Quilting Goodies

I've been super busy over the past week. I finished up the bindings on my three quilts for this month's OMG (see yesterday's post).

I got caught up on my Loves Me, Loves Me Not blocks. I neglected to take a picture of all six blocks together, but here are representatives of the first two blocks. There are four Wedding Rings and two Ohio Stars.


I need help--this quilt has quite a few hourglass blocks and those blocks are my nemesis. Mine never turn out right, even with making them oversized and trimming them down. It seems like I always have one corner that is off, which makes joining them into the blocks a complete nightmare. I spend a lot of time selectively seam ripping to make the intersections somewhat align. What tips do you have for making perfect hourglass units?

Another question I have is how old is your oldest UFO? I have several that are from the early 2000s. One needs to be quilted, some need appliqué which I do not enjoy at all, and some were way above my skill level when I started, so they never got finished. 

Last summer I found some BOM kits from one of my UFOs on eBay. I purchased them figuring that I'd have some extra fabric to go towards redoing or finishing this project that I hadn't done very well with. The other day I was surfing eBay and found two more kits for the parts I had already messed up. I was pretty excited because I do have plans to finish this quilt some day and now I have ample fabric--and hopefully ample skills--to finish it. The copyright on the patterns says 2000. 😆
I won a prize in the Villa Rosa blog hop a few weeks ago and my prize arrived this week. So fun!
Our robotics team will be competing in the state tournament on Saturday, so we had to step up our pit display. We made a table runner. I hemmed the fabric and my husband is the vinyl aficionado.
No pictures, but I did finish up the hanging sleeves and labels for the two quilts I entered (still wondering what on earth I was thinking) in the IHQS. I will drop those off Saturday at the assigned time. And hope that I don't have to be too social so that I can rush back home in time to see the livestream of the robotics tournament.

I did plenty of quilting too. Here's this week's batch:
Jess's baby quilt, quilted with Doing Doughnuts

Legene's, quilted with Flirtatious

Amber's, quilted with Freehand Hearts & Loops

Terry's, quilted with Abstract Butterfly
I love the Abstract Butterfly design, but it is kind of a pain to do on a large quilt.
It is difficult to get everything to line up, even using my "tweak" function. 

Cindy's, also quilted with Freehand Hearts & Loops

Something of note this week is that I was able to get the last four shelves from IKEA that we needed for our closet makeover. Just like the last few drawers, I was able to select delivery and then pick them up at the local Fed Ex for a $4 shipping charge. So worth it! Weirdly, the four small shelves came in an absolutely ginormous box that took two employees to carry out. They were so surprised when I pulled four little shelves out of that giant box. It took 10 months to get all the pieces we need for this project. Hopefully it won't take 10 months to get my husband to build it. I'm not holding my breath though. We've been married a long time and I know how he works. 🤪

We also got a new, very much needed, mattress. I've been sleeping pretty well the last few days. 🎉 It's kinda weird though because this mattress is a lot thinner than the previous one, so it's a lot closer to the ground. And it is still off gassing and smells a bit. But I don't hurt when I get up.

Have a wonderful week.




February One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

Ready to link up your February finishes? 

This link up will remain open until February 28 at 11:55 pm EST. Remember, you can link up from either my post or Patty's at Elm Street Quilts and your link will show up in the same link party. 

Want to see everyone's goals? Check out the February goal page. I visited every single link and there were so many great projects!

My goal for February was to get binding onto the fronts of three of my personal quilts. I'm happy to report  that I was successful! Even though they aren't finished yet, it's nice to have them off the floor in front of my sewing room door, where I had laid them out flat in a stack for almost two months. I won't run out of things to do in the evenings any time soon...

Now it's your turn to share your finish. Please add a link to this OMG post so that others can follow where you are linking.  Just paste this into your post:

Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal February Finish Link Up

Take a few minutes to visit others and make new friends!

So as to avoid an overly long post, stop by tomorrow for an extra edition of my blog to see what else I've been up to over the past week. I have questions for you!


You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Board & Batten & Other Projects

I finished my Board & Batten top! I have backing picked out, but I haven't found the right quilting design yet. Suggestions welcomed. 🙂

I spent some time prepping HST for the remaining three wedding ring blocks I need to make for the Loves Me, Loves Me Not QAL. 

I have started assembling my Melodic Mystery quilt too. I like how the colors are coming together. 

I'm also working on my OMG, which was to get binding onto the fronts of three quilts. I have one complete and I started working on the second one, #Trending, yesterday. I didn't think the bottom looked square after I had squared my quilt, so I used my wall and a bunch of rulers to make sure. {It wasn't quite square and I trimmed off the offending bit prior to this picture.}

Of course I've been quilting too. I quilted Loop the Loop on Margaret's quilt. I thought it looked kind of like loops of thread to go with those little sewing figures on the cream fabric.

Marilyn chose Ginger Snap for this Pivot quilt. I picked Glide thread in Sand.

We went with Stardust on this Paperdrop quilt. I used Glide thread in Key Lime.

I spent Saturday watching our robotics tournament on livestream (more on that below) and worked on binding Haley's quilt. She had some ric rac trim that came with her kit that she wanted under the binding. I watched Lori Holt's video to learn her technique and went for it. I think it was okay, but I guess I'll see how it looks after Haley stitches her binding to the back of her quilt. 

Next up is Mary Ann's quilt. She picked Radiance for the quilting. It's kinda hard to see. This was a mystery quilt from one of the local quilt shops. I'll be quilting Amber's version of the pattern today!

And one more from Mary Ann, quilted with Ground Cover. Ground Cover works well to ease in fullness. Thread color here is Glide Butterscotch.

Back to robotics. The boys were in third place after the robot qualifying rounds, which meant they got to move to the alliance round. They were runner up in the tournament for the robot. FTC has a fairly complex scoring/advancement protocol. The top scoring robots don't always make it to the next level of competition. This year, they took six teams--all four teams from the final round of alliance matches plus the two teams who won first place in the Think and Inspire awards. Our boys won the Innovate Award sponsored by Raytheon. I was proud on their behalf because that award recognizes all the engineering processes the boys learned and used (some include Finite Element Analysis, modeling in Solidworks, and completing a Trade Study). As awesome as that award is, it does not generally advance you to the state tournament, so it's good that their robot performed well as they claimed the fifth of six spots to advance. So next weekend they get to compete in their first state tournament for FTC! Also, it's a good thing I didn't try to go to QuiltCon this year, because I have to turn in my IHQS quilts on that Saturday and it's tourney day. 

And finally, a chicken story. Actually, two chicken stories. The first one is from Saturday. The men were at the robotics tournament and my daughter had to work. She couldn't get the switch for the coop heater to turn on because it was frozen. So I waited a while and then went out around 9 to try my luck at it. I was scraping off frost with my nails and it still wasn't switching, so I cupped it in my hands and eventually got it thawed enough to turn on. Meanwhile, the chickens came running to the back to see what I was doing. 

I'll spare you the video I took, but Smoky decided that me standing there meant he had to crow loudly and repeatedly until I moved away from the coop.

The other story regards eggs. None of the hens use the nesting boxes, ever. One lays her eggs around wherever Henry is sitting in the coop, one always lays right in the door opening, and the other lays in random spots. We checked Sunday afternoon to see if there were any eggs and found this:

Right in Henry's food bowl! 🤣😂

I'll be quilting, prepping my two quilts for the IHQS, and finishing up my OMG bindings this week. Stop by next Wednesday, or any day from then until the end of the month, to link up your finished OMG.

Linking with For the Love of Geese, My Quilt Infatuation, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

QAL Progress

I've made pretty good progress this week. Last week I had only made a few blocks of the Board & Batten quilt even though I should have been working on the second half of the blocks by then. I now have 3/4 of the rows fully sewn. This week's task is to assemble the top. I need to finish sewing row four and then it's just three more seams to have a completed top!

This week's task in the Loves Me, Loves Me Not QAL is to make four Wedding Ring blocks. I have one complete and I really like it. I'm using Riley Blake Blossoms for the white fabric. It's really floppy. Not sure why--I've used lots of other Blossoms fabric that wasn't like that. Weird.

I have two rows assembled on the Melodic Mystery, but that is taking the lowest priority of the three projects for me right now.

I still need to do the bindings on my three quilts for my OMG. My plan right now is to do that this coming weekend.

I have not yet sewn on the hanging sleeves or labels for the quilts I entered in the show. I have two weeks left to get that done. 

Of course I've been busy quilting for others too.

This one belongs to Linda. It's quilted with In the Swirls.

Next is a baby quilt for Jess. I selected Stardust for the quilting.

Melissa picked In the Swirls for her quilt too.

And here's Haley's, quilted with Triplet.

The weather's been decent the last few days--well, except part of yesterday when it rained. Monday the trees we ordered back in October finally got installed. I hope they grow fast and block the view of the house they built behind/to the side of us. Since they removed all the trees from their lot, it is a wide open view into our yard and our bedroom. 😒 Obviously I disapprove of their actions. You can see their porch in this picture. It was muddy and I didn't want to walk over to get a better picture. The trees look kinda stubby. They are all between 5 - 6 feet tall, but pretty bottom heavy.


We planted the one in the lower right last spring. 

Signs of spring are showing up. Can you see the daffodils and day lilies poking through?

I tried hard to get some new pictures of the chickens. My daughter wasn't home to help, so here is what I got. 😆😆😆




Linking with For the Love of Geese, My Quilt Infatuation, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.


Weekly Update--I'm Behind

So you saw my big news yesterday that I'm co-hosting OMG with Patty from Elm Street Quilts. I need One Monthly Goal to help keep me focused each month, and hopefully there are plenty of others that need that focus and accountability too. I've been shuffling things around on the blog to accommodate the link ups and info. I have a bit more to do, but I think it's pretty functional right now. 

My goal this month, which you likely saw yesterday, is to make binding for all three of these quilts and sew it to the front of each as I'm planning to hand-stitch the binding. Hand-stitching is my preference on most of my personal quilts unless I'm in a huge rush or if I'm donating it and know it will be washed a lot.

Of course I have a million other things I could have chosen as well--Grassy Creek border (I am a bit superstitious and every time I choose that, things seem to go haywire, so I'm holding off for now.), quilting my Tall Tales quilt--need a backing for that one still, catch up on all my QALs, finish some other half-done project, of which there are many. I decided to select the binding because I'm tired of walking around the three quilts on the floor.

I've done a bunch of quilts for others over the past week. 

I completed three of Terry's. She's so artistic! She chose Doing Donuts for the first one.

Next we used Diamond Rain. My daughter won the contest to name this design. 😊 We thought it gave a leaded glass effect--the quilt is shown sideways here; it's actually long and skinny.

Deco Arch was her pick for the third quilt.

Next I did two mini quilts for Jae. The first one is a challenge to create a quilt using colors from a cereal box (I think I have this right? I know Jae's inspiration was one of the pink Cheerios boxes). We went with Doing Donuts to mimic the Cheerio shape.

I did some custom quilting on her other mini.

I've also been working on several of Linda's quilts. The first is quilted with Windswept. The So Fine thread I picked really blends in! (hard to see the quilting)

The other two are both quilted with Rainbow Hearts.


While I've been productive in some areas, I'm a bit behind on the Board & Batten QAL. got slowed down by needing to replace the running green fabric. I had ordered a Ruby Star fabric that looked like the same shade, but I didn't like it with my other fabrics--too dark. I didn't have time to go shopping in person to find a replacement, so I dug through all my fabric and came up with a batik that worked (thanks, Denise!). I have three of 14 blocks completed from last week's task. This week's task is to complete the other 14. I'm hoping to have a bit of time to myself this weekend to get caught up.

Oops! That third block is not quite right. 

The last clue of the Melodic Mystery should come out today, so that is another one I need to complete. 

One area where I am current is the Loves Me, Loves Me Not QAL. This one started on Monday with cutting. I LOVE cutting fabric. I got up really early Monday and cut out everything. I opted to wait on cutting the sashing and borders until I do the sewing so that I'm only cutting once. You know me, I'm a math major and I like my accurate border cutting.


I got really brave and entered two quilts in the IHQS. The show is not juried, but is judged. This is so outside of my comfort zone! The show has been on hiatus--the last one was held in 2020 and visiting that was actually the last thing I did before the world shut down. Anyway, there is usually a broad mix of quilts, everything from quilts by nationally known quilters and award winners at Paducah to kids' first quilts. Mine will be somewhere in the middle, I guess. This year's show will be March 2 - 4. I'll need to get hanging sleeves and labels onto my quilts in the next few weeks before the drop-off date. 

Other things of note this week--one of our inverters for our solar went out a few months ago and the replacement was FINALLY installed Monday. I was able to get the four drawers we still needed for the future closet upgrade. I was able to order online and pick up at the local FedEx. The only catch was that I could order three in one order and the fourth in a separate order. Each order had a pickup fee of $4 and it was SO WORTH IT!!! Four more shelves to go...

Oh, and I can hardly believe this, but...

We have the worst drivers in this town. The UPS store is back open after its second drive-thru incident last year. People are saying this is the second time someone's driven into the hardware store. Several restaurants have had it happen multiple times, the tattoo parlor, a house that's between us and town, Walmart several times, a gas station. There's actually a Reddit thread about all the places people have driven into around town. 😳

The chickens are doing well. There's still a few clumps of clover growing in our vegetable garden tubs and my daughter periodically throws a clump in with them. It is so funny to watch them with it.

Well, this is super long. I'll be back next Wednesday for my regular post. Have a nice week!

February One Monthly Goal

I'm pleased to announce that I'm sharing hosting duties for One Monthly Goal with Patty from Elm Street Quilts. Patty's been inspiring me to complete at least one quilting task every month for quite a few years and I'm excited to co-host. 

You can link up at either of our blogs and your OMG project will show up in the same link party. How cool is that?!

Want more information about One Monthly Goal (OMG)? I have a dedicated page up top in the navigation bar with all the details.


New to One Monthly Goal?  Welcome!  To join, share a photo of your project plus some words about what you want to accomplish in a blog post or Instagram post and add that photo to the link up.  Return at the end of the month and share your results.  (Results link up opens for the last 7 days of the month.)

My goal for this month is to make and attach the bindings to the fronts of these three quilts. They have been spread out on the floor in front of my sewing room door for a few months and I'm tired of walking around them! 😄 Also, this might just be the shortest discussion of my monthly goal that I've ever written!!! 

My regular blog post will be published tomorrow, so be sure to visit again to see what's new in my world this week. Get my posts delivered to your inbox by entering your email in the "Follow by email" box to the right. I usually post once a week, on Wednesdays, but this is a special week. :)


Enquiring minds want to know--what is your goal for this month?  The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on February 22.  Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal February Link Up

Take a few minutes to visit others and make new friends!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter