Design Wall Monday--4/19/2021

 Design Wall Monday--see more great creative endeavors on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Following my last post about tea-dyeing linen, having diluted my tea bath to about 1/4 strength, I cut off a big piece of the white linen, wet it and put it in the pot after reheating.  However, it did not take up any of the tea color after an hour.  Perhaps I didn't wring out the piece of linen well, or the tea bath did not have enough salt. So I dumped it out and started over Sunday morning with fresh water and three tea bags.  I carefully wet and wrung out the white linen and left it in the tea for 20 minutes or so, checking periodically against the prior dyed strips.  I rinsed it in plain water and then in the water/vinegar bath, plain water again, rolled it in a towel and then hung to dry.  Finally I ironed it.

The white strip is the original linen, the smaller strip my first choice of  tea-dyed test pieces, and the background the final.  The gray background of my ironing board cover isn't showing the true color well, but you can see it is a little darker than the test strip, which is what I wanted.  

I used some colored pencils to color most of the stitching chart.  I may start with the House, as it is just below the center of the design.  I kind of want to get the overlapping pattern area out of the way so I don't get confused! I used some red floss to mark the center lines of the linen vertically and horizontally, but am considering adding a  couple more registration lines. It is a lot harder to count linen threads than Aida cloth!  The raw edges need to be folded and stitched too, to keep from raveling, but I'm getting closer to playing with the yummy floss.

We had a long visit with our newest grandson. Dane, and our son and DIL on Saturday.  Dane is just shy of 8 months and crawling everywhere, standing with help, and generally busy busy busy.

Proud Dada Nick with his charmer...

..and ever-attentive Mama Ashley helping him play and learn.  He loved crawling up the carpeted stairs in our house.

Mimi got in lots of hugs and kisses while playing with Dane. 

We're always happy to see our kids and grandkids and get in lots of play time.  Looking forward to more frequent visits now that we're all vaccinated and the state is opening up more.  Maybe in a couple more months we'll actually want to eat indoors at a restaurant--it has been over a year since that has happened.

And Baby Makes Three

The long anticipated arrival of our grandson went off without a hitch  yesterday.  Well, the doctor was running late (they always are, I told our son!), so baby's birth was about an hour later than anticipated. 

And he is healthy and whole, though his legs and toes were a bit purple from being folded up by his head for so long; he has a little flat spot where his head was wedged too.  He weighed just under 7 lbs and was about 20 inches long.  Ashley did great during the C-section and our son was thrilled that baby Dane looks so much like him.  The family has been sending us little video updates on a new app we downloaded called MarcoPolo.  It has been fun to interact within our family group and see Dane become accustomed to being outside the womb :)

Here with Mama...

And Daddy :)  He's feeding well and had perfect hearing.  

Eyes open now and then!  Can't tell what color they will be yet, of course. 

This is our son Nick when he was about a week old.  Pretty similar!  Can't wait to meet baby Dane in person.  We went and got our COVID testing today, and will get flu shots in a couple of days.  Meanwhile I still didn't completely finish the cushion covers for Ashley's glider.  Only the closures left to wrangle into submission, which I will get done tomorrow without too much drama, I hope.  

Sliver of moon was visible at sunset. The smoke from county fires has cleared a bit so we can see regular clouds in the southeast.  Coincidentally, Nick was also born in August during a fire :)

Reminiscing and Stitching

I have been looking back on my years of blogging, enjoying old posts and missing some of the early commenters and friends who were so encouraging to a newby blogger, and thankful for the many who still visit and share!  10 years ago I was moving out of the first dedicated sewing room I had, when our older daughter moved out, our younger daughter changed bedrooms, and our son moved back in.  

 

Back to the downstairs family room, and sharing it with my husband's music equipment--he was deep into playing in a band in those days. Can you believe how much we crammed in?  I had no fabric downstairs at that time, other than the project boxes in the Hoosier.

 

 At that point I was still using my husband's childhood metal desk for sewing and waiting on a big, very exciting delivery--no, not the baby kind, the furniture kind. 

Here Nick is earning his keep by helping put together my new sewing desk, a Bertha by Arrow Cabinets, which has seen so many creations travel across its top over the last decade.  Recently big cracks developed in two of the plastic drawer door bins.  Replacements are pretty expensive, mostly due to shipping costs, but after 10 years and no problems with this desk I will fork over the $40--after a bit of a balk!  I shared my first sewing days on the new desk HERE.  How time flies...now I'm working on cushion covers for a glider for Nick's wife Ashley, as they will hold their son by end of next week after a scheduled C-section. Baby did not turn on his own and an external version was unsuccessful. Dad and Mom get to stay in the hospital together with baby for three days after delivery.  I think that's wonderful.

The yellowed cotton fabric definitely needed replacing.  Ashley chose this nice patterned one--I had had her buy a shower curtain to use as they come in lots of patterns, the fabric is wide, and many are pretty inexpensive. This one is a looser weave due to some polyester content so I am lining the pieces.

I'll also be sewing up some PeePee Teepees this week.  Baby boys, you know!  Wish I'd had some way back when...:)

Stitching Away on Dream Weaver

I've been stitching away on the Jen Kingwell Designs Dream Weaver  quilt for my son and daughter in law, though my son always refers to it as "Ashley's quilt", so cute.  I showed my version of the pieced background a few posts back, and moved on to the applique.  Since I made a very enlarged version of the background, I also enlarged the templates for the applique on a copy machine and wanted to try out the pieces.  After tracing from the printed pattern onto template plastic, I cut construction paper to mockup the pieced center design in the original size and the enlarged one. 

That's a 12" ruler for size between them.  When we had a family dinner on Sunday, I showed the mockup to Ashley and Nick and she immediately agreed with the enlarged version. We played with the fabrics she picked out at Superbuzzy so many months ago, and made some choices for the appliques.  

 It was such fun to finally get to cut into all the yummy fat quarters from Superbuzzy. 

Although designer Michelle McKillop hand sewed all her applique pieces, I machine pieced mine.  I did need to made some adjustments to several seams a few inches from the center to make it lie flat.  Some spray starch helped too!  I got a start on the next ring since Ashley couldn't yet decide on what she wanted to use for the center.  Tracing and cutting pieces takes time but these are pretty small. 

She chose a variety of white on white prints leftover from the background, and the points will be in a dark turquoise solid, which she also chose for the outer bias ring and bias stems.  I think that will look great.  Happy to be working on the next step of this beauty.  

The Meadowland QAL at Then Came June starts next week, so I want to have all the Dream Weaver center applique done before then.  The first week of the QAL is just cutting, I believe, so I should have time to sew on Dream Weaver as well.  

Wedding Reception

Here's a few pics of our son Nick and new daughter-in-law Ashley's lovely, low key family style reception at her parents' beach house.  They worked so very hard to get the house and yard ready for their guests!  In the front courtyard guests were greeted with this:

I never learned who made the beautiful driftwood/beach rock art piece for them.

Inside, the living room wall displayed photos of both Nick and Ashley from baby to present.

The clips had their ages marked, so fun to see what they looked like at the same ages--and as a couple now.

Many of our family members at the table...

..with the next bride-to-be getting bunny ears from her little brother!

Here the bride's father is giving his speech for the newlyweds.  Grant and I, my brother, and several of Ashley's relatives also said many kind things and gave hopes and wishes for the future. 

 Ashley got a little emotional during her speech...

Happy to be joined together and celebrating with people who love them.

We're only missing brother Kevin from this family portrait--he had to leave early to catch a flight. My CK flowered dress stood up well to the day.  I made four cream cheese pies for the dessert table--which disappeared in record time!

 The couple on the dock, prepared to sail away in the channel.

 Ashley hamming it up in the Captain's hat. 

 Her dad made the "Recently Married" sign, so funny.  Many guests took the cue and left but a lot of family members stayed a bit to help clear up and we got to know them more.

It was a lovely day and we are so happy to have another family to join.  We wish Nick and Ashley a long and happy married life.