Photographing fabrics.........
I took advantage of the coupon sale at Batiks Plus a couple weeks ago. These 3 fabrics look fabulous together. However when I tried to photograph them to show you, I can't get true color. The honeysuckle is truer color in this picture. This one was taken under the daylight fluorescent bulbs in my studio.

The violets are truer in this second picture. This one was taken under a lamp with a regular light bulb.
This is why you don't really see the true beauty of a lot of quilts in pictures. Purples photograph as blues a lot of the time.

My class went well yesterday and I had my camera with me but I totally forgot to take pictures. I guess I need to get it out and have it sitting on the table to remind me.

Laura, you asked me a question in the comments yesterday but you are a no reply comment blogger. If you enable your email in Edit Profile I would be able to email you back.

Second group for second class..........
Was that title confusing enough? I had more people in the Double 4 patch class than we had room for in the designing stage so I had half of them meet last Friday and the rest will meet today. The store isn't open on Mondays so we will have the place to ourselves. I finally had a chance to do some sewing on my scrappy blocks, some finished and 3 still in pieces. I am using the leftovers from the basket quilt that I was working on (and that still isn't finished).
Here is one more picture of the view from my kitchen window, taken with the zoom feature. If you click on it you will see many different varieties of hostas. My coneflowers are getting tall back there but because they don't get much sun they will bloom later than the ones in the front yard.

We had glorious low humidity and sunshine with cooler temperatures yesterday. All of my windows were open so I could breathe real air. I am not a big fan of air conditioning but have to run it on the really steamy days.

Update on nature and students' work..........
I planted a couple zinnias in this little round flower bed. The coneflowers are getting ready to bloom too. I had white ones in this bed but some have reverted back to pink.
There were just 2 in the class yesterday but several from the Tuesday class stopped by to see how they were doing. Here is the top ready for borders that one student made.

This second one is more of a denim blue. They made good progress today and I am proud of them.

The second day of a garage sale is usually slow so I am glad I only needed to be open for 2 hours. A lot of stuff left the garage even though a few of the things were free things. Getting rid of the stuff is the main goal. If I got paid for some of it that was a bonus. Today I'll sort through what is left and figure out what gets donated where and what I can just pitch. I got enough tables down to get my van in the garage before it started raining last night.

Two more hours of garage sale.......
There definitely weren't very many shoppers out yesterday for the garage sales. We heard later that a couple subdivisions had big neighborhood sales. I did get rid of a lot of stuff but not for big bucks. I did sell Dad's chair and ottoman and a little bookcase of his as well as almost all of Mother's kitchen stuff. In the picture yesterday what looked like fabric was record albums. I had a little fabric in the sale but not much.

At 1 I had to be at the store for the second class of the Double 4 patch. I didn't realize until I was ready to post this picture that the student is dressed to match her quilt.
Debbie used a lot of older fabrics for a wonderful colorful version.

I helped on the shopping for the fabric on this next one and the colors worked beautifully.

There are soft muted greens in this one to give a little lift to the brown and beiges. I gave Lisa an assortment of fabrics to mix in with the ones she already had and it is turning out great. There is a lot of texture to some of the prints.

I have the second half of the Strip Pieced Kaleidoscope class for the second bunch of ladies today. I will have the garage sale open from 8-10 and then teach from 10:30-2. There are only 2 ladies left in this class because one switched to the Tues. class for class 2. They should be able to get a lot done today.

One front came through and dropped the humidity yesterday and last night cooled down enough to open the windows overnight. Today is supposed to be hot and more humid again and then they promise a nice week next week in the low 80's. This past week has been way too hot for me.

Is there anything uglier than a garage sale.........
I took this picture after I had pulled my wheelbarrow back in and the vacuum cleaner is still sitting there. I'll be so happy when this sale is over. I'll tell my dad it is the LAST one. But I think I said that a couple years ago....
The lilies are working overtime. I need to get out there and pick off the dead blossoms.

It was another scorcher yesterday. My neighbors are on vacation so I paid my grandson to come and cut the grass in both yards.

I have had this basted for over a week.........
but I can't seem to find the time to start quilting it. I have been working on the garage sale stuff. It will be good to have the garage cleaned and organized again. Meanwhile I am having quilting withdrawal.
If you want to see the whole quilt, go to the Labels list and click on Triangles and go down to the second post.

My son is going to send 2 guys over today to help move some of the furniture in the garage so I can do the final sweeping and set up the tables.

It is so amazing..........
all of the fabric choices in a class. Everyone's individuality sure shows up. I didn't get a picture of this first one up on the wall and I missed taking pictures of one person's blocks altogether.
Floral multicolor

four groups of strips used in this one

This one will end up being queen size With 5 fabrics you get a ring with the center fabric of the strata. Everyone did great today. We are going to meet for one hour next Tuesday to talk about assembly and borders.

More nature..........
Summer came in a hurry with several 90+ degree days in a row. It doesn't make you want to stay outside for very long. I am thankful for the air conditioning in my van. I remember the days of riding in a hot car with the windows open. Below is a little section in the front garden. I like the little bursts of color in between the all green plants.
This is the view straight out to the backyard from my kitchen window.

This is looking left from the kitchen window. Most of the backyard is a shade garden. Click on the pictures for a closer view.

Last night I met one of the readers of my blog. She came to my house to pick up the batik strips she purchased instead of having me mail them to her. I also helped her out with a binding fabric for a baby quilt. She has been to a lot of workshops too so we had lots to talk about. She also brought some of her work to show me. Her machine quilting on small pieces is spectacular. I kind of fall apart while doing really tiny stippling but hers was so nice and rounded. I am all fired up now to finish something.

Nature by the front door.......
The porch pots are filling in. I planted a fourth one, the one at the top left. The dirt below it is from the ants that invaded it and then left the first day it was on the porch.
The hydrangea blooms are getting bigger. I always have a few coleus plants with their colorful leaves in the corner of the flower bed.

This was the biggest hydrangea bloom so far.

I didn't do any sewing yesterday other than some of the preemie kimonos for our church project for an area hospital. We meet for our Tabitha circle today so I had to have my homework done.

Wedges cut........
My class was small yesterday so I had time to cut my wedges while they sewed. I did a lot of pressing for them so they could keep sewing. I also did a little ripping. One machine didn't want to behave itself.
Summer is officially here and we are feeling the heat already. I prefer 75 degrees myself.

Back to Kaleidoscope..........
Today I teach the second group of ladies how to make Strip Pieced Kaleidoscope. I usually make up some strip sets when I am teaching so I have something to demo the cutting on. This one will be a scrappy looking yellow to red wallhanging.
We missed out on the big storms yesterday morning. Up north of us they had lots of trees down, heavy rain and hail. We had nothing until last evening and even then it was only wind and moderate rain. We were lucky. My garden is still safe. I need to get out and take pictures and document which plants I have where and which ones need dividing because they are getting too big.

My neighbor across the street always has a big garage sale the last weekend in June. Her kids come down from Wisconsin and set up all of the tables and handle the sale. This year I need to open my doors the same days and see how much of my parents things I can sell along with some of my own. I have to teach a class at 1 on Friday so I'll only be able to be open from 8-12:30. The mornings are the best anyway.

Getting ready for another class........
Today I will teach the first session of Double 4 patch. I have a lot of short ends that I have sewn together for demonstrating the 4 patches. I line the first one up with the bottom edge touching a line on the mat.
Then I stack each one on top lining up the bottom edge on the next line so they are all staggered and no seams are on top of each other. I will now slice off a clean up cut and then 2.5" segments. It is never more than 4 thicknesses even when going over seams.

We had rain a couple times yesterday but missed out on the heavy storms that Iowa had.

Two more not so great choices...........
I guess the stripe is not at the same angle on each side of the V in the fabric. This one is enough to make you dizzy if you look at it too long.
I know the blue lovers will probably like this choice and it really is a little more periwinkle in real life. Even thought the blocks pop on it, I don't think it adds anything to it. I think my choice is going to be a white background fabric unless something else magically appears in my stash and says "use me".

Here are the flowers on my windowsill in my country kitchen. The coreopsis has such a sweet smell.

I have 8 students in my double 4 patch class which starts on Fri. afternoon. Most of the time I can't fill any classes and end up cancelling everything. I hope this is a new wave of interest in classes. I will have more time to teach now. Mother was the one with all of the appointments. Dad has one next week but probably won't have more than one a month or less if he continues the way he has been in the past. At 95 he only takes one prescription, for his thyroid.

Ruler info

This is the Kaleidoscope ruler..........
that I recommend for my class. It has the quarter inch lines drawn all the way across the ruler and it is also tall enough for several different groups of strips. One of the other brand rulers has medium green lines which I think are hard to see. Others don't have as many lines to match up with the width of your strip set. Also the complete directions for making a quilt are on the back of the packaging with this one. They are well written and are the ones I teach from.
I got up with a migraine yesterday, so I took my 3 Advil and taught my class. I had 5 super nice ladies in the class. When I got home I was too wiped out to work on any project. Here are the 2 fabrics that I am considering next for the fill ins on the project from last week.

The blue one is a little more periwinkle than it shows in the picture. Several people have commented that they think blue will work. I find blue to be cold but I do happen to like periwinkle or rich royal blue. Hopefully I will have pictures for you tomorrow.

I had a busy day...........
having my van serviced, running errands, taking Dad to the attorney and the bank, more errands for him and then preparing for the class I will teach tomorrow. I like to make what I call demo boards with instructions and sewn pieces to illustrate what the words are explaining. I am teaching strip pieced Kaleidoscope as a 2 part class. We had people who wanted a week day and some wanting a weekend day so I will be teaching it twice, Tues. and Sat. for 2 weeks. If you want to see my quilts, go to the Labels list on the right side column and click on Kaleidoscope quilts and it will bring up all of the posts where I showed them.
I have given the other project (shown the last few days) a rest for a day. I really liked hearing all of your opinions and reasons behind them in the comments. I have at least 2 more things to try yet.

One more choice...........
I won't have time to work on this again until late in the day tomorrow, so I tried one more mixed setting tonight.
You can see with the close up that they are squares, not dots. In this version there is the organized rows fabric and then the random assortment of squares in the other fabric.

I now have piles like this of 6 different fabrics.

I won't post again until tomorrow night or Tues. morning but I want to hear what all of you think of the choices in these last 3 posts.

And I thought this was going to be easy...........
I cut some black with white.
Then I cut some white with black and before I had exchanged all of the pieces, I took a picture with a little of each.

Then I finished filling in with all of the white with black.

I was thinking of this piece being light and airy and fresh looking. Although I like the black with white in the first picture I think it makes the piece look heavy. Of course I have a few more blocks to make to finish filling in at the bottom and I purposely have waited to see if they need to be lighter or darker.

I think the one with both of the prints in it confused the eye and the original layout of blocks which I think is strong, is not even noticed.

I like the white with black but I have one more fabric to cut and try.

I cut some dots.......

I started with the largest piece of fabric I had but I think this one is too dark and doesn't add anything.
I only have half or quarter yards of the rest of the dots. I tried this green with pink dots. I'm not getting excited yet.

I liked the white "holes" that were showing on the design board so I tried a white with lime green dots next. This one looks the best to me, but I may try a black and white print next.

Our rain stopped mid morning yesterday and the sun came out in time to dry the grass before the party at my neighbor's yard in the afternoon. My neighbor is the daughter of one of my good quilting friends and I was invited so I went over and met the sisters in law that my friend is always telling me about. They have extensive sewing backgrounds too so we had a lot of fun talking.

Blocks measured, layout drawn............
I made a layout of the blocks I have been working on and drew in a few that I have to make yet (marked with X's). I ran out of room on the right side of paper so the measurements are written in but the whole blocks aren't drawn. I will tape 2 pieces of graph paper together so I can finish it. I haven't had time to play with the fill in fabrics yet.
I spent a lot of time outside yesterday pulling weeds and planting flowers because rain was predicted overnight. That will give the flowers a good start. Next I have to tackle the aggressive plants and bushes. I will dig out a bunch of evening primrose and trim the gold mound spirea. The lambs ear is aggressive too so I will dig it out and move it somewhere else.

The ground cover at the bottom of the picture is 2 different kinds which travel by root and are really hard to control. I am going to try to dig it all out of that one section so I have a path through the garden. Gardening is rewarding but hard work. We have had perfect growing seasons for a couple years.

Squaring up............
I decided I would have to square up all of the blocks from yesterday so I can plot it out on graph paper to decide what size the fill in pieces will be.
Here are the little slivers trimmed away.

I'm auditioning some of these fabrics for the fill in blocks. So much for a nice safe solid color, huh????

The other option I will try is rows of half square triangle blocks. That almost sounds like too much work though.

The interview with Social Security went well for Dad. He was able to answer most questions and I was on the other phone to fill in information. We had a very polite and patient interviewer, much nicer than the person I called to find out what to do.