More photo updating.........

This is another in my Prismatic Garden series that I could never get a good photo of.  Now I have some new auxiliary lights that are helping to light the dark areas.

The center was always hard to photograph too to get the details in the batiks to show.

The dark areas were always too dark without extra lighting.

Now I will have to check some of the other photos that I took with the previous camera that took lower resolution photos.

I haven't taken any outside photos because the only thing I have done outside is mow the shade grass in the back yard and a few areas in the front that had grown taller. More than half of the yard remains unmowed because of lack of rain.  

Chisel Star sewn...........

I sewed the last four blocks yesterday and then spent a couple hours moving blocks around to distribute the fabrics.  Since there are anywhere from 4 to 8 pieces of each print it was a challenge.  I did the best I could and then sewed it all together.  The lighting is not even, the bottom half is farther from the light source.  It is approximately 54" x 72" and will get a dark Marcia Derse print for binding. 

This is just an observation about the new Kaffe collective line: there are so many more prints that read as a predominant color in this February 2021 collection.  Some of his fabrics in previous lines have had 2 colors almost across the color wheel  from each other (red and blue, green and orange) in the same print and they really didn't work well paired with either color.  I think this season's fabrics will be so much more fun to play with.

I will have my monthly recap post tomorrow.  If I can finish the Friendship star blocks and get that top sewn together I will have 6 finished tops for the month.  No completely finished quilts though.  I will have a nice bunch of easy ones to quilt in May with these new tops.  

Finish #1 for March 2020..............

Prismatic Garden 14 finished at 41.5" x 57.5".  It has polyester batting from the 1980s by the Putnam Company.

The backing is made from 3 long strips leftover from backing on other quilts.  The binding is a purple that matches one of the colors of grapes in the border fabric.

A friend is coming over to sew today so I will probably get more 9 patches sewn for my Blooming 9 Patch quilt.  I am planning to cut some of the last fabric and make some 9 patches with it and cut the edge triangles so I can start sewing rows.  This is pieced diagonally so I can start by piecing the 2 opposite corners and work my way toward the center longer rows.

A little quilting............

I decided I needed to have a finish near the beginning of the month so I ditch quilted this top along seam lines in both directions and in the diagonal seams and on both sides of the inner border.  Then I did a large loose free motion meander in the border.  I found a piece of polyester batting that was the perfect size.  I haven't used puffy polyester for many years.  Maybe you can see the puff since each large pieced triangle is unquilted. 

Last night I sewed on the binding and started the hand stitching.  This is a small quilt so it should only take a couple more nights of hand stitching to complete it.  The backing is 3 different fabrics which I showed on this post. You can click on my photos for a larger view.  Have you ever wondered about the blogs that tell you to click for a larger view and instead it is the same size or sometimes smaller?  If they use Google Blogger it is because they have YES for "showcase images with lightbox" in their settings.  I have mine set for NO and that gives you the ability to supersize my photos.  Of course the blogger has to upload large enough photos too for that to happen.  Some people upload very small photos to begin with so we can never see the details in their quilt projects.  I want you to see the details in mine.

May 2019 monthly recap..............

May was all about quilt tops, 9 to be exact.  2 colorwashes were started and finished in May.  The third one was started in April with the live part of my Colorwash360 class and finished in May.  The black and white just needed its border designed and sewn on.  Downtown (bottom left) was blocks started last year and finalized into a design and sewn in May.  The triangle quilt (top right) with Kona cotton color "pickle" as an insert in the blocks was started in April.  Cascade (red top center) was started in March and then put away for a month and a half.  Wild rectangles (second from left bottom row) was started and finished in May.  Prismatic Garden 14 (center bottom row) utilized blocks leftover from at least 2 quilts from my Prismatic Garden quilt series.

Speaking of the Prismatic Garden 14, it was just finished yesterday so now you can all see what I chose for the borders.  My 2 friends were over yesterday and it was unanimous that this was the perfect border treatment.  It is 43" x 59.5" and is so much prettier in real life.

Here are some closeup shots of the fabrics in the blocks.

Since it will be a lap quilt, the person using it will see how nice the fabric strips in the blocks go with the border fabric.  In fact this might look nice as the extra cover across my feet and legs on my bed next winter.

There are lots of batiks in the strip piecing in addition to the assortment of print quilting cotton.

It was fun to read all of your comments and why you chose which border in the auditioning phase.  It all goes to prove this quilt could have been finished several different ways, all the preferences of the creator and all would have been attractive.

no decision yet..........

Thanks to all who voiced an opinion about border choices for my quilt yesterday.  That was fun!  I had the crazy idea last night to try that tiny triangle print as a first border with the grape fabric.  Interesting!  My 2 friends are coming over to sew  today so we will have some discussion about the choices and hopefully I will get the borders sewn on for another finished quilt top for May.

I planted my porch pots yesterday morning (photos in a couple days) and went with my granddaughter to her wedding dress fitting yesterday afternoon.  It was a sunny warm day and no rain.

The weatherman last night said we had 21 out of 31 days in May with measurable rain.  Some of my neighbors still have standing water on parts of their lawns.  Today is supposed to be dry and Sunday through Tuesday no rain is predicted.  Saturday scattered showers and I hope they are very light showers.

I looked through fabrics for a possible print to put in as random plain blocks with these pastel 16 patches.  This is the one I will cut  today and see if it looks OK.

Wild weather and a quilt top................

Yesterday morning started out dry and partly sunny and not too hot so I planted my last 4 tomato plants along my driveway.  They did so well here last year that it was worth a second try.  I worked up the dirt the night before so I could get right to the planting today.

Two of the plants are the 4th of July variety which did great last year.

The other two are Early Girl which have always been a winner for me.  I like smaller tomatoes so these are perfect for salads and sandwiches.

Then it got dark and started raining really hard.  I heard we only got a little over 2" but that was in about 20 minutes.  I have shown this scene before with my bird feeders but not with the lake by them. 
Edited: I found out later that we had 3.5" in 20 minutes.

This is the backyard of my neighbor to the north and his back to back neighbors with one huge lake.

This is the backyard of the neighbor to the south.  My house sits a little higher than both of my neighbors.

There was standing water all the way up the street and it even covered the street at one spot.  We were in a severe thunderstorm warning first and a tornado watch after that.  My power went off at 1:45 and didn't come back on until 6:15 p.m.

I had 2 blocks left to sew when the power went off so last night I sewed them and then got all of the blocks sewn into a top.  It is about 32" x 49" right now so I'll look for border fabrics.  If I don't find anything I'll finish it at this size. 

We have more stormy weather predicted for later today and some rain the 2 days after that.  The farmers have not been able to get many crops planted with our extremely wet spring.

17 blocks sewn..............

I got 17 of these blocks sewn yesterday, 7 left to sew.  I did add the extra blocks for another row in length.  It will still only be about 32" x 40".  I think I'll put a border on it.

I selected petunias for my backyard pots this year.  This is such a pretty shade of pink.

The other one is purple, even deeper toned than they look here.  I hope the hummingbirds like them.

There aren't any peonies blooming for Memorial Day.  Usually they are at least starting to bloom but this year there are just tight buds on all of the plants.

Cleaning out a bin........

While my 2 friends worked on their projects yesterday I was determined to empty a bin of pieces, parts, and partially made quilt tops.  These are leftover triangles from a couple of my Prismatic Garden series quilts.  I had all of these up on the wall to see how big of a top I could make and then I found...............

under another project were some already pieced blocks.  I decided this would made a nice side of a tote bag.

This could be the other side of the tote bag.  There are a couple left over blocks that could be used as pockets in the lining.

There are also 5 more blocks that could be used in the small quilt layout above to make it a row longer.

I also found a partially made quilt top which I showed last on January 28, 2009.  At that point I said I had made a decision so I could finish it.  Well.......that was a little over 10 years ago.  I think it has aged enough, it is ready.  I'll show it tomorrow and hopefully it will be all sewn together.

Below are blooms on my Weigela bushes.  They are so pretty.  We cut back the darker pink one drastically last fall so it only had a few branches with blooms on them.  It will all grow back and be big and bushy again next year.

Quilt top done, triangles cut........

I decided I liked this fabric for the outer border and cut it and sewed it on.  The right side is a little dark because I didn't turn on the light on that side of it last night.  A hint when you are working with dotted fabrics: cut the longest edge of sashing strips on the lengthwise grain and it will look straighter.  In this case it was 4.5" x 8.5" so I cut a strip 8.5" and sliced it into 4.5" sections.  If I had cut a 4.5" strip on the crosswise grain you would have seen the dots running crooked across the sashing strips.

The art quilters group is coming on Monday so I am cleaning off the tables in the basement.  The strip sets for Prismatic Garden were laying there waiting to be cut so I finished them up, 104 triangles to go with the 88 left from previous quilts.

Playing with blocks....

I had 3 sets of blocks on my little design wall.  Some were all dark, some all light, some diagonally half light/half dark, and some darks and lights across from each other in the block.  I had sewn those groups to use for a demo at a guild program I did in May.  I decided to try all 3 types of blocks together and see if they would play well together.  I think this might be interesting but I really won't know until I sew a bunch more blocks and transfer this to a larger design wall.  I don't design my quilts in a computer program because if I knew what it was going to look like, I wouldn't need to actually make it.  For me the thrill is seeing the patterns emerge on the design wall.

I stayed inside all day yesterday.  It never got out of the 50s and turned cold again by evening.  I had to empty the dehumidifiers and put them away for the season.  There were a few other maintenence jobs and then I worked on the pillowcase kits for Monday's church sew in.  I have 20 kits ready now.  Today my cousin and his wife are in the area and are stopping by to see me and then going to see Dad. 

A fun day......

It was so much fun yesterday morning meeting another blogger.  I can't tell you who it was until she gets home from her trip but I can tell you we had a great time talking 'quilt'.  Her husband checked out the fair and was impressed with the size of our fairgrounds.  After they left I got out my helpers, super sliders and started moving furniture away from the next wall to be painted.

I'm going to show you why I hate my carpeting.  I had it put in 17 years ago and painted the walls the same shade of taupe and was very happy with it.......until the carpeting started changing color.  The pink area is where furniture was sitting. The carpet has a green cast in some areas and some areas are still taupe.  The dark area near the wall is the rust from the bleeder leaking earlier this year.    The only good news in all of this is that furniture will always cover the rust, and the carpet doesn't look as sick with the new contrasting paint color.  I got the ceiling line taped on 20' of this 30' wall and I need to move the roll top desk before I can finish it.  I will have to take all of the drawers out and then I can lift the corners just enough to stick the sliders under.  I have moved the desk before so I know I can do it.....it's not fun, but I can do it.

My reward for prepping the wall was sewing the 5 strip sets that I chose the day before.

Here is the reward I will have after painting on Saturday and Sunday.

Strip sets..........

I was going through the Prismatic Garden triangles that were left from #13 and can see I need to add some variety to them before I can start on #14.  I started grouping some sets of 4 ready to sew tonight after company leaves.  Yes, another blogger friend is stopping by today on their trip through the midwest.

Prismatic Garden 13 portrait......

I finished the last side of the binding and sewed down the hanging sleeve last night on Prismatic Garden 13.  This has been my best selling series over the years.  I will have 3 from the series in my show in NC.

I was hoping I would have time to finish this newest colorwash for the show too.  Since I changed my shipping date from Thursday to Monday I put the extra days to good use.  I got it quilted last night.  Today I hope I find a binding I like right away.  I have embroidery club in the afternoon and computer club tonight so I need to get a lot done in the morning.  I made 3 more mug rugs with African fabric but didn't get their bindings done.  I will show them tomorrow.

Happy Valentine's Day

Here is another of my antique Valentine postcards. They are so different from today's cards. This is a repeat that I showed last year when I showed a series of heart quilts in February. If you are interested in its construction, click on Prismatic Garden on the Label list on the right side of the blog and it will take you to the whole series I have made as well as some in progress pictures of some.

It's just another day for me, cleaning the house for the company on Monday, continuing to make blocks for my next project. We got a coating of snow last night which should melt today. Hurray, no shoveling!

Fixed label, another Prismatic Garden

I hadn't sewn the last side of the label down in the picture yesterday so I decided to see if I had a piece of light colored fabric with wonder under already on it and if I did I would insert it under the label to cut down the show through of the backing and seam allowances. Luckily I did find a piece because I probably wouldn't have fixed it if I had to start from scratch. I'm happier with it now. I really love the Prismatic Garden 12: Heart and I'm going to wait one more day to mail it out. I'm still trying to get a picture that is perfectly square.

The only one in the Prismatic Garden series that I have been hesitant about is the one below. I don't usually add borders to them and on this one I did. It has been waiting 4 or 5 years to be finished. Boy, time flies when you are having fun! I have had a hard time deciding which way is up on it but I think this is the way I like it, if I like it at all. Decision time: is this one going to get finished this year??

Heart Quilt finished

It is finished and ready to ship to the IL Artisan's shop! If you have been reading my blog for awhile you may recognize the strip pieced triangles as something I have used before. If you don't know what I am talking about, click on Prismatic Garden in the labels column on the right side of the blog. This will take you to others in the series. This one is called Prismatic Garden 12: Heart. I was so close to and involved in creating the center red heart that I missed all of the other hearts that start appearing in the background until my daughter commented on it.

I made a label and made the decision to not line it and to let the hearts from the backing show through it. Where I should have been more careful was that the seam allowance turned under should have been the same on all sides. That is not something I would readily see if I were looking at someone else's label because I would be so busy reading it and looking at the embroidery to notice it. I could still loosen one side and get in there and trim it but.........do I really want to?

Here is a picture showing how I make the triangles.