TV.
Now it's time to get the Penguins on Ice quilted and I'm contemplating making more masks. |
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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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