Art Cards, Watercolor and Lazy Quilting

Each of the above pictures are available for purchase. 2.5" x 3.5" watercolor.

I've started working on three different art cards or ACEO's. The seascape is a standard watercolor that I love to do. I'm comfortable painting seascapes. I enjoy painting them! Parrots are a great series of watercolors that I've done in the past. I can't help but paint a parrot art card every so often! Florals are something that I would love to learn to paint even better. If you could see all the watercolor books on my shelf that are about florals, you would know how serious I am about this goal! All I can do is practice and paint more and more!

I'm at a stand still with my quilt fabric. After I bought the new starch (and what an ordeal that was!), I realized that I needed to decide if I was going to pre-wash my fabric or not. The local quilt store recommended that I NOT pre-wash the last fabric I bought. They said that it was easier to work with the fabric that way, and they weren't worried much about shrinkage or color bleeding. But, the quilt I am going to do involves colorful fabric (reproduction fabric in strong primary colors) with solid white sashing borders. I'm worried that if I don't pre-wash this fabric, that it will color bleed into the white when I finally complete the quilt and wash it someday. If I put so much work into making a king size quilt, I'd be awfully upset if the beautiful repro fabric bled into the white. I'm being lazy debating on this. The real reason I haven't just went ahead and washed the fabric is because I'm lazy! I like the feel of the fresh fabric from the bolt, the feel of the sizing still in the fabric. I know it's easier to work with and will involve much less ironing and starching to prepare the fabric. I really just want to iron a little and get started cutting. But, I know if I want to do a good job ..... I should start out right.

So my goal for this week is to wash the fabric and then starch the stiff back into it! I'm also going to work on listing my art cards on eBay, and starting my Farmers Market Tomatoes painting.