Stories from the Sewing Room

Here I am, writing my weekly post a day early. I opted not to write an additional post last week after publishing the March OMG Finish Link Up. And tomorrow, my usual publishing day, the April OMG will post. So, let's get started with my March PHD report.

Linking with Ms. P's PHD program

I completed item three on my list, the History Center quilt. This one will be donated to the big guild's community quilts program next week. The quilt is large, finishing at 79" x 90". My quilt holders had to do this one sideways and it was still a stretch with two of them.

I completed item eight on my list, Nancy's Bonnie & Camille. I'm not sure what I will do with this one. It's around 51" square.

I also made progress on #23, the Linda J. Hahn class quilt, completing the top. I keep looking at that outer border and thinking it could be a hair thinner. I don't know.

Finally, I completed my new start, the Dresden plate mini quilt. 

That gives me a total of four completed UFOs so far. Not too bad. Eight more finishes feels like a challenge right now though. 

I have done no other sewing. 

I have, however, done a ton of quilting to try to catch up from my spring break time off. First is Ann's quilt, quilted with Frost. 

Next is another of Ann's, quilted with Flirtatious Leaves. The quilting blended really well with this one. 

Then I did a series of table runners for Jan and Brenda. This one is quilted with Fall Foliage.

This one is quilted with Maureen's Oak Leaf.

These two are quilted with Persian.

And this one is quilted with JK Celtic. I decided it would be fastest to baste all their backing fabrics together and only do one load. You may be surprised to know that each of the runners took around 45 minutes to stitch out. I was surprised. 

Next I quilted Deb's with Curlique. I always wonder if you pronounce that design as curly-Q or cur-leek. Anyway, I was pleased with how it turned out. 

Sara's is quilted with Cakewalk.

Barb picked Cassava for this one.

Donna chose Spaceman.

I also had some binding last week. I sewed the binding to the front of all of Ann's quilts. One didn't have quite enough binding included, so she had me sew what there was and leave a bit loose on each end so she could add more.

forgot to take an in-progress picture/this one is complete

And I fully bound Donna's. 

So far this week I have quilted Ginger Snap on Marsali's quilt.

And Cassava on Keetah's quilt. 

Moving into the "everything has changed" topic, Friday and Saturday we were at IU for the "Why Luddy?" event. Friday evening the prospective students spent time in the dorm with current students while the parents listened to a variety of panels. At the end, the parents returned to the dorm and some of us took advantage of the optional dorm tour. Saturday everyone was together for another series of panels. 

We learned that my son was awarded one last scholarship for being a FIRST alumni. We also learned that students living in the designated dorm get to take advantage of a number of additional opportunities. And we learned that our plan to compress the 4+1 BS/MS program into 3+1 is not really possible due to the structure of the class schedule. So all our planning has gone out the window. 

Since my son's scholarships now total more than just tuition, we feel that he would really benefit from taking on some debt for a year to have the additional experiences that living in the dorm for a year would provide. The original plan was to save that money by commuting, but again, he was awarded a lot of scholarship money, way more than we ever dreamed. So I will become an empty-nester much sooner than was planned. Most students stay in the dorm for one year only, so he will likely return home for the rest of the time. However, I suspect he may enjoy being away from us, so I can't make any firm plan for the rest of his college years. I can say that we cannot afford rent in town, so he will have to consider that. 

Besides the unexpected housing change of plan, we found out that the big scholarship (which is awarded to around 3% of incoming freshmen!) requires him to maintain a 3.5 GPA. I am concerned about that. The others are either a 3.2 or a 3.0. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. The overall experience of the weekend was very good, just a lot of unexpected change. 

In other news, my car has been out of commission for over a week. I'm hoping it will be back to fully operational by the end of the week. It's like I'm grounded. Not that I usually go many places anyway. I'm usually way too busy with work and chores. But still.

I am behind in my yard work. I need soil to add to my vegetable garden beds and I should have already had some things in the ground. (Broken car = no way to haul soil). I should have also started seeds, but I guess it's not super late. I need to start clearing the junk out of the neglected lower flower garden. I considered hiring someone to weed, but I can't find anyone that doesn't explicitly state that they do chemical removal. I want manual removal. So I guess it's on me. 

Finally, do you remember when I said that the chickens we were having hatched were in limbo since she lost power to her incubator? Four survived. My husband is bringing some home today, but I don't know how many he committed to. Some things are better unasked. 

I'll be back tomorrow with the April OMG link up.

We've made it through another month and it's time to share our progress.

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

Then I went to sew the spire units to the stars and WHAT?! They don't fit. I figured out that I had cut the center strips 1/2" too large, so I had to disassemble one row of spires on each, trim off the excess, and resew everything. 

I got the center unit completed.

Here I am auditioning the skinny and outer borders. The instructions call for 1.5" finished and 3.5" finished, but I went with 1" finished for the skinny border because I thought the other was too heavy. 

Here is my finished top. I'll probably do some light custom quilting on this one. It's around 33" square.