What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 I've been trying to do more video content but I don't really like to be on camera. Editing the videos is a learning experience and time consuming. I am getting better but I never thought I'd be filming and editing videos as part of my job. You just never know what skills you'll need in life!

I made a video demonstrating how to make a basic bowl with rope. It's kind of a mini class. It's not perfect, but I think you can get the idea and learn something which is more important than ...

 As most Sue Spargo projects are, this one took quite a while. I've been working on this for about four years. The hand quilting alone took a little over two years, but I really only got to work on it on Thursdays during the hand sewing group at my shop.

I included lots of close up shots of the finished quilt below. 

The pattern is called Crimson Tweed by Sue Spargo. The pattern book is discontinued and I have already sold my personal copy of the pattern to a customer who wanted it. An internet search might turn up ...

 On Thursday of last week I put the final seed stitch, which is how I hand quilted this, in my version of Crimson Tweed.

I've been working on this for quite some time! I started quilting it in October of 2022. I worked on it most Thursday afternoons at my shop during our Hand Sewing Group. Sometimes store sewing took precedent and I had to get it done instead of working on my Crimson Tweed, but I tried to not let store sewing get in the way very often.

The last step is binding, a label and a hanging ...

 I did a little experiment last week. I bought some liquid Rit dye from the grocery store along with a bottle of the Rit dye Color Fix. I followed the directions on the bottles and dip dyed a sewn bowl and some loose rope.

Here is the bowl before dyeing.

I used an old bucket to set the bowl and loose rope in with the dye. Then I set them in the sun in my backyard to dry.

Here is what the bowl looks like after it dried. 

Then I made another bowl with the dip dyed loose rope.

On ...

 I'm having so much fun sewing with the new rope I received in my shop!

The first thing I made with the new rope from The Mountain Thread Company was this Basket with Handles. I used the kit shown in the photos that the basket is sitting on to make it. I wanted to test out their kits. They are excellent! Each kit includes the amount of rope you need to make the project, a denim needle for your sewing machine and the instructions for the project.

 This is not new. I've made bowls, baskets and bags using rope in the past, but around 2018 I started having difficulty finding good rope. I ordered several different brands and tried buying from my local Ace Hardware and Walmart, but everything I could find was too "floppy" so I quit.

Well, rope bowl sewing is making a comeback and there are now lots of great rope options on the market again.

The above bowl was made using 100 ft of cotton rope. Then I found a company that makes kits!

Each one of these kits comes with enough ...

 I'm getting closer to finishing up my potato chip quilt.

I got it quilted this weekend. Next step is binding. I have some scrappy binding and I plan to use it for this scrappy quilt.

Check out the backing fabric I used. I found this in my stash.

 My first full-length fiction effort; I hope you enjoy it <3

This started as a short story. It was supposed to be a fun flash told through a few letters. Then I thought it would be good to add backstory to the letters, setting how they were found, probably in an attic, something like that. The next thing I knew, there were 13,000 words. 

But there still wasn't an ending. And while I had hoped to write a mystery, I discovered that I had unexpectedly veered into the Gothic trope territory. So, I paused for some research to ...

 I used sashing and corner stones to complete my quilt top using the 12 blocks that I made. If you made 12 blocks and you want to finish your blocks the way I did, the directions are below.

You will need (31) 2" by 12.5" for the sashing and (20) 2" by 2" squares of scraps for the corner stones. If you used the larger 2.5" by 4.5" potato chip pieces, then you need (31) 2.5" by 16.5" rectangles for the sashing and (20) 2.5" by 2.5" squares of scraps for the corner ...

 Now is the time to enter. Unless you are local and can bring your blocks into the shop, you need to take ONE photo of your blocks similar to what I did below. I made 12 blocks, but your photo should include all of the blocks you made. And one block is totally fine, it counts!

You can enter the contest in any of the following ways, but please only do ONE:

(1) If you are local, you don't need to take a photo. You can just bring all of your blocks into the shop. We'll count them ...