Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Finally! I've been crocheting dishrags every time we go for a ride in the car and try to do a few rows on one every night before retiring. Below are three of them done for the upcoming quilt bazaar booth that will help us buy batting for charity quilts. Trust me. I'd rather be quilting!

I've gotten a lot of those for Christmas gifts. They are good dish rags, IMO. I knit. But I've never made any.

I bought some knitted dishrags at the Cabin on the Square one day last year. They're excellent. But I just cotton to crochet for some reason. OK, habit. but I like my crocheted disrags, too.

On our trip to the repair shop yesterday, the red one got finished, but I ran out of the variegated thread too soon, so I added a fancy edge and some solid stitching all the way around.

 

[koshergrl]

I prefer to crochet...

 

[freedombecki]

Finally! I've been crocheting dishrags every time we go for a ride in the car and try to do a few rows on one every night before retiring. Below are three of them done for the upcoming quilt bazaar booth that will help us buy batting for charity quilts. Trust me. I'd rather be quilting!

I LOVE crocheted dishrags.

Yes, but mine are so plain. My sister gave me one of hers that was shaped into a cute little white hen. I love that one. Mine are square, but I try to use 2 cotton yarns. I wish they'd carry all of the cotton 4-ply yarns in the world somewhere close, but every time I go there, nothing matches. It takes 5 or 10 shopping places to get enough of the right colors to do a set that would appeal to many shopping at a craft bazaar. Fortunately, it's a good destination to get out of the house to now and then.

 

[freedombecki]

I've been away due to my good computer lost its power supply. On one of our great rains, we had a lightning strike probably on a nearby pole and probably had a power surge. The next day, the microwave started arcing, and the spare microwave is making funny noises.

I am doing a lot of croheted dishrag, but I can't show them until we get the problem fixed on the other computer that links to the printer. This ocomputer is an old one and hasn't been used since 2007. excep I had it repaired abot 6 months ago. Pardon my typos, but this one skips letters and spaces just about every 3 or 4 words. Some I catch, not all. Sorry.

Will get back to the quilting one of these days. Hope everyone is spending a few minutes looking at some of the quilt we have posted, and those who haven't posted, hope you find those pictures of you family quilts or ones you love and share them here.

Have to go now. My screen is bobbing up and down.

 

[freedombecki]

Some crocheted dishrags done while the big puter was on the fritz.

 

[freedombecki]

And some more dishrags:

 

[freedombecki]

Purple lime confetti dishrag

 

[freedombecki]

Finished another purple confetti dishrag last night (simple type), an ocean blue, lime confetti one this morning, and on the way home from the Hobby Lobby in College Station, which is quite a long way from here, I did one in neutrals, salmon, and royal blue in the car, finishing just before we turned off to head north to our gentleman's farm. Oh, and my gosh, there is hardly a snippet of evidence the pond was ever half gone in the drought, except for the beautiful pine tree that turned red in the drought and will fall to the earth in about 2 years from now.

Tonight, I'm going to try to work on and finish the lime green one. I don't know why it is, but for some reason I like lime green all of a sudden. It must be all those red and white blocks of every kind I'm working on on the sewing machine every morning.

​

 

[freedombecki]

Oh, and I found a Praying Hands to die for in cross stitch at JoAnn's Fabrics at Bryan or College Station (not sure where the boundary is). I bought a 20 dollar book just to get the pattern. It is going to be my next challenging postage stamp quilt. The only trouble is, I will have to cut everything in the quilt to finish to 1 inch squares or redesign the picture so I won't be covering a football field, but a bed.

I love the story of Drurer drawing the praying hands of his dear friend who worked hard so Drurer could go to art school. Then, When Drurer graduated and was planning to take on the world with his painting to pay for his friend's painting instructions at art school university also, his friend grew very ill. Just before he died, Drurer tearfully drew his friend's praying hands, and today, we have a most beautiful work of Drurer's hands, immortalized wherever believers gather together to ask God to comfort those who are suffering. (that is my recollection of the story)

This is from Albrecht Drurer's Credits and Complete Works Website:

 

[freedombecki]

GO, DISHRAGS!!!!



I just felt like saying that.

 

[freedombecki]

I honestly sat in front of the sewing machine yesterday before tearing myself away to do more dishrags. So for the last couple-and-a-half days, I've done a stack of quilt squares and 6 more dishrags.

1) lime sherbet dishrag

2) country pink and blue dishrag

3) U of TX (Austin) dishrag

 

[freedombecki]

To show how addictive crochet is, I decided to start several dishrags this morning, but as I got into the 6th row (usually when the last color is crocheted in) I wouldn't be able to stop. Thrice. The ones in the post above and this one that are not in plastic bags yet are the ones I did today. I actually brought the packages in here to do after they came off the scanning screen of my Kodak printer. I'm sorry some of the colors are not as bright as they actually are, but the rags are of 4-ply cotton, which is rather thick which makes a poor seal when you shut the lid on the scanner, and light filters in. Today, it is a diffuse gray light on account of rain plus humidity at 99% when it isn't raining.
This group is:

1) red thirties

2) Swedish Flag colors 1

3) Swedish Flag colors 2

 

[freedombecki]

For those here who are knitters, here's someone else's really pretty dishrag, and I've bought several like it at the Cabin in the Square in a nearby city. Ok, I bought a passel of 'em. I love pretty colors everywhere in the house.

The picture credits and her free set of how-tos (which I cannot decipher) are at the link below the picture.

picture credits and instructions
​

 

[freedombecki]

Saturday night, before retiring, I crocheted a series of 6-row centers I will just call "Garden" for the charity table. The first one (shown below), however, will be given as a gift to a friend who helped me by taking pictures of quilts so I could share them here earlier. Friends who encourage us in our projects by doing stuff we can't do contribute greatly to our productivity in charitable giving. This lady did a special thing for me, and I'm indebted to her even after my small token of reciprocity. She's getting The Yellow Rose of Texas for her gift! I appreciate all the help I can get.

 

[freedombecki]

Here are others I am considering packaging one for each day of the week for dishrags. I will redo a yellow one with the same lace border, hoping I have enough green tweed yarn to do so.

29. Garden Roses (pink)
30. Garden Roses (peach)
31. Garden (Bells of Ireland green)

 

[freedombecki]

Y tres mas dishrags.

1) Garden bluebells
2) Garden orchids
3) Garden burgundy roses

 

[freedombecki]

I am eager to get back to quilting after all that crochet dishrag bit, and I really like this quilt:

photo credits Delightful thumbnail gallery at link, too.​

 

[freedombecki]

However, the double four-patch I'm going to do one except in my fabrics is below. You must click on it to appreciate it.

 

[freedombecki]

^Didn't anyone see the argyle sock the quilter stitched into her squares?^

I'm telling you, that lady who did the above quilt is brilliant. I've been working with 4-patch squares for several weeks now, doing a variety of perfectly-matched squares, scrap but matched squares, nonsensical squares, and everything-you-wanted-to-know-but-didn't-ask 4-patch squares, but what the lady above did is take conflicting (scrap) squares, followed a general plot for making a quilt that looks exactly like an argyle sock, oozed in some variety, and produced that very hard-won quilt top that is a winner in every way. In its small form, you cannot see the work and thinking that went into her arrangement. If someone told me that was her first quilt, I'd fall right over and !faint! Right on the spot. I'm betting she either bought a cloth board to arrange her scraps meticulously to make a clear statement OR she just good ol' American finagled a way to make her scraps look every bit as beautiful as someone who could afford the yardage to buy four just-so fabrics, following a prescribed EASY pattern, following monkey-see, monkey-do instructions (which, by the way, some people can't do).

Instead, that quilter took the road less traveled and made her scraps into a stunning master work that resembles a Scottish plaid when you back off from it. She even built in a quality of radiance by using reds of differing values. God, it's a stunning thing she did. Not one person here commented on it.

No wonder people contemplate their navels after a while of living on this mudball of a silly planet we somehow occupy together. Nobody gets it what they did to do a good thing.

 

[Dabs]

Y tres mas dishrags.

1) Garden bluebells
2) Garden orchids
3) Garden burgundy roses

These are gorgeous!!
Too pretty to use

I finally uploaded some of the pics of the afghans I have crocheted