Slow going

I worked on one t-shirt all weekend and it is still not done. I finished up the AC/DC logo at the top. I bought some shiny metallic thread and used it for backstitching the inner row around the letters. It is hard to capture it in a picture, but it added just a bit of shine. While I stitched I had on a new channel that show a lot of martial art movies. This weekend was all 5 Kickboxer movies. They are pretty bad movies - lame story lines and bad acting. It was funny to see one particular actor that played one bad guy character in two of the movies and then he got brought back and played a completely different bad guy in the fourth movie of the series.

For the word Ballbreakers, I outlined the letters in the satin floss. This took hours and hours, but I like the way it came out. Here is picture of it in progress and then done so you could see the difference it made.

I used a running stitch or quilted the background following the rays of blue that came from the Angus figure in the middle.

I want to put the year the Ballbreakers album was released, so I found my stencil and with tailor's wax marked the shirt.

After I outline the date and embroider a border around the shirt then this shirt will be 100% done.

I did cook a little, did some laundry, a little walking, washed dishes, and watered the seedlings also. The Shasta daisies are looking good

The poor daylilies are being ravaged by the deer. They come in the night and eat the flowers! You can see here that this group has flowers only in one area because the deer have eaten the rest. They also stepped on my zinnias and one of the plants was halfway pulled out of the ground. I stuffed it back in, but I didn't have time to give it a drink of water so it might die.

Working that needle!

I finished the "Let". Here is what is looks like now.

I managed to get a lot done on the next shirt. I think I will outlining the letters again right along the letters. I am thinking about going to Pat Catan's and getting some of the shiny fuchsia to add an little extra bit of interest. It is fun to play around and see what happens!

We got a downpour for a half hour yesterday. I mean it poured! There was some flooding around town, but I had no issues. The humidity levels are very high though. This morning I went to look out the windows in my studio and the condensation was heavy.

I am so glad it is Friday! You know what I will be working on this weekend. Hope you have a great weekend!

Nose to the grindstone

It got up to 87 yesterday so as soon as I got home from work I had to give the seeds and canna a drink. After I was done it was down to the studio to embroider. I also embroidered at lunch time and a bit this morning before work and this is the result - the "there" is done and part of the "Let" is done.

Once the "Let" is done I will move on to the next shirt. I still have the area in the center of the shirt that I don't know what I am going to do. It needs some stitching, but what? I will figure it out eventually, but in the meantime I will keep stitching.

The plan I had last year that worked well was to get some stitching on each shirt, then go back and keep adding more as time permits. I have 64 days to get this done plus I have a t-shirt quilt to get made for a fundraiser which is the day after the AC/DC quilt is due. I can see me taking some vacation to get both of these projects done.

A little progress

After work I headed to Pat Catan's (a craft store) with a 50% off coupon. I wanted some of these floss holders as I could not find the ones I had bought years and years ago. I want to hand dye some floss so these hold the floss so it doesn't get all tangled.

I saw this floss. I bought one skein to see how it stitches up. It is a bit shinier than the regular DMC floss and I think it could add another bit of interest to the AC/DC piece. It comes in about 10 colors so if I like it I will have to get more. The hot pink and purple were gorgeous.
I am showing it next to the regular floss so you can sort of see the difference.

I spent way too much time wandering around Pat Catan's. I finally made myself leave and next thing you know I was wandering around the library. I had some books, a CD and DVD's that I took back, but then I wandered over to the new books and then to the CDs, etc. Next think I knew it was twenty after five! I headed home gathered up trash and the recycling for todays pick up, watered the seeds and canna, cooked some dinner, did some dishes, and did a load of laundry. Yes, life was interfering with my stitching time! I only managed to get the "BE" done. I say it is better than nothing!

Her are a few pictures of the flower beds. With the water the zinnias are getting because I am watering the coneflower seeds, the zinnias are growing like crazy. I know they are hard to see in this picture, but this is what they looked like on Saturday. You can just see them toward the top of the pictured mixed with the leaves from the daffodils.

Here is what they look like this morning. They have double in size since Saturday. I will just have to keep a watch out for the beetles that like to eat the leaves. I think they show up in July.

My Shasta daisies that I planted from seed two years ago are just covered with buds and have just started to bloom.

That took how long to embroider?

No messing about last evening. After I gave the seeds and canna a drink of water and threw the sheets in the washer I started working on the AC/DC piece while I watched reruns of Top Gear and the Tony Awards which I had taped. So let's call it 4:30 to 8:00 and this is what I got done - I finished the 1977 area. Aren't those blue stars cute?

Then I started working on the lettering that says "Let There Be Rock." The ROCK is done. The texture that the backstitching gives is wonderful. I wish you could feel it! Here it is and the next picture shows you the different the embroidery makes to the letters. It just makes me smile! I was on the fence with the light blue/green on the outside of the lettering, but now I like it.

I saw another doe in the backyard this morning having breakfast. She looks pregnant to me so there may be another fawn shortly.

This morning I had a few minutes so I added a few more pieces of fabric to the baby quilt that is on the design wall. Here is what it looks like now.

What was I thinking?

I received a phone call from the fellow who will be photographing all art for the Akron Art Prize. He was wondering if I could do some sewing for him. As it turned out it was repairing a photography tent for photographing luxury cars. The person who was going to do it has a six week waiting time. This person makes sails. Of course, I said that I don't have the space or the type of heavy duty industrial machine to do this type of work and gave him some ideas on who he might contact.

This phone call got me to thinking. It is almost mid-June so how much time do I have to get my piece embroidered and finished? As of today, I have 67 days. Take off a day to face bind the piece and sew on the rod pocket, and that gives me about 3.5 day's time to embroider each shirt. Now that seems like a lot of time, but I have a full time job. I worked Saturday and Sunday on one shirt so I would say it is half done. Some shirts won't take as long. I am starting to get in a rhythm so the work is going quicker. No more making quilts with the UFO strips; I have to concentrate 100% on my AC/DC piece. Here is the shirt and two detail shots of what I have done so far

I spent 5 hours this weekend working in the front yard. Here is the bed closest to the street that needed the major TLC.

Here are the weeds pulled. The ground is pretty hard. We got all of 1 minute of rain this weekend.

I planted the canna I had from last year. They were planted in back of the cora bells. I saw two rhizomes that still had a bit of life left in them so they got planted and were give a big fat drink of water. I will just have to cross my finger that something comes up. The bed looks a lot better!

In the center bed I planted more Shasta daisy seeds and coneflower seeds. I watered them several times yesterday as the sun was hot and drying out the soil. I did notice that the zinnias that came up from last year's seed are growing fast!

There was a doe and fawn in the backyard early Saturday morning. The fawn can't be more than a couple days old.

A life of it's own ...

That is what I feel like with this UFO project! It seems to have taken on a life of it's own! What started out to be was to make a few baby quilt tops out of some strips I had cut last year has escalated into quite a project! Here are the strips I started out with.

So what happened? I needed a few more strips of this and then that and the next thing you know I spent 3 hours last evening cutting more strips! I had sorted thru all my grays at lunch and had a pile of smaller pieces (less than 3/4 of a yard, but more around less than half a yard) to cut into strips. I wanted more of a variety of prints and a selection of lighter to darker grays. I also hung the strips back up on the design wall so I could see what I had because having them in a pile was not working for me. I also sorted out the white background prints and cut a few more strips from smaller pieces I pulled from my stash so here is what I have now.

On top of that I started using some of the fabric I had set aside for a different UFO which is ok with me! Here is the fabric from the other UFO laid out on the design wall last year, but ended up in a pile that I have been pulling from.

I did "fix" the center squares I cut too small and have most of the lower left block sewn together. I used the narrower scraps I had left from cutting the squares and some of the pieces that were to be sashing in the previous picture.

I can see now I will need to cut more white background strips. Will it ever end? LOL! The good thing is that I am working on two UFOs at the same time, I am clearing out my stash of small pieces that have been buried in my stash for years, and I will have lots of baby quilt tops in case I need one fast. Once I get to the point where I have used up most of my strips, I will start finishing all the tops.

Last night I noticed a deer in the backyard. I haven't seen any for quite a while including any fawn.

Have a great weekend!