Stories from the Sewing Room

How did you do with your goal this month?

This link up will remain open until August 31 at 11:55 pm EST.

For quilting, we decided on the Get in Loser design from Melissa Kelley. The thread is Glide Grape on the bottom and Amethyst on the top. It was a pretty long stitch-out even though I feel like I went with a standard size for the design scale. This first one is true colors.

My full quilt photo color is so far off. I couldn't adjust it to look remotely close to actual.

We debated which color binding to use. I used the darker color simply because I had a better all-purpose thread color match for it (or so I thought). After quilting, the quilt now measures 88" x 102.25". I was a bit shocked that I lost 2" of width just from quilting. I haven't completely finished yet since I was feeling tired by late Monday afternoon and I still had to make a trip into town to deliver my son's car to him. But I'll get the binding completed for sure before the end of the month and then I'll update the post with a final picture or two.

I've finished part 2 of Unity! I was super excited that the measurements are dead on. 🎉 That's especially important when you are doing a quilt with rounds.

I've also completed the final selvedge rug! Here are all three I've made this year. The final one is in the middle.

I've completed three quilts for others. First is the final bit of Christi's bow quilt, quilted with Christmas Bows. You may recall that the power went out last week just before I finished this one. 

Next is Heidi's, quilted with Starry.

And finally, another of Heidi's, quilted with Fall Foliage.

Beyond that, I just took it easy and worked on preparing things for my son's move in to the dorm. I did a lot of laundry and a lot of shuffling around of things. He kept bringing out more and more things to be packed. We fit everything plus three adults into my car. We did have to add on the hitch carrier to stow the foam mattress toppers for him and his roommate. I think we still added a few more things after I took this picture.

While we were loading the car, I noticed a luna moth on a car tire. I haven't seen one in a few years.

The big move was Monday morning. I had to stand outside with his things while my husband moved the car and my son went into the dorm to check in. 

It took us a few hours to unpack everything, help him move around some of the furniture, and put away enough stuff that we could bring the boxes and bags back home with us. He spent most of his time setting up his computer. His roommate was in there the whole time and I'm not sure he unloaded much of anything while we were there. They are friends from high school, so they are already familiar with each other though I hadn't ever talked to him before.

We did have to pick up another power strip, which I had expected, along with a few random things, so we did two more quick stops with stuff--he had to come out to meet us in the driveway. I'm glad he ended up having to do early move-in instead of the Tuesday/Wednesday grand move-in. It wasn't super busy. I saw a few videos from Tuesday morning and it was packed. He has two days of orientation and programming for the dorm LLC (living learning center). And then two days of programming in his college.

We are now getting used to our quiet empty nest. Our fish died Monday. Guess it waited until both kids were out of the house. My husband and daughter put both roosters plus Penny back in the coop over the weekend. My husband has had to move the roosters around since they haven't consistently gone back in the coop at night. Peanut is still in the garage, which smells much better with only one chicken in there instead of four. 

I'm planning to poke around the gardens a bit if the weather holds in the evenings. I need to finish weeding the barn garden. The electrical inspection is set up for Friday afternoon, so it would be nice to clear the weeds around the foundation before that. We harvested about two pounds of green beans over the weekend and I guess there's still more out there. The tomatoes need to be picked if the bugs/worms haven't totally destroyed them. Maybe the watermelons are ready? I need to pull out the remaining pea and lettuce plants and possibly sow more seeds for a fall harvest. One of the pumpkin vines has really spread. It's gone up and through the fence in various points. Can you see it?

We have a lot of giant ironweed on our spare lot right now. I always find it pretty.

I haven't started my purple whole cloth quilt OMG yet. The finish link up post will go live on the 25th, so I'd better get at it!