Binding ready

The binding is ready

Cookies made for the tillers - oatmeal raisin

Got two more AC/DC shirts in the mail

My daffodils are looking pretty! I need to get out and weed before the weeds really take hold. The rain on Saturday will soften the ground and Sunday the sun is suppose to shine so it would be a good time to attack them.

Onward binding!

I did manage to finish quilting Nocturne last evening!

Now it is onto the binding. I pulled out the fabric I have left which are a bit bigger than a FQ. My plan right now is to match the color of the binding to the quilt top meaning navy binding to the navy, cream binding to the cream area, etc.

I wasn't sure I was going to get the quilting done because I had to make a batch of cookies last evening at the last minute.

See I have been watching the tile guys on the job site. They are very nice and don't have any problems with me watching. I told them I might pick up some tips! When talking to one of the fellows I was telling him about my bathroom tiling project and how I am having issues with cutting the tile with a tile snapper. He told me to bring my tile and he would cut it for me on their expensive tile saw for cookies! Thus the cookies! I don't know how much longer they will be on site since they are putting up tile very quickly so I needed to act fast! Here is one area they are tiling.

Almost quilted

Sometimes I think I must bore you all with my daily reporting of progress on whatever I am working on, but Charlene S. said "it inspired her to try quilting one day". So here you go Charlene S. your daily inspiration! LOL!!! I made great progress yesterday and I now am 91% done with the quilting! The area left to quilt is this corner with the navy fabrics. I should be able to finish it by bed tonight then on to the binding.

I have two more AC/DC shirts coming. I would really like to have a shirt to represent every studio album AC/DC made, but the shirts that I am finding for the last four albums I still need are all at the $11.00 to $18.00 price range! I keep looking for a bargain. I have a bit more time so will hold off for a while longer before I start constructing this piece.

What a weekend

It was a busy, tiring weekend. Saturday I helped with the band. They were playing a private party. We left my brother's house at 4:15 and I got home at 11:45. The load in and load out went very easy for once.

While I sat at the venue by the merchandise booth I knitted. My scarf is now 44" long.

I was still tired when I got up on Sunday. I quilted a bit and made a batch of cutout cookies to take to my brother's for lunch. There were 10 of us for lunch. Here is some of food. Some of the veggies and the bake potatoes are not on the table yet.

It was so nice outside that we ate outside and watched the deer in the backyard. My SIL feeds the deer and talks to them all the time. The deer are pretty tame.

I now have 80% of the quilting done on the Nocturne quilt. I varied the size of the line quilting from wider at the top to narrower at the bottom.

Ready for the weekend

I was really tired last evening so I didn't do much. I did get three Lenten roses dug up for one of the fellows at work. The one on top of the trash bin was in the front of the house which gets the southern sun so it was not as big as the other two. It had lots of new growth so it will be fine. The fellow at work has a shady spot the needed a bit of color and he said that those would do the trick. He also had a lot of deer and the deer don't touch these as they are poisonous to them.

I need to go and work on my bed of these plants. Right now it is just a mess, but the plants are still pretty and I love that they bloom so early.

Here is my only white one. I did notice that I had some new plants coming up from seed. I may have to be more diligent and try to save some seed from the white plant and try again to grow more.

I did get to use my nifty new spade/shovel I bought a month ago. I was unsure that it would really work as good as they showed in the demonstration, but it did! I have pure clay soil and it is tough to dig! One of the Lenten roses had a big root ball and this tool went thru the tough soil and root ball so much easier than using a regular shovel. I am now looking forward to doing some gardening since I know this tool will make it easier!

Just as I got the everything put away from the digging it started to sprinkle. I headed in and decided I wanted to wind the skeins of yarn I bought last weekend into balls.

I got 3 more inches knitted on my scarf.

and the wide backing that I bought on sale from Connecting Threads showed up.

It is going to be a busy weekend. Saturday the band is playing a private party so I will go to help with luging equipment and manning the merchandise booth. We have to take our own sound system. That means a lot more very heavy equipment to load in and out, and my poor brother will be stressing more than usual. I always feel that the more I help with the loading it helps my brother's stress level to be a tiny bit lower. On Sunday I was invited to Easter lunch. I plan on working on the Nocturne quilt and I have a few other projects I would like to get started.

Have a great weekend!

Back to quilting and a bit of knitting

I went back to quilting on the Nocturne quilt last evening. I am now 63% done with the quilting!

I knitted at lunch yesterday and a bit last evening. I now have 19" done.

Another AC/DC t-shirt arrived in the mail yesterday too. I only need a few more and I can start the construction of this piece!

Picking fabric - the scale of it all

I wish I could take credit for putting together the Nocturne fabrics, but I cannot. This was a Moda collection. There were a few pieces in the collection that are not in my quilt - the shop where I had bought them did not have the entire line. There was one piece they had but I did not like it at all

Breaking down each color in the collection into groups demonstrates what I think is one of the most important aspects of putting fabric together and that is SCALE. By scale I mean the size of the design - small, medium, large. Along with the size of the prints the other big factor is of course COLOR. In this group of Nocturne navy background fabrics, you can see how the size or scale of the prints goes from large to small left to right. There is also the creams, grays, and medium blues which pick up the other colors used in the collection.

Here is the gray group. You can see that the large gray circle piece is not the same gray as the other pieces in the collection so it is not so matchey matchey.

The creams

And the only two medium blue the shop had.

Another thing to look at with this collection is the use of geometic shapes. Whether it be a stripe, zig zags, circles, etc. a geometic adds an element to keep the group from looking flat and boring.

Here is a small group of blues I put together. I think there are too many small prints or tone on tone fabrics in this group and what's with the yellow and turquoise fabric?

I am just making a baby quilt so I am going with what I have collected. This is how the top turned out

I think the zig zag fabric is too light and again too many small prints. Is it the end of the world? No. I will quilt it and somebody will love it.

It makes me rethink these other groups I have put together for baby quilts. Looking at these again I am basically dealing with one main color for each group and not four colors like the Nocturne collection. When a collection is being designed it is much easier to evenly distribute the colors across the entire collection than to go out to the marketplace and try to find fabric that would work this way! I have a group of whites, grays, and black that I plan on paring with these stripe sets - I will talk about those next.

Here are the black, gray and whites I have cut from my stash. It contains all kinds of prints including text and geometrics

Here are the small prints pulled out of the group

The mediums

And the large

An interesting thing is just because a fabric is a medium in this group doesn't mean it can't be a small in another group. Here is the snowflake fabric with a small and a large print which makes the snowflake a medium print

Keeping the snowflake fabric and paring with two different fabrics changes the snowflake fabric into being the small print

I hope this has helped in someway. You need to just mix it up a bit! Have fun!

Ad Hoc Improv Quilt group and progress on all fronts

I link up to Fret Not Yourself and Sew Slowly's AHIQ posts. This is an on-line group that gets me and my work! I have acquired a few more AC/DC t-shirts for my piece for the Akron Art Prize event this summer. It will be made in the spirit of the piece I did last year which was improv pieced, free motion quilted, and embroidered. That pieced is shown in my bog banner. I have another shirt on it's way, but I still would like a few more. I am trying to get a shirt that represents every studio album they have made. The ones I have bought so far are a mix of reproductions and vintage. Vintage shirts are expensive! I have been trying to stay under $10.00 a shirt, but I might have to break that rule to get the shirts I need. Here is the what I have so far.

I worked on the Nocturne quilt and I am now 58% done with the quilting. I didn't get as much done as I wanted last evening - I had to do some cooking and dishes needed done.

I knitted at lunch yesterday and now my scarf is 12 1/2" long.

Doing and undoing

Sunday was the first day of spring, but I woke up to a heavy dusting of snow! Bummer! Here are my first blooms on the daffodils that happened before the temperature dropped Saturday night. Daffodils are tough and this cold spell won't bother them.

I went to the yarn shop to get another skein of yarn so I could finish my scarf. Since the yarn is hand dyed there is a lot of variation from skein to skein. I couldn't resist buying a few more.

I had brought my scarf for matching and the lady at the shop suggested that I knit two rows with one skein and two rows with the other skein to blend them. I first tried just adding the second skein and there was too big of a color difference.

I ended up tearing out the scarf down to two or three rows and started over.

I now have about 10 1/2 inches knitted. It a good thing I am not in a hurry to get this done, but it was a lesson learned when knitting hand dyed yarn. I had never use it before, thus the mistake.

I did work on my Nocturne quilt on Sunday. I am now 48% done with the quilting!

While I quilt I am always thinking what the next project is going to be. I have some quilt backing coming from Connecting Threads. They were having sales last week so I got an excellent deal on it. Some of the backing will be for the next project.

I also made time to go for a hike in the woods. The snow had disappeared by the time I headed out. It was nice and peaceful and I didn't run into another person the whole time I was in the park.

I took an unmarked path to just see where it went. It dead ended here so I turned around and walked back to the main trail.