Stories from the Sewing Room

This week I have two finishes to share. First is one of the projects from my UFO list, what I call the History Center quilt. I purchased this quilt top at the local history center's fundraising yard sale last year. It was quite inexpensive and I couldn't just leave it there. I shared recently that I had quilted it. I finished the binding on Friday so that I could share it at small guild before donating it to the community quilts program at the big guild in a few weeks. 

I wasn't able to get a good picture of the whole thing since the weather didn't cooperate and I didn't have a tall enough quilt holder (quilt measures 79" x 90"). So here is a poor picture of it on the floor. 

My second finish is my first new start of the year. I took a class at the IHQS at the beginning of March and here is my completed project, the Dresden Plate mini. I learned a few things on this one. One, it's really hard to get a nice, smooth center. Two, I had a lot of issues with the background fabrics shadowing through after quilting. I had accounted for it as best as I could with the center circle, however, I did not expect the backgrounds to show through the fans. Three, it looks like I didn't do a very good job of trimming since it is off-center. I have enough fans to make a second one, so some day I might try again with lighter backgrounds. 

I've been working a bit more on the Linda J. Hahn class quilt that I'd selected for this month's OMG. I was removing the papers prior to assembling since the marks show through the fabrics. I guess I pulled a bit too hard on this one. 😄

I'm finding the assembling of the star blocks to be beyond tedious. I have about a week left to get the top assembled before OMG opens up. Not sure I'll make it. 

Beyond that, it's spring break and I've been taking things pretty slow. 

I finished up Dawn's quilt and got the binding attached to the front for her. 

I finished quilting Annie's t-shirt quilt. You can see the Beavis and Butthead backing fabric in this photo.

I started on a group of Ann's quilts. This one is quilted with Cloud Nine Petite, but you really can't see it. I will attach the binding to the fronts of all of her quilts.

Another of Ann's, quilted with Flirtatious. 

Meanwhile, my daughter came for a visit over the weekend and we traveled to Goose Pond to go bird watching. We saw lots of pelicans, lots of ducks, including huge amounts of Coots plus a few others including Mallards and Northern Shovelers. We also saw plenty of crows and Red-winged Blackbirds, Ring-billed Gulls, some Canada geese, some eagles, and a killdeer. The naturalist at the welcome center told us to be on the lookout for Black-Necked Stilts. He said we are at the far northern edge of their territory. We found them! This is the first time we haven't seen any type of cranes. 

Pelicans and sea gulls

Black-necked Stilt

Pair of Stilts

Pelicans

In chicken news, my daughter got the chicken coop cleaned up. We were surprised that Peanut laid an egg the next day. She hasn't laid in months. We found a second egg this week too. I mentioned before that we are having some eggs hatched to hopefully add more hens to the coop. Unfortunately, the lady had a lengthy power outage during the storms we had this weekend and her incubators were down for more than five hours. She isn't sure they will still hatch--they had about two weeks left--so she has started another batch. That will take at least three weeks more. 

Finally, the best news of all arrived this week. My son was invited to apply to the Luddy Scholars program a while back. He wasn't sure he wanted to write an essay and wasn't entirely sure what the program even is. And he had just over 24 hours to get it done from the time of notification to the due date. I insisted he apply. Well, he was selected for the program and awarded a very nice scholarship. We believe that he now has more than enough to cover his tuition. What a relief! And an honor.

I'll be back with the OMG finish link up for this month next Wednesday. Depending on how things go, I may or may not make an additional, regular post next week.

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and Alycia Quilts.

Nancy's quilt is completed! I'll take it to guild Friday to share. Sorry for the cruddy indoor picture. It's raining again.

This is my first completed quilt of the year. I've also finished two knitting projects.

I've also been making some progress on my Linda J. Hahn quilt from last year's IHQS class. Please tell me this is relatable:

At least I didn't trim off the foundation bit as well. I'm also glad it's just plain white fabric. Anyway, they are all trimmed and the one needs to be repaired.

I've trimmed the history center quilt so that it's one step closer to binding. 

I also have a new start. I took a class with Heather Kojan at IHQS Thursday. She is a fun, laid-back teacher, which suits my taste just fine. I don't need a high-stress, quilt police environment. I was really happy to see a few younger people (<45) in class. I heard there were quite a few young people and kids in the fabric dyeing classes. Anyway, I had enough time to sew all of the Dresden ring together and create the background piece during the three-hour class. 

I opted to sew the center at home where there is better lighting and a sewing machine that I am more familiar with.  

I added an additional layer of interfacing between the center circle and the background to help mask that script fabric behind the light center. As you can see, everything is sewn down and ready for quilting. I think I'm going to trim the background down an inch or two on each side.

I had been planning to start a knitting project, but I've been reading a Patty Lyons book, which I recommend, and now I'm thinking that I need to do the practice exercises in the book before doing something (else) "wrong". 😐

I've quilted just a few things since last week. First is Marsali's quilt, quilted with Baptist Fan.

Next is a quilt Dawn's mom made at some point that she recently found in her things. I'm pretty certain the top fabrics are all poly blends. She picked Lacey Loops for this quilting. I will bind it and she'll have a great memento. 

I've also started working on Annie's t-shirt quilt. I can't totally remember, but I think she said these are her brother-in-law's shirts. Many of them were threadbare, but she patched them up and we are going for it. Also notable on this one is the Beavis and Butthead fabric they provided for the backing (not pictured because I didn't get far enough on it for it to show yet). 🤣 Oh, I'm doing my standard Diagonal Plaid Bias quilting. 

Switching over to the garden, my first daffodils bloomed on March 7 this year. 

They really popped Monday--most of them are blooming now. When we first started the gardens, they all bloomed at different times over the course of a month or so. Over time they seem to have just all started going at once. I love daffodils so here are some more pictures. 

I also keep track of the date the first bloom happens. Here's my data: