Watching Paint Dry

Happy Friday to you! I'm sorry that I've been remiss in blogging this week. But I'll try to make up for the lack of posts. Probably all in one post *grin*.

See the little paint pots in the photo? That paint is about 30 years old. And still good. I hearts me my Deka paints. These are the paints I used to paint the quilt in question in the post, Proportion. For mixing my paint, I use those plastic beer cups that come with a keg of beer.

So what was I painting? Well, since I made such an unfortunate choice of fabric to combine with the focus fabric for the Challenge Quilt and that choice resulted in a large proportion of the focus fabric ending up as the backing for the quilt, I needed something quite spectacular for the front. And as I'm running out of time it needed to be one piece. I searched and searched for what I had in mind and came up empty handed. What's The Quilter to do? Why, paint her own fabric, of course.

In the style of Mickey Lawler's Skydyes, I decided to paint my own background. CarGuy set up the sawhorses and board. I covered it with a trash bag so the wood would not absorb all my paint, and then went after it. This picture shows the fabric drying before I put on the next layer of paint to darken some areas and change the color in others. I apologize for the quality of the photo. The wind was blowing, it was sunny and I just could not get a quality shot. You will see more of this fabric when I actively start making the Challenge Quilt: Poetry in Motion.

As I was waiting for the paint to dry between layers I kept hearing this sound. A humming that kept getting louder and louder. So loud, in fact, that it drowned out my inconsiderate neighbor's radio. I turned around and saw thousands and thousands of bees just swarming in the air over my back door. Eek! They came out of nowhere and just as quickly disappeared. Totally bizarre!

Oh, and speaking of stinging insects. Tuesday I went to the commercial drive up window at the bank, rolled my car window down, stuck my arm out to place the deposit in the teller's box and was stung just above my elbow. Now, I have never been stung by a bee, hornet, wasp, yellow jacket, etc. By the time I got back to the studio, my elbow was itchy, itchy, itchy. By Wednesday morning it looked like I had two elbows on my left arm. I was also having a systemic (whole body) reaction to the sting: nausea, diarrhea, muscle aches and dizziness. By mid-afternoon I was better. Now I know what kind of reaction I get: not good.

I have also been remiss in labeling my quilts. Bad Quilter! So I visited all the quilts in my house and labeled the five (5) that did not have labels. There that is done and off my mind.