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Race Car Quilt

I've been looking over my PHD list, trying to figure out what to work on next. I decided to work more on the race car quilt I talked about a few weeks ago. I'd already constructed two of the three types of blocks that make up the center. That left two blocks that have the "peaky/spike" or "tri-recs" units. 

I couldn't remember exactly how to sew these when they aren't trimmed off with the specialty rulers. Hmm...maybe I can use my Tri-Recs rulers to nip the points? Well, these don't line up, do they? Now what?


I turned to the internet and watched part of a video from Holly Anne Knight on how to make this type of block without a specialty ruler. It looked like she was making two sets at a time in her method, but it gave me a point of reference for how to line it up. 

This looks okay, I think?

Or maybe not. The blocks seem to have grown. I feel like the cutting instructions weren't quite right for these parts. I decided that since the strip was the correct size on one side, I'd center it on the other and then just trim off the excess. Obviously this isn't the right way, but it worked well enough for a project I don't really care much about anymore. 

After I trimmed the blocks down, I assembled the central portion of the quilt. Definitely not my best work as far as points being accurate, but considering I cut this thing out 15 years ago, it's okay. 

It has four sets of borders next. After that there is another round of pieced blocks. I've set it aside until I feel like adding borders. I find adding borders really tedious.

I'm not sure what I'll work on next. I'd like to start working on my fitting pattern, but I am not sure what size to cut, so need to look into that a bit more. I'd also really like to get my Marble mystery quilted, but I'm a bit behind on work, so it may need to wait a bit.

Speaking of work, I completed two large quilts and a table runner. 

The first quilt has such a fun story: the maker is a pre-teen young man. It's his first quilt and he's planning to enter it in the IHQS in a few weeks. He requested Diamond Squared. It has a minky/cuddle backing. It took me two days to quilt.

The next quilt belongs to Annie and it's a large quilt at 103" x 103". The quilt pattern she used is called Lyla Jean. She wanted Thread Garden for the stitching. It took two full days to quilt--over nine hours in just the actual stitching time, not counting loading, advancing, etc. It also took almost 1000 meters of thread (one small cone) for the front. I wound 60 wt bobbins from a different thread.

Finally, I started working on Trish's group of quilts. I got one of her table runners quilted with Interlocking Orange Peel. The quilt pattern she used is called Jolly Balls Balls of Jolly. I must admit that when I saw that name come through in my quilting request form, I wasn't sure what to expect. LOL. It's a cute little table runner.

In my personal life, our weekend robotics competition did not go well. The boys won another CONNECT Award, but their robot and/or alliances didn't perform as well as we would like. They think their expansion hub is failing in a similar fashion to the control hub last month. When we got home, my husband looked at the robot and discovered a bunch of screws had come loose too. So the robot got torn down and repaired again. The state competition is on March 8. 

Rain poured down all day Saturday and I think I even saw a flash of lightning that evening. I was super surprised to wake up to three inches of snow Sunday morning! 

We've had a hawk hanging around our mailbox for almost a week. I think all the critters are getting desperate for more food. Sorry it looks so grainy. I took it through the screen.

Speaking of critters, Beaker the hen had her last dose of antibiotic this morning and she goes back to the vet next week. She's trying to bear weight on her foot. The bad toe, which is the one in the middle, seems to be "loose" according to my husband. I don't want to look too closely. 🫣

My daughter visited Friday night to check on Beaker. While the menfolk were at robotics, we watched the Barbie movie. I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but it wasn't that. I had a hard time staying awake. Am I turning into my mother? 

My son had another appointment for his hand and he's now done with the brace unless he feels he needs it. Maybe he can start driving himself to things again soon. 

I've been reading through more of my quilt history books in the evenings. We're up to date on most of our current Hulu watches, which include Abbott Elementary, High Potential, and Celebrity Jeopardy. We've also started rewatching Superstore episodes when we only have a short amount of tv time. It's still funny and I don't even remember parts of the very early episodes. We have a few episodes of My Name is Gabriel left, but we need to read the subtitles on those. For our PBS watches, we're still working on the current season of All Creatures Great & Small. We've finished Miss Scarlett and haven't started Vienna Blood yet. I've watched all of this season's available Finding Your Roots episodes. What are your favorite PBS shows?

The February OMG finish link up will be available starting Saturday. 


Frankenbatting & Regret

I've only done utility sewing over the past week. I have made three Frankenbattings--one for my own project, one for a customer, and one for my small guild. I used three different types of battings for these: Quilters Dream Blend for my own (seams beautifully), QD 80/20 Natural (more challenging to seam nicely), and Hobbs 80/20 (it's stretchy). Using my walking foot, I zig-zag stitch my batting scraps after straightening the edges where I'm planning to sew.

Here's the QD Blend. If I had trimmed the batting to be even on the edges, you wouldn't even know there was a seam.

I normally try to make the seams in my pieced battings run horizontally. I'm not sure why other than that's the way my scraps usually make the most sense. Maybe because horizontal seams are better in the backing on the longarm? I ended up running the QD 80/20 seams vertically just because it's easier to have the excess batting hanging down rather than off to the sides on the longarm. And, yes, I realize I could have trimmed it, but that's more work and this was a fairly small quilt. I find that the 80/20 tends to get a bit wavy when you stitch chunks together.

The Hobbs ended up having horizontal and vertical seams. Much to my surprise, one of the remnants I was sewing already had a seam in it. Then one piece ended up too small and another was very oversized, so I cut the excess off and used it to fill in the small part. Hobbs is a pretty stretchy batting, so I figured this is okay. It's for a donation quilt, so it's not like it needs to be show-quality.

As far as the regret portion of my post title, I was slightly unhappy with my thread color choice on my Runway quilt, but I wasn't upset enough at it to spend time ripping out all the quilting. What I am regretting is that in my haste to get my project quilted, I forgot to check for seam shadowing. Of course, by the time you are part way into the quilting and notice it, it's too late (unless you want to spend hours ripping out the quilting to fix it). The seam shadowing is pretty bad in this quilt. I am so disappointed in myself. I decided this one isn't worth hand binding. I will probably donate it. Look for a finish soon.

Good from a distance, but not great up close.

I have completed five quilts for others.

First is Marsali's Happy Stripes quilt, quilted with Whoop-de-Doo at a 50% offset.

Then I quilted Toni's quilt with Honey. I probably should have scaled up the design more, but it does look cute.

Next is Marsali's Star Pop quilt, quilted with Thread Garden. She gave me a minky/cuddle fabric for the back and the quilting looked amazing on it.

Jae's baby quilt is quilted with Mallow.

This guild donation quilt is another variation of Bedford Tiles (remember mine from last month?). One of my guild mates made the center, another added the borders, someone pieced the backing, I'm quilting it, and others will bind it. I chose to quilt it with Lovely Loops and used the Hobbs Frankenbatting. I'm pretty sure I've quilted four of these now, including my own. 

If you're wondering how I'm doing personally, I'm still full of rage and despair. Federal workers are not your enemies. They are your family, friends, neighbors, and people in your community. Cutting funding and jobs doesn't just affect the federal employee or the scientist receiving research funding; it also affects the support people such as lab assistants, lab animal caregivers, admin assistants, janitors, food service, security people, contract specialists, shipping and transportation people, etc. It all ripples out. 

My hair is still way too short and still sticking out everywhere. I say it represents my currently prickly personality. 

I managed to catch my pinky fingernail on the long arm needle while advancing a quilt. I have no idea how this even happened. The needle broke and the lower half of it was lodged in my nail bed. It was very painful. It's been five days and I still get occasional sharp twinges of pain. I did not get blood on the quilt though!

Beaker the hen had a costly vet visit last week Wednesday. She had x-rays. Her toes are not broken, but she does have frostbite on a few and a growth ("lesion") on one. The vet wasn't sure if the lesion is a tumor and/or is cancerous. She prescribed an antiseptic foot soak, a pain medication, and an antibiotic and advised that medication requires two people to administer. The first two and a half days it was pretty easy to get all the medicine in. Saturday Beaker must have started feeling better because it is now really hard to hold her still enough and get her beak pried open to squirt the medicine in. In case you wondered, I am the medicine squirter, not the chicken holder. The growth is still pretty ugly and big, but Beaker is starting to put a little pressure on her foot now. We'll see. I'm having a sale in my Etsy fabric shop to help raise money to cover the unexpected bill. I think I've covered almost two prescriptions so far. That was the affordable part of the bill. 🫣  We're supposed to have a follow-up appointment in two weeks with more x-rays. We have her isolated in the garage now to try to help her rest and not be jostled or mounted.

Meanwhile, my son was still having range-of-motion issues after his fall. I talked to a nurse at his doctor's office and she advised me to go to the orthopedic walk-in clinic, which must be done within 14 days of injury. Otherwise you have to get a referral and wait for an appointment. We just snuck in on our last day of eligibility. More x-rays, a brace, antibiotic, and a follow-up appointment were the result. I think we've easily met his deductible for the year. 

My daughter visited over the weekend while the menfolk traveled to the very northern part of the state for their next robotics tournament. I really enjoyed having girl time. We hung out, got groceries, and watched the robotics tournament live stream. I found this cute little cake to surprise her with. If you can't tell, it's a little dog. It looked better than it tasted.

Our robotics team had perhaps our best event showing ever. We were ranked third after the regular matches and selected by the number one team to be in the finals alliance. We dropped a match in the playoff, came back from the loser bracket, and won the tournament! Our team also won the INSPIRE Award, the highest award possible, for the first time ever! It was possibly the nicest day I've had in 2025.

Here are some birds that were flying above me as I walked in the sunshine Monday. My Merlin app tells me they were sandhill cranes. This is as zoomed in as my phone camera could go.

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation, Quiltery, and Alycia Quilts.