I challenged myself to finish my braid quilt in time for the SCVQA quilt show. I knew that I would put off quilting this one if I didn’t have a deadline. The quilt show seemed like the perfect opportunity to give me that deadline. I thought the quilt lent itself to a fairly easy choice for a quilt pattern, even on my standard domestic machine.

I decided to follow the zig zag patter of the braid across the quilt. I started with the middle row and quilted from one side of the quilt to the other. I then worked my way to the top and bottom of the quilt by quilting every 4th row. By only quilting every forth row I got the layers sabilized more quickly and it enabled me to give up sooner, if I ran into a lot of problems. I can’t say that I was super speedy, but it really wasn’t difficult. I was able to use my walking foot, since it was straight lines, so it wasn’t stressful at all. I ended up quilting every other row. At the top and bottom border I just continued the same quilting pattern.

I’m happy to say it is complete and it looks great in the guest bedroom.

Bill’s Grandmother fell and broke her knee this week. She is going to have to spend several weeks in rehab. While Bill and I love being out here, it is really hard at times like this, to be away from family. We really wanted to do something to let her know that we were thinking of her. I thought about different things I could make for her room to brighten it up, but in the end we decided that a colorful pillow would be the best choice. Thankfully I had a stash of flannel to use but I needed a pillow. I made a quick trip to the fabric store, but would you believe that they were out. Thankfully Michaels was right down the street and they had just what I was looking for.

I sketched out my design and starting cutting fabric. I decided to put the heart on with a fringed edge so that I didn’t have to worry about fraying flannel applique. I’m not sure that I loved how that came out, but it worked for this project.

Update: Grandma is out of the hospital and doing well. Our hug from California was a huge success. If you know someone who is going into the hospital I highly recommend something like this to let them know you are thinking of them, even when you can not be there.

I am happy to say that I finally completed all of the curtains. I made minor changes after the first set, but then they went pretty smoothly once I got the process down. The most difficult part was trying to find a surface large enough to do my cutting on. I ended up using my cutting table with my ironing board at one end to make it longer. I also ended up taking several rulers together to give me one long enough to make my cuts.

The purchased curtain panels are each 40 inches wide. That means we need 3 curtain panels for each window. The new border fabric we purchased is 55 inches wide. I now have two choices, waste 15 inches of fabric on each strip of border fabric or reassemble the purchased curtains to be 55 inches wide. I hate to waste fabric so I went for the reassembly. The first step is to take one of the 3 panels and cut it into 4 pieces. Then I take 2 of the pieces and sew them to each side of a full size panel. This will give me a panel that is 55 inches wide. Repeat the process until you have 8 new panels.

Cut the new panels to length and then sew on the border fabric. Now you have new curtains with lots of seams. Not too lovely from the back, even if you do make nice finished seams.

I have decided to take the easy way out, and Bill wanted the room a little darker, so I will be lining the panels. This will allow me to hide the seams and block out more light, and give a little more insulating protection.

I had great success with some new curtains I bought for my front room, so I thought I would go the easy route and purchase curtains for the family room as well. I have 2 sliding glass doors and 2 large windows in the room so I needed a bunch of curtains.

I found some curtains that coordinated with my current wall colors and I thought I had success. I needed 8 packages of curtains to cover all the windows. No problem.

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This quilt went together very quickly. I created all the points of color by sewing full strips of each color together alternating them with black strips. Once they were all sewn together, I then cut them into the rows for all the borders.

I had to do a little bit of un-sewing to get the lengths that I needed for each border strip, but that was much easier than cutting and sewing each small square separately.

For my next version of this quilt I may do a little bit of rag edge for the large squares to introduce some texture.

Now that I have solved my water temperature issues, I have started dyeing fabric for my latest quilt. It is a rainbow colored baby quilt.

It would be better if it was a little warmer. Since the studio is separate from the house, I hate to spend money to heat an empty room with fabric sitting in it. I decided to use the heating pad and just let the fabric soak longer.

The result is slightly less color depth than I like, but I am pleased with the result and am happy that i didn’t have to spend extra electricity to get something I liked.

!!CAUTION!!    !!CAUTION!!     !!CAUTION!!     !!CAUTION!!   !!CAUTION!!    !!CAUTION!!

Increasing your water heater temperature can be very dangerous. Please make sure that every person in your household is aware that you have increased your hot water temperature and does not use the water. Always return the water to a safe temperature as soon as you are finished. Always use appropriate gloves and tools.

When I rinse my hand-dyed fabric, I need to soak the fabric in hot water. The minimum temperature is 140˚, but I prefer something closer to 170˚. This helps to remove the excess dye faster and more completely. Recently I installed an “on-demand” (sometimes called an “instant hot”) water heater in my studio: a Tagaki T-K1S. I bought this specific model because it’s rated for a max output temperature of 182˚F. That’s HOT! It worked great.

But after I replaced my studio’s old, clogged iron pipes with new copper pipes, the water pressure was better but my hot water got cooler. What happened?

On-demand water heaters work very differently than traditional “tank storage” water heaters. If you are considering getting one of these, you need to understand how they work else you won’t be able to get the hottest water possible to rinse hand-dyed fabric properly.

After some experimentation, I figured out how to get super-hot water again. Here’s how to do it:

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Due to a mis-communication I created a last minute Christmas quilt this year. December 13th we determined that we wanted to make a quilt for my sil. I thought we had ruled out the quilt for this year in favor of another gift, but it turns out I was mistaken and this was the year of the quilt. I am happy to make them. Especially when they are well received.

I have a complex of not wanting to be Aunt Clara giving the pink bunny pajamas (A Christmas Story).  I love to make things and I love to give them away, but I know that my tastes don’t always match others, so I am a cautious home made gift giver.

I spent Sunday and Monday dyeing and rinsing flannel for the quilt. I knew I wanted tans and earthy greens. I don’t do a lot of tans so I tried creating a couple of gradations. They ended up a little closer in color than I would have liked, but do to the short time frame, I was pretty pleased with them and called them good.

Monday night Bill helped me to cut the fabric into strips and then use the AccuQuilt die cut machine to cut the squares.

Since it was Bill’s sister, it was his pleasure to pick the pattern for the quilt. He wanted to create blobs of color that kind of blended into the next blob. I don’t know if we were completely successful, but we had fun and it did break me out of my symmetrical and regimented patterning. We finished laying out the squares around 11pm on Monday.

Tuesday morning I labeled the squares so that I could keep them where they were planned and set them up for chain piecing. I spent the day piecing the quilt and was finished in time for bed.

Wednesday I spent the day washing and drying the quilt to get that nice snuggley texture and remove the extra lint before the sending it out. I also created my label pocket and label.

It was shipped on Thursday. Yeah! I love how fun these quilts are to make and the ease that the AccuQuilt adds in making them. With any luck it will coordinate with the home decor.

The photo is a little fuzzy. It was a quick overhead shot while standing on a bar stool, but it had to get in the mail.

I leave tomorrow for a trip to my cousins wedding. Unfortunately last week my purse started to fall apart. I have been wanting to make one for myself so I looked through my patterns to see what would work. I settled on a pattern from a book called Quilted Bags & Purses by Mary Jo Hiney. I used fabric that I had left over from other dyeing projects so I was able to put the bag together in a couple of days. It would have been faster, but the author and I didn’t see eye to eye on the instructions. There were several places that I just could not figure out what she was talking about. Thankfully I was able to complete the bag and I am happy with the results.

I changed a couple of things when I made it this time and if I make another one I will change several more things. I love pockets, but this one has back to back pockets that don’t seem to work for me. If I put items in the outside pockets there really isn’t space for items in the inside pockets.