Stories from the Sewing Room

 It's time to share your progress for the month.

This link up will remain open until July 21 at 11:55 pm EST.

My goal this month was to quilt my Churn, Churn, Churn mini quilt. I wanted to custom quilt it, and I did. Typically I have a plan for what I am going to quilt prior to starting. I did not do that this time. 

I did a combination of FMQ and ruler work. There are definitely things I would have done differently. I thought I was going to do the pebbling in all the blue, but I was really tired after doing the outside, so I did quicker things on the inside. In retrospect, I would have done the coils on the outside and the pebbles on the inner parts. I probably should have redone the corner coils because they are kind of sloppy. 

And I made some big errors in my crosshatch considering that I used a ruler, but I was tired and my back was killing me, so I left it. 

I tried a boxy quilting in the red that turned out pretty well. I know that's one of the more basic FMQ patterns, but I've never tried it by hand before.

I finished sewing down the binding yesterday morning! I didn't think I'd get it done in time.

For the backing, I sewed together a bunch of red charms I received years ago from an international swap. I thought I had centered the top with the backing, but as you can see, it was a bit off. Luckily I did not run out of backing fabric! 

  

I've finished my second planned Teal RSC block. I thought this scrap bin had tons of this color. Nope. I barely had enough to make a block (hence the charm square in the central portion which I probably should have cut into smaller pieces). Much of the fabric remaining in this bin reads more green than aqua to me and that was surprising. 

Free pattern available from mmm quilts. Linking with So Scrappy RSC

Once it's the orange month, I'll have all my blocks and can start assembling the quilt top. I should probably start planning the backing now.

I've been able to do a bit more sewing this week. I made some napkins for my daughter using this giraffe fabric from my stash.

I also knitted three dish scrubbies for her. Only two are pictured since I made the third one in the car on the way up to her house last weekend.

I also made this little guy. It's part of Fat Quarter Shop's Spooky & Sweet pattern. I'm hoping to have the rest of the top assembled by the end of the week.

I've been very busy with the quilting and the bookings are rolling in. It almost feels like the Christmas rush although it's way early for that. 

I quilted a loopy meander on Jess's quilt. She had me trim her quilt. The backing is minky. I'm still finding little black fluffs everywhere.

Cindy chose Flirtatious for her Christmas Wreaths quilt.

Cindy also brought me two quilts she labeled as "Falls in Town". She selected Windswept for both. The first one is the larger version.

And the second is the smaller version.

Trudy picked In the Swirls for her quilt.

I was a bit worried I wouldn't have anything to share this week. I managed to pull off a little eleventh-hour stitching and I've finished one of my two planned RSC blocks for the month. This one is the light version. I'll be working on a darker version next. 

I also got two more Bedford Tiles blocks done, for a total of 3/20 completed. 

I got a few quilts done. The first one belongs to Sara and we went with Doing Doughnuts for the design. This picture almost looks like black and white. LOL.

I quilted and bound one for Hannah, but I can't share yet. This is a bit of the back. She picked Seuss Trees for the design.

Keetah wanted a Minnie Mouse pattern on her Minnie Mouse quilt. I found one called Mouse Ears with Bows Flipped. I used Glide Grapefruit for the thread.

Deb picked Stipple for her hand-pieced quilt.

We decided on Rosemary for Deb's other quilt.

We had a small garden harvest...green beans (my husband says this is probably all we'll get since the plants are so stunted), a few tomatoes, coolapenos, and random peppers from the "bell pepper assortment".

We got my daughter moved into her new place on Saturday. It's weird not having her here. We did get to talk to her last night (most of the time it's just texting). We'll probably head back up there over the weekend to bring her a few things and take her to get other things she needs.

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.

I picked up my quilts from the fair on Sunday. In addition to the ribbons, I also won $4. It was free to enter them. We did go to the fair last Wednesday afternoon (we were told it was free before 4 pm but it was not) to look at them and a few animals--we walked through the rabbit and pigeon barn and of course we had to see the chickens. The meat chickens made me very sad. There were some pretty cool types of pet (hopefully) chickens on display. I found some of them kind of terrifying. Anyway, here are the pieces, their ribbons, and the judge's comments.

I got a few quilts completed. First up is one that belongs to my small quilt guild. I quilted it with Doing Doughnuts in an alternate setup.

Next is Irene's quilt, quilted with Boho Boxes. She was visiting from England; how fun is that?

Finally, Jeni's quilt. She won my quilting prize from the Malted Mystery QAL. She sent me a sampler made with Friends (the TV show) fabric and requested Bean Sprout quilting with lavender thread.

I picked and purchased my fabrics for the next Meadow Mist mystery quilt, the Marble mystery. I chose a backing fabric from my stash and purchased solids for the front. The background fabric will be the Kona Bone and my other colors are Kona Bellini, Mango, Regatta, and Leaf. I'll use the remaining backing fabric to bind. 

I've done very little sewing lately. I've been struggling a bit (or a lot, depending on the day) with my daughter's impending departure for her new job. It was very demoralizing at first to find out that she can't afford anywhere safe to live on her own. We started looking for roommates. The first viewing we had set up fell through. We found another one that looked promising but was at the very top of what she can afford. We went and looked on Monday and weren't sure the woman was going to rent it to her. It is a new construction and  includes garage parking. The renter gets a furnished bedroom, a shared bath, and access to the laundry room and the main floor. Later that evening, it seemed that the lease will be extended to her and she can move in this weekend--her new job starts Monday. I know this whole thing will be a good experience for her, but this mom is not handling it very well. I wish her job wasn't over an hour away.

So. Here is my sole piece of sewing over the past week. It is one of the blocks to my Bedford Tiles quilt. Only 19 more to go.

Send positive thoughts my way. I know many of you have already been here before and I'll be okay eventually. In the meantime, I'll be a grieving, anxious, nervous wreck (in secret as much as possible so I don't spike her anxiety).

Last month at the big guild, a guild member who works with the county fair asked us to consider entering our quilts in the fair. I've never entered anything in a fair before. It's free to enter, so I looked at what I've completed this year, looked at the class descriptions in the booklet, and selected three pieces. I also decided to make a fourth. The original entry date was supposed to be last week Wednesday, but it was moved to Thursday since the fair grounds didn't have power (along with most of town) after the big storm last Tuesday. 

Wednesday I decided to make a pumpkin pillow similar to the one I made my mom last year. I wanted to quilt it the same way, but I hadn't saved the pattern set up. Oops. I grabbed what I thought was the same one, set it up, watched it stitch part of the top row, and went upstairs to make dinner. I came back down and decided that it wasn't worthy of being placed on display. The pattern was off, the tension was off, it was just not great. 

As you can see, it's really tiny. It also has a lot of backtracking, so no way am I pulling it out. It's fine for someone who doesn't know quilting, so I'll probably finish it at some point.

I made a second one and used a different quilting pattern. I was actually going to custom quilt version two, but I didn't have any matching orange thread. Oh well. I quilted it with Swirly Girl and hand bound it. As soon as I was done, we drove over to the fairgrounds and dropped everything off. 

I entered my Malted Mystery quilt (the pink, green, and white one), my In and Out mini version 2 (last month's OMG finish), the pillow, and my art quilt. These are all pictured on my 2024 finishes page. I haven't been to the fair yet, but the lady emailed me this picture.

I had guild last night and another lady told me I did really well and had ribbons on all or most? Huh. I definitely will have to go now. I don't know what the ribbon signifies as far as place or whatever.

Besides that, I've been trying to catch up on the quilts. The whole power outage and then my daughter's job offer and the robotics tournament over the weekend really threw me off. 

I quilted Connie's Ohio Shop Hop quilt--this one is big!--with Radiate. It was fun to look at all the shop blocks and the custom shop hop fabric.

I particularly like these two blocks:

I quilted Haley's quilt with Cakewalk. This one is from Cheryl's Just Two Charm Pack book.

I quilted Charlene's with Diagonal Plaid and Glide Apricot Blush thread.

And I quilted Lauren's quilt with Flirtatious and Glide Limerick thread. 

I bound all three of Connie's quilts.

And put the binding on the front of Haley's so she can hand-stitch it down.