MAILING PRINT

 I finished off the print for Maria's Monumental Puzzle Print, 100 Acts of Kindness.

I wanted to include some goodies for Maria for doing such noble work, too.

So, off it all goes to the Post Office.

CORRECTED CATS

 I took the bottom border off and inserted some black bits and put it all back together.  Much better.

Since it has little white cats running about I decided it should be named after Victoria's new kitten, Yuki.  Yuki is very curious and loves to go where she has never been.  They've been keeping her confined to the house and not letting her outside until she's older and neutered.  She's not totally happy about that.  There have been times when we are all chasing her about the garden trying to entice her with treats.

So, here's the backing and border:

PUTTING SQUARES TOGETHER

 From last Saturday's Quilt Freedom Workshop, the little black and white project is coming along.  I finally figured out what I didn't like.  I had cut strips for the border from the black and white cat fabric.  The cats were evenly spaced and running around the edges.  That was not the look I was after, so it occurred to me to cut them into squares and rotate them to break up the pattern..  It looks a lot better now.

Before

After I cut the border fabric into squares.

Sewn into rows.

All sewn together...

After I got it all sewn together, I realized that I had, somewhere along the line, lost the black pieces in the bottom border.  Tomorrow I'm going to take that bottom border off and add some blacks to it.

MY PENS

 After doing a bunch of laundry and housework in the morning while Darrell was busy in the shop with some potential clients, I sat on the new deck and sketched my pens.  It was a beautiful day - warm but with a nice breeze.

Jax felt he was missing out on something good going on in the shop.

SATURDAY WORKSHOP

 I'm signed up to take a monthly zoom workshop with Joe Cunningham called Quilt Freedom Workshop.  This month was about two color quilts, or two fabric designs.  I started out thinking I would use black and white.  Then when I saw the project I changed the black out for a print with black and white.  (it's not actually white, it matches Kona Oyster which I used as my white).  

Here's how it ended up at the end of the day:

I want to spend more time moving the pieces around before I settle on the final.

FLOWERS BACKING

 I pulled out my old project (from last year) FLOWERS.  The top is done, and I have a pile of fabrics and scraps waiting to be made into a backing.  I had purchased new fabrics for the backing, too.  I have two yards of a Tula Pink that is the same pinks and purples as the Kona solids used on the front.  And two yards of a dark grey with little pink clouds with rain and lightning, which I thought was perfect for a flower quilt.

The quilt top is 48" by 71" which means that the two yard lengths wouldn't be quite long enough.  I cut the grey cloud fabric in half the long way and inserted these pieces I made from the adding machine tape covered with the scraps from the front (I love these!).  I put the label on the light pink fabric in the middle of one of the pieces.

There was enough of the Tula Pink fabric that I could just add a bit of itself to itself to make it long enough.  Here's the finished backing:

Now I'm worried that the label is too wide and part of it will get cut off!  Oh, no!

PHOTOGRAPHING RHYTHM

 

BINDING RHYTHM

 I fussed over which fabric to use as binding on the Rhythm quilt.  The backing is a beautiful muted orange shot cotton.  But, it seems to me that that fabric is too thin to be a binding so I didn't want to use it.  I auditioned several different Kona solids and settled on a light olive green.  It works great with the backing and isn't too loud for the front.

QUILTING RHYTHM

 I've loaded the bars quilt, Rhythm, onto the longarm and have Eduard quilting a panto called 'Sunshine' over it.

All done!

HELLO RHYTHM

I finished the top of the bars quilt I've been working on and I made a back and the label.  I named the quilt Rhythm.

I made the back with the Kaffe Shot Cotton I bought that was too orange for the intended project.  It will be great for this one.

FINISHED PRINT

I finished up the carving on my print for the Kindness Puzzle Collaborative Print.  I think it turned out pretty good, with a minimum of mistakes.  The dogs enjoyed hanging out with me out by the picnic table.

Then we moved up onto the deck and continued with the napping, until it got too hot to stay outside.

Once inside, Jax continued with his nap.

It was a good day for dogs.

STARTED ON PRINT

I sewed a few rows on the Bars Quilt.  Still have a few more to go.

I made a backing for the fish tank, sides too.

Then, I took my carving tools: chisels and an exacto knife out to the picnic table and spent a pleasant few hours working on the print for Maria's monumental collaborative puzzle on Kindness.  I didn't quite get done.  But I did better than I thought I would, considering I haven't done anything like this in years.

BANKING

Of course I waited until the last day to file our B&O quarterly taxes.  And, I'm behind on the bookkeeping and had problems to deal with.  So, I had to go to the bank so they could help me sort them out.

I was surprised that there was a line at 10am when they opened.

I was only there for 45 minutes and they solved a few problems for me.

SEWING ROWS

I got down to the bottom of my design wall.  I can't add any more rows.  So, I'm sewing the rows together.  I want to put several more rows on the bottom still.

MORE ROWS

I added a few more rows to my Bars quilt.  

Then I did a 'value' check:

I ran back to the pet store to get another fish tank - the plan being to get some cleaner water going in that tank and then transfer my poor fish out of the green water tank into the cleaner one.  The water is so green now I can't even see the fish - I haven't seen the Plecostomus - I fear for him.

CAT PORTRAIT

Bentley was hanging out on the picnic table, snoozing.  So, I did a sketch of him, of course.

He stayed there just long enough for me to finish then he was off.

He was hot, but enjoying being a cat:

FISH MONDAY

I went to the pet store today to get a plecostomus.  Maybe he can help with the build-up of algae in my poor little fish's tank.

It was too hot today, didn't do much - watched this happen:

That was about it.

MOVING THINGS AROUND

First thing this morning I started looking for a new iron, since mine died yesterday.  Can't do much sewing without an iron.  I thought about getting a 'tank' type iron - but they are expensive and I decided against it mainly because of the way my ironing board is set up.  I don't know where I would put the tank and have it be accessible yet out of my way.

So, when I found the professional Rowenta model I settle on I found the best price on Amazon.  I ordered it and was surprised to see that it would be delivered today, before 6pm, still free shipping.  Amazing.  [And it was.]

In the meantime, I cut out pieces and put them on the wall.  At the end of the morning, I wasn't really happy with it and spent some time moving a few groups around.

I was amazed when I downloaded these pictures of the quilt and the flowers - the colors are very similar.  Hmmm.

I took a picture of the Coneflowers so I could paint them into my journal.  It was hard to get the deep red/orange of the flowers right on this paper.  But I like it.