Stories from the Sewing Room

I had all sorts of plans to get so much done last week. Instead I spent a day and a half in bed feeling meh. Then I sat and watched the livestream of the robotics tourney (they had to travel overnight and I opted not to go) for an entire day. On the plus side, our boys did fantastic and ended the regular matches in first place. They decided that since they'd already earned a state bid, instead of inviting the second place team who also already had earned a state bid onto their alliance, they would select a team to join their alliance that hadn't yet earned a state bid in an effort to help get them one. 

Well...the second place team was furious and told a few of our kids that they weren't there to help anyone out. Great gracious professionalism. 🙄 The second place team won the robot final alliance matches and also won the Inspire award, which, ironically, is for best demonstration of the FIRST ideals--like good sportsmanship, helping others, promoting STEM, etc. 

In the end, due to the complex advancement rules, our boys' losing ended up getting TWO teams state bids. Best example of gracious professionalism ever! I'm so proud of our boys for trying to lift others and not just taking the easy win. And we won a much-deserved Control award for programming. Our programmer (who is not my child, btw) is outstanding. 

Anyway, back to sewing. I did get my art quilt quilted. It's fully custom. I planned to use 10 different threads, but in the end only used eight. I didn't use the salmon or the lavender. 

I did use the Fil-Tec invisible thread on the borders and on part of the sky. I didn't have to loosen the tension much, which I was surprised by. I did attempt to use it with the IQ, but the tension went really haywire and I had to rip out part of a border and switch back to hand-guided. It's really hard to see where the invisible thread is going. I used the blacklight on my Lucey and that helped some. 

I have a week or so left to get it bound to meet my OMG. 

Last week I hadn't finished sewing on the borders of my Malted Mystery. I finished those last Wednesday and haven't made any further progress--I was planning to add on the rest of what's left and get it quilted ahead of next month's reveal. Nope. I did wash the backing fabric though. 

I wanted to work on this month's RSC blocks. Nope. I have red scraps all over my cutting mat, but that's as far as I've gotten. 

I don't have much to show for client work either. It's been tremendously slow this year. I finished Carol's quilt that I shared last week. I started Sharon's yesterday. She wanted to have 9" circles cut out of the four corners so that she can add some appliqué after quilting. I seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take to edit the design to accomplish her vision. (In other words, I need to do a pricing adjustment if I do that service in the future.) Here's what my screen looked like for the first pass of the quilt. It had 22 tie offs. Yikes!

My Grassy Creek quilt is now fully ready to enter in the show. I sewed on the hanging sleeve over the weekend. I do not enjoy sewing on hanging sleeves. I'm so glad that part is done!

Here's a photo of the whole quilt.