Stories from the Sewing Room

We've survived a week of school, some allergy virus, more uncomfortable weather, and made baby steps on lots of projects. 

I was a binding machine over the last week. Besides machine binding my own Betty quilt, I also bound four quilts for clients and partially bound another. That, as you can imagine, left me little time for personal sewing and also a big need for rest. I've taken several rest days this week.

I did a tiny amount of personal sewing. I am making progress on the first half of the border pieces for Grassy Creek. Two thirds just need a final trim and 1/3 are in progress.

I started looking at my Buttercups mini quilt that I had cut up as a leader/ender project. It's not really suited for that due to the large amount of directional piecing and layout, so I organized it onto four design boards (one for each block) and one more board with all the border pieces. I forgot to take a picture.

I pulled out embroidery floss for a very tiny cross stitch project, but haven't trimmed and serged the Aida yet. I decided that I needed to finish hand-binding my strawberry quilt before starting yet another project. I am now half way on the binding.

And this is as far as I got on my dress form. I realized that we didn't have a tape dispenser or enough tape, so ordered one from Amazon.

I worked on a few quilts. This first one belongs to Jeri. It is all made from Essex linens. I love the coneflower prints in this range. We decided on the Cosmos design and Glide Peach thread paired with Glide Salmon on the back. I also bound this one. 

I can't show you Annie's quilt right now, but I can tell you that she provided some double gauze for the backing. I hadn't used this before. Her quilt top was pieced with regular cotton fabrics. She was concerned that the batting would poke through. I tried samples of several battings--QD Blend (which has a scrim), Hobbs, a double layer using Blend on the bottom and Hobbs on the top, and QD Cotton Deluxe (thicker than normal, similar to using a double batting). 

The verdict, at least for my machine, is that none of the battings I sampled poked through. I preferred the thicker batting, or a double layer, for stitch quality, and 40 wt Glide on top (she picked Glide Raven, a purple) with 60 wt white (my pick) in the bobbin. I really wanted that thinner thread on the back since the gauze is so delicate. She wanted a cozy, squishy quilt, so we used the Cotton Deluxe since it was a bit more flexible than the Hobbs/Blend combo. Taking a bit of care since the gauze is stretchy, it quilted just fine. She requested the Intrigue quilting design.

The weather has cooled down a bit over the past few days, so it's somewhat reasonable outside. The crew we hired to put the sheeting on the roof came yesterday and now the barn is shedding water. The shingle person will hopefully come soon. 

I walked around the yard a bit to look at all the work that needs to be done since it was cooler out. Something out there is sending my allergies into overdrive. I also need to deep clean my sewing room since it, too, is bothering my allergies. Sometimes unwanted pet (or human) hair comes in with quilts and there is always a lot of dust due to all the fabric and batting fibers floating around. I spend so much time dusting and sweeping in there. It's time to vacuum every surface and mop the vinyl plank after I vacuum. And clean out the air filter. But I digress. 

The Rose of Sharon off the right of the barn driveway (it's at the lower right edge of the picture above) is covered in buds and a few blossoms. I think it's finally getting enough size that the deer won't eat all of it. We had to transplant the other one due to barn construction. It seems to be reestablishing itself, but no flowers right now.

We "harvested" these tomatoes that had fallen off the vines.

As you can see, there are lots of tomatoes on the vine that aren't yet ripe. Probably need to straighten up that hoop, too.

The cucumbers are fizzling also and the peas died off a while ago. It is probably time to harvest the beets--those are behind the tomato plant in the picture above.

The green beans have a lot of beans waiting to be picked. 

The flower gardens are woefully neglected. The lower one is the worst, what with all the spearmint and the patch of Johnson grass. And the walnut trees that the squirrels plant.

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