Playing with stash........

I went through my red regular quilting cottons (not batiks) and put the pinker ones on one end of the shelf, the salmon to coral next on the shelf and the truer reds at the far end.  I pulled out this little group to contemplate using them in the near future.  This is what a stash is for, to pull fabrics from 8 different manufacturers and probably over a 15 year time span and see how well they go together. 

I was outside later and took this photo of the big coleus in front of the garage.  Yes, I have pink and red in the same planter.

I filled my bird feeders and looked out a little while later to see this guy inside the wire cage that is supposed to keep him out.  One of the brown squirrels was able to tip the cap up just far enough to start chewing the plastic tube in the center. Then the gray squirrels fit into the tiny spot that was chewed out and have chewed it down to the half way point and the only thing holding this together is strapping tape.  Of course they eat through that so I have to keep replacing it.  That's how he got in, chewed the tape and then slipped in. 

He is frantically trying to get out of there because I scared the cr*p out of him by walking up close to take his picture.  The little gray squirrels can fit into really tight places and the big brown squirrels do most of the destruction to the feeders.  I'm at the point that if I had a pellet gun I would probably be shooting at them.

Twin tops, little flowers...........

I made some changes yesterday morning in the layouts and sewed the tops together before lunch.

The borders and backings are the same fabric.  I got the seams sewn in the backings and all of the borders cut. I started sewing the borders on last night but was too tired to finish them. One more day and they will be ready for quilting.  The question is do they go ahead of the 51 waiting to be quilted or just wait their turn.

I picked a little bouquet from the flowers in the pots and the Coreopsis in the garden.

This little sunflower was in the bouquet but in typical sunflower fashion, it started hanging its head which I guess is a sign that it is time for it to dry up.

Can you believe this month is 1/3 over already?  We had a day in the mid 70s yesterday, down in the 50s at night.  We had July weather in March and April, March weather in May, and now October weather in August.  Of course this nice cool streak isn't going to last, up in the 80s and even close to 90 next week.

24 blocks........

Yesterday I finished sewing the last 10 blocks.  I had to move a third design wall over to be able to get all of the blocks of both quilts up.  I have the identical block designs in the same position on both quilts.

Then I decided to move 2 blue fish blocks to the quilt on the left and 2 gold fish blocks to the quilt on the right.  I'm not sure this is the final layout but at least I have all of the blocks up where I can see them together.

I needed to do something different last night so I trimmed the 50 crooked cobblestone blocks that I have made in the last 2 months.  I think I have over 200 now to play with.

Modular quilts progress..........

On the left are 7 blocks for one of the modular quilts, on the right 4 blocks for the other quilt.  As I mentioned they are for twin boys and I think you can see now how they will tell the quilts apart.  I made more progress yesterday than I thought I would.  This is not necessarily the order the blocks will end up.  I will take them down and when I have all of the blocks done I'll go back to the design wall.

This is the next block to be sewn.  I picked up that fish print in 2 different colorways on sale a couple years ago.  On this quilt unlike the last 3 modular quilts, I am designing each 18" block and sewing and not designing the whole quilt on the design wall before I sew. I hope the blocks will look good next to each other when I am done.  I am designing 2 identical (or close to identical) blocks each time and with the ones with the large fish print one goes in each block. I have the next 5 blocks designed and ready to sew today. 

If you want to see more about modular quilts look on my Label list on the right sidebar and click on Modular quilt tutorial.

Basting with a friend.......

This is the quilt I helped my friend Rosemary baste yesterday morning.  It is for her daughter and was a collaborative project for them.  When we finished at 11:30 we decided to go out for dessert.  No, we didn't eat lunch, we just got strawberry pie with ice cream.  We're both senior citizens and need to follow the 'dessert first' policy.  I came home and had a sandwich.

This is a patch of lawn out near the street.  I just had to take a photo of the blooming weeds with the dead grass.  You can see the rain has produced a few new patches of green grass.  I'm hoping we get all of the rain they are predicting for Wed. night - Thurs. so maybe we can have all green lawns again.

For everyone that asked what a modular quilt is, I have a label list on my right side bar and I label every post.  On there is a label: modular quilt tutorial.  Also if you have a word you want to search on my blog, there is a search box in the top left corner of the blog.  Type in a word and every post that has that word will pop up.

For all that asked yesterday here is the selvage of the tree word fabric.  Remember please, if you don't have an email link, I can't respond to your questions.  I have an email link on my right sidebar that you can use to contact me if you are a noreply-comment@blogger.com because you haven't enabled your email address in your Blogger account.

Starting a new project.........

The art quilters came yesterday, one of the few   beautiful cooler summer days we have had.  We had lots of fun and one of them is coming back today to baste a quilt on my clean tables.  Last night I started cutting for the next project, 2 modular quilts for twin boys.  I only got about a third of the fabrics cut but it is a good start.

I love fabric with words and couldn't resist this tree related one.  It will work well in these nature inspired quilts.

Odds and ends.....

While I was finishing the clean up in the basement I found the 2 sets of blocks that I had designed into table runners.  I figured I should sew them now while the blocks were still in order instead of having to design them again later.  Yesterday morning I baked 2 batches of cookies for the art quilters group today.  I mixed both batches of dough on Saturday night and then got up on a cool Sunday morning and baked all of them.

I sewed a few of the dotty blocks too when I was stacking them to move them.  It is supposed to be in the mid 80s again today with low humidity.  It feels almost like a normal summer for a couple days anyway.