Stories from the Sewing Room

Current events have been weighing heavy. I'm trying to give myself some mental rest by staying busy in the sewing room. It's time to pick June's monthly goal. As always, I have so many choices. Not sure if that's a blessing or curse.

Options:

1. Make all the string pieced border pieces for Grassy Creek. I'm not a string piecing fan, but it really needs to be done. I need to first cut all the foundation pieces to size. Once I get all those eleventy billion pieces made and sewn, I do have backing fabric purchased, so I am actually committed to finishing this at some point.

2. Finish the top for the guild BOM I ran last year. I did move this back onto the design wall for motivation. The background fabric is navy. I just don't care for sewing sashing and I had other things that needed to be done first. It's a pretty small quilt though. I have fabric for backing and binding, but no idea how I want to quilt it.

If you know a trick for getting nicely aligned sashing without cornerstones, I'd love to hear it!

3. Finish the #Trending blocks. I have two more blocks to make, then need to assemble the top. I don't have a backing for this one. 

4. Bind the pink and green baby quilt I shared last week. I think I owe a binding demonstration to the small guild, so I'll probably save this one until I need to do the presentation.

5. Bind the Flower Patch quilt. Haven't gotten this one trimmed or the binding made yet.

6. Bind my Macaron Mystery quilt (see below). I have the binding sewn onto the front and ready to hand-stitch down.

7. Finish my half-done Chalk quilt. I do have some backing fabric purchased.

8. Make more blocks for my long-abandoned Tall Tales/Summer Book Club quilt. 

9. Throw caution to the wind and start something entirely new. (Rosewood Star mini quilt, I'm looking at you!) Soooooo tempting! LOL

I am hoping to knock out more than one of the things on my list, but my official choice for this month is to make more blocks for the Tall Tales quilt since the SAL is happening again. I tried and failed to keep up with this one last time Kate ran the program, maybe three summers ago? Four? I have 18 regular books and three large books made. I need a total of 16 large and 38 regular books, plus one custom book, for the layout I want to do. I need to make 20 regular books and 13 large books.

                                             Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal June Link-up

The SAL runs for eight weeks, so I think my goal for June will be to get at least 16 books made. This might be a bit ambitious considering I have at least four days in June I know I will be unable to get to my sewing room. But that's what goals are for, right? To stretch towards?

I have my fabrics all selected, at least for now. I might change up a few of them. The only place I might run into trouble is that my background fabric is from JoAnn, one of their really cheap ones. While they still sell the print, the fabric quality has significantly declined. Hopefully I have enough, or things will get really interesting!

So, what else has been happening in my world? The furniture we ordered last Thanksgiving has arrived. Luckily the furniture store is willing to store it for us until the carpet is done. I really hope the third time's the charm on the darn carpet. 

I have completed the test quilt I was working on, but I can't share it until the pattern's official release date (which I don't know). I quilted it with Thread Garden and it looks cute.

I have been busy quilting too, trying to get caught up from when my machine was down. I quilted eight things this week (though two of those were mine)!!

I quilted this cute quilt with the Tia's Daisy pattern for Melissa. It doesn't show up much in this picture, but it's super cute.

I quilted Ginger Snap onto Melissa's Granny Square quilt. We went with purple thread.

Next up is Jeri's quilt, quilted with More Square Drama.

Elle's quilt, quilted with Malachite.

My Macaron Mystery quilt, at long last. I picked Rosemary for the quilting. I wish I'd picked something different. I love the bird print, but these aren't my colors. Oh well.

Ginger's very first quilt, quilted with Saffron Blossom.

Another of Ginger's, quilted with Peace.

I did another embroidery job too. This involves creating the embroidery file, removing the pocket from the pajamas, embroidering it, and sewing it back on. I made the mistake of trying to grab a thread end while the machine was running. Ouch. Now it looks like I have a mole on the end of my finger. Hope it heals soon.

We have been enjoying lots of fresh strawberries. We harvested the lettuce and had enough for three salads. I'm sad the lettuce struggled this year, because I sure do love fresh lettuce. The herbs growing in the hydroponic garden are starting to sprout. The flowers are kind of at an in-between stage. The roses and clematis are still going strong, as is the catmint. The coneflowers are just starting to send up blooms, as is the gaillardia. Everything else isn't there yet. 

I'm still finding tons of walnuts growing everywhere I don't want them, courtesy of the squirrels. We have tons of rabbits this year and have been watching a group of five tom turkeys running around the neighbors' spare lot and yard.

The Norway spruce saplings we were gifted are mostly doing well. We removed the protective growing sleeves from most of them since they were outgrowing them. I was able to look at my pear trees the other night. The non-Bartlett pear has two pears that I can see. One of them is actually pretty large. The Bartlett has dropped some of the baby fruits, but a ton are still there. I wonder if we'll get any to the harvest point? And how do you tell when they are ready? They are not close yet, but I guess I need to learn about this in anticipation.

Thanks for stopping by.

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