Stories from the Sewing Room

Last week I was trying to plan out my projects. I'm happy to report that I made a small amount of progress. I was able to piece the Jimothy block. He's going to be turned into a pillow cover. We need to decide if it will be a bound pillow or a stitch and turn out-type. And he needs to be quilted first. But it's progress! Something to remember for next time is to really reduce the stitch length on the tiny pieces. The pattern is from Getting Jazzy with It. Her instructions were good and I really liked that there were alignment marks on the bigger units so you knew where to line up adjoining paper chunks.

I have decided on a pattern (actually a mash-up) for the dress to wear to the wedding and ordered appropriate fabric and have had the patterns printed. I'm waiting on both to arrive.

I've decided to tackle the smaller of the chicken cross stitches first and have made a small amount of progress. For some reason, I'd stitched one comb and a little bit of body on each project before setting them aside. Anyway, I figured if I started with the smaller, easier one, I'd feel like I accomplished something because it would be easier to finish.

I've considered how to recover the dining room chairs and might go with the easy selection there as well. I'll need to remove the seat from one of the chairs to measure how much fabric I might need and go from there. 

No further progress on anything else. I did order a quilt kit that has a six-week stitch along starting next week. I thought maybe I'd try to work along with that so that I'm not left with yet another UFO. I'm not that into Halloween, but somehow I always get suckered in by cute Halloween projects (see Ghostie Girls runners, still not sewn). Speaking of Halloween, I found a pumpkin vine growing in the rock retaining wall behind my house. The pumpkins in the garden are ready to harvest.

I have made zero progress on my OMG. I have one week. Yikes, thought I had two. Weekend plans, perhaps?

I'm still trying to make my way through my quilting queue. Here are the quilts that I've worked on since last week.

First, three more memory quilts for Annie, quilted with Diagonal Plaid Bias. These all have a strip of t-shirts down the back as well, which you can see in the first picture. I still need to make the binding from the backing and bind three of the four memory quilts.

And Lacy Loops on her other quilt.

Jae decided on Ground Cover for this one.

Other than that, life has been happening. My husband requested help with the blown-in insulation in his barn ceiling. He thought it would take about two hours to put in 30 bags of insulation. He would be up on the ladder and I would feed the batts into the hopper. Despite wearing PPE, I was covered in dust. I was sweating profusely and my nose was running and my mask was soaked in sweat, so it probably didn't really keep me from breathing in the dust. My eyes were in misery and are not yet fully recovered. The hopper did not work well and I had to break every bale into little chunks to get past the safety fencing and push it down in with a stick. Plus I'm still not at 100% health-wise. I made it for two and half hours, in which we got 14 bags installed. His boss kindly came over and helped him finish the job (in another 2.5 hours). At this point, half of the ceiling insulation is in place. I'm not sure how I feel about having to repeat this process to complete the other half of the job.

We met up with my son for lunch on Friday. While leaving campus, we saw a delivery robot. 

He also came home briefly Friday night and we brought him a camera lens Monday evening. I enjoy every second. I won't get to see my daughter for another couple of weeks.

Smoky the rooster has started to do some really creaky crowing most mornings. We're taking that as an encouraging sign because they stay silent when they're ill. Henry leaves the coop most days but has to be put back in at night. Peanut had really been struggling and we unfortunately lost her last night. 😭 Here's a picture of her and Smoky from back in April before all this started. 

Monday morning I heard some weird noises and looked out the window towards the coop. The three bigger hens were in the garden and they were making alarm noises (at a much lower volume than the alarm noises Silkies make) because there was a FOX! NOOO! Smoky wasn't alarming, but he was patrolling the area under the coop. Luckily Henry and Peanut weren't out. The other hens (Penny, Poppy, and Nugget) hopped up into one of the garden tanks and froze. I went out two separate times and circled the entire area, hoping to scare away the fox. Ugh. Not how I wanted my day to start. The entire area is as reinforced as we can get it, above and below ground, but I would hate for a clever critter to figure out how to sneak in and kill our pets. 

Finally, this gem from Kroger. 

The lemons weren't even on this table at all.

I've been thinking about all the things I need to do or would like to do. I probably spend more time thinking about what to do than I do actually doing. Maybe you can relate?

I have two pieces of mending. For one, I haven't been able to find the right color thread. The other isn't immediately urgent, but would be nice to have done and out of my sewing room.

I have plenty of projects that are half-done and several small, new start projects to complete. My daughter wants a Jimothy pillow (from Getting Jazzy with It). I had pulled part of the fabrics about a month ago and one of the times she was home, she picked a background from my stash. However, the fabric I had selected as the main raccoon fur was too close in scale to the background she picked. She really, really wanted to stick with the background fabric, which is a Debbie Mumm print. That should give you an idea of its age. Anyway, we went to the fabric store over the weekend and we eventually agreed upon a new fur fabric. The new fabric is a linen print that they had in the cotton markdown section. I'll need to wash it before I can get going on this one. 

The original and the replacement are the bottom two fabrics.

Since my daughter was home, I made her help me switch out the quilt on her bed. Thankfully the sides are long enough to cover the mattress (at least until I wash and dry it at some point in the future). Here are a few views of it in place, one in natural lighting (dark) and one with the light on. As you can see, she likes her stuffed animals. She is the personality type that likes all her things to be on display (outie) and I'm not (innie), so I usually don't go in her room unless I need to since it's too overwhelming for me. 

It's hard for me to get used to the purple in there. She had a very light pink quilt for 20+ years and four houses plus a rental or two. I'm trying to remember, but I think we've had three different paint colors in the various houses. One more thing from her room. This thing is just about as tall as she is. She puts her clothes on it.

I still haven't started sewing the Ghostie Girls runners that I cut out a few weeks ago. I haven't been able to drag myself down into my sewing room the last few weekends. I did organize all the pieces to try to make it easier to find each one.

I am in need of an evening handwork project, so I pulled out a few knitting projects and a few partially completed small cross stitch projects to pick from. Or, more realistically, to rotate through. One of the knitting projects is a blanket on size 8 needles, so that will be a major commitment. I guess I'm kind of missing the utter mindlessness of the selvedge rugs.

I need to replace the fabric on our dining room chairs. They came with removable slip covers. I can only find two of the six. And they are just light natural canvas, so they show everything. We bought these chairs over 15 years ago and I put laminated cotton on them since the kids were little. Half of them are stained and torn now. It's hard to find laminated cotton these days. I'd prefer that since it's a quick job. Otherwise I'd need to recreate the slip covers and then I'd still have a hard time finding suitable fabric since Jo-Ann is gone. I really miss Jo-Ann.

Finally, we have been invited to an outdoor wedding with a semi-formal dress code. I have about two months to figure out something to wear. Since nothing ready-to-wear ever fits me correctly, I need to choose a pattern, find an appropriate fabric, do all the fitting, and complete it. 😬 I'd kind of forgotten about (or blocked?) this event, probably at least partially due to the dress requirement. 

I found it really hard last week to get any work done. I didn't feel all that great until Thursday and I also had 14 people stop by during the week with their quilts. I did finish a few quilts somehow. These are from Wednesday to Tuesday.

I completed Trudy's quilt, quilted with Star Spangled Banner.

I quilted Cinnamon Swirl on Heidi's quilt.

I bound Carole's t-shirt quilt that I shared last week.

I quilted Winterfest on Heidi's other quilt.

I quilted Diagonal Plaid Bias on the first of four memory quilts Annie made. These will be a bit of a challenge for me with the pieced front and back and the wide variety of fabrics included. I decided to do the most challenging one (front denim overall pocket with snaps) first. I'm supposed to bind all of these. I need to measure and see if there's enough backing fabric left to do the job.

Paula W. agreed to In the Swirls for her quilt and wanted purple thread. 

Jumping over to the great outdoors, my husband harvested a few tiny bell peppers and a watermelon. I've consumed one of the peppers. We haven't cut open the melon yet to see if it's even edible.

We made jalapeño poppers with our 11 coolapenos. They were quite tasty. Definitely better right out of the oven than reheated though.

We'd been discussing how the street sweeper hadn't been through our neighborhood this year. Friday it did come through, but it wasn't the normal one. It didn't use any water, mostly it just seemed to be blowing the dirt around and redistributing it. I couldn't see any of the brushes actually turning.

The sky was rather dramatic Saturday evening. I have a video of some lightning within a cloud, but I'm feeling too lazy to try to upload it. All the clouds we could see had lightning during our walk, but only just flashes within the clouds, never any bolts or anything.

This cloud is lit up mid-lightning flash. Not as fun as the actual flickering, but easier to upload. :)