Stories from the Sewing Room

I'm afraid I don't have much to share this week. I haven't really felt like doing much. I already knew I wasn't going to feel like doing much over the weekend due to getting a booster shot Friday. However, I also received some sad news that really took it out of me. 

I've been meeting over Zoom several times a month for over three years with a group of women who are also quilting business owners. We also text often and have become good friends. Even though we live far apart, I have met all of them in person, Lin at an APQS maintenance class, Christina and Holly at Quilt Con in February. Like me, Holly had brought her husband along and we enjoyed hanging out with them for the day. 

Friday Holly let us know that her husband Tim had passed as a result of a tragic accident. Even though I only met him once, it was easy to see what a bright light he was, just a truly happy, positive person. Holly and Tim have three school-aged children and my heart is just breaking for their entire family. There has been a Go Fund Me started to help her. I realize that most people don't wish to donate money to a stranger, but I feel powerless and this is something small I can do. 

I decided to give myself grace and just slow down.

I prepped several things that need to be sewn. This is part of the September clue for Meadow Mist's Marble mystery. 

I put my Bedford Tiles blocks on the design wall.

I made the outside borders, kinda, for my RSC quilt. I made one giant strip that I will cut according to the measurements of my quilt top. I didn't have quite enough of the fabric that I'd used for the inner sashing strips. I was about 40" short, so there are a few other fabrics mixed in. Hopefully it doesn't end up looking too weird when I get it sewn on.

I've completed a few quilts for others. The first few belong to Ann K. I stitched Moon and Stars on the first one.

I stitched Scribble Hearts on the second. I attached her binding to the front of both of these.

I quilted Mike's Swoosh on Jae's quilt. I think she's planning to display this one at the local show in October. It is a double quilt show weekend--both my guild, Bloomington Quilters Guild, and hers, Quarry Quilters of Bedford, are having their shows October 4 and 5. There is so much going on around town that weekend--the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival, Hilly Hundred bicycle tour, Hoosiers Outrun Cancer, the Science Fest at IU, and some sporting events. You can also see John Mellencamp's art all semester at the Eskenazi Art Museum on campus. So if you ever had the desire to visit Bloomington, that is the weekend to do so. LOL. {The only one of these things I've ever attended besides the quilt shows is the Science Fest. We are planning to visit the Eskenazi though.}

I've started stitching Faux Free Motion on Susan's quilt. This is definitely going to be a two-day job. 

We've been enjoying the antics of the squirrels. I don't know if it's just one or multiples that do wacky things on our deck. They usually go for the drip pan on the grill and also chew on the mat on the deck underneath the grill. They pick flowers from the hydrangea and nibble at them on the deck. They try to climb up the wall and throw themselves at the slider door. We sometimes ponder whether they are intoxicated from chewing on the mat.

There are many rabbits in the yard right now along with all the squirrels. We've seen lots of different birds, but most so briefly that we don't have enough time to figure out what the unusual ones are. We had a large flock of nighthawks for a few nights. We saw some sort of waterfowl, possibly snow geese, flying by in a v-formation. The hummingbirds are still here and battling for feeder dominance. I also saw a hummingbird pecking (?) at the suet a few times.

Other than taking time to smell the metaphorical roses, robotics has officially started for the season. Lots of technical discussion is taking place, during and outside of practice. The team is all boys, the mentors all men. I am vastly outnumbered. I miss having my daughter home. 

My son and I are slowly working through some camera classes. He's become quite interested in photography, and, being the engineer brain that he is, he has to figure out all the settings and how they affect each other, how the different lenses work, and so on. Above my pay grade. I'm trying, but he has to re-explain everything to me.

Not to be a total downer, but my mom told me that my high school gym teacher/driver's training teacher/father of my classmate, died this weekend too. He enjoyed a full life. I obviously knew he was the wrestling coach, but didn't realize how many awards and honors he'd received for wrestling/coaching throughout his career. Here's to you, Mr. Lehman. Well done. My parents were both teachers and I feel like almost every time I talk to mom she tells me that another of my teachers is gone. I guess I'm at that age. Or they are. 

Well, hopefully I'll be more uplifting and will have sewn something for next week. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

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

I've been inching closer to sewing some clothes for myself. I've ordered more A0 format prints of patterns I want to make. After arriving in Indianapolis and taking detours to both Kansas Cities (is that how you make them plural? 🤔), they finally made it back to Indianapolis and then down the highway to my neck of the woods. I ordered from a different place this time--The Plotted Pattern. I chose the mid-price, thinner paper. They look good. I actually found this place recommended on Reddit of all places, via a Google search.  

I've been reading through The Palmer/Pletsch Complete Guide to Fitting book and purchased the Butterick pattern they created for practicing fitting. I think I'm gonna need to convince my husband to help me when I go through the fitting process. I'm sure he'll be thrilled. I just watched a video from Love Notions Patterns that showed me more about picking a size that should help too.

I finally located the old bra I had set aside to double-check the fit on my Bootstrap dress form. Insert record scratch here. 

I can't get the hooks to close. Not even close! I'm like 6 - 8 inches apart. The bra is old and stretched out, but still fits, so it's definitely an issue with the form.

There is not enough stuffing in the cup area--I can fit my fist inside each cup with room to spare. 

The measurements all match mine, but I didn't really think the shape matched me. It's hard to tell because I don't know what I look like outside of myself, you know? My body perception might not match reality. I thought it would be close enough, but it clearly is not. I think I need to take the form off the stand, unzip it, pull out the stuffing, and re-stuff it (while it's wearing the bra) to try to fit my shape better. The bust is the area I struggle with the most for shirts, both sewn and purchased. 

So. Yay. 

After that sad discovery, I spent Labor Day working on my RSC instead. I'm not quite done with the top. I want to add borders around the outside. I need to dig through my white scrap bin to find large enough pieces. I'm thinking I'll cut 2.5" strips. I will probably be piecing lots of fabrics together to get long enough lengths. 

Then it will be on to piecing a back. It won't be from scraps, but will be from my existing fabrics. 

That means my design wall is empty again. I will be placing my Bedford Tiles blocks up there so that I can see what the orientation needs to be to get the look from the pattern. And then it's more sashing and border sewing. Blah. So boring. 

My Meadow Mist Marble mystery quilt is all cut, ready for tomorrow's instructions. Nothing like leaving it til the last moment. That's okay because Cheryl's mysteries are very easy to catch up on should you fall behind. 

The thing I probably need to concentrate on most is getting the hanging sleeves made and attached to the quilts I entered in the guild show since those are the only things I have going right now that have a firm deadline. This ranks right up there with sashing and borders.

In my quilting world, I thought I was done updating my website for now, but received a notice from Squarespace Monday morning telling me there is an issue with linked Google forms not collecting information that is input. So I had to fix that since that is how I book quilts and sign people up for the newsletter. It's always something.

I completed three more quilts for others during the past week.

The first one belongs to Trudy and she requested Peace. (Peace is actually considered a border pattern, but it works great as a panto.) I used yellow thread to match, but it looks light in the photo.

Next is Mary Ann's The Puppies quilt. I struggled with this one because the back had a panel and some seams in inconvenient places and I couldn't quite figure out how to get it centered how she wanted. I finally got it. I selected a 60 wt thread for the top because she was worried about the pattern competing with the piecing. Oh, the pattern is Paw Prints. 

Finally, I quilted Echo Blossoms on Trish's quilt. She picked Glide Salmon from the threads I sent her. Salmon is one of my favorites. It blends with so many colors of fabric. The backing fabric was so soft and drape-y. I need to remember to ask her what type it is (update--she didn't know 😄).

Outdoors it is looking like fall. We switched from highs in the 90s to highs in the 70s over the weekend and it's so nice out right now. Lots of leaves are falling, way more than usual for this time of year. My gardens remain neglected due to my fear of catching poison ivy again and also just the feeling of being overwhelmed I get when I look at the state of the lower garden. It is bad! I had a big patch of mystery plant come up down there. It's flowering now and it is goldenrod. I didn't realize, but goldenrod can be as invasive as spearmint in my area, so I will need to tackle it this fall. There are also a lot of volunteer trees growing in there that need to be removed along with grapevine, which was really rampant in the gardens and in the woods this year. 

Robotics kicks off for the season on Saturday. I've opted not to attend the kickoff event, partially for personal reasons and partially because we're getting our boosters Friday and I usually just want to sleep for a day afterwards. The graffiti quilting class I'm taking with Karlee Porter also starts Saturday. I'll probably watch the replay in smaller chunks of time after the fact since I generally can't sit for that long at a time.

I'll leave you this week with some pictures I took while out on our evening walks in the past week. 

I like how you can see the sun rays in this one. I need to figure out how to edit out their sewer vent pipe.

The sky didn't actually look like this, but the photo looks cool.  That tall thing on the left is their flag all bunched up on their pole.