In the Nick of Time

I finished my May OMG with literally hours left.  My goal was to get two rings of my For the Love of Geese pattern sewn and I finished a few minutes ago!

Here it is!


Don't worry, it will be round when I sew it together.  :P 

Linking with Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - May Finish Link-up.

Whew!  I made it.  Now I'm going to go watch Space Force with the family.


Geese

This month has taken some interesting twists and turns.  Nothing major, just a lot of time spent on things I wasn't anticipating.  Isn't that how life goes?

I have done quite a bit of sewing this past week, though I haven't made quite as much progress as I had hoped.

I finished the entire outer ring of my For the love of geese quilt and made some progress on the next ring in. My goal for May was to have the outer ring and the pink ring done.  You can see I'm not quite there, but May isn't yet over.  Will I be able to finish my goal in time??
Denise at For the love of geese sent me these lovely Island Batiks.  Are the colors wonderful?  Thanks, Denise!
My husband made me this sign for my sewing room.  I just have to choose where to hang it.


Some of the flowers are looking nice.  It's been an odd year for the flowers.  My butterfly bushes have basically fizzled out.  I have one that is doing okay and the other four are really struggling or have died.  This year we are inundated with chipmunks and rabbits and they are plotting the gardens' demises.  My irises need to be divided, so there are very few blooms.  Those that have set flowers are on very short stalks, so they don't show well, being down in the leaves.  We had a late frost that didn't help matters either.  This is my favorite iris, Crater Lake Blue.  It usually has giant blooms.  The blooms are still fairly large, but the stalks are flopping over, which is very unusual in my yard.
I can't remember what this plant is, but let's enjoy it before the bunnies eat it.
I lost half of my clematis vines this year too.  Three of the four remaining are blooming or starting to bloom.


This clump is at the lower left of the vine above.
We always call this our Seuss clematis because it's so different from our others.  We bought it at Menards one year.
There is usually a bird nest in this one.

My little garden out my sewing room window looks nice this year too.
We have harvested about half of the baby bok choy we grew.  We've been enjoying the fresh lettuce too. Most everything else is growing well, but no other food yet.

I have to take my daughter to pick up her diploma this morning.  The kids have dentist appointments tomorrow, which should be interesting.  I'm glad they have implemented strict safety standards though.  For me, always a germaphobe, I like that there are now more sanitizer stations and also not having to wait in a waiting room.  I would have loved not waiting in a pediatrician waiting room when the kids were young.  We'd go for something routine and I would end up sick, even though I tried my best not to touch anything.  Ha.

Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

Funny Things #49


Binding

Over the weekend I finished up my client Adeline's quilt.  She hired me to quilt and bind it.  


I got a new toy to help with squaring it up before binding.  Have you ever used a tile laser square to help square up a quilt?  I found it helpful, yet pretty finicky to use.  I had to be exceptionally careful not to touch any of the fabric other than to lightly mark my trim lines or the laser line went haywire.  After very carefully marking and trimming, the client's quilt came out extremely square. 

Next I tried to use the laser to square up my Dash Along quilt.  I thought that my quilt was pretty square to start with.  Diagonal measurements were very close.  According to the laser, the quilt was not remotely square.  I trimmed it up with a ruler in the normal fashion and decided it was good enough.  Oh well.

I am currently binding my Dash Along quilt.  I have one long side of the quilt and half of one short side bound. This is the back.  It's been super dark and gloomy the last few days, which is not ideal for photos.

I have also been making some masks for my household.  I got my hair cut Monday, so needed a mask.  I managed to keep it on for the duration of my time in the salon.  I made some for my kids too, in the event they leave the house in the future.  I had to really work at tweaking to get a proper fit for them.  I do not enjoy anything about the masks, so this is probably the first and last time I will ever mention it.

Last week we celebrated my daughter's birthday.  We decided on a recipe I'd pinned long ago for her cake. It's called Shirley Temple cake.  It is basically a lemon cake with maraschino cherries.  I was very pleased that the cake turned out.  This might be my only attempt at a Bundt-style cake that has ever turned out. Here is the recipe if you are interested.  We reduced the sugar by 3/4 cup (used 2 1/4 cups).  I would also finely chop the maraschino cherries before adding them and make only half of the glaze. You can see we had way too much. One final note--this cake dries out really fast, so be sure to have a way to cover it.

One of my clematis started blooming.  

And here's a picture of my little pineapple.  The three I'm trying to root are struggling.  I should be able to harvest the bok choy and lettuce this week.
Check back Friday for a funny picture.

Linking with For the love of geese.




Chaos in the Workspace

I've been pretty busy this past week, and my sewing room is showing it.  There is stuff piled everywhere.

I quilted my Dash Along churn dash quilt over the weekend.  I made the top during a quilt along in 2018.  I originally was planning to custom quilt it, but didn't have the time or the plan figured, and I was itching to stitch out this new pantograph I got.  I wanted the scale to be very tiny, so it took eight million years (or so it felt like) to stitch it out.  In reality, the actual stitching time was around nine hours, plus the time to set it up, line up rows, change out bobbins, etc.  It took two days of work to complete the quilting, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  I just need to find the time to make and attach the binding.  The churn dash blocks are 12".
While Dash Along was being stitched, I was planning out my borders for the Frolic quilt.  I use planning in the loosest sense.  It was more of a "let's sew this together and sew this here and see what happens" kind of thing.  I think it's working out well, but I have a few other things to complete before I can get back to it.
The central part of the quilt top, trimmed and stay-stitched.
Joining the HST into flying geese units.
I made the inner border wider than was suggested.
Strips of flying geese border units.
Meanwhile, I am contemplating my color choices on For the Love of Geese.  I had a layout planned and then inadvertently switched some of the pieces while sewing.  I'm debating whether I can live with it or need to redo some.  I think the answer is that I need to redo some.  No one else would probably notice, but I think it would drive me crazy over time.  It's shown on the design wall, along with the lone part of the Bonnie Hunter Unity quilt I sewed.
I am also working on a client's quilt.  The quilting is nearly done, then I will make and attach the binding for her.  Her work takes precedence over mine, so this is what I will be working on for a few days before getting back to my stuff.
Here are a few other views of my sewing room this morning.
So that's where I'm at.  What's new with you?

PS--My Blogger homepage or dashboard has a new look.  I'm not a fan.  While it is more visually appealing, the functionality and ease of locating things is seriously lacking.  Boo.  Bad choice, Google.

Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation and Alycia Quilts.


Lots of Quilting

I quilted two small quilts over the weekend.  I upgraded my quilting software so decided to make another Quilts for Kids to test out the program.  I had several larger pieces of fabric I'd bought especially for this purpose, so I went into the fabric closet to pull out some coordinating fabrics.

And then realized that I did not purchase enough yardage of either piece.  Giant sigh.  

On to plan B.  I dug through my stash trying to come up with enough yardage of anything.  Side note:  I don't usually buy yardage of anything except shades of white.  I found a huge piece of yellow fabric that would work for backing plus enough to mix in with the front fabrics.  Kept searching, came up with a yard+ piece of mouse fabric.  I'm pretty sure I've had this piece of fabric for over 20 years!!  But it is still cute.  Came up with gray polka dot that was left over from a quilt backing.  Okay, this can work.  It's a little offbeat, but all good.

As I assembled the top, I realized that I really didn't care for the piece of fabric I'd pulled for the inner border.  Back to the closet I went, and came up with a coordinating color.  Bonus, it had cats on it!

I decided to really try out the software upgrade by stitching an orange peel design.  Orange peel is notoriously hard to line up from row to row with the software.  It did pretty well, so I'm pleased.  The only change I would have made is to use white thread instead of the gray, because I don't love the gray on the yellow fabric.
I've accumulated quite a few quilts for the Quilts for Kids charity now.  This is a stack of eight that I've done over the past year.  They are closed through at least May 15 due to COVID, so I can't send them in yet.  These will all need to be washed and dried before sending.  Can you imagine how big and heavy this box will be?
Since the trial quilt went well, I decided to load another quilt.  This one is from the Primrose Cottage Quilts spring box and is 36" x 36".  I have loads of batting remnants, but couldn't find one the right size for this quilt, so I made a "Frankenbatting" for the first time.  It was no big deal and I would do it again for sure. It might even help me tame the giant batting avalanche in the fabric closet. Here's a picture of the batting while I was zig-zagging it together.
I quilted it with the Pretty Posies design and I love how soft and feminine it came out.  While the kit came with binding, I wanted a different fabric, so ordered it and am waiting for it to arrive in order to complete this one.
I'm ready to start quilting my Dash Along churn dash quilt along quilt from a few years ago next.  After a good month of not much sewing or quilting, suddenly I'm ready to quilt all the things.  My sew-jo has returned. Woo hoo!  Do you need a top quilted?  I am ready.  Click on the circular "Quilting by Anne-Marie" logo in the sidebar to head to my quilting services page to order quilting.  Sign up for my once-a-month newsletter while you're there in order to receive special offers/codes.  Your email will not be shared.  :)

I was on a Zoom call last night with the larger quilt guild I belong to.  One of the ladies shared her finished Frolic top and I love how she did the border.  I had been dragging my feet because I didn't love the original border and felt like it would need another after that.  However, I loved how Marita's looked. I am totally stealing her idea and will probably finish that top next, no extra/additional borders needed after. I already have the quilting design selected for that one.  I'm still working on my For the Love of Geese top too.  We won't talk about the Unity quilt.  ha.

Things are coming along in the gardens.  Some of the irises are starting to bloom. I ventured out in the rain yesterday to snap these photos.
I have loads of milkweed coming up in the lower front garden, so maybe this year we will get monarchs that can take advantage of them.  

The allium looks nice this year.  We have hummingbirds now too!
The veggies are mostly doing well, minus the beets.  The onions look limp, but since this is our first year trying to grow them, I'm not sure how they should look.  They are in the hanging boxes in the picture below. My husband has added three strawberry beds outside of our fenced vegetable area.  He build protective frames for them with pipes and netting.  We'll see how that goes too.  You can see two of them in the back of this picture.  The other one is on the other side of the garden.
School ends for my kids tomorrow.  2020 sure has been a strange one so far.  Hope you are all doing well.