I am spending the month of August focusing on finishing projects. Bits and pieces of this have been on my design wall for months but the top is now done:
This top measures approximately 36″ x 42″. Tomorrow I hope to baste and quilt this.
Until next time…
A bloggger I follow regularly is Kathy Loomis from Art with a Needle. She is an incredible artist and regularly and freely shares her insight into the art world as well as her techniques. I am a technique freak. I don’t use patterns but love to learn new ways of doing things. A recent technique she shared was how to insert very tiny lines of fabric into a larger block. I couldn’t wait to try it and did!
But then my bits languished on the design wall for a couple months. I kept trying to use a piece of hand dyed, manipulated fabric with them and it just wasn’t working. This week, I gave up and tried something else and it came together to my satsifaction. I do not claim this as an original work of art, it is my interpretation of Kathy’s technique and admittedly, looks like it.
I love the way it turned out. I enjoyed learning something new. I will most certainly use this again. I can see applications to my ladder series. For now anyway, I will hang this in my family room. Here it is:
As I worked on this piece, I thought of broken things, broken people. Once something has been broken, it is never the same. It can be fixed but it will never be as it once was. I thought of how God can take our broken pieces and make them beautiful. He can truly redeem anything.
Until next time….
I finished two baby quilts in two days and I am pretty pleased with how they turned out. I like them better now that they are quilted.
Here is the back:
I am pleased with the quilting. I was getting tired of the basic stipple but have been feeling rather uncreative lately. I came up with the and I like it. It satisfies my requirements of quick and mindless but also gives me a closely quilted piece for lots of texture.
Here is the second finish:
Here is the back:
This pic really shows off the texture after washing:
Until next time….
Say that 5 times fast!
I found this piece of fabric in a thrift shop last week:
I paid two bucks for this two yard piece that had never been used or washed. Of course I washed it as soon as I got home and put it with some bits of hand dyed fabrics. I made two baby sized tops out of it and still have some left. First I made a wonky log cabin that I thought I would love:
Eh…not so much. The really dark fab is actually a dark purple. An the yellowish green is more chartruese (sp?). I am not in love….maybe quilting will help. Then I moved on to a simpler idea that I had:
Tha background on both of these is actually snow white. My sewing room is in the basement with flourescent lights and it is so hard to get good pics there. Once they are quilted, I will take pics outside. Hopefully that will help.
I also had a couple finishes this past week. Yahoo!!!! I will post pics of those later this week. Nothing earth shattering but finished feels good. In fact, I may layer and quilt one of the above tops yet today since it is raining here.
Until next time….
I have collected vintage Singer Sewing Machine Company items for YEARS. Last weekend, my DH spotted a Singer book shaped bank at the antique fest. I have always wanted one of these but had never seen one in person.
I am pretty excited about this little find! The only real issue here is that apparently, the key broke off at some point. I can grasp the end of it with a needle nose pliers but it won’t turn far enough to remove what is left of the key. Any great ideas out there?
Until next time…
Well, new to me! I am not sure how old this one actually is. I am normally a Singer girl but this little Elna caught my eye last weekend at a local antique fest and the price was right. I brought her home and she sews well.
According to the manual, she is an Elna Plana. She does a straight stitch and zig zag. She only came with one bobbin and the case was missing but I figured I could get $20 worth of fun out of this.
If anyone knows anything about this model, I would appreciate hearing about it. As I mentioned, I know quite a bit about Singers but not much of anything about Elnas.
Until next time…
I am not a complete newbie at fabric dyeing. In fact, I have dyed a couple hundred yards and for the most part, have been successful. So what went wrong this week?
A while back I needed muslin for some craft things and had a 50% off coupon for JoAnn’s. I grabbed a bolt of muslin but when I got it home realized it was “Dyer’s Cloth.” Cool, I thought. They said at JoAnn’s that it had no finishes or perma press added and was ready to go. So I ripped some pieces and used it off the bolt. I think this may have been my mistake.
This is one piece of fabric:
Not too bad,eh? I kid you not, what follows is the reverse side of this SAME piece:
Sorry for the blur, here is a closeup:
What are those white areas????? Someone please help me out here! I find it so strange that they show on one side of the fabric but not the other. I have this on nearly EVERY piece of this dyer’s cloth that I used. No, I did not pre-wash it. I think I should have. Does this prove it does indeed have a finish of some sort on it?
Here is a closeup from another piece:
I dyed some other pieces the same day using the same dyes and soda ash. No white splotches. I had thought perhaps the soda ash was not completely dissolved but since the non-dyers cloth pieces turned out fine it must be something to do with this cloth.
So if anyone knows, please tell me! Also, for all you wise dyers out there, now what? Do you think overdying with a weak dye solution will help?
Until next time….
A while back I mentioned that I had handpieced a bunch of 4 inch Bowtie blocks and finally put them together. After that, the top languished in my sewing room because I was too lazy to go further. Yesterday, I had a hard talk with myself and said “DO IT NOW!” So, I did. I pieced the back, cut the batting, basted, and quilted. I even got the binding done.
Granted this is not a huge quilt (approx 45″ by 50something”), but still. I washed it this morning and though I hated it in the middle of quilting, I have decided I do like it after all. I don’t know why I always hate my pieces when they are about 70% done. I usually like them again when they are finished. Thankfully!
So here are the pics:
It may look a bit washed out and faded in the pictures but this is actually pretty accurate colorwise. Most of the fabrics are Civil War repros. I drew the spine for the feather borders but then stitched the feathers themselves without marking. I am pretty pleased with how that turned out since I am SO out of practice with free motion work.
It feels good to finish something :).
Until next time….
Last night I finished this baby quilt from the previous tutorial. I used a wonky grid for the machine quilting. Overall, I am pleased. I hope the baby to come will like it too!
This was simple, fun, and fast. It is definitely a pattern I would repeat, especially since it would be impossible to make two that are identical!
Until next time….
KatyQuilts 
