Yes it was hot......

I don't know what the "official" temperature was yesterday but my car thermometer said 101 degrees on my way home from lunch after class.  I went out to put fresh water in the birdbaths around 4 and it was like a furnace outside.

I did have 5 wonderful students in my class yesterday.  We had a nice cool classroom so all was well.  Last night I cut 15 more fabrics for the batik kits so I'm at 50 which means I'm 1/4 of the way done with them.  It takes a long time to choose the fabrics for a good assortment so I'll be working on the next 40 fabrics today.

Cutting, class, cute bird..........

I finally made the first cuts on the batik kits.  I have 35 fabrics cut and 5 more ready to press and cut.  It was getting warm in the basement with the iron on so I gave up after the 9 p.m. news last night.

Today I am teaching my color class.  I had 7 kits leftover from NC and I had 7 students signed up.  2 called last night with husband health situations and cancelled so I hope I have 5 students when I get there this morning.

I saw a goldfinch outside my kitchen window on a coneflower but by the time I got my camera he had flown to one of the volunteer sunflowers.

Wiped out..........

Call me a wimp if you like, but this heat is getting to me.  98 degrees yesterday, 90 today, 100 tomorrow.  We get a few hours reprieve and then right back into the furnace.  My plants in pots have spent as much time in the garage as out front because they would never survive being baked for hours every single day.  I was simply wiped out by the time I got home from church sewing circle.  Of course it didn't help that I got a headache on the other side of my head yesterday (left side Sat., right side Mon.).  I sewed a few more triangle squares last night just so I could hear the hum of the machine.  Enough whining, I have to be productive today for my sanity if nothing else.

Travel size pillows....

This was my trial pillowcase to fit the little travel pillows which are half the size of a regular pillow.  It really need to be about 1" longer.  My church's sewing circle is making these for a local Head Start program for migrant workers' children. 

I went through my fabrics looking for ones that will appeal to small children and used 12.5 yards out of my stash.  There are 18 kits piled here.  I added 2 after I took the photo.  The contrasting cuff fabrics are folded inside each one.  I made sure that every pillowcase is different.  There are 8 striped ones on the bottom from the same fabric but there are 8 different cuff fabrics.  This way they will be able to identify their own.  We will complete them this afternoon for distribution this week.



Colorwash batik fabrics.......

I woke up with a headache yesterday, not a bad one but an irritating one.  I lost a day of cutting because of it.  I was able to pull fabrics to prepare for cutting though.  I don't always use all of the ones I pull.  I make that decision once I start cutting.

Here are 2 examples of fabrics that work great in the colorwash because of all of the different cuts you will get in one strip, but they don't work well in kits because I categorize the fabrics by color to get an even balance, and each kit would have these in a different place.  This is the type of fabric you need to cut for yourself to add into a kit you purchase.

Every 2 weeks I have to stop whatever I am working on, clean off the cutting table, and work on the church projects.  Today I have to search through my kid prints and cut 20 pillowcases for the travel size pillows.  We will work on them tomorrow at sewing circle.  It is supposed to be 100 degrees tomorrow, not a great day to have to leave the house.

It was a busy day.......

I made a couple trips to the post office with colorwash kits yesterday, put away the pile of fabric from the kits I had already cut and pulled batiks to cut.  I packed a box with scraps and fabrics I no longer needed to send to a couple of elementary school art teachers that I met in NC in June.  Finally last night I was ready to cut some more triangles for the zig zag quilt.  I started pressing them and when I yawned about the 5th time I decided it was bedtime.

Break time...........

I needed a break from cutting so I sewed some more blocks for this quilt.  I was thinking oh how boring as I'm putting pieces up on the wall but when I looked at it through the camera I like it.  I'm trying to place the values so it looks like a folded strip, kind of 3-D.  I don't have enough of the right value changes cut yet so I pulled a bunch more fabrics to cut into triangles today.