The tables are finally cleaned off and the cookies baked. The art quilters will be here today. I laid the blocks on the table so I won't forget to show them today.
We're going into a warm spell now which is unusual for early November. I'll probably spend some time outside this week with fall clean up. The plants in most of my pots still look pretty good so I hate to dump them, but it is time.
As I was cleaning off tables in the basement I decided to leave this pile on a table that no one needs to use. It is a stack that I will cut for my own colorwash squares stash. They are all multicolor pieces so I rarely cut them for kits. When I'm doing kits I have to choose a variety of values in each color range and this group changes color too often.
This one can be used in pink, purple and blue areas of a colorwash.
This one will work in red, orange and gold areas.
Green, blue and pink will be isolated in 2.5" cuts.
Gold, beige and blue are the predominant colors of this one. I will have a stack of squares from each of these fabrics so I can go through the stack to find the piece that will work best.
I had a good time with my cousin and his wife yesterday. He is the cousin that was on the tricycle in the nostalgia photo I showed about a week ago. They went home with 2 quilts for themselves and one for their daughter. It is a wedding present for their daughter a few years late. Our plan was that they would pick it up and take it to her the next time they traveled to see her.
I added 4 columns on the right edge. I really wanted more purple in there.
Then I decided the right side was a lot darker than the left side so I added one more column on the left.
I thought the proportion was a little off now so I removed one column on the right. So it ended up with one column added on the left and three added on the right. I may substitute some darker blues in the bottom right corner from the column I removed.
Here is the photo from yesterday so you can see the difference. Tweaking comes next but I have a busy couple days coming up. My cousin and wife are in the area and stopping by to see me midday and we'll go out for lunch. Then I have to finish putting away things in the basement and bake cookies to prepare for the art quilters who are coming Monday.
I took out some of the dull green on beige prints and added some more yellows. If you go back to my post yesterday you might be able to spot the changes. I'm still not happy with it. I may add 4 columns on the right side and make it rectangular. I think I can leave this up on this design wall because we don't use it when the art quilters are here.
I was moving some boxes and found the one with pieces cut with this Sizzix die. I had to buy another adapter to use this die with my Studio die cutter. This die is one of Victoria Findlay Wolfe's designs. The pieces are just laying on the table, not sewn. I started cutting pieces from my Kaffe scrap box and I need to get back to it to have more choices for the blocks.
I started working on this colorwash over a week ago. I put a few pieces on it two days ago and yesterday decided I needed to fill it all in.
I had the last 2 innings of the World Series game on while I worked on it. I don't usually watch baseball but with our Cubs in it, I need to know how it comes out. Cubs won the game!!
I filled it all in but it needs a lot of tweaking. The brightest yellows might come out or get moved. I need to get my trays of squares back in their big storage box because the art quilters are coming next Monday.
I have been busy packaging and mailing colorwash kits that I sold and the studio desperately needs to be cleaned up. This is the main cutting table with my personal collection of batik squares. I had them out to help in the tweaking stage for the class last week.
This is another cutting table. I had sorted all of the scraps that I can cut for my own collection but haven't had time to do it.
My granddaughter invited me out to her house for pizza last night. My other granddaughter and her boyfriend were there too. I held the new baby who is 8 weeks old today. He is a smiley little guy.
I'm still searching for large floral prints in my stash. This one is a contender for the 8" squares.
This one looks more like a painting than a realistic flower so I'm not sure about it.
This one would have multiple flowers in an 8" square.
I could use this for the small squares around the edge or have multiple flowers in a large square. I will probably go ahead and do some fussy cutting and if they don't go in this quilt, they can be used in another quilt. Now I'll go through the Philip Jacobs and Kaffe fabrics for more large flowers. I know I'll find some there.
I have been working on a small project for a friend for about a month, just sewing a little every evening. I need to find the backing now and get it basted for quilting.
Yesterday afternoon I packaged lots of colorwash kits ready to mail this morning. I did a little outside clean up too, dumping the contents of the pots with Coleus. They looked pretty bad after the frost. My church sewing circle got cancelled for today so I hope to dig into a quilting project.
This is one of the fabrics I recognized in the Seed Packet quilt I showed yesterday. It is an Alexander Henry fabric from about 15-20 years ago. The big squares are cut 8" in the book. My ruler is 8.5" so I may change to that.
This fabric is a possibility too. I think they were mostly red and pink in the book. I probably will add in orange.
There are smaller blocks around the perimeter of the quilt so these may work there. I haven't opened my 2 boxes of floral fabrics yet so I'm sure I'll find a few more. Most of my floral prints are small to medium size flowers so I'll find more for the smaller blocks.
I found time to sit down and read most of this new hard cover Kaffe Fassett book. Does anyone call hard cover editions coffee table books any more? Kaffe discusses many types of color groups with beautiful still life arrangements illustrating them. There are also quilts (and directions to make them) and needlepoint designs in this book.
One of my favorites is his Seed Packet quilt. It is huge fussy cut flowers from his fabrics as well as other brands. It sounds like he is a collector of beautiful floral fabrics too. I recognized a few of the older fabrics. I love that red headboard too.
There are 2 sizes of squares so I will have to look for 2 sizes of flowers as I go through my fabrics.
This book from C&T Publishing came 2 days ago. I think Cindy Grisdela did a great job of explaining the elements and principals of design. I don't have any formal art training and I have read explanations before but the way Cindy explains them finally makes some sense to me. I'm usually just depending on what is visually pleasing to me. I have a drawer full of improv pieces and parts already made that I can play with to try out some of her ideas.
I listed one group of colorwash kits for sale on my Wandaful blog (link to it above the title of today's post and link also on my right sidebar above "My current favorite"). I may have some other kits to list but I'm waiting to hear back from some buyers first.
I have buds on several of my Christmas cactus plants. This one is red. About half of my plants were outside for a few weeks each. I'm hoping they will all bloom even if they didn't get to experience the hot humid summer outside.
The students were done tweaking their colorwash projects in three hours. One of them had a 5.5 hour drive home to MO so she was glad to be on the road early and home in daylight.
I will list my colorwash kits for sale tomorrow. I am just too tired after 2 days of class to do it right now.
One student is using a reducing glass to view her work and decide if anything needs to be moved.
Today will be tweaking day.
Another student is filling in the green area on hers. She was hoping to find more red batiks at home to cut and bring this morning.
I brought all of the colorwash samples down to the basement. I sorted them by the time period in which they were made.
I finished cutting the colorwash kits. They won't be available on my Wandaful blogshop until after the class finishes on Thursday.
I even had time to mow the grass late yesterday afternoon. The humidity level dropped and there was a nice cool breeze.
I just need 8 more fabrics and I'll be done with the colorwash kits. I spent all morning yesterday on errands and then did vacuuming and laundry. After that I chose another 25 fabrics to cut and pressed out the fold marks. I will de-lint the design walls today and move them into place for the class tomorrow and Thurs.
I pulled out my Nancy Crow fabrics and the Australian fabrics and chose some that I thought might work for the last 3 blocks.
After looking at them for awhile I took down the ones that I didn't think worked as well and added two more new ones. I may not get these cut until Friday because I only have 2 more days before I teach the colorwash class at my house. I need to finish cleaning and also finish cutting the batik colorwash kits. I will leave these on the design wall today and hopefully I can make a decision which 3 I'll use.
Cutting and vacuuming were my jobs yesterday. I have 70 more fabrics to choose, press out the fold marks and cut for the colorwash kits.
The weather has turned warm again, 80s expected tomorrow. I guess it is Indian Summer because we have had our first frost.
This is one of the photos I found when I was transferring files from my old computer that was dying. It was taken in 1952. My only cousin on my mother's side is the little guy and then me and my two brothers on our second hand bicycles. We lived out in the country, gravel road, gravel driveway and wide open spaces. There were only 2 farms in our mile. The only other building in that mile was the one room school that I attended in first and second grade, a quarter mile down the road.
I trimmed the 5 blocks that I finished a couple days ago and put them up on the design wall in no particular order. Now I need to decide what colors I need in the Marcia Derse triangles and Kaffe stripes for the last 3 blocks.
Here is a reminder photo of the quilt in Kathy Doughty's new book.
I'm still learning how to use the selfie stick and cell phone camera to take photos of myself working. Here I am getting ready to cut the green batiks for the colorwash kits.
A No Reply person asked how they could buy a kit. I will tell on this blog when they are all cut and ready to sell and they will be available on my Wandaful blog. I have 100 more fabrics to press and cut yet.
I did some more cutting for batik colorwash kits and then watched Netfix and sewed five more blocks for the current project. I need to trim the corners and then I can get them up on the design wall. This makes 9 blocks and I was hoping to do 12. That means searching one more time through my big prints.
I finally had to turn on the heat in my house on Wednesday. It was only in the 50s yesterday. Now it is going to warm up for the weekend through Tuesday to the 70s and then drop down again. The trees are changing color too.
I need more pieces in my personal collection of batik colorwash squares so while I'm cutting I'm making more kits to sell too. I have 102 fabrics cut so far and will need 240 total. I always lay out one kit grouped by color as I'm cutting so I make sure I get a good variety in the kit.
I went out between rainstorms and took this photo of the almost fully opened Dahlia. There are a few buds but the one shown is the closest to blooming. We got over a half inch of rain yesterday.
This one has just started opening on another plant. I brought these 2 plants into the garage and just put the rest of them up by the garage. A possible frost was predicted at 10 p.m yesterday.
Last night was my 3 hour TV night so I decided to iron out fold marks and cut five more blocks for my current project.
I have 2 more Dahlias starting to bloom, yellow again. There are more buds but I don't know if they will all get to bloom before it gets cold. I will pull the pots up close to the garage tonight because it is supposed to get down in the 30s.
I have had 2 good experiences with large companies. My cable provider (which I dealt with last week when the cable box stopped working) looked at what I was paying and the service I was getting and they changed me over to a 24 month promotion for the same cost and my internet speed is tripled now. Yesterday I called my cell phone provider about a data problem and the nice gentleman that I dealt with said he could offer me one of their new plans instead of the 2 year old plan I was on for $6 less a month with 4 times the amount of data. As much as I dreaded contacting either company trying to get through to a human being it paid off to be patient with the automated voice.
I sewed two more blocks last night. Right now it looks a bit boring with the same stripes repeated over and over. When I get all of the blocks cut there will be a larger variety. The fabric in the top left block is an Australian fabric. The other three are at least 15 years old.
I went to church sewing circle yesterday afternoon and on the way home I stopped at the car dealer repair dept. Sunday morning my car battery was dead and the battery isn't even 3 years old. My neighbor jumped it for me on Sunday and luckily it started every time after that. I stopped to have the mechanics check the battery and after a 45 minute diagnostic test they found it had a bad cell so I have a new battery.
I sewed a second
block last night. I sewed the triangle sections for the next 2 blocks too.
I finished the tractor block and added a few of the other blocks to the design wall so you can see the size of the block in comparison. It still needs hand embroidery of the steering wheel. Several other blocks are waiting for hand embroidery too so I'll probably do them all at the same time.
Yesterday was another beautiful fall day. I trimmed the last Goldmound Spirea and then decided to mow the grass. I knew I wouldn't be able to do it today because I have sewing circle at church this afternoon. Last night I cut out some preemie layettes for our project.
