Flowering Snowballs is a Finish, Although Looking a Little Bruised Perhaps

So once again, I completely fell off the face of the earth, blogging-wise that is. We actually went on a vacation, planned for last September, rescheduled for October and then finally rescheduled again for March of this year. The timing was terrible for my husbands work schedule {naturally}, but we decided it was probably never going to get better.

Flowering Snowball finish

Off we went, thinking it better to deal with bad timing than lose our tickets forever. Just before we left I had stitched the last bit of binding into place on my Flowering Snowball quilt and found time to get it washed while I was packing. Imagine my dismay when I pulled it out of the washer and saw some serious fabric bleeds....

It's got some dull areas now

It quickly got tossed back in the washer with a even more color catchers and a small amount of synthrapol. No luck. Upon further scrutiny I noticed that all the dye had gravitated to a single cream fabric throughout the entire quilt. It really wasn't a case of dye bleeding directly next to a weepy fabric, it simply happened that one particular fabric acted as a huge dye magnet. Great. Just my luck.

The two left corner cream pieces turned a very light lavender-gray

 What to do, what to do?

And here you can see all the bottom pieces of the snowball turned color

I know, I know. Several of you out there are shaking your heads at me for ever even washing my quilts directly after finishing. But it's just what I do. Loving that fresh washed, crinkly goodness that comes from a hand stitched quilt almost gives me no choice. And I do pre-wash all my fabrics. Every. Single. Time. But I don't do the 12 hour soak which is probably what I have to do to ensure zero dye bleeds..... Ughh.

With this snowball, it's the top half of the creamy fabrics that turned

In any case, I let this one dry on the floor until it was only slightly damp and then laid it out over my just-made bed to finish drying while we were gone. To soak or not to soak and try to release all those migrating dyes? That was the question of the day and one I needed to think on. A side effect of doing that seems to wash out all the sparkly parts in a brand new quilt. Seeing as how the dye only gravitated to one particular fabric, there was still a bit of sparkle to be found. In fact, the quilt had inadvertently gained a new moodiness, kind of a vintage thing that didn't exactly look ruinous. You know, not to an extreme? I certainly wasn't pulling my hair out in despair, although that could have had more to do with the fact that I was still packing with the intent to avoid doing laundry for gulp! 10 days?

And somehow I don't even care this time.
Just makes my head hurt!

So we left on our trip for Oklahoma to visit our bajillion family members and friends. So many to see and never enough time allotted! This trip was carefully planned out by the men folk {my husband and oldest son who bought our airline tickets for our 25th anniversary last year}. I very determinedly decided to give as little input as possible and just see what opportunities might appear. Turns out one of my husbands cousins is newly into quilting and was delighted to take me to her two favorite quilt stores: Nancy's Trunk in Ripley, Oklahoma and Quilt Post in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Both of them were very fun little shops and well worth the time. It almost helped stem the itchiness I was feeling to be reunited with my quilting projects!

A few new pieces of inspiration!

Not that I bought anything much different than what I find out here on the west coast, but it's always great fun to see how different stores present their wares! I went into both stores thinking to be conservative and only buy about four fatquarters. Yeah right...... So then later in the week I got another surprise when the same cousin suggested we head up to Pawhuska to check out the Pioneer Woman's new store! Ahh was that the most fun ever. It would have been great to eat there as well, but the line was over an hour wait so we headed to the bakery instead. Just heavenly. You gotta try those Butter Blonde Brownies! Totally worth the experience if you ever get the chance. I have been a fan of Ree Drummond for years now and never thought I'd get the chance to visit her store and see all her wonderful merchandise!

And maybe something new for dinner?

So eventually we made it home {earlier this week} and what with the time change, way too many late nights and a long delay on one of our layovers, I crashed and burned. Fatigue set in and I ended up sick for a couple days. Happy homecoming for me! But the first thing I did when I walked into my bedroom was see that newly finished quilt laying across my bed and hello? Who cares about naughty dye bleeds when it just looks, feels and smells like home. I wrapped that quilt around me and had the best nights sleep in well over a week. I aint' changing a thing.*wink

Keeping the stitching loose and undemanding.
It feels so good to have the hoop out again!!

I am so very glad to be home again. Happy to feel like I'm well enough to start quilting again too! {Took a few hand quilting stitches on my Creative Process quilt just last night!} Like always, it's going to take me a bit to get back in the groove, I've a pile of emails to get through and lots of stuff to take care of on the homefront. And although I mostly tuned out the social media on my trip, I did take a day or two and cruise through the blogs just to get my quota of quilting inspiration. Will try to start commenting again now that I'm headed back into the normal warp and weft of my life!