January OMG Complete

Woo, it's been a week. I have been a busy little thing. Lengthy post ahead.

First, today is the actual link up for Denise's Flower Patch SAL.  You can see my individual blocks and commentary in last week's post. Here are all of my blocks put together so far.

Something I forgot to share about this last week is that my son came looking for science help while I was sewing and I didn't have paper handy, so I wrote on my foundation paper. I love this newsprint for paper piecing. You can buy a ream of it on Amazon quite reasonably. 

Next, I have completed my January goal, which was to assemble at least 1/4 of my Grassy Creek blocks. I have about half of them assembled. Now that I'm seeing it together, I see why the border exists, but I am unenthusiastic about actually creating the border pieces (more strings). I am also unenthusiastic about the actual sewing of the rows, so I will probably take a break for a few weeks before going back to it. It's sideways here. The bottom of the quilt is pictured on the left.

Here's what's still left to sew.

I have lots of other things I can work on. I have set aside Rhododendron Trail for now. Based on last year's schedule, I think that the Macaron Mystery should be close to wrapping up, so that may be something I strive for in February. I need to assemble my guild mystery BOM from last year. My original plan was to make one that I could show the block for each month and one that was all finished and quilted for the reveal in December. The former is ready for assembly and the latter is still just a pile of fabric. 😒 I need to bind a small quilt. I really, really, really want to sew this little Elizabeth Hartman kit I have. I bought background fabric so that I could join another block of the week program, but haven't had time to start it yet since I've been working on Grassy Creek. I have several other projects that I'd like to finish off too. Time is not on my side. I've been really good about not buying fabric unless it's a backing or a background for things I already have, but not so good at the actual getting the things done. Anyway, this is all material for a post for next week with a new OMG. Let's move along.

I've been quilting every single day (not what I aspire to, but out of necessity to meet some deadlines). Here's what I've quilted this past week.

This absolutely gorgeous quilt of Elle's, quilted with Persephone 3. She provides Warm & Natural for all her quilts.

Another of Elle's quilts, quilted with Loop the Loop.

Sonja's amazing Log Cabin quilt. These strips are like 1/2" finished. Quilted with Basketweave. Sonja often sends me Pellon Bamboo batting, which quilts just beautifully. I do have to be careful not to pop holes in it when I load it, but boy is it nice. I'd definitely recommend giving it a try.

Sara's flannel quilt, quilted with More Square Drama. She brought me Hobbs wool batting, which I hadn't used before. It felt different than I expected it to, but quilted quite nicely.

Elle's blue quilt, quilted with Ginger Snap. 

Elle's labyrinth quilt, quilted with The Tempest.

I was trying to figure out which Glide threads I needed to reorder or add and my thread drawers were a mess. I took the time to really organize by colors and two of my drawers look so nice and organized. And now it's easy to see what colors I'm running low on and find them by color family. First is the neutral drawer (which has overflow So Fine in it too). 

And the color drawer. Isn't it pretty?

You'll notice I have a lot of tiny spools of Glide (1000 m, about 1094 yards). You can quilt at least one quilt, usually two to three, with one of the small spools (assuming you use pre-wound bobbins like I do and don't wind your own). For example, Elle's 90 x 94 blue pickle dish quilt above needed just over 400 yards of top thread, as did her green quilt (98 x 100).

I haven't reorganized the So Fine drawer yet. It's in a "wherever it fits so that the drawer will close" state.😆

On the home front, last week I saw a FB post that one of the local restaurants was doing a Canada-themed dinner special. We had some gift cards and I didn't have anything planned for dinner, so it seemed like a good time to try some different cuisine. We tried each thing on the menu--my son ordered the poutine appetizer as his meal, my daughter had the salmon and veggies, and my husband and I got the Montreal smoked sandwiches. We ordered the nanaimo for dessert. It used up all of our gift cards and then some. My daughter said hers was really good. My son liked his, but his fries were not overly crispy. It's pictured below without the gravy poured over it. Our sandwiches tasted largely of yellow mustard with a hint of corned beef flavor. My fries were soggy, but we did have our meals as takeout. The dessert was quite different, a bit sour and not as sweet as I would have expected given the ingredient list. I was a bit underwhelmed overall, particularly given the cost, but it was fun to try something new on a whim. We don't get to do that much anymore.




Meanwhile, our robotics team is wrapping up their season. They had a practice interview session via Zoom last week. They had two competitions on Saturday and ended up in third place for league play for the season. Not bad considering they go against middle and high school teams and one of our two members is a total rookie. I was able to watch their matches via live stream. Their championship tourney is this Saturday (again, I'll be watching the live stream), with their judged virtual interview session tonight.

If you're keeping track of my lettuce, here it is this week, 2.5 weeks after I started the growing process. Be sure to scroll down to last week's post to look at last week's growth (1.5 weeks post-planting). The difference is startling! My last seeds have sprouted, but not made their way above the paper thing yet. Now that the lettuce is really growing, I have to add 1-2 cups of water to the tank per day; it's using that much.

I'll leave you this week with a shot of our snail in the fish tank. You never know where you'll find him. He was missing for almost a week before Christmas. I kept asking if it could escape and my family assured me it couldn't. My daughter found him in the carpet near the tank. Gross. I guess they can survive up to a week out of water.  He is good at keeping the algae knocked down though.
Have a good week.

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.


Flower Patch SAL Blocks 8 & 9

Edited: Okay, it's not time to link up. That's next week. 🤦🏻‍♀️

It's time to link up blocks 8 and 9 in Denise's Flower Patch SAL. I did some late night sewing to finish these in time and was reminded why I should never sew after about 5 pm. I spent a lot of time with my seam ripper because I kept sewing the geese on the wrong sides or going the wrong direction. 😔



I have all the units made for the Macaron Mystery.

I'm contemplating starting a new block of the week with fabrics I already had in the stash since several of my BOM projects are just about finished.

I have my first finish for the year, but I can't show it yet, so enjoy this picture of the back of the quilt! I am proud of myself because I learned how to edit an existing digital design. I cut out some of the eight pointed stars, drew some four pointed stars, and added them in to the design.

I have not yet begun to assemble my Grassy Creek top, which is my OMG for the month. I feel good about my progress on the rest of the stuff though.

I've been super busy with quilting too, trying to catch up. I finished off Kathy's felted wool quilt.

Here's Sara's quilt, being quilted with Honey Hexagons.

Haley's Little Miss Sawtooth quilt, quilted with New Moon Loops. I also made the binding and attached it to the front of this quilt.

Next up was Beth's quilt, quilted with Baptist Diamonds Curved.

I've started quilting one of Elle's quilts. This is a king sized quilt and it will be a two-day stitch out.

My lettuce in my hydroponic garden is growing, mostly. One hasn't sprouted. I'll probably give it a few more days and then put a lettuce seed in there to see if I can get something growing.

Oh, and Keanu Reeves wants to send me an Instagram message. NOT. LOL.


Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

Off to a Slow Start

I'm off to such a slow start this year. I knew last week would be slow with college orientation and such, but I haven't seemed to be able to pick up the pace yet. Things are all just a little off and I guess I'm not going with the flow as much as I generally do. I showed up early for my dentist appointment yesterday (thought appointment was earlier than it was) and my hygienist was running late, so I had to wait in my car for almost half an hour--they're back to the call when you get here and we'll tell you when you can come in. My Superior Threads order was delivered Sunday and the one color I actually needed for this week was the one that didn't come. I was able to call and get it corrected yesterday, but now I am waiting for the replacement. That's the first time that's ever happened with them, and they were very nice about it, but I still have to wait. I have several medical/orthodontic medical bills that are completely screwed up, so I spent lots of time on the phone trying to get those straightened out. Those are all in a wait and see mode now too.

So what's good right now? Actually, most things, as long as I keep my news consumption at a low level. My daughter started classes Monday and things went okay. Tuesday seemed to be much better. My son was able to get his booster shot last week. He was feeling groggy Thursday, so I had him stay home from school Friday since it was super cold out too, and I did not feel one bit guilty about it. (Our previous school superintendent would usually either delay or close school when it was that cold, but guess the new one isn't going to do that. The wind chill in the morning was -6 and it is not easy here to access adequate winter clothing. Finding boots and snow pants locally when the kids were younger was a challenge.) I was able to find some KN-95 masks for the kids to wear to classes. Quilt guild meetings are back to virtual this month and I'm relieved. I got to sleep in a bit this morning and I'll be home alone all day today!

Oh, funny story to share. You know how my sewing room tour aired last Wednesday? I had clicked on the link to the video so that I could share that before I went to the orientation, which ended up being hundreds of people sitting in an auditorium the entire day 😒. I'm sitting in the auditorium and my husband is texting me that he keeps hearing people talking. He was home alone that day. He finally figured out that the livestream had started and the talking was coming from the computer. I hadn't closed the tab from when I grabbed the link, so it just started playing. 😆🤣🤣

You're here for the sewing, so let's get to it. I forgot to share the quilt I worked on last week. Yup, only one. It is another of Toni's memory quilts, being quilted with the Tractor pantograph. Just look at all those tiny pinwheels!

Next, I've been working on Kathy's felted wool/needle felting quilt. This one is thick and stretchy. It required adjusting the longarm to clear the seams. I spent a day and a half basting and then doing stitch in the ditch and burying in a million threads. Then I added some random cross-hatch blocks. We decided it needed more quilting than that, so it will be going back on the frame for some more quilting today. 

I didn't have enough time to work on client quilts yesterday afternoon, so I thought I'd work on one of my own long-neglected projects. It will be quick and easy, I thought. ha ha ha ha. Five hours later, it is quilted. I had watched a class from the IQ Summit and wanted to apply what I learned, so I practiced placing and adjusting patterns within blocks. I finished well after dinner, so the photo doesn't show much, if any, of the quilting, but once it's light again, I will take some better pictures.

While I was quilting yesterday, I was able to spend a few minutes working on this month's Macaron Mystery.



Sadly, nothing at all has happened on either of the Bonnie Hunters.

I'll leave you with my new garden, a gift from my husband. He keeps messing with it after I set it up, so I guess maybe it was actually a gift for him. I'm growing lettuce. It sprouted within three days. The light has to be on 15 hours at a time. It's really bright. 

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

January OMG

Happy New Year!

Not a ton of sewing has been going on. I have completed sewing the quilt I've been testing, but I can't share it yet.

I was able to sew this month's #Trending block, the owl. It is attached to some of the bees from December. I can't believe I'm up to date on this one!

Last night I was a speaker at the large guild I belong to. I am a terrible public speaker.  The meeting got switched to Zoom due to Covid, so I thought speaking over Zoom using a slide show would be easier. It wasn't! Once I shared my screen, my mouse no longer worked and I couldn't remove the people from the sidebar. They covered all the text on my slides! Eeek! I made it through and I am glad that commitment is complete. And hopefully I addressed my assigned topic of machine quilting without sounding like an advertisement--I was trying really hard have general information and not just have it all about my business.

My goal for this month is to piece together at least 1/4 of the Grassy Creek units that are hanging on my design wall. Here is a lovely picture of my long arm that I used in last night's speech with the Grassy Creek units hanging on the design wall in the background.

Today I will be spending the entire day at college orientation with my daughter. It's going to be freezing out and the orientation information says we will be doing a good amount of walking. I'm guessing that's a campus tour outside. Brrrr. Hope I don't freeze to death. But shivering burns calories, right? And the mask will keep my face warmer. Looking for the upside. :)

Want to view my sewing room? I'm going to be on the Quilted Joy Clubhouse today at 1 pm eastern! I hope I don't look like a complete fool. 😅 I'll have to watch the replay.

Until next week--

Stay safe out there! 😷

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.