Stories from the Sewing Room

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.