Valerean

Once I had the wyvern quilt pieced, batted, backed and pinned, I got to work on the hand-quilting and embroidery. I kept it fairly simple by feathering stitching around the napkin with a hand-dyed rainbow perle thread. I also used copper and gold holographic Sulky to stitch around the wyvern, the orange scrollwork and the brown/black plaid fabric around it. For the log cabin blocks I decided to hand quilt them with a beautiful light golden brown Valdani perle thread that I rescued from being sold as bowl filler in an antique mall. Here's me putting the final stitch in the quilt. After squaring the quilt I had a couple of options for the binding. To keep it a true scrappy project I cobbled together four different lengths of scrap brown binding leftover from a bunch of different projects (lucky they were all the same color.) Here's the back of the finished quilt. And here's the front. This was a kind of improvisational dry run to see how I'm d...

Here's the final pieced top for my Wyvern quilt project. I made a couple of mistakes, but overall I'm happy with how it looks. I found this interesting thrifted beanstalk print in my stash, and had enough to serve as the backing. So I backed, batted and pinned the quilt. I'm embroidering the edges of the vintage napkin first, and then I'll hand quilt it.

I designed a fat quarter via Spoonflower to print the poem I composed for my pink-only quilt, and it arrived on July 22nd. I thought I'd done the math correctly to get four repeats of the poem (extras in case I mess up with what I have planned for incorporating it into the quilt) but I have a bit of repeat runover on one side, which I will use, no problem. I'm taking a break from piecing the pink-only quilt now as I'm having trouble with my hands again, and want to loosen them up a bit with a small crochet project before I continue sewing. Stayed tuned to see what I do with that.

Back in May while I was having a bad arthritis flare-up I went to the scraps bin to dig out something I could sew on the machine, and settled on a bundle of green scraps and a charm pack in what I think are Kaffe Fassett prints (where I got those is anyone's guess). I had enough charm squares to make a decent size table topper, and I knew I could sew it all together on my machine in one night. As I was piecing the top my angst over my hands being too crippled to hand sew eased a bit. It's hard making this transition, but necessary. Eventually I won't be able to do anything but machine work. I pieced the backing, too. Using scraps to make things on the machine is fun, and I don't mind if I mess up (which I did.) The final topper came out okay. I definitely need more practice on the machine, but it was nice to get a project like this done in a night versus two weeks doing it by hand. I used the last four charm blocks and green scraps to make a m...

I'm almost ready to start work on designing my summer art quilt for 2025, which will be the pink-only Art quilter's bingo challenge quilt (say that ten times really fast, ha.) I usually make what I like during summer, as it's my favorite season and I tend to indulge myself, even with new projects. Projects I make from challenges or patterns, however, put me a bit more on edge. This t-shirt quilt turned out to be a bear to piece and quilt, but it's also become my favorite quilt to snuggle up with. I also really like how challenges inspire me. Making this quilt out of a one pound bundle of vintage fabrics chosen by someone else pushed me to consider how to use lace as fabric, with lovely results. My last one-color art quilt challenge helped me get over my hatred of yellow, so it's good for me (I still dislike it, but I'll use it now, versus completely avoiding it altogether.) I've had a long and unhappy history with the color pink, which I associa...

I love old sewing thread. I collect wooden and paper spools with old darning silks on them. I also have a couple hundred spools of vintage threads that came in old sewing boxes, bags of thrifted notions and auction lots. Most are still in good shape, but I rarely use them for anything except basting here and there. For quilting and textile art I prefer Gütermann thread, which I think is the best quality on the market. I have Gütermann in basically all colors. When I saw this video by Maeli Designs about turning sewing thread into yarn I simply had to try it, and pulled twelve spools of my vintage threads in different shades of blue. I did the technique from the video by hand because I don't own a yarn winder, and it works just like the video said. I then crocheted this little disk with a 4mm hook. The gathered threads are not like yarn, so they're hard to hold together. It's easy to turn the threads into a bunched mess with a slip of the hook (and I shou...

For my pink-only quilt I decided to do borders of hearts, and found this paper pieced pattern that was free if you sign up for her newsletter. It looked simple enough to do, but I haven't done any paper piecing in years, however, so I decided to make a test block. I did enlarge the foundation pattern slightly for my own purposes, and then got to work. Paper piecing is easy enough, but you do have to remember to watch your positioning and seam allowances. I ended up making a mistake, of course, but that's why I do test blocks. The finished patchwork looks nice despite my little error. I also got to remember why you're suppose to use short stitches with paper piecing -- for easy removal of the paper backing. Still, it worked out well, and if I do these in an assembly-line fashion, I can probably piece all the hearts in one or two days. This is just a mock up, but it will give you an idea of how the border of the quilt will look.

Hey, it's me in real time again. My Scrappy Saturdays idea hit a snag when I made this crazy-quilted tote. I wanted to hand-quilt it with circles, so despite working on it for the last month I'm only about half-done. I'm not making much of a dent in the scraps bin, either. Time to try a one-day challenge and see what I can make in 24 hours, and post the finished projects at the end of the day. Here are the results: a quilt top, a dog mat. a diagonally-pieced runner and a little gift pouch. Not bad for a crippled old lady with crampy hands. :)

I haven't been posting much about my annual art project for 2025, making mini-quilts, so here's an update. Lately it's been a bit harder to come up with new ideas for each week's mini-quilt, but I've managed to keep up. Sometimes I resort to beading or using found objects or quilt tags from 14carrot rather than embroidery because my hands are an arthritic mess. Here are all the mini-quilts I've done to date. I'm more than halfway to the finish line, and I'm pretty sure I'll have 52 of these by the end of the year.

Yesterday my guy and I went wandering, and we stopped at The Old Packing House in Umatilla so I could pick up more pink fabrics for my pink-only quilt. I was insanely lucky to find five yards of a dark and light mottled salmon pink fabric that I can use as backing, as I want all the rest that I've acquired on the front of the quilt. This will also let me make the quilt as big as I like. Here's everything that I have so far assembled on my sewing table. I'm just waiting on some beads and then I can get started. In the meantime, I'm finishing up the poem for the quilt today. It's a lot! Ha. I'm really looking forward to it, though -- and I've already lost all of my dislike of pink while gathering everything. :)

On my art quilter's bingo card I have pink only . Pink is my second least favorite color for reasons I won't get into because I'm done with all that. As I did last year with yellow I want to do something positive to help me get over my color angst, so I decided to make an all-pink art quilt this year. My idea was inspired by the École des Nouvelles Images' short film Code Rose , which really spoke to me as a Floridian, an artist and a veteran. Based on the video I came up with the above mockup. Basically I want to write a poem about my sentiments and shape it via embroidery it into the aircraft carrier, and then cover it with flamingos. It's pretty ambitious for me, but I also love the idea, so why not? I have ordered some new flamingo fabric from Spoonflower, and I'll update you all on the project when it arrives and I have a poem to share.

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

This was the scene in my sewing room last month while I was making my second mini-quilt of March. I got out my boxes of vintage laces, bits and bobs to get some inspiration, which oddly took a while. I'd struggled a bit the week before with the one I made as a visual poem, so I wanted straightforward and uncomplicated. Which for me, of course, it never is. My inspiration for this mini-quilt came from some of the very vintage colors 14carrot used to make these three quilt tags. I love sepia and cream and gold. I wanted to put my own spin on it, however, so I went for the lace (I have lots and most of it is too old to use on anything but art pieces that won't be washed.) It's often difficult to work with antique lace, however, and I really wrestled to get it to stay down where I wanted it. Here's the mini-quilt as of the writing of this post. I'm not finished with it, but I'm mostly happy with my progress. As I've mentioned I've ha...

A lot of quilters use jelly rolls, and I'm no exception. They became a thing when they were first introduced back in 2007, and have been a staple of the quilting industry ever since. Simply put, a jelly roll is bundle of 40 strips of 2-1/2" precut fabric (they're usually 40" to 44" long, or whatever the width of the fabric is.) Jelly rolls are made of fabrics that belong to a collection, or are of the same or complementary colors, or have a common theme, like baby or Christmas. Because they're already cut you can start piecing right away, which is the convenience factor. I stopped using jelly rolls when I got more into quilting with thrifted fabrics. Precuts are too expensive, frankly. I still have an entire bin that includes quite a few leftover jelly rolls, and even more 2-1/2" strips in my scraps bin. I'd like to use them up, so I invested in Carolyn Forster's Jelly Roll Scraps . This book features 15 quilts and 15 gift items you c...