Stories from the Sewing Room

Friends, I am so close to my holiday vacation. I just have one binding to go. I considered trying to push through and get it done last night, but decided to take it easy and finish it up today. 

I know that I need to stop when I get tired. I'm not always great at stopping, but whenever I try to push through, things go sideways mechanically (why???) and I make mistakes. This is a goal to work towards next year. 

I did have a bit of time yesterday to get some of my own sewing done. I have completed the top and bottom rows of border for the race car quilt. 

I was really surprised to see some unexpected directions when I pulled out the pattern. I had assumed that the blocks would just alternate, but they don't. I don't even know what this repeat is! Probably no one would have ever known if I had just sewn them alternating, but I'm trying to follow the pattern. Considering how non-square my blocks were, they are going together fairly well. I'm still giving myself permission to just sew without making sure all intersections are perfect. It's kind of freeing and kind of cringe-inducing. 

These rows went together very quickly. I haven't measured them yet to compare them to the pattern measurements. Everything to this point has been 1/2" off from the pattern, so as long as that continues, the border in between should go well. Then I just have to figure out a backing and this thing will be done and donated.

I've also been making a bit of progress on the knitted baby blanket. I'm in the last repeat.

I'm having a lot of fun with the small guild advent calendar. So is everyone else based on the amount of group texts I'm getting per day! My gifts are days 10 and 11, so I opened day 10 (the quilting spray starch) yesterday so that I could get a picture of everything so far while the light was good. 

Brenda is a rock star and made every single person (14 or 15?) a quilt. Actually I haven't seen all these yet, so just going on group text info. She made me a chicken table runner and the note said she found the embroidered chickens at a yard sale. 

We have guild Friday night. I suggested we all bring our things Brenda made, which I knew would embarrass her, but she does such creative and innovative work (you should see some of the things she's come up with for the round robin quilts that I don't participate in) that I think it would be fun to see. We are also doing a fat quarter basket swap, so I'll share my offering next week. 

Okay, now for the last of this year's quilts. I bound two of Hannah's quilts that I completed recently. 

I started on Hannah's final quilt in this group. She requested Dunes and also wanted a cutout around one block. I had heard Dunes can be difficult to stitch due to the very slight curve and the amount of lines and stitching R-L and so on. It is a design that you set up as a block or an extended width rather than as an edge-to-edge. I didn't feel like I was having many issues, but it was pretty time-consuming to stitch. 

Then I got to the point in the pattern where I needed to do the no-sew zone and everything went to heck. Part of the pattern disappeared when I tried to split out the lines to remove part of the overstitching. I tried to add the pattern back in and then it didn't line up with the cut out. THEN I noticed that part of the previous pass had terrible tension and I had to remove that. It took forever to realign the pattern properly. Anyway, I eventually got it done, but it took multiple days. 

I bound her quilt and now they are ready to ship back to her. 

I also made the binding and sewed it to Cindy's mom's quilt. 

I started on Kim's quilt. She picked Orange Blossom Special for the quilting. The pattern stitches out really well, but it is really slow, so it took two days to stitch out. Like I mentioned at the top of the post, I still need to bind it. And then it's vacation time!

Look at me switching up the quilt photos with a dramatic night time image!

In other news, not a lot is happening (which is good). I was a little surprised yesterday morning that I was hearing machinery around 6:30 am. They were pouring the basement floor in the house that's being built kitty-corner to us. They had loads of giant work lights set up. It lit up my dining room and we're not even that close. I feel sorry for the people directly across the street from them!

Remember Jeri, whose quilts went missing for a while before being delivered with the box completely torn open? Thankfully the quilts were fine. Anyway, for the last batch we switched to UPS and I had an AirTag in the box. I also sent her a little gift. My husband laser-engraved these slate coasters with a picture of her dog. 

It's time to share my November PHD progress. Can you guess what it looks like? 

Linking with Ms. P Designs PHD program

Yep, pretty much the same as last month. It's killing me that I'm so far away from the PHD right now. But I have made progress on many projects this year. I added the approximate years I started each project in the chart just for fun. 

I did create a new quilt from start to finish in November. I call it Flying. I even wrote up a postcard-style pattern for it that I sent out to my longarm quilting mailing list and listed in one of my Etsy shops.

That leaves just one new start for 2025 that I haven't yet finished, the Linda Hahn class.

As far as the actual PHD portion of my list, I have made progress only on #11 and #14. I've completed the last of the blocks for the race car quilt (#11) and just have to sew them into rows and columns and add a border in between the rest of the quilt and those. Then quilt and bind it. 

I have two patterns repeats left for #14, the knitted baby blanket I started in 2017. It looks the same as it did last time I wrote about it, so I didn't bother with a new picture.

I'm wrapping up this year's quilts, hopefully this week, so maybe I can knock out a few more of my own projects by the end of the year. 

Here are the quilts I've worked on since last week. First is Hannah's, quilted with Echoed Swirls. I still need to bind this plus one of her others that I previously quilted. Side note on Echoed Swirls--this design is very dense! This is as big as I can get it. The lines are no more than 1/2" apart.

Next is Jeri's, quilted with Interlocked Orange Peel. I've written about this quilting design several times before. This quilt is a throw and it took me several days of work because the pattern would not line up no matter what I did. I ended up having to use every other row of my backup file to try to get close to alignment. Although I love how the design looks, this is the last time I will be quilting it for someone else. It's just too much hassle to get an end product I'm happy with. 

I quilted Maureen's Oak Leaf on Kayle's quilt. In my opinion this design stitches out best at a larger scale like Kayle chose. 

Kayle selected Stardust for this quilt. This quilt pattern is adorable and I love the pops of neon. 

Annie picked Radio Waves for this one. 

I quilted Bubble Glitter on Mary's quilt. This quilt alternates between this pieced part and large white swaths. It has a combo of high-thread count sheet and pieced parts on the back. 

I got the binding sewn onto all of Jeri's quilts. 

Speaking of Jeri, her box of missing quilts was finally delivered. The box was completely ripped open on one side and had been taped closed with two different types of tape. Thankfully the quilts were fine. We are going to switch to UPS for this group and also add an AirTag so we know where they are. 

Moving on to some fun things of my own, my small guild is doing an advent box where the participants each provided one purchased and one one handmade item to the hard-working organizer. She wrapped the items and made cute little bits of a story that are included in each day's items. She let me know Saturday night that mine was ready. We were in the middle of a snow storm, but my husband decided he'd drive me to her house to pick it up. I guess you can't take the Michigan out of him. 😏

As we were driving back into our neighborhood, we saw lots of flashing lights. Oh yeah, we forgot the fire department's Santa parade was driving through our neighborhood that night. I felt bad for the Santas standing on the back of the fire engine in the snow. Here's a totally lousy picture I took to send to the kids and urge them to hurry and open the front door to wave. 

Back to the advent box, here is mine before opening. 

Here is what was in the first two days. I don't have time this morning to find today's package and photo it before I have to leave for an appointment. There is a bag of sparkly binding clips, the little tin of cookies, a wee braw bag Kayle made, and the wooden thing is a needle holder and has some needles in it. 

Totally switching gears, I bought a new Christmas cactus (Thanksgiving cactus, probably). I thought the blooms would be light pink or white with hot pink stamens. Instead, the first flower is a strange yellowish beige with the hot pink stamen.

And here is something I found funny. I was cutting someone's fabric order and while folding the fabric I noticed one of the birds appears to have pooped. Hmm...I don't remember seeing when I cut other pieces previously. It is an unfortunately located manufacturing flaw. I cut the person a new piece and will be adding this piece to my own stash because it just makes me laugh.

I'll leave you with that. 😅