Stories from the Sewing Room

I feel like I've made a lot of progress this week. I'm up to date on the Board & Batten quilt along. I had to sew and trim a ton of HST and I got them all done!

I have the rows made for my OMG quilt this month, so I'm still on track to finish on time.

I'm joining Patty from Elm Street Quilts for the Loves Me, Loves Me Not quilt along that runs from now into May. You do have to buy the pattern in order to participate, however, there are prizes available. I just really like the pattern and I pulled fabrics from my stash to make the quilt. 

Another project I moved forward is my art quilt from the class I took with Cathy Geier last spring. I finally put the borders on--I ordered several different batiks and eventually one was the right colors--and I love it! Now I need to make time to quilt it. Cathy suggested using a very minuscule  stipple or meander over the main body to hold all the fabrics in place. I will need to try again to use invisible thread on my longarm. I haven't had great success with that in the past. 

I quilted a bunch of quilts this past week, more than I thought I had.

First is Lauren's. She wanted Two Scoops quilted in a large design scale and we picked black thread. I also bound this one--that was a shoulder workout! I actually overdid it and had to rest my shoulder all weekend. Aging is awesome! 

Next is Carol's, quilted with Ruby Twist. She did such a nice job with all her miters, though they don't really show in this picture. I just love the Ruby Twist design.

Then I quilted Pat's with Swirling. My daughter and I selected Glide thread in Rust to blend. Random aside--this thread is really close to the color of my parents' basement carpet that they have had for more years than I'd like to admit--maybe 40?! I still need to bind this quilt and I am so thankful that Pat is always very patient. 

I also quilted two of Deb's. First is this one, quilted with Spring Thing and Glide Cool Mint thread. This looks so nice in my sewing room; it matches quite well. :)

And then this one with Stipple. Nice and cheerful!

I also prepped a backing for my friend Katie. I decided to try to match the plaid. I loosely followed the tutorial on Suzy Quilts. Do you have one of these Dritz EZY-Hem tools? I have had this for over 20 years. I also purchased one of the newer Clover ones, but I almost always choose my Dritz one. 

Here's how I did. I didn't have time to press the seam after I sewed it last night, but I think it looks pretty good. And really, I don't think Katie will care one way or the other. I just wanted to try it again.

The weather was absolutely beautiful, though a bit windy, yesterday. It felt like spring and I went for two walks, one alone in the middle of the day, and then another in late afternoon with my husband once he got home from work. Anyway, our plants and trees are confused. I noticed some of the daffodils, hostas, and iris in my gardens are starting to grow. I also noticed that some of the trees in the neighborhood are budding and several very large tulip poplars are blossoming! Look at that beautiful blue sky too!

I was looking around my lower garden to see what was starting to grow and noticed all these weird things on our contorted filbert tree. I've never seen them before and I was really hoping it wasn't some strange bug! Google tells us those are catkins, sort of like a flower, only the catkins are the male part. Looking at them in my picture, the male part makes sense! 😳😆

I also attempted to wash the blankets I had on the guest bed prior to putting them back into the chest for storage. I went to pull one of them out of the washer and it literally disintegrated into chunks! I was left holding a large, white stretchy mesh as the chunks rained down into the tub. What a mess! So instead of putting what was left in the dryer, we put them into a trash bag. 

All in all, it's been a nice week, minus the weird disintegrating blanket thing.