Stories from the Sewing Room

I've met my goal for November, which was to create all the selvedge yarn and start knitting.  It took several weeks to tie all the yarn together.  The knitting is going much faster.  As you may recall from last week, each ball weighed two pounds, 14 ounces when I started.  As of last night, each ball now weighs one pound, six ounces.  I would guess I'm about half way done, and that makes sense since I've used about half of each ball by weight.  It's a relief to see the math since I've been worrying that I won't have enough to finish. It's fun remembering the projects I made with each strip of fabric as I get to it, and I wonder what the people who donated selvedges to me made with their fabrics.

First is Kayle's quilt.

I do not need another big project since I have plenty in progress, but I am going to sew along with Bonnie Hunter for the Grassy Creek Mystery that starts on Friday.  As you can see, my colors are VERY different than hers.  I hope this works out okay.  😬  The majority of the fabrics are things I already had.  I had to add lots of grays since the quilt requires a good bit of  yardage, and a few other pieces to get up to the total required.  My fabrics are all spread out on my cream yardage that is also part of the quilt.

Other than that, it's been pretty quiet around here.  I picked up a convection oven/air fryer on special.  If you have a great recipe for an air fryer, I'd love if you shared it with me.  I hope you have a small, safe, quiet Thanksgiving, and I'll see you next week.

Now that Odie has received her quilt, I am very excited to share it with you!  The quilt pattern is Fandango by Stacey Day and Tula Pink and you can find it at FreeSpirit Fabrics.  All the fabrics are Tula Pink as well.  The quilting is all hand-guided custom and some ruler work.  Enjoy!

Here are a few sneak peeks of some edge-to-edge quilting on Cindy's quilts.  This first one is the quilt pattern Chandelier by Lella Boutique.  Fabrics are all Corey Yoder. I quilted Echo Blossoms on it.

Moving on to my own projects, I was preparing binding for the Civil War quilt I shared last week. I found it really weird that this fabric has a printed selvedge on both sides.  I can't remember ever having another fabric like that.  It's great if you're buying a fat quarter.  I always get the side with no identifying information!

Remember my selvedge yarn balls from last week? Cheree suggested that I weigh a certain yardage to estimate how much "yarn" I have.  That was such a great suggestion.  I made several five yard lengths and weighed them.  The average weight (and also the mode for you math people out there) was .8 ounces. 

When I ran out of selvedge strips, each ball was around two pounds, 14 ounces.  Using a proportion with like terms (5/.8 = x/46), each yarn ball is approximately 287.5 yards!

Moving along, you may recall that a while back I chopped up my brand new Kona color card.  I had the bright idea to put them all in plastic page protectors.  The size I bought is for coins.  Well, I finally got around to sorting them and putting them in the sheets.  Bad idea.  Bad, bad, bad idea. With just the slightest movement, the chips fly right out of the protectors.  Plus, I don't think these protectors were meant for taking things in and out. While they are thick, the welds are not and I already ripped a couple just putting the chips in. I'll need to come up with something different. Big old sigh.

One last thing--I may be crazy, but I decided to participate in Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt again this year.  Last year's Frolic just needs to be quilted, which I am hoping to get to next week. I only made it through the 1st clue on Unity this spring.  I wasn't going to finish it, but I loved the fabrics I had pulled and I loved my friend Annie's finished version.  I was planning to work on it over the next few months.

But (imagine me saying that all stretched out--buuuuuutttt), I had a fabric pull that I really wanted to work with and couldn't quite make work with any of my other planned projects. It's way different than her colors, but I only needed to buy a few pieces to get up to the full yardages needed.  I will probably end up with a bit of extra, but since I am fabric shopping online only these days, sometimes things that match on the screen end up being really bad together in person.  Is anyone else joining in this year?

One more last, last thing.  Speaking of ordering fabrics online, I ordered background fabric for my guild BOM. I received it and it is so not what I was hoping.  It will work, but I don't really love it.  So I ordered another piece and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.  I hope this one does the trick, because that's a lot of yardage to mess up twice.

Until next week--

Linking with For the love of geese.

Happy Veterans Day to those of you who have served.  

I'm back to being my mostly hopeful self this week.  Thanks to those of you who reached out.  😊  I'm looking forward to January 2021.

I've finished the custom quilting project (Fandango), but I will wait until next week to share it so that its owner gets to see it first.

After I finished Fandango I needed to switch my long arm back over to being set up for computer work.  Before I started on someone else's quilt, I wanted to test things out on one of my own.  I was planning to finally quilt Frolic, however, I pulled out the wide backing I had set aside and discovered when I unfolded it that there were grease stains in the middle.  I hadn't even unfolded it from when it was purchased, so that was not a pleasant surprise.  And of course it's been sitting around forever since I didn't use it for what I had initially purchased it for.  Luckily some treatment with Dawn and a trip through the washer took removed the grease.  Now I get to iron a three yard piece of wide back!  Yippee!  

Since Frolic wasn't a quick option, I pulled out a Civil War reproduction top that's been hanging around for several years (pattern by Bonnie Blue Quilts).  I bought backing fabric on New Year's, so yay me for quilting it in the same year as purchasing backing!  😏 The Civil War top was much smaller than I remembered, only 50" x 50".  I quilted it with Abundant Feathers and it looks pretty nice.  It will need to wait for binding since my goal this month is to make my "yarn" from selvedges and start knitting.

Speaking of that project, progress is being made.  I have two large balls of selvedge yarn and there are still more selvedges to go.  The balls are at least 6" across right now, and quite unwieldy. I have no idea how much yardage it will take to actually knit the rug.  I guess I'll keep on tying on more pieces until I run out and hope that there is enough there to finish my project.

I also had to repair one of my masks. The metal nose piece broke in half!  I decided to make a spare one while I was at it.  We each have an assigned fabric in our house.

Have I mentioned that my friend and I are running a block-of-the-month program for our guild in 2021?  I've been busy writing and formatting directions and my lovely friend is testing them to make sure they make sense and have correct measurements.  Kudos to all you pattern writers out there.  I'm finding it much more difficult to make quilting directions than to make instructions for all my doll clothing patterns.  

I'm about half way done with the monthly instructions and decided maybe I should make a test quilt too.  While I tried hard to use fabric from my stash, I was really struggling with colors on this one.  I ended up ordering fabric for my quilt yesterday (and my husband doesn't like my color choices, but whatever). 

We took some photos of my completed Water Drop quilt (pattern by Maeberry Square).  It's really hard to get a photo of it where the colors look correct.  The background fabric is Kona White.  The other three are Kona Cypress, Cyan, and Celestial.

My husband has put three of our windows completely back together.  Our master bath is completed and one of the bedroom windows.  It's nice to have a blind back on the window.  I tried to take a picture of it, but the picture came out terrible and I couldn't color correct it, so no sharing. I asked him to do our office window next because it's nearly impossible to work at the computer in the afternoons due to glare.  I really want the blinds back up in there.  After that, he'll move back to our remaining bedroom windows.

I guess that's it for this week.  Stay safe, friends.

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

My goal for November is to transform all these selvedges into something useful.  I've been collecting them for several years.  Some of them were gifted to me via the #getyourquiltywishesgranted hashtag.

My goal is to at least start knitting my project by the end of the month.

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal November Link-up

I've been working on a custom quilting job this week.  Here's a sneak peek.