Home again, Home again, giggety gig

We flew home on Weds (or was it Tues?!).  The sky was clear as a bell and the arial views were stunning!

There's Mt. Rainier, all of it's 14,000+ feet of glory!!

Puget Sound is especially interesting from the air with all of it's water ways and islands.

Look!  There's even an island with some 9 patches!

Moving South we got a great view of Mt. Saint Helens.  Remember that one?  I'll give you a hint:

CABOOM!!!!!!!!!!

It's hard to believe but it's been more than 40 years since it erupted in Mar. of 1980!

That's Mt. Jefferson off in the distance and directly below is some of the rich agricultural land of Central Oregon (now there's a crazy patchwork!

In the center of this next Picture you can see the "Three Sisters" and Mt. Bachelor just beyond them on the right.

At the base of the East side of the Three Sisters is the charming little town of "Sister's" Oregon. It is Home to the famous Sister's Out Door Quilt Show!

A little farther South we passed almost right over Crater Lake!

We missed seeing Mt. Lassen and Mt, Shasta on account of Cloud cover but the clouds cleared in time to see the Northern end of the San Fransisco Bay  You can just see the mouth of the Sacramento river under the wing tip of the plane. 

And a view of the Bay Bridge and Down Town of San Fransisco!

And a clear shot of the Salesforce building.  It is so much freaking taller than any of the other buildings it's crazy!!

All this arial viewing got me thinking about map quilts.

I think I've got an idea for my next quilt project...

stay tuned.

Have a great Weekend!

take care, cw

 

More CZU quilts To-Go!

I sent off 3 more CZU quilts for the next give away the other day.  This is the latest finish.  It was a combination of two large FQ bundles that I thought looked nice together.  Purple-Green and Blue is always a pretty safe combos and one of my Favs!.

These blocks are 18" square   You can cover a lot of territory when you work with 18" blocks.  This quilt is 87" square!

I used my new favorite stipple for the quilting.  I've been calling it my the 'George Jetson' pattern.  It has kind of a Mid Century Modern vibe.  What I like about it is three fold: 

it's a good scale for these blocks (big),  

it travels through the various patches sometimes appearing and then disappearing  which makes it more interesting and probably most important it's something my brain can handle without to much effort or time!  

Once the quilt was loaded on the frame I think it only took about 3 hours to quilt!

Here's the back...

It's hard to find long enough yardage in my stash to cover the 5+ yards needed for a backing of this size.  Fortunately the flea market has gotten some nice Big yardage donations of late and I found this peacock fabric which with a few extra strips made a nice backing!

I sewed the border designs of the peacocks in the middle because they were very narrow.  On a long arm it's hard to control the outside edges (except at the top edge).  If I had put them on the edges they would not come out even.  The peacocks would probably be half cut off on one side or the other.  Details, Details!

Here's a longer stretch of the quilting at the bottom edge.  If you asked me how I do this, I couldn't tell you.  I guess it's basically a Life Time of Doodling!  

I hope you all have a wonderful safe weekend!

take care, cw

 

Dye Rot

Dye Rot?
You might have heard the term but what does it really mean?
Basically through some part of the Dye process some part of the cloth was exposed to some caustic chemical which rendered it weaker and therefore more likely to disintegrate sooner than other surrounding parts of the cloth.
It's pretty easy to identify because the spots of deterioration are usually in some regular pattern based on the pattern of the print.  As in this picture,

This is Maybe the oldest quilt top in my collection of Vintage quilts and tops.  The indigo print and style of applique may date back as far as the 1840's!

You can see from the regular way that the spots appear that this was not just random rot!  Something touched those spots to make the fabric rot in that pattern.

The two flowers are more less the same age but the one on the left has a small print.  Where as the one on the right is a solid.  One has rot the other is in pretty good shape.

So what prompted this rant on rot?!   

I recently discovered some Dye rot on a quilt that I made about 10years ago!

I was really surprised!  

But this was a scrappy quilt made from scraps I scrounged from many sources so somewhere along the way this really OLD scrap snuck into the mix.

This is the quilt with the afore mentioned scrap.  It is the everyday quilt on my bed.  It's 104" square and when I made it I really did scrounge around for every 30's style repro fabric scrap I could get my hands on. So I guess I should not be to surprised that some really old scraps found their way into the mix.

Fabric scroungers beware!  Some scraps tho' free may not be worth using.  Who wants holes in their quilts?!  Fortunately I think this was the only scrap of that fabric that made it into the quilt.  It will be easy to repair.  But i do sometimes wonder if my bent toward frugality is a little toooo bent.

Have a great week!

take care, cw