May OMG Complete

I can't believe I'm done with a week to spare! Especially with how things have been going lately. More on that later. My goal this month was to finish piecing and quilt my Flower Patch quilt from Denise's SAL. Here is it is fully pieced.

Quilting in progress (quilting design is called Wishing):

Finished with the quilting:

A few detail shots with poor late evening lighting.



I hope to find some time to make binding soon.

I've also been working on piecing a test quilt, but cannot share pictures.

I've been working really hard to get lots of quilts knocked out. I had a few challenging ones recently that caused my longarm to skip a tooth on the belt. The needle bar also needed alignment and then we had to retime the machine. It took Tuesday - Friday to address everything. After all that, I thought I'd work on a baby quilt of my own to make sure everything was functioning properly prior to getting back to work. So I was all full of hope Saturday and working along on the quilt. 

You might remember this quilt from past posts. I made it 16 years ago and the quilting was less than ideal, so it got abandoned part way through the quilting process. For your viewing pleasure, here is how it used to look.


I ripped it all out this spring, removed some really odd batting--no idea what it was, but it was weird, and replaced it with a nice piece of Quilter's Dream 80/20 in white (my favorite). I quilted this with a combination of hand guided ruler work and Intelliquilter blocks.

I stopped to research border quilting methods using Intelliquilter and also to take a walk before more rain moved in. Well, we got part way into our walk and it started dumping rain, so we had to run back through the edge of the neighbor's property to get back to our house. Yes, we did check the radar before we went, and according to that, we should have had about an hour. Pretty much as soon as we got back in the house the rain stopped. I was watching a video and reading a tutorial when the power started blipping. And then it was out. A brief but very strong storm moved through and there was no more power for the next 16.5 hours. I am fortunate to live in an area where we rarely lose power, and if we do it is usually not more than an hour or two. So the 16.5 hours really sucked. We were able to get our generator running (for the first time in about nine years) so that we could power the fridge and freezer. Turns out one of our neighbors had a bunch of trees fall on the line. They still had power, but everyone south of them did not. 😒

Sunday afternoon I was able to get back to quilting. First I finished the pink and green quilt. Here's what I've done since then:

My Flower Patch (see above).

Keetah's baby quilt, quilted with Play Baseball (wouldn't recommend this pantograph).

Two baby quilts for Amber, quilted with loopy meander.

Finally, Keetah's huge, beautiful quilt, quilted with Plumeria (this one took 8+ hours! 🤯).

Moving over to the garden, the veggies are doing so-so. Only one of six cucumber seeds sprouted. The lettuce is very patchy. We couldn't find any beets. The peas are so-so. Zucchini and green beans look good. No chives sprouted. Several of the volunteer dills didn't make it. The strawberries are doing well, but something is eating them despite their being netted. 

Our roses look amazing this year.

My favorite iris, Crater Lake Blue, is blooming in the lower garden. I'm thankful all my landscaping came through the high winds with no damage.


I have an abundance of milkweed everywhere. 😆 Unfortunately, I still have an abundance of spearmint infiltrating this garden as well.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back next week to find out what my June goal will be.

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



6 comments

  1. Your Flower Patch quilt is just beautiful. To be done early--yay! I've dropped off of doing the One Monthly Goal over the last few months--really need to pick that one back up! It's a good one for motivation. I can't imagine removing all that quilting--wow! Looks great now! Any chance it's pill bugs (rollie pollies) or slugs eating the strawberries? If so, food-grade diatomaceous earth (powder) should take care of them. (We have both pests but I have so many strawberries on I'm probably not going to bother with the powder.). All of your flowers look great! Our roses are quite happy right now too!

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  2. Your Flower Patch quilt has turned out so nice. I've downloaded the clues and hope to give it a try eventually.

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  3. Hi,
    Your Flower Patch quilt is beautiful!! I love all the colors
    you used in it. Have a great day!

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  4. Your Flower Patch quilt and your garden flowers are both spectacular! I am sorry to hear of your mechanical difficulties -- been there, done that! -- but it sounds like it gave you a good opportunity to explore new techniques with IQ. I love seeing that glimpse of your early quilting on the baby quilt before you ripped it out and requilted it using the skills you have today. Like they used to say in the cigarette ads: "You've come a long way, Baby!"

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  5. The flowers and quilts are beautiful but you know, I really love that Flower Patch quilt. The baby quilt, not sure what I would have done. Thank you for linking up and sewing along. BTW, I am sending more rain your way.

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