Exciting news!

I received a phone call last night from one of the coordinators for the Akron Art Prize. There is a gallery in Hudson that is going to show pieces from last year's exhibit that used more unusual materials and she asked if my AC/DC piece was available because she would like it in the show! Last year when they had this exhibit, they only picked 15 out of the 188 pieces of art from the 2015 show for this special exhibit so I feel very honored to be asked. The piece is the one shown in my header.

Meantime, I did get a bit done on my piece for this year's Akron Art Prize. I got the olive shirt with the orange star done and the small Green Tour piece. The material for the Green tour piece is actually nylon/polyester with a sweatshirt lining. I had to be careful because the nylon wanted to move around a bit so I had to hold the fabric in place so I didn't get any puckers.

I told the coordinator what my piece was going to be this year and she got very excited. She said she loves R.E.M.'s music so she is very interested to see what I do. Just because I apply for the show doesn't not mean I will get in, but I am going to try!

One Monthl Goal report

http://www.elmstreetquilts.com/p/omg-one-monthly-goal.html

My goal this month was to get the R.E.M. quilt top together. Well, I did that and more! I spent part of Sunday and all day Monday quilting the top. I stitched in the ditch around all the denim pieces and around the pockets to nail them down. Here is a picture of the back of the quilt showing the outline of one of the pockets. Yes, it is hard to see the stitching.

I got almost all the t-shirts quilted!

I have a little bit of this shirt left to quilt. I ran out of bobbin thread, it was going on 7:30 last night, and I was getting tired so I will finish quilting this shirt tonight.

and these two still need quilted

I did get an little embroidery and hand quilting done too. Now that the free motion machine quilting is almost done, I will be taking this everywhere with me to do the hand work when I have nothing else to do or I am sitting at the merchandise booth for my nephew's band. Our first gig is Saturday so I am ready!

Friday night I met with another door salesman and he had a better door with a better warranty for $1500 less than the fellow I signed with on Thursday. I cancelled the order with Thursday's guy and signed up with the Friday guy. I will get my new door July 21.

I spent a lot of time Saturday working in the yard. It was almost 80 and very humid so I could only work for about an hour before I had to go back inside and cool off. I trimmed, then went inside, I mowed the front and sides, then went inside, cleared out the weeds and tall grass around one of the pines, then went inside, and lastly I cleaned up the garage. I noticed that the Shasta daisies have flower buds already! These are the plants that I transplanted so all the rain with intermittent sunshine has done them good! I also had fertilized them so that may have helped.

These orange lilies have also shot up flower heads in the last few days. The deer will come along and eat some of the flowers, but not all so I will get some color.

The back yard is next on the list to attack. It rained hard again last night and the back stays wet longer so I don't know if it will dry out enough to mow tonight or not.

Crack-a-lackin'

I usually only concentrate on one project at a time, but I have several going on right now - the R.E.M. quilt and the AHIQ denim quilt. It's a three day weekend so I need to get crack-a-lackin' and work, work, work!

I got started on the quilting for the R.E.M. quilt last evening and this morning before I headed to work. I am planning on hand quilting the denim areas just to make this piece even more different than the last two pieces I entered into the Akron Art Prize. Here is what I have done so far. I am going to hand more hand quilting to the area with the purple triangles and I will be embroidering around the letters on the t-shirt.

I would have gotten more done except I had a fellow come to the house and give me an estimate on a new front door. I had replaced the door when I bought the house years ago, but it wasn't an expensive door and didn't hold up to the beating it takes with full sun in the summer and the weather hitting it constantly. I let the fellow doing the other work on the house just get me a door since the door that was in the house could not be locked - yes, I could not lock the house - and I was overwhelmed with driving 50 miles one way to work and trying to manage all the work that was being done on the house before I moved in. I just need a new door. As you can see the paint has peeled and the wood brick mold is rotting away. The new door I am looking at is 20 gauge powder coated steel, fully insulated, and heavy duty. It is not going to be cheap, but I won't have any more issues. Here is the current door - so sad!

Here are this morning's finds.

Have a great holiday weekend and be safe!

The battle won!

It was a battle getting those last three pairs of jeans taken apart. Rows and rows of stitching to take out, but I got them torn apart and I only stuck myself with the seam ripper twice! Here are all the backs laid out in no particular order.

Pickings were slim this morning in the parking lots.

AHIQ project progress report

I got to work on my AHIQ project as soon as I got home from work. I needed to take the jeans apart. It went fairly quick as many of the jeans were put together with a chain stitch so all I had to do is get the row started and I could just pull the stitching out in one long piece. I managed to get four out of the seven pair apart to the point where the backs are ready for using. I thought about taking off the pockets, but I think I will leave them. Some of them are sewn on so they will never come off so it would take a lot of work to try and get them off without damaging the fabric.

Here are the three pair left to take apart. I like that I have so many different colors of blue to work with!

Here is the pile of fronts with the waistbands still attached. I will use these for my second block for my AHIQ piece. Once I get all the jeans apart, I hope to figure out how I am going to put this quilt together and what second block I am going to use. If that wasn't enough, I would like to get this done for Father's Day. Yes, I am crazy! That gives me 25 days - plenty of time! LOL!!!

The to do list is growing fast. I found out last night that a box of Harley t-shirts is on its way to me so I can make another quilt to donate to the same fundraiser last year's went to. Here is last year's quilt in case you forgot what it looked like

The fundraiser is on August 19 so I need to get this one done asap! I found a bolt of P44F Pellon for backing the t-shirts in the fabric storage room this morning. Last night I couldn't remember if I had some or not so I was very happy this morning to find that bolt at the top of the closet! I need to watch sales to build my stock back up. I think it was about a year and a half ago that JoAnn's had it on sale and I bought over 125 yards. A t-shirt quilt can use up to 25 yards of the interfacing so I will go thru it quick.

Here is this mornings goodies from the parking lots.

Little progress

All I got done yesterday evening on the R.E.M. quilt was oiling my machine and winding a few bobbins. After mowing the grass I had over 19,000 steps for the day and I was tired! I did take a picture of the front flower bed and comparing it with the picture of when I first planted the transplanted ornament grass and Shasta daisies, I can see quite a difference.

Before

Currently

We have had rain, cooler weather the last couple days, and some sunshine which I think is giving these transplants a great start. I keep watching to see when the California poppies start coming up. They will fill in nicely between the transplants.

Here are the items that I picked up on my walks on Sunday, Monday and this morning. School is out June 7 so after that I don't expect to find much at all.

Done and fixed

I spent most of the weekend making and altering covers for my nephew. I forgot to take a picture of the one I altered, but here are the scraps.

My brother said the other two covers need just a little tweaking, but we can work on that after they come back from their road trip.

Sunday afternoon I took the pins out of the R.E.M. quilt, turned the backing around and got it all pin basted again.

I can finally start machine quilting it tonight. I dug out all my quilting thread and I am anxious to get started on the machine quilting.

Covers

I need to switch projects and get the covers done for my nephew. He needs them next week. I had two sections already quilted, so last night I quilted the long section. This cover is for an amp.

I also need to make a cover for this electric piano

and I have one more cover to modify and make smaller. The sewing is not difficult and shouldn't take me too long to get these done.

This morning's walk yielded some interesting finds. I gave the luge wrench to the custodian because I didn't want to carry it with me on my walk. He threw it in the trash bin. Oh well! I am trying to find the owner of the tool box. The driveway marker - well, I looked around the houses closest to the school to see if anyone had another one figuring some kid took it and then just tossed it at the school. I didn't see anyone close by that had any markers.

The quarter I found will go into my plastic wine glass that I have been keeping all the money I have found over the last 27 months. It is getting full!

Have a great weekend!

Change it or let it go?

I got the rest of the R.E.M. quilt pin basted

Then I decided to flip the quilt back so you could see the backing and saw the print for the backing was upside down. How on earth did I do that? Do I live with it or take the pin basting out and change it? In the bigger scheme of things is it really incorrect or is it just my perspective? Does it really make a difference? These are all questions I am asking myself.

Yesterday I went out to the job site mid-morning and saw a doe on the other side of the fence. She looked at me and when I got too close she took off running down the railroad tracks. She was over a mile away from the metro park. Last winter I did see deer tracks once in awhile on the job site. That is a five foot fence. It is hard to believe a deer can jump a five foot fence, but apparently they can!

I planted seeds last night. In the front bed I tossed in some California poppy seeds.

In the center bed I put lavender seeds to the left and coneflower seeds in the bare spot toward the middle. I had a mix of white and purple coneflower seeds. I watered them in. The forecast said it was suppose to rain today, but that has changed so I will have to water them again tonight and every night until it does rain. I hope I have better luck this year with the seeds than I did last year. Last year nothing came up except the zinnia seeds that self seeded.

This morning was all about finding money! This was a lot more than I usually find. I only found one pencil. The kids have either run out of pencils to lose or they decided to take care of the ones they had.

Pin basting

I got about 3/4 of the R.E.M. quilt pin basted last evening.

I had to mow the front last night, water the transplanted ornamental grass and the Shasta daisies, and do a load of laundry. I can see where there are some green blades coming up on the ornamental grass and the daisies look like they are doing well.

My brother sent me another picture of Captain and how that quilt perfectly fit his bed.

I wasn't sure if I would find any goodies on my walk this morning, but the kids did not disappoint me. The smashed pencils went into the trash.

Here are all the writing instruments I have found this school year so far.

Progress on the R.E.M. top

Last evening I found fabric in my stash for the backing for the R.E.M. quilt. I got it sewn together, pressed it, taped it down, and layered on the batting and top. I can start pin basting it tonight.

Remember those eight dog quilts I made last year that my brother wanted?

He really only needed four so he kept the four extra ones and has been giving them to other dogs. Last evening I got message from him that he gave another one away and here is the picture of Captain on his new quilt. How cute is this?

This morning's walk yielded this

The bow is now decorating my plant

This morning I had to go on the 11-month walk thru around the site with the sitework contractor, school district rep and the architect. Here is what I found that was lost by students between 7 am and 11 this morning after I had already picked up all the change, pencils and pens - those kids sure lose stuff!