Stories from the Sewing Room

I'm pleased to share my completed Malted Mystery quilt top. 

I thought it might be fun to solicit opinions on how I should quilt this. My household is split on which design I should use. I had a definite favorite before making these mock-ups, but now I'm second guessing. I do have to quilt and bind this in the next week or so to finish my OMG before I need to post the finish link up, so time may end up being a deciding factor.

Option 1: Peak Blooms

Option 2: Mallow

Option 3: Orange Dream

I've worked on several quilts for others. I fully machine bound all of Pat's quilts that I shared last week.

I quilted Annie's Indigo Way quilt with the Starry design and Glide thread in the Celery color way. 

I already returned her quilt, so here's one more picture that shows some of the backing as well.

I quilted Lauren's Kaffe quilt with Curly. I have second, matching quilt to do and will also fully machine bind both. The quilting barely shows on the front, but it looks awesome on the back.

My plans for the rest of the week include quilting Lauren's second quilt and binding both, quilting Jo's Chilhowie, and hopefully getting my Malted quilted and bound.

I'm hoping to run to a local quilt shop today to pick up fabrics for a class my small guild is holding next month. I tried to shop my stash first, but I don't buy enough of most fabrics to meet the requirements of the pattern and have something that looks good together. Pfft. 

We had our robotics state championship tournament on Saturday. We knew going in that this would be the end of the line for us. Only two teams advance to the Worlds--the captain of the winning robot alliance (group of three teams) and the Inspire award winner. We ended up ranked 7th at the end of the regular robot runs. Our boys were selected by the number one ranked team as their first alliance partner and we made it all the way to the last match before losing. It was thrilling, yet also heartbreaking, because we lost due to penalty points and we aren't the biggest fans of the team that ended up winning, who were ranked third going in. The other local team (ranked second going into finals, but lost right away due to odd decisions) won the Inspire award. As we tell the kids, the rankings and the judging are both quite subjective. Our boys won the Design award for best robot design. My son was thrilled! The robot design and build is his main responsibility.

I ended up feeling ill and spent most of Sunday sleeping or resting and Monday taking it easy. My kids are both on spring break this week. My daughter mentioned last week that she had to do an exit interview for her student loans--she is graduating in May. I asked her how much she owed and how much money she has. She has enough to fully pay off all of them! I was a bit shocked, but also happy and relieved. I've been pushing her to determine her next steps and apply for local full-time jobs while she decides. I also found an online certificate to masters program in her potential goal field and we've been discussing pros and cons of that. She is not amused by any of it. 

I have done absolutely zero gardening. It's probably good because we've had a few mornings with hard frost. The other days it seems to be raining. I'm still about two months away from our last frost.

We had a surprise announcement last week that the school board and the superintendent have agreed to part ways June 30. The school corporation does have to pay him $228k to buy out the contract. I'm upset that the money could have been spent in much better ways, as could much of the money he handled in the last three years. I'm glad he will be gone. He has caused much harm.

My sister and her kids are coming to stay with us Easter weekend, so we need to clean up all the robotics parts so that we can access the Murphy bed in the living room and clean out the spare bedroom, which is used for storage, so that we can set up a bed in there. The robotics parts are still strewn everywhere in the house, but the menfolk did clean up the OSB sheets we use for a partial robot field, so I can now access the closet in the living room. I was able to put many things away in the closet. Now I have to deal with the giant pile of boxes I save to use for return shipping of quilts that my family moved from the spare room to the living room floor. It's probably time to recycle many of them. 

One last thing, remember the eagle cam I mentioned last week? Sadly, it looks like none of Shadow and Jackie's three eggs were viable. It became really heart-wrenching to watch. On a positive, as of March 12 the Goose Pond barn owls have laid seven eggs .

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, Alycia Quilts, and From Bolt to Beauty.