I'm Vicki Welsh and I'm in my studios exploring quilting, dyeing, color study and fiber arts with a little photography and bird watching mixed in for fun.
because I've been busy buying a glass kiln. Got a great deal on a used one so I HAD to do it. It looks like this one. I can't wait to go pick it up. Now I have to get glass and tools and a grinder and supplies.
We also had two gigantic mattresses delivered and are in the process of building a bed frame. No photos but I'll have some soon. Chris is doing all of the work to this point. Once it's in the room and partly assembled I will cover it with hand dyed denim. It's going to be very cool.
Today was supposed to be another color post but that just did not happen. I'm going to happy hour with my college roommate instead.
I know I've talked about this 20 times at least, but in case there's someone new here I'm going to give the background again.
My quilt group, Country School Quilters, along with other local Richmond Quilt Guild Chapters and quilt groups provide quilts to the local veteran's hospital for Christmas. We make them throughout the year and the our coordinator gets them all together in time for delivery. This year we have invited the coordinator from the veteran's hospital to our holiday party to see all of the quilts together. That is my way of explaining the mad rush to get as many of them finished as possible and why I quilted 5 of them this weekend: 2 for Estelle and 3 for me. In return Estelle put the binding on mine and here they are almost ready to be delivered. I just have to sew on the labels during the football game tonight.
These quilts represent a great group effort for a wonderful cause. These quilts are smaller than the quilts usually given for Quilts of Valor but are sized just right for hospital beds.
This quilt top was made by my friend, Patty. She was making several of these tops out of scraps and had a stack of fabrics that she called "dull" left over. Not being shy, I emailed her and told her if she wanted to get rid of the dull fabrics that I'd be thrilled to have a top for the veteran's hospital. I swear I think it was in my mailbox in 3 days! That woman produces!
I had intended to dye a backing but found this fun navy polka dot in my backing stash and thought it was perfect. It made a nice binding too! All of these quilts are pantograph quilted. I used the Square Spiral on this one and Woodgrain on the others. I have since ordered 3 new quick and easy pantographs because I'm really, really sick of woodgrain and have been wanting to get a few new ones for Mom to use anyway. I don't use them often but I like having a few (like 10 or so) to choose from.
This quilt was made by Wanda. Her use of color and value is, in my opinion, perfect. I added the hand dyed border to bring it up to size and I love the black and white print for the binding.
This one got a "scrap" piece of hand dyed fabric for the back. I love the texture and the blues and purples tie in to the front of the quilt.
This last one is the scrap quilt that I made. It's 100% hand dyed fabric. I loooooooooooooove this quilt but I hope they do not give it to anyone who is susceptible to vertigo. It could cause problems.
For the back I used a Sugar Maple gradient that I dyed for another project and never used. I love that fabric never really expires. Even if it's ugly it can be overdyed and made new again.
These are ready for labels and a wash before heading off to their new owners. Now it's time to start on a batch for Christmas 2013!
Last night was the last glass class. I have so enjoyed the classes. Last night we made jewelry with dichroic glass. I will not have those pieces back for a week or so but I can share everything else I made over the past 3 weeks. Remember, like with quilting classes, this was a learning experience. There's some big time "yuk" but there are a few winners, like the little plate I made in the first class.
This is a pendant lamp shade that I made in the first class with the blue bowl. I wasn't going to share it because it's a Christmas gift for my SIL for her kitchen. She (and my brother) are remodeling the kitchen and using tiles in greys, browns and blacks. I'm really happy with the way this turned out. I've already sent her a photo of it because I couldn't wait. Hopefully it will work in her kitchen.
In the second class we did some "weaving" and casting. These are my cast pieces. I actually made 3 of them but one is stuck in the mold. Apparently it wasn't coated well enough with the release agent. Glad that wasn't on me! I'm not sure what I will do with these. They are kind of cool but I can't see wearing either of them as a pendant.
Here's a failure for you! She wanted us to work with decals so I did and I think it's awful. This would have been cool with just the blue dots on lime. I'm glad for the experience but they can keep the decals. This can be smashed up for future projects.
Here's another fail. It actually looks better in the photo than it looks in real life. The gray stripes are copper foil. Yes, I expected copper, not ash. This can be another one for the smash pile. Both of these plates are 6" square.
Here's my big win of the class. I LOVE this plate. It's 12" square. All 5 people in class made a wove plate. Only 3 survived the firing unfortunately. I'm glad mine was one of them!
I do not have a lot of hope for my jewelry pieces but I'll share them when I get them. As with everything I do, I went all anal retentive and used a lot of tiny glass scraps for my pieces and spent a lot of time sanding them down to fit together like a quilt. It's going to me much ado about a mess.
Now, I am having a big internal debate about going forward with this craft. I absolutely love working with the glass and I think I can get into this hobby for about $1200 to cover a used kiln with glass and supplies that would last about a year. It's a lot of money but that's not the dilemma. The dilemma is time. Will I have (or make) the time? I have talked myself in and out of it 15 times in the past 5 days. I REALLY enjoy doing it and I don't expect to spend a lot of time working with glass but I'd love a couple of hours a week and that would certainly be enough time to create gifts and things for myself without winding up with closets full of glass.
I don't know. I'll figure it out eventually! Meanwhile I will just enjoy my woven plate.
I've been doing lots of custom orders lately so haven't had as much time to fill the shop but I've fixed that this week. I have several new fabrics in the shop today.
I know, I've been totally MIA here all weekend. I have a really good excuse.
Chris and I got home from the river Friday evening and I decided to get started on quilting my 3 veteran's quilts. I really wanted to get them done this weekend so that I could quilt 2 for Estelle. I made good progress Friday night so I called her Saturday and offered her a deal. I would quilt her quilts if she would bind mine....I even had the binding already made. She agreed and I became a woman on a mission! By the time she arrived Sunday afternoon I had finished all 3 of my quilts and was ready to lead hers. She left with my 3 quilts and I got started quilting hers and I finished both of them by 7 pm.
Here are her quilts. Of course they are all quilted with pantographs.
This one is made from leftover blocks from a veteran's quilt that someone else made. Estelle added the dark blue from her stash and some of the batik scraps. I quilted this one with my favorite pantograph, Square Spiral.
All of these quilts go to the local veteran's hospital and are given out for Christmas. These are a little different from QOV quilts because they are smaller. The average size is 48 x 60.
This one, bad photo and all, is a kit that I made up for Estelle with my Go! 6" tumbler. I am slowly getting rid of my print stash for charity quilts. This one takes 110 tumblers and they are arranged 11 tumblers in a row for 10 rows. She put this together in a day.
After the marathon of quilting I decided to cut another quilt. Another guild friend, Nancy, asked for a kit and she will work on this at the next Sewing Saturday. These are all some of the old Kyle's Marketplace prints and I think it will make a fun quilt. I was happy to reduce the produce stash a bit.
Willie needs a good cleaning right now but once I get that done I will load this Stack n Whack that my Mom made.
First I have to pay bills and do some laundry and other chores so go on over to Patchwork Times and see what everyone else is doing.
