Stories from the Sewing Room

I surprised myself and finished up all the binding on my #trending quilt, thanks in part to the weather being a bit cooler than normal over the past few days. Indoor photo this time due to high winds outside.

This quilt pattern is by John at Art East Quilting Co. When the pattern first came out it was a mystery, with only the first block, the sloth, revealed. I bought the kit directly from John and kind of kept up with the mystery, but finished the top several months behind schedule--not too bad for one of my own projects. I quilted it with the Arches pattern in December and have been working on stitching down the binding off and on for a few months now. 

One thing I really like about this quilt (besides the sloth!) is the backing material I found. It is an older print from Paintbrush Studios called Over the Rainbow by Ampersand Design Studio. The colors were just about a perfect match to the Kona cottons he picked for the front. 

I will prep the binding for the strawberry quilt soon. I'm planning to stitch that down by hand, but also trying to stay on-task with my Women's Voices OMG since I need to be done by the finish link up next week, so it will have to wait a few days until I have WV finished. I have 60% of the WV top assembled and am hoping to make short work of the rest. Here's a bit of proof that I'm working on it. Also, I have mentioned how ugly I think the provided sashing fabric is, but I will say that it is helping tie together the huge color differences in the blocks. So I'm warming to it.

I've decided that my next project will be a new one. I deserve a treat after finishing up the Women's Voices! And it will be July, my birthday month. I received my copy of Cheryl Brickey's (Meadow Mist Designs) new book, Just Two Charm Pack Quilts. I've had a few charm packs of Sweetwater's Elementary line forever. I looked it up and it came out in late 2014. Oof, older than I thought. It's time to use it! I had just enough of everything to make the "Betty" quilt in the book. There are lots of great projects in the book, so I'm sure I'll make more as time allows. 

Side note, I also received Kelly Young's (My Quilt Infatuation) new book, Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs, and I recommend that one as well. They are both really great, useful books. In fact, I will be using Kelly's ideas for the backing for the quilt from Cheryl's book since I will need just a little bit more than what I have and have some extra charm squares.

After that, it will be back to finishing another UFO. Probably either Grassy Creek or the Batesville BOM I've been sharing recently. Preferably both. Or maybe something totally different. I do have a hard time staying on-task. 

Let's look at the quilts I've worked on over the past week. 

First up is Trish's Lighthouse (by Camille Roskelley) quilt. She picked Diagonal Plaid and I suggested using a 60 wt thread on top so that the contrast wasn't so stark. It looks really good. And check out that backing fabric--it's so fun!  I know, it's really hard to see. You'll have to take my word for it that it's cute.

Next up is one of my unquilted objects. This is one of two Sunshowers (pattern by Megan Collins) quilts I made. I finished the baby version I did last year, I think. I went really bold with this one, using Glide Mint and the Chip design. The Mint appears white in my pictures, but it is the same color as the top arc of the rainbows. I am planning to machine bind this quilt as time allows. Maybe next week? We'll see.

Finally, here's Terry's Japanese fish quilt. She requested Boho Boxes and we decided to use black 60 wt thread on this one. I'm sensing a theme in this week's quilts. 😄 Funny how things go in spurts like that.

Monday I had to drive my daughter to an appointment that was over an hour away. Only a few miles from home we got stuck in a line of traffic. We could eventually see that there were two large trucks with a man standing in the back of each. Each held a hose. The road had been recently resurfaced and they were apparently reseeding the sides of the road. It looked like one guy was spraying seeds and one was spraying water with a slight green tinge and some chunks in it. Not sure why they were doing it right when people were driving to work.

On the way home after the appointment, my tire light came on. It started flashing, so I turned off the highway into what looked like a gas station. Well, it used to be a gas station, but now it is a U-Haul rental place. No help there. I got out and looked at the tires, which all looked the same. Called my husband and he told me to just keep driving and if anything happened, to call the roadside assistance number on the insurance card. Okay then.

I was feeling relieved when we crossed into our home county with no issues. We turned back onto the resurfaced road and had to laugh. It now looked like this:

A lot of mailboxes were green on the fronts too. Weirdly, they sprayed seed where the grass was still growing and on spots that never had grass before. And clearly had poor aim. They were men, after all. 😏

When my husband got home from work that evening, he checked my tires and determined that one of the tire pressure sensors was bad. My car is pretty old and he had recently replaced another one. He had to borrow a tool from a co-worker. Tuesday night he went to replace the sensor and found that there was a commercial screw lodged in my tire. Well, isn't that special?

Not a whole lot else has been going on. We got a much needed, really nice, steady rain over the weekend. The barn walls are nearly complete and the trusses are supposed to be delivered later today.