Stories from the Sewing Room

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.