A busy weekend

Friday evening I went over to my brother's to see the newly remodeled Silver Swap Studios. It looks fantastic! I know the band will have a great time making music in this studio. My brother built an enclosed space for the sound board using a sliding door. This was the family room in the house, but once Michael was into playing music the space was taken over with drum sets, speakers, keyboards, and mountains of equipment. Now it is all organized.

Saturday and Sunday I spent working on the second piece I can't talk about. I got enough of it quilted that I could attached the facing binding. I have a little more than half of the binding hand sewn on. I have to post my pieces tomorrow so tonight I will be getting as much done as possible tonight.

I spent a fair amount of time running upstairs to the kitchen from the studio making sauce and a big pot of beef vegetable soup.

I had bought a chuck roast for the soup. I used only half of it for Sunday's batch, so I got out my new toy and vacuum packed the other half. This is the first time I used my Food Saver since I bought it several weeks ago. It took me a couple of tries to learn where to place the bag in just the right spot for sealing. Once I did get it right it worked great.

The weather has been wacky here. It snowed Friday morning hard, but we got less than 1/2" and it was gone by afternoon. It is still cold and the temperature didn't get above freezing yesterday. The high was 27 degrees. This morning it is only 16!

More fabric?

I think I done lost my mind! Yes, I bought more fabric. This time it was Halloween fabric for two more Halloween quilts - twin sized - I want to make for gifts. I got a good deal on this fabric - 15% of the sale price.

I am going to have to collect more FQ of Halloween quilts and after looking at them it dawned on me the color pallet I need for each quilt. One will be made with green and orange fabrics and the other with at least purple. I have yet to find pink Halloween fabric.

I ordered a bunch of spider web fabric with a off white background and black spider webs for these quilts as the fabric that would be in each block, but apparently their inventory was incorrect so I got none. I was not happy. Fabric.com was having an extra 15% off so the white spider web fabric was also a great price. I had to spend some time yesterday searching the web for this fabric. I found 8.5 yards in a shop in South Dakota and it is on it's way to me. I need to figure out how many more yards I will need.

I have been working on the project I can't talk about. I started machine quilting it a couple of days ago and I plan on working on it all weekend.

Have a great weekend!

More fabric!

I finally received my backorder from December. This came from Hancock's and it is one more drum fabric to add to the pile. I know when I do my stash report at the end of the month my stash will have grown more than what I used. I still have another order of fabric coming this week.

I now feel I have a great start on a collection of fabric with drums on them to use for the next baby quilt for a drummer. I will keep adding more as I find them and will place them in their own separate pile on my fabric storage shelves so I won't have to sort thru all my music fabric when looking for drums.

I got started on pin basting my second piece I can't talk about. I am really going to have to focus to get this piece done and the next top completed as I need to submit photos by next Tuesday.

Progress on the project I can't talk about

I finished sewing together my second piece. Tonight I will get it pin basted and then I will work on getting my third piece constructed.

Today at work I have to make a road trip to deliver Operation and Maintenance manuals to the school district. I have been collecting these from the contractors and I now need to pass them on. Here is my load today which consists of 25 binders. I sure hope I can get all of these in the car!

Student's work and Art & Ale

I received an email from one of my students from the workshop. Jane included a picture of the piece she made and it is wonderful! Jane did a fantastic job!

I worked at the Art & Ale event at the Akron Art Museum on Friday night. Here is the view from my station before the crowd arrived.

They had tasty food too. Pulled pork sandwiches, perogies, beef stew with mashed potatoes, cheese, and mini cupcakes. The mini cupcakes only had 30 calories each!

Sunday I made cookies for the guys at work for St. Patrick's Day. The second batch got a bit dark, but they still taste good.

I finished my first piece that I can't talk about. I really need to work hard this week and get at least the tops done for the other two pieces I want to submit. The date for finished pieces was extended which is a big help. Here is just the back corner of on of the pieces. Sorry this is all I can show.

I wore my shamrock socks today for St. P's day in honor of my great grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side who immigrated to the US from Ireland.

This morning as I getting ready to leave for work I heard a bird with an unusual call. I keep looking around to try and figure out where the sound was coming from. Then I saw a large bird in the neighbor's tree. I think it must be some kind of hawk. If you make the picture bigger you can see the bird in the center of the picture. I zoomed in as far and I could with my camera and took a few steps closer, but I didn't want to get too close. Pretty cool!

Oops I did it again!

What a person to do when Timeless Treasure musical novelty fabric is on clearance and the shipping is free? Well, you have to buy some! This fabric came from Hancock's in Paducah.

I have another order of fabric coming - clearance fabric with an extra 20% off and free shipping. Wait to you see that load!

I was channel surfing last night and found a sports channel that I didn't know I got. Most of the commercials are in Spanish, but the commentators all speak English. What caught my eye on the menu was CYCLING! I already missed a couple of races, but now that I found this channel I will be able to keep up with the smaller races. This race is in southern Italy and oh the scenery!

Here is the scenery I am looking at

And the daffodils are probably wondering what is going on!

We were very lucky and only got 1 or 2 inches after the rain turned to snow. One of the fellow had a hard time driving on the interstate this morning because it was covered with ice. He saw a lot of cars in the ditch on his way to work.

How can I resist a sale?

I buy much of my fabric on-line because I look for specific prints especially in the area of music novelty fabrics. I need to keep stocked up on music fabric - I never know when my brother will need another quilt for his music friends. Here are pictures of my newest fabrics and I just love them

I love the scale of these large musical notes! The large notes are Andover fabrics and the small notes are makower uk.

Then I needed more fabric with drums on them. The large scale ones are again Andover and the gray one in the middle is makeover uk

Then I can always use another guitar fabric - Timeless Treasure - and the stripe was just another fun Andover that was part of the music fabric collection.

After washing I will add these to my music fabric stash. Does this seem like a lot of music fabric to you? I like using a lot of different prints in my quilts so I am happy to add a few more pieces to the mix. More choices is better as far as I am concerned especially when you get it on sale!

Here is what the daffodils looked like on 3/8/14

This is what they looked like last night

They might be thinking about retreating with the weather rolling in today. It is raining right now, but supposedly it is going to turn to snow this afternoon. We'll see.