Blue & Yellow Woven - Altered

Blue & Yellow Woven - Altered
Originally uploaded by basketcasejoy

Here's what I did to the Blue & Yellow Woven quilt. I had intended to do a Sunflower in quilting, but somehow I ended up with an appliqued Sunflower, stem and leaves. There may be more to come.

This is the first time I've added appliqued to a pieced background. (Or in this case, a faux-pieced background!) The quilt is a bit busy. Perhaps, it needs a BIG bumblebee...

The Quiet Quilter

It's been almost 10 days since my last post. Why? Lots going on around here. I played "Mom's Taxi Service" all last week and if I wasn't dropping one son off, I was picking up the other one! The time in between was spent working on knitting and quilting UFOs, but nothing was completed.

:o(

During the week, I worked on three (oops! four!) different projects for the UFO Club. I shared this information on Ravelry, but didn't have any new pictures to share here. I worked on Michael's T-shirt Quilt, trimmed down the Jacob's Ladder, completed the next step on my Circle Denim Quilt, and added applique to the Blue & Yellow Woven quilt.

Just when I was ready to post a picture today...I realized that I left my project in a friend's car!!!

Bummer!!!

Photos of the applique work that I did will follow at a later date. (The other work was too boring for photos.) For now, you'll have to imagine a Sunflower on my Blue & Yellow Woven quilt. It's almost done! I just have to decide on binding. I auditioned a number of fabrics yesterday, but the RIGHT choice wasn't among them. More news later...

Dye Frenzy

Yesterday my quilt bee got together for a Dye Frenzy. We used DYLON Permanent Fabric Dye. It takes 4 cups of warm water to dissolve and you add 4 Tablespoons of table salt to that. For a deeper or more vibrant result, that's it! Simply drop in your fabric and wait. Otherwise, you can add up to 4 cups of cold water to increase the amount of fabric that you can dye.

We each brought a pack or 2 of dye and some fabrics. Note: Fabrics MUST be prewashed! If not, the color won't take. The colors we used are shown in the photo. Not shown are Radient Red, Goldfish Orange, and Tropical Green (which was used to dye the old T-shirt shown.)

The method used for dyeing the T-shirt was to accordian fold it lengthwise and place large office clamps at varying intervals. I'm pleased with the way it turned out. It could have been considered for over-dyeing, but I ran out of time.

The purple piece was done by drawing lines with glue gel, allowing the glue to dry, and then placing it in the dye bath. The color turned out light because I did this one last and ran out of time. This technique opens a world of possibilites!

I would recommend this activity to any group of quilters. Smaller groups can get away with 1 pack of dye per color (for use with smaller pieces of fabric, such as Fat Quarters.) Larger groups, or if your group will be dying yardage, may want to use 2 packs per color. Our group used 1 pack per color and had dye leftover!

Combine the dye packs with a couple of buckets or tubs from the Dollar Store for each color (one for the dye bath and one for the rinse water) and this is an affordable project. Better still...It's TONS of fun!

The only thing I would change about our event would be to add tables next time for the rinse procedure. It often takes some time and multiple buckets of water to rinse out the excess dye. It's rather back-breaking work, if the rinse basins are on the ground. We might also want to have more squirt bottles and some spray bottles available for additional dyeing options.

I really hope you will try this with your group of quilting friends.

Another One Bites the Dust!

I am pleased to report that my 2nd quilt has been completed for the UFO Club. This one is was an experiment in making a woven quilt. A friend had made a clock using woven strips and I thought I'd give it a try using the trimmings from The Margaret Mystery.

I attempted to show you the back of the quilt (featuring the quilting) and a close-up, but (for some unknown reason) the pictures kept disappearing from my post.

Anyway, I used wavy lines to counteract the straight strips and mimicked the swirls in the background.

I did something on this piece that I wouldn't repeat. The strips were woven without adding fusible interfacing. This made it a bit difficult when it came to the actual quilting! The close-up showed the fact that not all of the edges are completely stitched down. I chalk that up to the freeform technique that was used in the making of this quilt. Enjoy!

Quilting Progress

I was a very busy quilter today! I went from this pile of shirts to this stack of pressed and stablized shirts in "just" 2 hours.

Before beginning work on the T-shirt quilt I applied the binding to one of my quilts for the UFO Club. I call this Journal Quilt on Steroids. It turned out too big for the Journal Quilt Project that I'm working on, however, it refused to be cut down! Sorry about the picture. It's a little blurry, but the resident photographer was at Swim Team when I wanted to post here.

More news later!

And She Knits, Too!

This is not the BEST picture, but I finished my JJ Scarflette too late in the day to get a better photo. I've been knitting for a very short while in comparison to my quilting "career" but I am really enjoying learning new skills. (Not that there aren't more things for me to learn about quilting, mind you!) However, my knitting "career" began at a time when I found it difficult to quilt and it has been my constant companion since.

One of my favorite places on Earth is my LYS. (That's Local Yarn Shop for those of you who don't knit, crochet, or otherwise play with yarn.) Why would an LYS be one of my favorite places? Well, it's quite simple. It's filled with TONS of color! (What quilter wouldn't like that?) It's filled with friends. (Hey! Did you think I was the only one hanging out there?) It's filled with fun. (And a fair amount of yarn, patterns, and books, too!)

I must be writing too late at night. I'm beginning to get sappy! Sorry about that. I'll be back to my regularly scheduled posts soon enough.

Boy Scouts 100th Anniversary Jamboree

The Tarheel Patrol

The Bison Patrol

The Road Kill Patrol

The Scorpion Patrol

This year marks the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America. Troops who attend the annual Jamboree take flags to fly at their campsite during the event. I have a friend who doesn't sew, so guess who got "volunteered" to make the flags for her Eagle Scout's troop? (That would be ME!) My friend and I have been talking about these flags for months now. In the last two weeks, they have been transformed from a stack of fabric, stencils and drawings into the flags shown above. The flags were designed by Mebane, NC area Scouts. I enjoyed the collaboration and was happy to help make their vision a reality. The artwork was done by a local artist and I did all of the stitching.

UFO Club - Summer 2010 - The List

UFO Club - Summer 2010

The List

As you can see, I have included a selection of projects that ranges in level of completion. I know that I should be starting with older UFOs, but I did throw in a few for good measure! Once I begin finishing some of these, I'm sure to get excited. Plus, I'll make sure to continue with some older UFOs next session.

Pictured above, in order from top to bottom:

1. The Margaret Mystery (2009)

2. QE2 Goodbye Quilt (1999)

3. Blue/Yellow Woven - now known as Sunflower Surprise (DONE!)

4. Remnants (2009) (DONE!)

5. Michael's T-shirt Quilt (DONE!)

Formerly at the top of the list (and pictured in a prior post.)

6. Oh! My Stars & Haircuts (DONE!)

Other UFOs that I would like to finish in the near future:

7. Journal Quilt on Steroids (DONE!)

8. Hollis' Iris Garden (2007/2008?)

9. Circle Denim Quilt (2008)

10. Black, White & Red All Over (2010)

Every quilt has a story. My plan is to share those stories with you as I complete each of these quilts.

Oh! My Stars and Haircuts

I hope all of my American friends enjoyed the 4th of July weekend!

I wanted to share my most recently completed quilt. It was pieced in 2005 or 2006 with the leftover blocks from a king sized quilt of the same design and was meant to be the FIRST quilt finished in our new house, but it got lost in the move. It was missing for 3 years! (Maybe I should call it The Lost Quilt.) Once found, it moved back into the rotation for finishing.

Ah! The finishing rotation...I stared at it for a month (or more) deciding if I wanted to tackle the quilting myself or if I wanted to send it out to be quilted. In the end, I decided that I wanted my friend Sarah to quilt it. As you can see, she did a wonderful job!

After being quilted, the quilt once again sat around while I decided the time was right for me to apply the binding. A pieced binding, no less! I used more of the scraps from that king sized quilt. (Perhaps, I should have called the quilt Thrifty!)

As you read in my first blog post, my friend Jenn from the Quilters Knitting group on Ravelry and I decided to start a UFO Club. This was enough to get me going on this quilt again! I applied the binding and began the process of stitching it down by hand. The name of the quilt ultimately came from the surprise that I felt on the day that I completed the project...my 2 boys got haircuts after 4 years of growing their hair long. Hooray! Clean cut boys and a newly finished quilt! What could be better?

The Joyful Quilter's Opening Post

Welcome to my very first blog post. I never thought I'd be saying those words! However, some of my Ravelry friends encouaged me to start a blog to share my quilting UFOs for our new UFO Club. So...here I am. The list of UFOs, with accompanying photos, will soon follow. (Once I figure out how this whole blog-thing works!)