Stories from the Sewing Room

I've had a different sort of week. I wrapped up my scheduled quilting last week and then took some time to decompress, catch up on paperwork, and work on a batting presentation that I presented Saturday morning. So far this week I've had nothing but appointments and events. In fact, today is the only day I don't have anything besides work on my schedule

I was able to take some time Sunday afternoon for personal sewing. I started  assembling the Athena bag. I am struggling to understand the instructions and I haven't found a video tutorial. First I made the adjustable strap.

Then I started assembling the back panel. It had a cloth pocket on one side.

And a mesh pocket on the other.

I have to insert a zipper into the front(?) panel next and I don't understand the instructions. You can see the zipper in the pattern cover in the strap photo above.

I got frustrated and set it aside. I decided to work on month two of the Kaleidobloom quilt course that I purchased last year from The Crafty Nomad. Month one was fabric selection and general information and instructions. Here are my completed month 2 blocks. They went together easily. The colors didn't photo well, but they are Kona Celestial and Kona Maize, dark teal and stick-of-butter yellow.

I've printed out the remainder of the templates and will get back to piecing this as soon as possible. There are eight groups/months of lessons in total. The course is self-paced.

I have just a few quilts to share this week. First is Trudy's, quilted with Ocean Waves.

Next is Teah's, quilted with Creeping Fig.

Finally, Elaine's, quilted with a large-scale Soho.

Out in the garden, things are going fairly well. There are a lot of watermelons. Can you see any?

We harvested three coolapenos, seven tomatoes, two zucchinis, and just over two pounds of mostly pole beans. Unfortunately, it looks like the zucchinis have been hit with squash bugs.

We have pumpkins growing outside the fence. I'm hoping these don't become the next target of the bugs.

In the weird category, the other night I was walking back up the driveway from the mailbox and happened to look over at the vegetable garden. There was a rabbit inside the fence. I yelled to my husband. We figured it had squeezed in between the door/gate gaps. He opened the gate and noticed that there were actually two rabbits in the garden, which he proceeded to chase. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't see it with my eyes, but both of them exited the garden straight through the fence, which is an approx. 2" x 4" grid. So when I was blaming squirrels for biting the blooms off the zucchini plants, maybe it was actually some stealth rabbits. We're considering adding some tighter chicken wire fencing along the bottom.

In my front garden I have zinnias blossoming. Since we were rebuilding this bed after the porch incident last year, I put in a few roses and some small perennials. I added two geraniums that I was gifted and threw all sorts of leftover seed packets in for good measure. The only thing that germinated from the seeds are these zinnias and they are all the same color. Weird, but fine.

I love the colors of the Gaillardia and geraniums together.

The only other thing of note this week is that when I returned from my annual exam yesterday morning, all I was thinking about was eating breakfast and then I saw this in my parking spot. 🤬 I'm guessing it was drawn to the wet concrete. We have two temporary AC units in the garage that have to vent, so that is what you are seeing under the door. I parked in my husband's spot to the right of this and crawled over the console and out the passenger door to avoid it. My husband asked if it was the same one as before, but I don't think so since the previous one was over five feet and this one didn't look quite so long. Yes, I know it's harmless. I don't care. Don't like, not approaching.

I'll be back Saturday with the OMG link up. 

It's been a slow week for personal sewing. Over the weekend I was able to re-quilt the border of the Beach Bumz quilt so that it was more even. Unfortunately, since it's batik, there are a lot of needle holes that are difficult to close back up.

I've started stitching down the binding and I'm about 1/4 done. I feel pretty confident that I can complete this in time to share it for the OMG finish link up on the 25th. I'm still wondering if I should have added more quilting to the white parts. 😆 

Over the weekend I completed the annual maintenance required for my machines. I have to clean the motor and motor brushes, take the side panel off, clean inside and oil the rocker. I typically complete these tasks in early July. The smaller machine was just fine--very clean, no issues. I had to get my husband to help me with the bigger machine because I couldn't get the rocker to move. He held it open while I sprayed some WD-40 on it and then oiled it. He noticed as he was manipulating it that it had some play. This can affect the foot and the needle. He also noticed that my oil wicks were looking pretty frayed. After I finish the quilts today I will contact service. Hopefully this is something we can fix at home instead of needing to send it in. To be fair, my machine is six years old and has quilted around 1000 quilts.

The rocker is the E.T. shaped piece near the bottom.

Meanwhile, I have been working a lot. I quilted Frost on Teah's quilt.

I quilted Midnight Sparkle on Melissa's quilt, which took two days.

And bound it. Which felt like two days. 😬

I also bound the one I quilted last week.

I finished the binding on Connie's quilt and sent it back to her. This is the last custom I will do for hire.

I quilted Fireflies on Sara's quilt.

This one had In the Swirls.

Elizabeth's cute little table runner had Fall Foliage stitched on it.

I stitched Diagonal Plaid Bias on Erin's t-shirt quilt and will bind it.

Teah picked Strawberry Fields for this one.

I quilted Lovely Rose on Trudy's quilt.

And Quatro Curved on Claire's first quilt.

I think I'm sufficiently caught up at this point to not need to work every single day. I also don't think I can continue working the hours I've been doing recently and not get completely burnt out. I've got a nicer schedule set up for the next several weeks. Luckily almost all the quilts I have scheduled now are not so huge either. 

I had kind of a weird experience last week. I was mindlessly scrolling Facebook one night and was shown a post from the statewide shop hop page. Someone was looking for a longarm quilter between two towns, which is where I happen to be. Several people recommended me to the OP, which was really nice. The OP mentioned that my wait time was x weeks according to my newsletter. It was actually a bit shorter than what she said, but I was going to let it go. I do not know who this person is. Lots of other quilters were either tagging businesses or recommending their own business. The next morning someone tagged me and my business and invited me to join the page. I joined as my business and liked the comments where people had recommended me. I attempted to respond directly to the OP's comment, telling her to reach out through my website (I have DM disabled on my business Facebook due to high amount of scam/spam messages), and it got sent to moderation. It eventually got denied and I am not allowed to comment on anything on the page. Oh well. 

Moving along, we've harvested a few more things--a handful of beans, three zucchinis, and a bowl full of lettuce. 

My daughter came down Sunday after work. I had her check the hens since she doesn't mind handling them. She couldn't catch the young ones, but thought they all looked and sounded okay. Unfortunately, Peanut the silkie hen is now sick and she's in quarantine in the garage with the roosters. Thankfully the vet let us get additional antibiotic without an appointment. The roosters have finished their course of antibiotics, but we aren't really sure if they are doing well or not. They have another week of quarantine to complete. Peanut started antibiotics Sunday evening. I'm still pretty convinced that the two Barred Rocks we bought from the lady on Facebook were carriers. I think the one actually had the illness, since we did hear her sneezing when we got her and she did have a very swollen eye. My daughter and husband disagree and think her eye was swollen due to Peanut pecking her eye, which my daughter did witness happening. We weren't savvy enough to know to quarantine them for a good amount of time prior to introducing them to the others. And now we are paying a pretty high price. 😢 This is still really weighing heavily on me.

In the "I can't believe I did that" category, I burned my knee by kneeling on my deck. I thought it felt really hot at the time. A few hours later, I noticed I had a big red circle on my knee. It lasted about 24 hours.

I have two quilts and one quilt binding left to finish this week. I am doing a short presentation about batting for a guild this weekend, so I need to prep that. I am doing this as a favor for someone and it's a 45-minute drive each way, so I'm not sure how much I want to invest in it in addition to the time and the gasoline. Maybe a very short handout rather than a multi-page resource guide that I'd be more inclined to do. For sure they can take a business card. Perhaps I'll create the lengthy guide for myself. 

Next week I have a series of standard medical and dental appointments. My doctor is probably going to tell me to lose weight.  I get to see her once per year and she's always like, "You seem healthy. Your weight is going the wrong way. Eat a Mediterranean diet." Yeah, trust me, I know. I'm calling this my "emotional baggage" weight. 😔 I worked really hard to lose a bunch pre-Covid and most of it has crept back on. I do exercise nearly every day and I'm rarely sick. Hopefully the other two appointments are uneventful. 

Finally, we found this game at Menards. Be sure to look at the pink circle. We aren't really sure what the original sentiment was, but it clearly didn't translate well. 

In case you can't see it, it says "Interesting play, the baby's hand-eye coordination but also to mention baby liter reaction force, so that the brain has also been developed."

Linking with Alycia Quilts and Quiltery.