June OMG Complete

My June OMG was to make 16 Tall Tales blocks. I made 20 regular blocks and 11 larger blocks. Here are all of the blocks I have made, some from 2019 and the bulk from this year.

I made eight of those larger blocks over the past week.


That leaves me two larger blocks and one custom block to fit my original design vision. I think I may expand that one more row and add another custom block and (six?) more regular blocks. I need to do some calculations and make sure that I have enough of the background fabric to do the setting.

My quilting week was a bit odd, more on that below. Here's what I got done (more than planned, so that's a plus).

Carol's Macaron Mystery, quilted with Sugar & Spice.

Amber's baseball quilt, quilted with Play Baseball. This is the panto I said I wouldn't recommend using when I used it on her friend's quilt. She was okay with how it looked and still wanted me to use it on hers. We also decided to go with the bold choice of red thread, which doesn't show much on the front, but stands out on the solid white backing. If you use Intelliquilter and want to give this design a try, turn off dwell and size it a bit larger, so that the baseballs are at least 3". That seems to help.

Haley's sampler quilt, quilted with Rolling Hills in the "echo" format.

Amber's bargello quilt, quilted with Hiding Out.

We made a quick weekend trip to see family. My niece and I made a key lime pie and my sister made an angel food cake. My daughter was having a hard time cutting her piece of cake and I looked in the pan. Look what I found! 😆

My kids and I had fun playing games with my niece and nephews and I hope all the kids made some nice memories. My husband worked really hard to help my parents get a room redone after some necessary repairs. We also managed to squeeze in a quick visit with his parents. It's so hard to arrange everyone's schedules and make it up there anymore. 

The round three carpet that was supposed to be happening this week has been postponed until the end of July due to one of their people having COVID. That kind of threw me off because I'd planned out all sorts of things to work around that. Oh well, we're pretty good at rolling with the punches around here, though I have to admit that I've been in pretty low spirits with all the news coming out the past few weeks--not just one topic, but all of them.

We haven't been great about taking care of the garden this week. It needs more water, but we were gone. I did get a tiny green bean and pea harvest.


Something, likely a chipmunk or squirrel, ate half the blossoms on the zucchinis. Ugh.

The indoor herb garden is...well. Out of control, I guess. Maybe I should have been pinching some of these back?

The flowers are coming along. We need to weed the lower garden and do tree removal on all of the gardens. I thought it was the squirrels planting all the walnuts, but I watched a chipmunk run back and forth in front of the sewing room window all afternoon yesterday, moving walnuts. It's supposed to be hot and rainy all weekend. Not the best weather for weeding. To be honest, most weather in the summer here is not ideal for being outdoors.

Finally, Cheryl at Meadow Mists Designs is starting her Melodic Mystery Quilt Along soon!  This is a free monthly quilt along (her eighth annual).  Instructions are posted to the Meadow Mist Designs blog on the Thursday of each month. There are lots of prizes, including free quilting of your Melodic Mystery by yours truly. There is an active Facebook group to quilt along with and even a sneak peek option for those who would rather the design not be a mystery (that would be me). Visit the Melodic Mystery page for more information about the quilt along, schedule, sponsors & prizes, Facebook group, and un-mystery option.


Linking with My Quilt Infatuation.


Tall Tales Week 3

I'm making great progress on my Tall Tales blocks. I have all 38 small books made. My goal for the month was to make 16 and I have completed 20, plus changed out the text portion of the book on the crab block pictured below. I also made three large blocks and have 10 remaining to get to my target of 16.

I also want to make one tall, narrow block similar to one I saw on Instagram. That will require some thinking.

As you can see, I haven't added any of the surrounding fabric/sashing yet since I need to figure out the correct size for that. Still, I feel like I'm making pretty good progress and it is fun to play with all the novelty prints I've collected.

I've also sewn together the string block I made a few weeks ago. The newly completed block is on the left and the original is on the right. I thought I had matched the background fabric to the previous one I made, but I guess not. In person they are noticeably different. 😕 Oh well. 

I've been busy with quilting, trying to work a little ahead in preparation for next week's carpet, round three.

Jeri's Sunflower quilt, quilted with Simply Sunflowers.

Deb's quilt, quilted with Stipple.

Terry's quilt, quilted with Ruby Twist. I took the picture from the other side of the frame. Gotta keep everyone on their toes. 🤪

Elle's t-shirt quilt, quilted with Diagonal Plaid.

Carol's SCQG BOM (my block instructions! 🥰), quilted with Mallow.

Judy's wallhanging, quilted with Denali.

And Carol's quilt, quilted with Turbo.

I'm so fortunate to have so many quilts with such variety come through my door. 

I spent a little time outdoors over the weekend since the weather was much more pleasant and I found another batch of peas in the garden. The green beans are just starting to produce and the zucchini plants are covered in blossoms. The cucumber plants are hanging in there. 

The flower gardens are blooming again. The day lilies in the side garden are full of flowers...well, one of the two plants is. Something ate most of the buds off the second plant. 😒 The daisy is now chest-high with lots of buds, but they still haven't opened. The smaller daisy has flowers. The coneflowers in the lower garden are looking good. All the milkweed is blooming, but there are very few butterflies and I've seen no caterpillars. The bee balm in the upper garden is blossoming, which makes the hummingbirds very happy. We have lots of happy bees too.

Well, that's about all I have to offer this week. Stop by next week to see how many blocks I've completed for the month.




New Batch of Tall Tales Blocks

I've completed a total of 11 new Tall Tales blocks so far this month. My goal is to make 16, so I'm still on track. 

This batch of blocks will be added to my previously made blocks.

I think I need to make nine more regular books and 13 more large books to have enough for the layout I want to use.

Here is some advice. Do not unroll an entire 25 yard roll of king batting to make sure it's all there! This was awful to get back onto the roll, and it was all there plus a tiny bit extra. I did enjoy all the time I spent with my son as we dealt with this poor idea though.

I've gotten five more quilts completed for others.

One for Sonja, quilted with Diagonal Plaid.

One for Annie, quilted with loopy meander. This is Annie's version of the BOM I ran in my small guild. It's so fun to see what everyone did with their layouts!

Toni's quilt, quilted with Peace.

Elle's, quilted with Beautiful Birds.

And one for Sara, quilted with Twist Tie.

We're experiencing very high temperatures this week. The weekend was okay, so we did a lot of weeding and now we are trying to stay inside as much as possible. We harvested the lettuce (all of it, this is the only harvest we got) and some peas (that was a surprise!) and then gave all the vegetables a good watering yesterday morning. My son and I were going to play a prank on my daughter. We knew the hose in the garden had holes in it, but she didn't. The plan was to have her do the watering while we harvested. She would get sprayed when we turned on the water. Karma had other ideas. When I turned on the water, my son and I got doused and she didn't. 😂 Since it was like 90 degrees already, we dried in about five minutes.

We'd purchased two of the living lettuces and decided to plant the cores since they had a bit of soil and all the roots. They are growing. Hopefully they survive this prolonged heat.

I'm very happy that I have finally gotten some cucumber seeds to sprout! Last year I planted three times and nothing germinated. This year it took two tries, but I have some plants.

And my pears! Here is the lone pear I could find on one of the trees. There were two before. 

And this is just one branch of the Bartlett pears. I hope some survive to adulthood!!! These are the size of cherries right now.

The coneflowers, milkweed, and day lilies are starting to bloom. I have a few daisies that are close too. I planted the daisies last year. The local nursery sells tiny starter perennials for a very reasonable price, so I usually buy those if I can. I don't have great luck with daisies usually, but man, look at this thing! It is almost hip high. There is another, much smaller one on the other side of the closer clematis too. Guess I bought two different varieties?

My indoor herb garden is doing well. One pod is a complete failure, but that's okay. I don't need two types of basil. Honestly, I'm not sure I need one type, but that's what came with the unit.
Stay inside and quilt. : )

Chasing Squirrels

Man, have I been chasing squirrels this past week! I've gotten quite a bit done, but maybe not what I should be doing.

I really wanted to work on that Rosewood Star mini I mentioned last week. I had been continually shifting this kit out of the way for about a year--I'd had it either in my book/pattern cabinet, or sitting right in front of it and I was tired of moving it around every time I got into my cabinet. So I made it start to finish this past week! 

Pattern is called Rosewood Star by Primrose Cottage Quilts. Fabrics are Lori Holt and quilting design is Elkweed.

I also sewed all the HST trimmings into this block.

Another squirrel--while arranging my fabrics for the Tall Tales blocks, I kept moving this orphan block around and finally moved it out onto the design wall. This one has a bit of a backstory. Years ago I won a baggie stuffed full of tiny Bonnie & Camille scraps from Shaunna @sunshinequiltstudio on Instagram and I made this block around then. The pattern I used can be found here


And here is my second block in progress. 😁 I think I can get several more from what's left.

I have actually made some Tall Tales blocks too. I'm on track to finish all 16 for this month's goals. They look really skewed in this picture. No idea how I managed that. LOL

I mentioned a baby quilt I tested last week. I am able to share my finished quilt with you now. The pattern is called Jungle Brigade by Yellow Umbrella Quilts

Lots of quilting for others has been happening too. This one belongs to Jae and is quilted with Sprawl.

Three baby quilts for Sara. The first one is quilted with Malachite.

The next two are quilted with Soho.

One for Pat, quilted with Cloud Nine Petite. I also bound this one.

Another for Pat, quilted with Twist Tie. Also bound this one. This is just the cutest fabric!

One more for Pat, quilted with Basketweave, and again, I bound it too.

Finally, one for Sonja, quilted with Diagonal Plaid. I'll be quilting another just like it today.

I did a little tinkering on the longarm that required the whole family over the weekend. I had been using Leader Grips for years--pretty much since I started using a longarm. On the Juki I used the Grips on all three leaders. On the APQS I used them on two. My hand strength is declining in my middle age and I wanted to give Sew Tites a try. They arrived on Friday. 

After looking at the pretty inexpert channels I'd sewn in to the leaders when I first got the machine, I decided to rip them out and start fresh with channels that would fit the Sew Tites metal bars better. I used Shelly's video as a guide. My husband and I discussed what would be the best way to sew the new channels and we decided to remove the leaders from the rollers. I'm not sure this was the best idea, but we got it done. It did take us two attempts on each leader to get them taped back on correctly. The kids helped too. 

I've now quilted four quilts using the Sew Tites and so far I am in love. I purchased eight packs of five based on Shelly's recommendation. I could use one more package since I have openings at the end of each leader that don't have bars in them. I also found out that my leaders are different widths than Shelly's (makes sense, she has a Gammill and I have an APQS), and my leaders are different widths from each other as well!!

That's about it in my sewing world. My husband tore apart my daughter's car, so we've been driving her to and from work until he finishes doing whatever it is he is doing to it. We also had some lawnmower issues. That is torn apart too. The grass is getting pretty long! The vegetable garden looks the same as last week. The strawberries are winding down. Here's my indoor garden. This time we are growing herbs. Dill seems like a bit of an odd choice for a tabletop garden. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My house is pretty much a wreck. We have way too many things going on in here. We are either in the middle of projects or have things ripped apart to get rid of excess stuff. The only really clean spaces are the downstairs bathroom, the laundry room, and my sewing room. I'm hoping to get it a bit more under control this month. Maybe some year I'll finally have it all together. 

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