Watching the hawks - yes, plural!

As soon as I got home from work I had to run upstairs to the kitchen to see if the hawk was there, but it was the female hawk not the male hawk. I had watched them long enough now I could tell the difference. She was perched on the deck

and he was across from her perched in the trees. I know he is hard to pick out, but he is on the branch above the big branch that angles from the bottom of the picture to the right. His chest is all white so he blends in with the sky and clouds.

This morning I headed to the kitchen and took a look out back and there was the female again. I am pretty sure she can see me, but it doesn't seem to bother her.

As I was watching her I saw two smaller birds fly into that big tree. I thought are they crazy, there are hawks around. Since I saw the hawks I have not seen any squirrels, chipmunks, cardinals, blue jays, or robins. Everyone is either hiding or were somebody's lunch. Well, I looked at those two smaller birds and here they are hawk chicks! They were practicing there skills and jumping from limb to limb. I am a city girl so to see this is pretty darn cool! Here are the kids - one is facing the camera and the one to the right has it's back to the camera.

I did get some dyeing books from the library to look at while I sat in the merchandise booth Saturday.

I am trying to prep for the big dyeing event at my house Aug. 18 for my Modern quilt group. While I was sitting there I worked some more on taking my son's t-shirt apart. I am about half done with that job.

Weekend pics

Saturday was the big show. I left the house at noon to head over to my brother's place. It was sprinkling when we got to Streetsboro and the ground was soggy. Mike got the SUV and trailer parked so it was time to unload the equipment. My brother is in the trailer with the green jacket.

Some of the equipment lined up in the tent backstage

There was another band playing as we unloaded. The crowd was sparse.

Merchandise table set up

The mud and standing water in the merchandise tent - this was before the huge downpour that happened a couple of hours later.

The guys scrounged up some more plywood

Sound check

Joe Vitale Jr played before Michael. Joe's dad is a drummer and played with many rock legends - Eagles and Peter Frampton

The skies cleared

Michael played two sets - doing one song with Joe, and then there were fireworks.

I got home at 1 a.m. I was wet, muddy, and tired! Sunday I just puttered around - I was just too tired to do much. In the late afternoon I saw a hawk sitting on my rotten deck railing looking for some supper. This is the first time I ever saw a hawk sitting on my deck. I once had a owl sit on the railing several years ago. I seems to be a good lookout point!

What a crazy busy week - and it's not over!

No sewing has happened this week. Wednesday was modern quilt group - seven members showed. We had a long discussion about dyeing fabric which some members are coming to my house in August for a dyeing session. The topic of the evening was how you got started quilting and how has your tastes changed and what influenced those changes. We met for 2 and 40 minutes hours which normally we meet for 2 hours. I was too tired to take any pictures so here is a picture of the rain we had Tuesday. The white arrow is pointing to the area where I live.

Last evening I worked at the museum. The weather is so much cooler than last week's 90+ degrees. It was only in the high 60's. They had a very popular band and with the beautiful weather the crowd showed up! It was packed.

With the large crowd we were busy selling drinks to go along with the fantastic smelling pulled pork that one of the local restaurants was selling outside next to us. Here are the 96 gallon recycle bins loaded with empty beer bottles - now that is a lot of beer!

I have a bunch of errands to run today and tomorrow I will be spending some long hours with the band. The Michael Weber Show is the headlining at the Streetsboro Family Fun Days. I will be running the merchandise booth. The band doesn't go on until 8:30 p.m. so it will be a late night for me.

Maybe Sunday I will have time to get back to quilting the Halloween quilt.

Have a great weekend!

New light & new project

I have a clamp swing arm lamp over my sewing machine and it had issues. The switch to turn it on and off didn't work and the clamp that the lamp went into was broken. I had tried to glue and tape the clamp back together, but it was on its last leg so I got a new lamp.
Old lamp

Nifty new lamp

A new project I have is to make a small quilt for a young fellow, Justin, who works at the museum and will be graduating with his masters this fall. He is quite talented. He has designed and constructed clothing and he done illustrations for several published books. We have such a strong connection with our love of sewing and the arts. He auditioned for Project Runway several years ago and Mondo wanted him on the show, but he did not get picked. I think that was a good thing, because he is such a sweet person if there were a bunch of cut throat designers in his group they would have broke him. Justin gathered up a bunch of his favorite clothing items he can no longer wear and some scraps of fabric from clothes he made and I am going to make him his quilt with these. He is leaving it up to me as the artist - that always cracks me up when he says that. I guess because what I do comes so easy to me so it doesn't seem like it is that special to be called art. Well, here is a picture of his items up on the design wall. Now I just need to get to work. I may have to hand quilt this one since some of the fabric has polyester in it. Free motion quilting and polyester don't mix at least on my sewing machine, but I could always just do regular stitching. It may be a combination of both - who knows at this point!

Hot time in the old town tonight!

I took a half day vacation Friday to work on Michael's vest and because I was still feeling terrible from the heat at the museum Thursday night. When I left work at 11:30 Friday this was the temperature

Saturday I finished his vest and put together another pair of pants. Here is Michael backstage with his bass player before the concert they played at on Sunday late afternoon. His mom and I made the pants - the shirt was already in his wardrobe.

I drank a bottle of Pedialyte on Saturday and by that evening I was feeling better. One of the women that works at the art museum recommended it. The taste was not so great, but it worked.

Here is the other pair of pants that I made. Michael's mom will hem them. She wanted these for him when the band plays at the next event this upcoming Saturday night. The Michael Weber Show is the headlining act! He will wear his black fringe vest and a red shirt with these crazy pants!

Here is the merchandise tent on Sunday. Thank goodness I had a tent - it was hot! We sold 25 CD's and 16 t-shirts.

People were enjoying the music and the band got a standing ovation at the end. Several comments were that they were very entertaining and they needed to be on the big stage. There is a big covered stage at the other end of the concourse where all the big acts play. Michael was playing on the tiny elevated platform at the far end of the concourse. He has played the big stage several years ago when he had the band with his school mates. Here is one cute lady that was smoking her stogie and dancing to the music.

I did not get any of the Halloween quilt quilted, but I did get the glass to get these two frames done. The frame on the left was a picture my son did in school and the right frame are my Jimmy Buffet backstage passes, tickets, and guitar picks.

Art museum and vest

It was hot last night to work at the museum. They put the band inside and not on the asphalt parking lot that had been baking in the sun all day, but the beverages were still outside. We had shade and a breeze once in awhile, but it was still hot. Thank goodness I took my cool towel! It made all the difference. I kept dunking it in ice water and tied it around my neck.

I still felt pretty bad when I got home after almost 3 hours in the heat standing on concrete. I went to bed and elevated my legs, but at 4:15 a.m. I woke up with a pounding headache. Hello Excedrin!

I was up early so I decided to work on Michael's vest. I got the side seam sewn and it is ready for the lining to be attached to the vest fabric.

I need to make fringe so this morning I decided to glue wrong sides together of the vest fabric to see how stiff it would make the fabric. I did one sample with the glue right out of the bottle. I used this leather glue - it is good stuff!

Then I also did a sample where I watered down the glue. It is the sample on the right and you can see it is darker where the water soaked thru the fabric. I am going to take a half day vacation today so I can work on this and by noon the fabric will be dry and I will be able to tell which method with the glue will work the best. I have to have the vest done for Michael to wear Sunday. I will take a picture of him in his new outfit and post on Monday.

So this weekend I need to get the other pair of pants done for Michael and I may have time to get a few blocks quilted on the Halloween quilt. Have a great weekend!

Unexpected company

I had company last night so no sewing was done. I was glad to see a friend I hadn't seen in about a year so it was good! She brought me two jars of her homemade strawberry jam, one jar of her homemade spicy blueberry jam, and some pieces of fabric! What a fun gift!

Tonight and tomorrow night I have events at the museum I am volunteering for, so I think I will have to take a half day of vacation tomorrow to sew together the vest for Michael. He needs the vest for Sunday.

Vest and mowing

Last evening I made the pattern and cut out the lining, fabric, and interfacing for my nephew's vest. I will sew it together tonight. Here are all the pieces and parts laid out on my sewing table.

I went outside at 7:15 p.m. to mow. I planned on only mowing the front and that is what I did. It was miserable outside. After mowing I spent 5 minutes pulling up the thistle and some crazy grass in the center flower bed. It was easy to pull since it had rained that afternoon. Here is a picture of the pile of weeds and will throw them in the compost pile later. I was just too hot to do it. I was only outside 35 minutes, but that wiped me out!

More show clothes to make

The quilting will be on hold awhile as I switch gears to sew clothes for my nephew. Yesterday his mom, my sister-in-law, found some fabric that looked like leather for a vest. This vest will go with the brown swirly pants we just made. I have a vest that I need to make a pattern from and then I can construct the new vest. I didn't feel good last evening so I didn't accomplish much except going to the library and the drug store to pick up some pictures I had printed.

I received my prize for the Quilt your Quilts challenge that Glen at Quilt Swissy sponsored. There were two books, a magazine, triangle paper, two patterns, some great fabric scraps, and a tomato pincushion. What fun! The best part is that I got all those quilt done!

Many hats - roadie, quilting, sewing

What a weekend! Saturday I went to Youngstown with the band. We set up a merchandise tent with Michael's first CD.

Thank goodness the band only played one set, because it was 90 degrees and they did not have any shade. They did a great job and the crowd loved it. We sold 17 CD's!

I had to stay at the merchandise tent so I needed something to do before the band played so I decided to start taking apart my son's t-shirt quilt which needs fixed. His dog decided to get a little rough with it. Why? We have no idea, because she had never done it before or since. Here is the damage Addie Lou inflicted on the quilt

I made this back in the day when I did not quilt as heavily as I do now so it is pretty easy to take the quilting stitches out. I don't know that I am going to be able to salvage the backing fabric. The fabric is so thin that I can just poke my finger thru it.

After I got home Saturday from Youngstown and Sunday morning I had time to catch up on the TDF. Sunday they were heading up for a mountain finish at Mont Ventoux (pronounced von-too). Here is profile of the race course. Very flat until the end. It was a long stage at 151 miles! Can you even imagine pedaling a bicycle for 151 miles in 6 hours?

Here is a shot of Mont Ventoux. It is over 6000 feet, above the tree line, and that is a weather station at the top. You can see all the campers parked along the road.

While I watched the TDF I managed to get three blocks quilted on the Halloween quilt.

Sunday afternoon I went back to my sister-in-law's to work on Michael's pants. Here they are ready to hem. I need to adjust the pattern a bit, but overall Mom is pleased with the pants.

Since we are in such a time crunch, I am going to make the next pair by myself and then the third pair we will work on together. Here is the fabric for the next pair.

On my way to work I saw four little heads peeking out of the storm sewer. They took off across the yard following mamma.