Stories from the Sewing Room

 Another month has flown past. I feel like I've accomplished a good amount. First off, here is my PHD report for the month.

I'll be linking with Ms. P for my report. 

I finished two projects this month, the In and Out mini and a donation quilt. For more details on the In and Out mini, scroll back to my last post. 

I was able to get the donation quilt (Runway from Quilter's World Spring 2024 issue) bound over the weekend and it will be turned in to the guild at our next meeting.  Look closely at the binding. I used all the leftovers from the quilt top, including the block trimmings, to get the binding made. Only thing I wish I would have done differently is to press open the seams from the block trimmings instead of leaving them to one side.

The RSC quilt is coming along nicely. I made four blue RSC blocks this month. I made two right at the beginning of the month using light/medium blues. I made two more using medium/dark blues. I now have 16 of the 20 blocks that I want for my quilt. This has been a really fun process so far. If you want to make your own, visit Sandra's blog for the free instructions.

Linking with So Scrappy RSC

I'm still keeping busy quilting for others. This week I quilted five quilts. The first one belongs to Barb. She picked Ginger Snap for the quilting and I suggested Glide Sand for the thread. It's a light gold that looks good when there's a big color difference between the background and the blocks. It also helped accentuate the gold metallic in the background print.

Next, I quilted Retro Lines on Trudy's mini. This design is pretty intense! I had to slow my machine down so much that it took several hours to quilt a mini. I used 60 wt thread on the top and bottom to help avoid heavy thread build up from all the backtracking. It looks really good though, so it was worth the effort. 

I quilted van Gogh on Toni's quilt. I selected Glide Khaki this time. It's still in the yellow tones, but not as intense as the Sand was on this quilt.

Connie requested Circle Drama for this quilt. I need to bind this one.

Next up was another of Connie's, quilted with Honeycomb with Bees. She wanted it fairly small, so this was another where I had to really slow down the stitching to get it to look accurate. Another long stitch-out and another one to bind.

Moving on, we've really been enjoying the birds lately. We have parents bringing in their babies to the feeders and I've also seen birds that don't come in to the feeders foraging in the edges of the yard with their young. All the young can fly, but they seem to still be dependent on their parents to feed them. I've watched grackles, Baltimore orioles, orchard orioles, and house finches with their young. We also have some hummingbirds coming in. 

Baltimore oriole

orchard oriole

Friday we all went down to Spring Mill State Park to look at a juvenile brown booby that somehow made its way into south-central Indiana. It's been there for almost a month, so the naturalists think it will stay for the summer. I borrowed this picture from the American Bird Conservancy to show its usual range. You can click on the link under the picture to see what the birds look like and learn more about them.

https://abcbirds.org/bird/brown-booby/

The bird was across the lake from the observation dock. We could see it well enough with the binoculars, though we don't own powerful enough equipment to get great photos.  

Can you spot the booby?

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

A few days later I started sewing down the binding and soon I had a finish. I don't think I've ever finished an OMG this quickly. It measures 13.75" x 13.875".

In the meantime, add your link to show your finish and then go visit other linkers and make new friends.

Last week I mentioned I was starting a project from my PHD list, a donation quilt made with a jelly roll that had been donated to me. Everything was going along merrily until I attempted to add the solid rectangles to the strip sets. 

At first I thought I'd cut the rectangles incorrectly. Nope. They matched the pattern instructions. 

After a bit of head scratching, I measured one of the jelly roll strips. Bingo. They were not 2.5" wide from outer point to outer point, but just a thread shy of 2.75"!

I eventually decided to try to cut new pieces to match the strip sets. I had just enough fabric left from the piece I'd cut the original ones from. 

Once the new pieces were cut, everything went together quickly. My quilt ended up being four inches wider than the original. I had enough backing, so this wasn't an issue other than the quilt is now almost square instead of oblong. It's a donation quilt, so it's fine. One other comment, this jelly roll only had five different prints, which made the color layout less than ideal.  On the plus side, no overthinking because my options were very limited.

I was able to quilt it over the weekend using the Echo Blossoms design. 

I was hoping to get it bound before today, but that didn't happen. I'm going to have to piece together every scrap I had left to try to get enough length in binding strips. 

If you're wondering what I'm going to do with the 33 rectangles that didn't work, I purchased a Ruby Star jelly roll to try again. It has arrived and its strips are actually 2.5". I'll be honest here, I almost never buy precuts (jelly roll, layer cake, charm, mini charm). I like yardage and I love cutting fabric. :D

I also prepped all my Bedford Tiles tubes into the appropriate strips. I looked at Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips instructions for guidance since the author of this pattern based it on Bonnie's. I may be the last person on Earth to find out about ripping every few stitches and then just pulling the seam apart. Of course Bonnie would have a quick technique. I got all the pieces separated in no time. 

I've still been busy quilting for others. I quilted Loop the Loop on Annie's quilt. I'm so pleased with how this one turned out--she left all the decisions to me on this one (though I did ask for design approval).

I quilted Windswept on Melissa's quilt. I also bound this one.

Next up was Jae's little quilt. We went with Starry.

I quilted a pair of quilts for Ann K. She picked Cakewalk for the pink one and Twist Tie for the purple. I partially bound these. 

Trudy picked Champagne Bubbles for her ocean panel quilt. Such a cute panel and coordinates.

Out in the garden, I harvested the peas. This is the entire harvest. I'll be lucky to get more than a couple more pea pods this season. There's a very obvious line in the big tank of where things grew or didn't. I think that the trees outside the garden have gotten tall enough to shade part of the tank too much.

I weeded the green bean tank. I was wearing my Farmer's Defense sleeves, but neglected to put on bug spray and now I have probably 40 bites on my legs. Oops. I was only out there 10 -15 minutes. The beans are struggling. 😞 

The Coolapenos are starting to form peppers. 

The tomatoes are doing great. 

I started four pepper plants from an "assorted bell pepper" seed pack. Two of the four plants have these. I don't think these are bell peppers....possibly banana peppers or Hungarian wax. I guess the amount of heat will help decide.

I knew it would be a gamble. Last year I direct-sowed some seeds from the same pack and ended up with a few very late plants with odd little peppers on them. The chickens adore all types of peppers, hot or not, so it's no big deal either way. Quite frankly, I enjoy the surprise of what grows from them. 

The chickens are molting. Smoky only has one tail feather right now and poor little Agatha (the darker hen in the front of the pictures) looks like she has no tail. Henry looks pretty plush and bushy in comparison to the rest. 

I found these fruits growing in the yard. My husband tells me these are blackberries and the red berry picture from last week shows black raspberries. The wild blackberries have a lot of seeds and the centers don't come out.

The OMG finish link up will open on the 24th and I'll share June's PHD report next Wednesday. 

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

I was contemplating my PHD list and decided to work on my Bedford Tiles quilt. I'm at the point where you have to un-sew certain seams to make the tubes into different strip sets. I quickly decided that that is something better done in front of the tv in the evening instead of in my sewing room, where I could be sewing. 

I decided to tackle the PHD goal of donation quilt instead. Last fall I was gifted a jelly roll because people thought "it looks like you." Hmmm. It wasn't something I would have chosen for myself and it just kept staring at me every time I went into the fabric closet. This jelly roll only had five different fabric prints, which I found a bit unusual. It was labeled "Quiltologie". The internet tells me this was a Hancock store brand prior to their closure in 2016. I decided to make the Runway quilt by Andy Knowlton (Quilter's World Spring 2024 magazine). Photo from magazine.

It zips right along. I knocked out the strip blocks in just a few hours. I have the solid blocks cut as well, so it's ready to assemble into a top. I thought I'd taken a picture of the blocks, but nope. Just a progress photo of sewing the strip sets.

I had four strips of the jelly roll left and I will need seven for binding. I think I'm going to use the cutoffs from the strip sets to form the rest of the length. I found a mostly coordinating fabric at JoAnn to use as the backing. I'm hoping to have this finished by the end of the month.

I've also finished the initial work on my passion project, an online fabric shop. I learned how to draw a logo (you'd laugh if you knew how many hours I had into drawing this thing), how hard it is to get good product photos, did all the required legal stuff, spent lots of money and time, and it's finally open. My initial idea of how it would look is nothing like what I ended up with, but it's all good. Now I have to do all the stupid social media stuff to go with it. 😬 {Edited to add: we chose Midvale because it's a nod to Gary Larsen's Midvale School for the Gifted comic. I also refer to us, our house, land, and chickens as Midvale Farm because we are like that school for the gifted. It was also available in our state as a business name, available on social media, and didn't have trademark issues. I found out after the paperwork was filed that there's a town in Utah called Midvale. Oh well. Sigh.}

I'm still moving through the quilts. I completed five more this week. First is one of Susan's, quilted with Loop the Loop. This quilt had very stiff appliqués on it, so I was worried, but it quilted beautifully. 

I also quilted her Kaleidoscope quilt with Stellar.

I finished the last of Susan's quilts with hand-guided loopy meander. This quilt had a lot of very thick seam intersections, so hand-guided was a great choice because I could avoid all those intersections. 

Amber loves the Ginger Heart quilting design and she picked it for her scrappy heart quilt. I always think scrappy quilts are like I-Spy quilts for adults. It's fun to look at all the different prints as I'm advancing the quilt. If you look closely, her backing fabric is a snowman print.

I quilted a secret project for Annie with Peas in My Garden.

I also made a Frankenbatting for Annie's other quilt, which will be quilted today. You can sort of see the quilt top underneath. It's so cute!

Out in the garden, we have tons of bunnies this year. 

I also saw this mom and baby. I figured it was only a matter of time before we saw a fawn once the deer starting attacking my gardens. 

The pumpkin plants are putting out lots of big flowers. I don't know much about pumpkins since I don't have room to grow them in my vegetable garden. Thanks to a comment from Lisa, I learned that pumpkins give off male and female flowers and the male flowers typically come first. We've noticed that the flowers close at night, which makes me wonder if they are related to morning glories or day lilies. I'll research that once I get a minute. 

I did find a baby pumpkin growing the other night when we went out for our evening walk, so my son and I hunted for more. We found a few starting and one that started and rotted. It will be interesting to see what these pumpkins look like. We fed the chickens a few different ones from the neighbors' holiday decorations and I'm pretty sure that's where these came from.

My son and husband (probably mostly the husband) finally chopped all the extraneous shrubs and saplings out of the gardens and removed most of the creeper and grape vine. That made such a huge difference! The gardens still need help, but at least they look more presentable and we don't have things trying to grow under the siding or up the columns. The birds don't have as much cover now. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Can you see the oriole?

I had to do my evening walk by myself last night, so I wandered around the yard taking pictures. I believe these are unripe blackberries, but I could be wrong. My husband brought in a bowl of blackberries two nights ago and he said there's a lot still, so that's my guess. 

Wildflowers on the back of our property. Our neighbors pushed their trampoline right up against the lot line between our lots. Thanks.

Wild roses. Much bigger flowers than normal.

Tomatoes in the garden.

A few peas made it.

The milkweed in the lower garden is in full bloom. I haven't seen any monarchs yet, but there are a lot of bees and lots of these--some sort of fritillary.

The husband has been hard at work siding the barn. I took this picture around the corner. As you can see (maybe), he has the gable ends done with the shakes. He has the back, the biggest part, almost fully sided. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.