Aaaand We're Back!

Did you miss me?  I've basically been on vacation for the past 3 weeks, which meant not much quilting and not much blogging.  I've enjoyed myself immensely, but tomorrow I go back to work and things around here will be back to regularly scheduled programming.

Two of my quilt are going to their forever homes tomorrow. Is there anything better than quilts ready for gifting?

The Sherwood Forest quilt is for a wedding, along with a couple of jars of pepper jelly.

The Sherbet Lane quilt is going for a new baby, along with a couple of bibs and tie-dye onesies.

And on the design wall this week, yup, it's still Texas!  I am so ready to have this thing together so I can use my design wall again!  Here is a close up of central Texas. Only one block to go, I still need to do the Valley.

Although I am not particularly ready to go back to work, I am looking forward to getting back to my routine sewing :) 

Tie Dye Days

Every summer I get the itch to do some tie dye and last week was the time. This time I decided to try some shibori in addition to other techniques.  For a great primer on tie dye I recommend Amanda's posts at Jedi Craft Girl.

I did all this with a single "Tulip" tie dye kit with a dozen colors.  It did 5 boys large shirts, 2 adult larges, 5 2T shirts, 5 4T shirts, and a dozen onesies in various sizes.

The real technique in tie dye in in learning different folds. I tried a bunch of shibori this time, which involves rolling the shirts around PVC pipe, wrapping with string, and scrunching.

That shirt is part of the set above, after a wash and dry.  Pretty cute :)

As far as the shibori, I really ended up liking the ones done with a single color dye.  The two on the left were done with just blue. After a wash a dry there's a lot more contrast from light to dark within thm.

I definitely like the ones done with a single colors dye best.

Here's a spiral design in progress.  I put a cooling rack over a pot to let the dye drip through.

Here's the finished onesie, along with some others.

Of course Wilson was on hand throughout the process to supervise.

He took time off to stalk some grass hoppers, too.

After marinating over night the shirts were ready to be unwrapped and hung to dry.

As a bonus, the shibori yielded pretty dyed cotton string. I'm think these will be perfect for wrapping gifts.

Baby gifts for the next year, all set!  If you are interested in seeing more of the individual shirts, here  are some below.  Thanks for visiting!

Stay-cation sewing things

I haven't been posting reliably lately, but it isn't because I haven't been doing things. I am having a stay-cation at the moment from work and have been sewing, tie-dying, pickling, and generally crafting to my heart's content. This afternoon I made cayenne pepper hard candy :)

I'll do a more thorough post on the tie dying later, but for now here are some photos of the finished shirts drying and Wilson being "helpful".

After being removed from my folding board, Wilson holds down the laundry basket.

Speaking of Wilson.  If you've been reading here for a while then you probably already know that Wilson is a highly-allergic, generally sensitive kitty.  He basically has kitty COPD now from all his chronic respiratory issues.  For the past 6 months or so he's been on a daily low dose steroid that have helped a lot, and he will probably stay on it for the rest of his life.

Wilson was jealous that Elvis was sitting in mom's lap.

Anyway, it's flea and tick season as you probably know and Wilson can't have the drops between his shoulders because it gives him a nasty rash and makes his hair fall out. We've always done flea collars in the past, so I put one on him about a week ago, then today I noticed that the hair had fallen out under the collar all the way around his neck and parts of it were rashed and bloody!  Needless to say, the collar is off and antibiotic ointment is on.  Sigh.  Does anybody have any ideas for flea and tick solutions for allergic kitties?

I am still managing to stay up to date with the Texas Quilt Along.  We are on the last quadrant now.  That's what is on the design wall. And on the design floor, as it were, I basted this batik quilt I made from the Summer Slice pattern at Cluck Cluck Sew.

 

I had no idea I even had that many batiks until I started cutting in to them!  Have a happy week, everyone :)

Linking to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.

Still working on Texas

Design wall Monday snuck up in me again. Those 3 day weekends always seem to go so fast! I have still been working on Texas for the Texas Quilt Along.  The entire West half of the state is done and the final quadrant, south-central Texas, is begun.

The first city block for this last quadrant will be posted tomorrow.

I have also been working on more crumb blocks.  These are the crumbs that weren't big enough to make the cut for the Crumb Jar Nines quilt.  Not sure what I'll do with these yet... I'm just enjoying looking at them.

Happy Monday y'all! I'm linking up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.