Our friends returned home Monday and we are slowly getting back to our normal life. I decided that I'd get the big blue quilt loaded so that I'll quilt it before the veterans quilt tops that I picked up last night at the club meeting. I think I know how I'm going to quilt this with some simple continuous curve motifs. I didn't have anything ready to start sewing so I decided to tackle this bin of fabric scraps. These are the quilt back leftovers from veterans quilts that I've quilted. This pile was much higher before I started putting together veterans quilt kits but I couldn't use all of it in the quilt kits and had this big pile left over. I keep adding to it every month. Last week I found out about another group of local sewists who make quilts for Lutheran World Relief. The quilts they make are very utilitarian and they use 11" cut blocks. The woman who is our contact gives me occasional bags of napkins to dye. People give her orphaned fabrics and sometimes it includes things like napkins and other unusable items. She works really hard to find homes for everything. Anyway, I found out about the 11" squares and thought I could turn that mess of backing scraps into something they could use. I cut and sewed and sewed and cut and in no time I had almost 100 squares to donate to their charity. I hope these work for them because it would be nice to have a destination for the leftover backing fabrics. Then I found a stack of 3.5" strips leftover from another project. I spent about an hour sewing them together and produced another 15 blocks for them. I got the pile down to this. I kept the gray and dyed blue fabrics because I do use those in my own veterans quilts. I feel like I really accomplished something!
I'll be getting on with quilting the big blue quilt today or tomorrow. First I have to do dyeing today.
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Our friends from England are still here and we had a lovely weekend with lots of great food. I got away for a few hours Saturday to take a class in fly tying. It was so much fun and the instructor is a true master of fly tying. He's an Iraq War veteran who has had a fascinating life. He got into fly fishing through a program he was invited to join to help with his PTSD. That was 15 years ago and he's been an avid fly fisherman since. There were 4 of us in class and we each made these 4 flies. The top one is called the Chernobyl ant, the fluffy one is the Bunny Leech, the tiny one is an ant and the pink one is the San Juan worm. I was right in my assumption that sewists would be good at this craft. In the sewing room I decided to finish putting this veterans quilt top together. I started it at quilt club last month and I had the blocks all together already. I hadn't been longarming for a while. All that quilting I did in January and February was a little too much on my neck so I've had to take it easy for a while. It's the process and posture of quilting pantographs that did me in. I decided that I was ready to load a new pair of quilts and quilt them from the front in short sessions. Usually I quilt overall patterns but this one (which is bright lime green) really inspired me to have a little fun. It's still pretty fast quilting. It should be done in a couple of days.
All of the patriotic fabrics that I ordered came in and I've soaked them to remove any bleeding dye so I might get back to cutting some veterans quilt kits before I leave for a little trip Thursday. We've had another couple of good days here with our friends. Wednesday we took advantage of the last sunny day for a few days. We went to Charlottesville to hike Ragged Mountain which is a nice 6 mile hike around the city reservoir. It was windy but a beautiful day. Laura has been doing some sewing for her grandson. His parents are chefs and he's likes being in the kitchen so she made him an apron. Then she made him a drawstring bag and pouch for his car collections. While she's been sewing I worked on more veterans quilt kits. These are the leftover blocks from the big blue bowtie quilt. I decided to do something like this. I had plenty fo blue scraps left to cut out pieces for more blocks. Here are all of the pieces cut and ready to sew together for this quilt and there are still some fabrics left over. I think I'll still need binding but I might just cut a scrappy binding. There's a stack of blue strings and I think there are enough for a string quilt like the one in this post. I cut the foundations and I had this orange/yellow fabric in my stash that I thought would be good for the center strip of the blocks.
I got the notice today that the patriotic fabrics that I ordered should be in Monday. I'll be ready to start on them when I get back from my road trip. I leave Thursday to meet my friend in Lincoln, NE and ride back to Virginia with her in her van. It should be a fun trip. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get 4 veterans quilts quilted before I leave and today I'm taking a fly tying class and that should be fun. We are having a great time with our guests. So far we've stayed close to home because they mostly wanted to relax and recover from their jet lag. Ian has been doing some yard work with us and we've been taking 5 mile walks. (Ian loves doing yard work. I'm really not a horrible host.) Laura has been doing some crochet and sewing and I've been making veterans quilt kits. The first one another version of this quilt. I loved it when I made it last year and am ready to do another. This was cut quickly on the Go! Cutter. The next quilt is from an idea I got from Cynthia Brunz. She coordinates a ton of charity quilts and I get some great ideas from her. My centers are scrap pieces from the last batch of patriotic veterans quilts that I made and the background is an assortment of blue hand dyed quilt back scraps from a lot of veterans quilts that I quilted in the past year or so. I think this one is going to look pretty cool. The third kit is a double 4-patch block. I've made this one several times. This one will reverse the dark and light positioning and it's going to have a border. The tan and light green are also quilt backing scraps. I didn't have enough of those fabrics to do blocks for the whole quilt so I found a stripe fabric to make a 4" border. Then I found a stack of large tumblers and cut more so I'd have enough for a 48" x 60" quilt. I'll put this together and if it needs some calming down I'll cut it apart and insert some sort of inner border. These are already labeled in rows ready for stitching. That weird piece of green fabric that looks to me flying in from the right is actually on a table. When I go through my scraps to cut them up I tend to cut 4" HST pieces and I cut enough to make another quilt like the one in the paper. I think I made that one about 12 years ago. It was a pretty pretty quilt and I'm ready to tackle another. Next I pulled these fabrics from my Nadelstern stash and I had great plans but just as I was typing here I realized that my plan will not work. I think I have a good idea for a replacement fabric for the sashing so I'll work on that, and some other kits, this week.
Last night we had a friend over for dinner. Today we are going to visit my Mom and my brother and then doing a little shopping and we have a hiking excursion planned for Wednesday. I had some free time on Saturday so I decided to focus and get the blue quilt top done. The border blocks were already together so I just had to put them together and attach them for the final border. This quilt, whenever it's done, will by about 96" square. It's a big one! After I finish quilting Red Sunset I will need to pump out a lot of veterans quilts before I can do this one, but I'd like to have it done by May. I really love this quilt and I'd absolutely consider making it again. I have a lot of leftover blocks and I've decided to set them aside for later to make more blocks and use these for a veterans quilt. The next time I make up a bunch of veterans quilts I'll kit up this one. I think it would make a really nice veterans quilt.
I hope that as you are reading this that we are on a nice hike in Arizona. I only had a few hours of crafting yesterday. I had to go to my brother's to get him to trim some hinges for me. Our cabinets have some really cheap hinges that break regularly. It's not a problem, I have a bag of replacement hinges and they are easy to replace, except on the bathroom cabinets. It seems that the cabinet maker trimmed the edge of the hinges so they would fit around the inside trim. My brother makes knives and axes so had a lot of really cool tools. He was able to trim 4 of them for me in just a few minutes. Now I have a stash of 3 for the bathroom cabinet. After that was accomplished and my cabinet door reinstalled, I got down to some sewing. I gathered the blocks off the floor and stacked them with my favorite clips. I remember when these came out and I thought they were a gimmick. I try to stay away from new sewing tools but I did eventually get some of these and I use them all the time. I love them. I got all of the blocks sewn together but they still need pressing. This will give you an idea of what the border will look like. I think it's a really cool quilt and I'd consider making another. It's a perfect pattern for monochromatic scraps. The one in the book is in pinks.
This weekend is all about preparing for our trip Sunday. Next week I expect that I may only have my Audiobook and January summary posts. I might have a weekend summary post Monday if I actually do anything blog worthy. Otherwise, will not be posting daily on vacation. I'll see you February 5th! I know this looks the same as a few days ago but it is different because it's all sewn together now! I had a lot of errands yesterday that included getting my new glasses, so I didn't have a lot of time left.But it was enough to finish putting the center of this quilt together. I really love it. Next up are the border blocks. They are value reversed from the center blocks. I'll start sewing these together this week but today I'm going to head to the basement for some quilting time. When I made the blocks for this quilt I made lots of extra ones so there are probably some placemats in here!
I posted really late yesterday but that was because I scheduled it for 10:30 pm instead of am. This is what I got done while that post was waiting to go live. I got all the center blocks stitched together. I was motivated because I needed to get the blocks off the floor before the cleaning lady comes today. I'm hugely motivated by deadlines! I love how this is looking.
In the evening I worked on the blanket for Chris' friend. I'm determined to have that done by Friday. Today is dyeing day so I don't know what else I'll accomplish. Sorry for the late post. I don't have a newsletter today because I need another week to get the next batch of new fabrics ready so I'll share an update on my blue quilt. I also worked on the Red Sunset quilt yesterday but another photo would look much like the last photo. I'm also plugging away at the big blanket for Chris' friend. I pulled out all of the dark blocks and laid them out in groups of 4 to sew together big blocks. This quilt is designed to be put together in rows of smaller blocks but I thought it would be easier to keep the block orientation right if I pieced them into 4-path blocks first. I need 36 of the large dark blocks and I was glad to see that I made lots of extras so I was able to replace a few bow ties that didn't have enough contrast for my liking. Here are the first 6 blocks on the design wall. I'll keep plugging away at these this week. I really like it so far! We also got a little snow yesterday. In the end it was a little more than this but just the right amount to be pretty but not bothersome.
Today's post is a lot more boring than yesterday. There's no new project just more work on the blue blocks and more quilting on the raffle quilt. I had my physical Tuesday and yesterday was spent dyeing fabric. I've also started blowing leaves. We have at least 10 trees that are over 70' that drop a ton of leaves. I'll be blowing leaves for weeks. It's nice to be outside and it's a little exercise so it's all good until I run out of places to put them! I've had a couple of sewing sessions so I'm almost finished sewing blue blocks. I only have that one little stack and then I can start making bigger blocks and putting the quilt together. While I was stitching Tuesday I had a visitor to the pond. I love my sewing room view! Here's a little autumnal color that I caught at my Mom's apartment Tuesday. The red trees are really spectacular around here this year. Sometimes it's an orange/gold year but this year is all about the red. You already know that I'm a very slow quilter. I let myself get analysis paralysis over my quilts. I'm working on the center blocks for the raffle quilt and I'm spending way too much time agonizing over the quilting for a raffle quilt that's meant to be a bed quilt. I finally settled on the pattern for the star blocks and I've finished 6 of 12. I'd like to finish the other 6 today. It would also be helpful if I can get a chiropractor appointment today. My back would like that before I spend too much time leaning over the longarm.
In the evenings I'm doing some crochet and will to share those tomorrow. For the next several days, these are the only projects that I plan to work on but I might also need to make a birthday postcard. I also need to get started on my Christmas card ideas. It's about time to start the annual Christmas card panic! |
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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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