Stories from the Sewing Room

At long last, I have completed the top from my 2021 guild BOM. I actually sewed all the blocks in 2020 since I designed the program, but I had to keep all the blocks separate since it was a mystery. I provided instructions for 13 blocks and it was up to guild members to decide how to finish them. I have quilted four and they were all so different. Anyway, here is my top, which was my OMG for August. Sorry for the wobbly picture. I was standing on my tiptoes, leaning over the top of the quilt to get a picture.

I do have a backing for this. I'm not sure if I want to do custom quilting or an edge-to-edge. 

Before I sewed everything together, I changed out the corners on the Wyoming Valley block. I had the poinsettia print there previously and decided I wanted it to be the background fabric instead.

Here is another view of the top that shows the colors more accurately.

First up is Kristi's quilt, quilted with Sapphire. You can see that this was a pretty big quilt!

Next is Pat's, quilted with Baptist Fans. I also bound this one.

One for Trish, quilted with Leafy Blooms.

My Gemstones quilt, quilted with Calder. I'm planning to donate this one once I get it bound.

One for Elle, quilted with Tristin. Another really big quilt.

And another for Trish, quilted with Stipple.

I also made and attached the binding to my Flower Patch quilt. Now I just need to make time to hand-stitch it down.

I'm feeling pretty accomplished this week. Taking charge of my schedule by assigning a quilt per workday and giving myself weekends off has recharged me.

The kids cleared out and weeded the vegetable garden and we all worked on weeding the side garden. We still have the front garden and the lower garden to work on, but with everyone either at school or working, it's slow going. And that's okay. We are in sweat bee season, so we can wait a bit more.

I can't remember if I mentioned it before or not, but we are building a detached garage on our spare lot to be my husband's workshop. Sunday evening all of us helped put down some plastic bubble wrap insulation (no idea if that's the right term, but it looks like heavy duty bubble wrap), plastic, and then the metal grids in preparation for the cement crew that came Monday to pour the floor. Yesterday my husband and I spent quite a while marking and making the relief cuts and cleaning up from that. Now we wait for material costs to hopefully come down some prior to the rest of the construction. We currently have a very pricey foundation and lots of fill stone.

Finally, we have become chicken owners. My husband and daughter sprung this on me a few weeks ago. I suggested that we buy Malay chickens because I thought that would be hilarious. However, they are meat chickens, not recommended for beginners, and I guess they can be pretty mean. I thought they would make pretty good guard chickens. LOL. They are like three feet tall and weigh eight pounds!

Images from Google:

We agreed on silkies and found a local farm to purchase from. They went to pick out the chicks last Thursday evening with the agreement that I am not required to do any care or maintenance for them. Meet our five silkies. Hopefully they are not all roosters!! 

Here they are last night. We think they are 4.5 - 5 weeks old. They are molting.

If you have Amazon Prime, I recommend watching the Chicken People documentary. I'm not much of a tv watcher, but this kept my attention the whole time.

Stop by next week to see what I choose for my September goal. I'll probably share another chicken picture too. :)

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and True Blue Quilts.