I Have Quilted Alot of Things . . .

I have quilted a lot of things, but I never would have guessed I would quilt my own shoes.  I have!  S invited me to a class, at The Quilt Crossing, last weekend.  I finished those bad girls up today.  I used Tulla Pink fabric for the uppers, and more yellow fabric with colorful buttons for the tongues.  I put bias binding on, in HOT pink.  S had ordered a sweet box of multicolored eyelets, so we did not have to use bronze or silver on our amazingly colorful one-of-a-kind shoes.  I used several different colors of eyelets to bling up my shoes.  

I topped them off with artful Monet shoestrings, I purchased last Saturday, at an art consortium store in where the A&W Market used to be in the 1960s-70s.  I am not dating myself.  I thought they may be too long, but they are just right!  

Nothing says "amazing shoes" like bright yellow and hot pink with cats and buttons!

Thursday, I Dyed!

Virginia gave me three bolts of fabric she detested.  I gave one bolt to the Tuesday Quilters, who make donation quilts exclusively.  As each one came in, last Tuesday, they touched the fabric and said, "Oh, this is really pretty."  One woman's pretty is another woman's detestable.  They were thankful for the lovely detestable fabric.

Surging, surging, surging . . .

On Thursday, I cut the remaining two bolts into one-yard pieces and surged the raw edges.  Half of them, I washed, dried, pressed and folded.  The other half, I sprayed my bleach water on each piece before placing them in the wash.  They came out with a little less of the pinkish in them.  Photo above:  left is original fabric color; right is after a little bleach spray and wash.  

I held back a couple yards so I could experiment with over-dying.  Photo above:  left is the original color; right is after I dyed it with Rit Sunshine Orange dye.  I sat in the backyard stirring my brew like an old witch.  I like how it came out.  I dyed 1/2 yard.  I, also, want to try overdying with red Dy-na-flow to see how that comes out.  All that washing, drying, pressing, and folding, then stirring plumb wore me out.  I will further cut the one-yard pieces down to half yards, so I can give a half yard of original and a half yard of bleached to each of my Unruly Quilt Artists at our 'Dying Day", in June.  

Question:  How many yards were on the two remaining bolts?

Answer: Seven on one and eight on the other.  Fifteen total.

An Actual Regular Sized Quilt Is Completed!

I have not been making many regular sized quilts these days.  I have been absorbed in art quilting and, of course, helping "the girls" with their quilt projects.   Once again, I started doing some scrap-busting about a year ago and this thing occupied my design wall for many months before I finally carved out the time to finish it.

It was quilted by Virginia Gross of Crabapple Creek Quilts.  In April, I took A on the shop-hop, as she had never been.  She is now retired and has time to do many more things.  We went to Nyssa, to visit Country Corners Quilt Shop.  Naturally, I spied a very fine old barn to take a photo of.  I asked permission and it was granted!  This is my latest quilt photographed on a barn.