Red Again

 

My granddaughter has asked me to make her a black, red and white quilt. I'm pretty sure I know where I am going with it, so I ordered some fabric, because a basic black red and white quilt isn't very interesting. I want to make her quilt fun so I ordered some fabrics. Since the Big Red quilt bled I've been very careful in choosing dark fabrics, particularly for backings of my quilts.

But my DGD wanted RED and RED was what I wanted to give her. So when the fabrics arrived the other day, I ran them through the wash, as I always do. The color catchers that came out were the ones on the upper left in the photo above.

I ran them all through the washer AGAIN, and the color catchers came out are on the upper right of the photo. But I wasn't worried. I knew that I would soak the fabrics the way Vicki Welsh recommends in her "Save my bleeding quilt" post.

So I did that and let the fabrics soak for a full twelve hours 

The color catchers that came out after I ran the fabrics through the wash were the ones at the bottom of the top picture. Actually, the photo is very deceiving. The color catches were almost white.

When I washed the BLACK fabrics, the color catchers were quite dark, so I plan to give them the good soak as well. It will take a day or two or three before I get to that because the guys will be at my house this week to finish the small things in the bathroom and office and I have decided to have the rug in my living room removed and have LVF installed there too. 

I'm still working on the silver and pink quilt, and hope to have that top done this week. 

Big, Bigger, and Biggest Big Red

The Big Red quilt is finished and I took it out for Beauty Shots. This was my favorite.

After I take a quilt outside for beauty shots, I put the quilt in the washer. Because it was made of red fabrics, I threw three Color Catchers in the machine.

Imagine my surprise when the Color Catchers turned out THIS red.

I was even more surprised when I looked at the quilt. OH CRAP! I had to deliver the quilt to Pam in a few hours. She was to present to her church group at 10 AM on Saturday. This was definitely not good.

After a second trip through the washing machine the quilt looked like this. Better, but no cigar! 

I contacted Julie and she told me about Vicki Welsh's Save My Bleeding Quilt.

The instructions say to soak the quilt in very hot water with Dawn dish detergent. For once I was glad I have a big bathtub.

The quilt must be totally submerged. I used bin covers, and weighed them down with pans filled with water.

I didn't have twelve hours to soak the quilt as Vicki recommends, but this is what the quilt looked like after soaking for four hours. Pam and I examined the quilt, and decided it was fine. So I threw it back into the washing machine for a rinse and then a wash. While that happened, we had dinner.

After a trip through the dryer, the quilt looked like this. Pam and I re-examined the quilt in detail and were both happy with it.

WHAT A RELIEF!

I can wholeheartedly recommend Vicki's method of dealing with a bleeding quilt.

Traveling Quilts

 

My friend Pam took me out to dinner for my birthday and as we were catching up she told me about her church group's plans to raise money for schoolchildren in Armenia. I told her I'd donate a quilt to her cause. Eventually she selected the Big Red quilt, so that is now being quilted. The group decided to raffle the quilt to raise more funds, and I thought that was a good idea.

While going through the quilts I had available, Pam saw this one, Blue Ribbon, which I had not yet had quilted.

"Oh, I like that one a lot. Can I have that for myself?" I was flattered and agreed. Pam offered to pay it. I'll let her pay for the backing fabric and the quilting.

So both quilts are now off being quilted.

Big Red & More

 

I finished sewing the Big Red flimsy together. I knew I would add a red binding to it, so I added a white border. When I started this quilt I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. But now I really like it.

I picked up three quilts from Janet-Lee Santeusanio, my long arm quilter. This is the second Nightingale quilt.

This is the Needle in a Haystack quilt. The quilting on these is very nice, but you may need to click the photo to enlarge so you can really see it.

This is the orange Carnelian quilt. I like all three quilts, and I don't really have a favorite, but I like this a lot.

I've already made the bindings for all these quilts, so I have quite a lot of binding in my future. 

Which is fine, because I've got new flooring being installed in my kitchen and hallway, and I'm also having the carpet removed in the dining room and it will be replaced with a hard surface floor. I'll need to keep out of the way of the workmen, so I will be in the studio.

Stay tuned!

Assembling Big Red

 

I've done a tiny bit of rearranging, and then I started sewing the blocks together. I'll finish sewing this together in the next few days. 

I've got to pick up a couple of quilts from my long-arm quilter over the weekend and add the binding to them. 

I've also got some long planned work being done in my house next week and I have to clear out some areas so I have had to figure out where I am going to put the stuff I have to move.

It'll be a busy two weeks, and I may not post as regularly, but I'll do my best to keep up!