Border prints

Here are pictures of the border prints I promised you. Right now I am cutting a piece of the sky to use in the piece I am making. I will use the rest of the fabric for something else. I took some close up shots so you could see the detail in these fabrics.

I used this next piece in my brother's wedding quilt. There is still the tone on tone parts that I will some of it in the piece I am working on.

The I have these pieces that are not the right color for what I am working on.

It got down to 40 degrees last night. I thought it would a good idea to cover my canna so I looked around the house for some boxes. I am sure glad I never got around to recycling the shoe boxes that have been sitting empty for 3 months!

A few days ago it was 91 and right now it is 44. Wacky!

Have a great weekend!

More sections sewn together

I made some progress last evening with getting a few more sections sewn together. This is what it looks like now.

Here is a close up so you can see the image.

I have several pieces of fabric that were given to me thru my brother by the lady who is the wardrobe lady for Jimmy Buffett. The fabric was designed and printed just for the shirts for JB's band. Many are border prints and this sea plane was in the sky part of one of the prints. I will have to take a picture of a couple of the prints and post tomorrow. They are interesting to look at and see all the imagery that was used like volcanos, palm trees, surf boards, grass shacks, and sharks.

We only got .54 inches of rain yesterday, but we are getting more today. This is what the radar looked like this morning.

I received a package from G yesterday containing a half yard of guitar fabric and a yard of the pianos the she got on sale at a shop going out of business. Thanks G! I will add this to my stash of music fabric.

Debating

I am working on my next project and I am debating on how to proceed. My signature way of constructing pieces is using two fabrics, double cutting, shuffling the pieces, and then stitching.

I kept thinking about doing the same thing except using more layers and shuffling those pieces so each section would have a variety of fabrics instead of just two.

I am making sky here. I think I need to make a few more sections of just two fabrics before I will be able to decide which way I want to go with this.

In my tour of the front yard last evening I found these blooming. I don't know what kind of flower these are, but the smell is strong. The leaves always come up way before the flowers show up. I always forget about these so it is a nice surprise every spring.

The weather service said we might get thunder storms last evening, but I decided to give my seedlings a drink anyway just in case it didn't rain. Yesterday it was very hot here and the top of the sweet peat was dry so I didn't want my seedling to shrivel up and die. Here are the zinnias on Saturday

and three days later look how much they have grown! I am just proud of myself that I actually got something to grow from seed!

About a half hour after I watered these clouds rolled in and it rained.

A busy evening

Last evening I sewed together two blocks left over from Homespun #4. They will go into Homespun #5 someday.

Dyed a couple pieces of fabric for different projects. Here they are still soaking until I wash them.

Laid out the group of fabrics I have been collecting for a project.

Cut some FQ pieces to send to Glen for her spool quilt.

Then I went outside at 7 p.m. to mow the grass. I got the front and one of the sides done and I was drenched. It was so humid with all the rain we have been having. I couldn't get the mower to start again so I gave up on mowing the back.

Well, then all heck broke loose. All I could think about is a song by Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills! Run for your lives!" The storms were rolling in. I was surprised that my satellite didn't go out. It usually does in just a little rainstorm. Here is the storm headed for Akron.

We had tornado warnings shown in the purple boxes. This does not bother me. I lived in Northern Indiana when I was a kid and severe storms and tornadoes were common.

Here there was some circulation just west of where I live. I live between where the map shows Fairlawn and North Akron.

Then it just keep getting closer. Pretty soon it was pouring down rain. There was lots of lighting and thunder. It was now about 9:15. At 9:25 the satellite went down so I decided to go to bed. The rain was easing up a bit by 9;45. This morning the guys said we got 1.33 inches in 45 minutes.

I was up at 3:30 and looked out the front window. All was quiet and there was a big ol' moon hanging in the sky.

The weather service is calling for rain almost every day for the next 5 days. I don't know if I will ever be able to cut the grass in the backyard. It is already very tall!

Car, cow quilt and gardening

Saturday I drove to my hometown and got a new muffler for the car. The car is so much quieter now! While I was at it I stopped at a Auto Zone and bought new windshield wipers. One of wipers on the car had a tear and it has needed replace for quite awhile. The lady at Auto Zone even put the new ones on for me! While I was in Dover I met up with my friend, had breakfast and then headed over to the quilt shop. The lady is closing the brick and mortar and going to just sell on-line so regular priced fabric was 20% off and clearance fabric was 40% off.

I bought these fabrics to go with the previous ones.

I picked up a few more Halloween fabrics. It would have been easy to buy a lot more, but I restrained myself.

On Sunday I got the cow quilt all sewn together, pinned basted and now it is ready for quilting.

I worked in the yard 2 1/2 hours to get my canna rhizomes planted. Here are the rhizomes in the bags I stored them in all winter. With the leaves poking out of the bags and I think they were telling me they were ready to be planted!

Here is the bed before I dug a trench to plant the canna.

Here is how it looks now with sweet peat as the mulch.

I was happy to see my Candy Cane Zinnia are coming up! I don't have the best of luck growing plants from seeds. I also have Envy Zinnias, which are green, sprouting too! The Shasta Daises have not come up yet. It rained early this morning so Mother Nature is helping me keep these alive!

I spend a lot of time yesterday washing and pressing all the fabric I have bought recently. I have a desk in my fabric storage room that I now have groups of fabric stacked together for quilts that need to be made. From left to right, Halloween - can you believe how much I have? That is for three quilts. The next are for an anniversary quilt - the peacock colors, and the next pile are the American Made Brand for a challenge that I would like to enter. I have a lot of sewing to do!

Progress on the cow baby quilt

After our first 80+ degree day since last summer, I first watered the seeds I planted after I got home from work. Wow - 81 degrees is a drastic change!

I managed to get all the cow blocks sewn and trimmed. This is going to be a fun quilt!

I have plenty of leftover fabric except I only have a FQ of the cow fabric to make some chunky piano key border.

This weekend the only thing I have planned is to get a new muffler for my car. I may have brunch with my friend, Peg, since I will be in the area for the muffler. The rest of the weekend will be working on the cow quilt and getting ready for my next project - Humm? I wonder what that will be?

Homespun #4 and binding done!

It was a beautiful evening, but I stayed in and sewed. It is not that enjoyable going for a walk when you have to carry a box of tissues everywhere you go.

I did get the Homespun #4 done! It turned out 50" x 59".

The binding is made of what pieces I had left. I think I sewed together 14 pieces to get enough binding.

I won't work on Homespun #5 next. I need to get the cow quilt done so I will start to sew those blocks together tonight.