Stories from the Sewing Room

I did pretty well this month, finishing three things from my PHD list. Two were on my list of UFOs and one was a 2024 start. 

I finished my Swiss Star quilt. (Scroll back one post to see more details about it). 

I finished making selvedge yarn. The balls weigh 3 pounds, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 10.8 ounces. 

Last time I did this, back in 2020, the balls each weighed 2 pounds, 14 ounces. At the time I calculated about how many yards were on each ball: five yards of selvedge weighed .8 ounces, which meant the balls were approximately 287.5 yards. Using that same 5 yd = .8 oz., the smaller of the balls I made this time is about 350 yards. I should have quite a bit left over after I knit a rug since I had a bit left over last time (which are the cores of these balls) and I'm planning to cast on fewer stitches this time. 

I don't have any immediate plans to start knitting because the guild show is coming up quickly and I have to make and attach hanging sleeves on four quilts. I'm definitely hand-sewing one of the sleeves. I'm seriously considering safety pinning the other three.  

I also finished a 2024 start, Spooky and Sweet. 

The things remaining on my list are the Batesville quilt, the RSC quilt, and a clothing item. I haven't worked on the Batesville quilt at all, nor have I attempted sewing any clothing. I did, however, order A0 prints of a few more of the patterns I want to make.

I have all the blocks completed for my RSC quilt. I need to add sashing and borders. I also need to make a back. I'm planning on sewing together fabrics I already have to create the backing. 

On the 2024 starts list, I have the Tessellations quilt and the Bedford Tiles quilt. I have no plans to finish the Tessellations quilt this year because I think I need a lot more coordinating fabric that I currently have. 

I have been working on Bedford Tiles. I have all 20 of the blocks completed! 

Now I need to add the sashing and cornerstones and the borders. I'm hoping the borders will tie everything together. I don't have any backing for this at the moment, so I'll need to look through what I have and see if I can make something work. I do have a nice striped binding. 

In other news, I've been working on Ann's Patriotic quilts. I shared one last week and have completed the remaining five. I have also attached the binding to the front of all of them. 

Quilted with Stardust.

Quilted with Shooting Star.

Quilted with Good Vibrations.

Quilted with Shooting Star.

Quilted with Good Vibrations.

I finished remaking all the design images for my business website. That was a project that was long overdue and I'm so glad it's finally completed. There's never a shortage of things to do when you run your own business(es). I keep virtual sticky notes on my computer desktop with things to be done. Somehow the lists never get shorter. 

Out in the garden, our volunteer pumpkin plant in the upper flower garden is back from the dead and producing lots of little pumpkins. Three of these are in the upper garden and one is in the back where the chicken coop was parked for the winter--that plant hasn't recovered.

 It's time once again to share your August OMG finish.

This link up will remain open until August 31 at 11:55 pm EST.

My goal for the month was to completely finish my Swiss Star quilt. This is one that my daughter has claimed. She selected the colors, quilting design, and thread. My contribution was the background fabric and binding choices. Oh, and all the labor! I got it done pretty early in the month and she's already taken it back home with her. 

Yes, that is a snail quilting design. It sort of looks white in the pictures, but the thread is a variegated rainbow, front and back. 

I didn't have a fun time quilting this one, so I opted for full machine binding to get it completed quickly.

This project was also on my PHD list. I like to double-count whenever possible. 

Now it's your turn.

It's been another week with no personal sewing. I spent a lot of it working on custom quilting. This isn't something I normally do for others anymore for several reasons: 

That being said, I did agree to do Connie's Looper quilt. She wanted graffiti-style quilting and really liked the look of one that Teresa Silva (@quiltingismybliss) had done. 

I have never done full-on graffiti quilting before, so it was very intimidating. Connie wanted to enter this quilt in a show, so I upgraded from her usual Hobbs to Quilter's Dream 80/20. Hobbs has a bad tendency to pop through the backing and that isn't acceptable for a show quilt in my opinion. This strategy worked--no pop throughs were found. That being said, I sort of wish I would have done a double batting so that the texture was bumpier. Often the double batting is a thin poly on the bottom and wool on the top. I didn't have either in stock and this project had a pretty short turn-around.

I used six colors of Glide thread: Tomato, Zaffre, Baby Blue (the background color), Prickly Pear, Starlight, and Periwinkle. I wound matching bobbins for each color.

I began by basting the entire quilt. This is not something I would normally do, and I'm not convinced it helped me a lot here, but I knew I wanted to roll back and forth to get the colors of the loops done in one pass. Basting also helped me empty a few bobbins that were close since I don't have many bobbins and I needed six empty bobbins for this project.

Next I quilted all of the loops. I alternated between a wishbone and a ribbon candy design. I basically copied Teresa here with a line 1/2" from one side and the design going right up to the seam on the other. I originally was going to stitch in the ditch, but due to the assembly of the blocks, the seams of one color don't form one continuous line. The loading of the quilt, basting, and quilting the loops took me one work day.

After that I had to do the background. Let me tell you, all that wide-open space was intimidating! I decided to start on the upper blue area first. I put in the sun motifs and then went back and filled in the space with different designs. I was pretty pleased with it. This took one work day.

The next day I needed to fill in the skinny strip of blue on the right side of the quilt and do all of the blue underneath the loops. I added two sun motifs and then started filling in the rest. I went from the bottom up on this part because I didn't know how to quilt some of the designs upside down. I eventually decided to add one more sun motif to the bottom portion. I was running out of ideas and for some reason the bottom seemed a lot bigger than the top even though it wasn't. I flipped through my books for some ideas and decided to quilt some of these "Bob Ross" designs. LOL. Can you see it? This also took one even longer work day. 

The fourth day I went back and cleaned up (ripped and re-did) a few areas I wasn't pleased with. This was an exercise in restraint, because there were quite a few more I felt I should have picked and redone, but I only did the egregious ones. I then had to make her binding and attach it to the front. 

Pictures were really difficult because the blue fabric didn't want to show up correctly. It looked cream or light gray in a lot of the pictures. I got it done, learned a lot, and sent it back home Monday morning. 

Enjoy this one because it is definitely a one-off.

I'm happy to be back in my wheelhouse of edge-to-edge this week. I trimmed, quilted, and then made and attached the binding to Maria's baby quilt. She selected Blood Orange Peel for the quilting. 

Then I started on Ann's large group of patriotic quilts. I quilted this one with Basic Swirl. I'll be attaching the binding to the front of all of them--there are five more after this one. 

Like I said at the start, I have not touched a single bit of my own sewing. I have been working on making my selvedge yarn in the evenings and the pile of selvedges finally looks like it's diminishing. These yarn balls are HUGE! I might have enough to knit two rugs. I really want to finish this before the end of the month so I have a finish on my PHD chart.

Other than that, I'm still plugging away at the designs I'm updating for my quilting website. I'm working through all the designs that start with S right now. In case you were wondering, way more of my designs start with S than any other letter. I may have mentioned before that the online compression tool I'm using limits me to 50 images every 24 hours. Well, S will take two days. I'll be so glad when this task is finished. I'm getting so close now!

I'll be back Sunday with the August OMG finish link up.

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, Alycia Quilts, and Free Motion Mavericks.

Here are my orange blocks for the RSC project. With the completion of these, I have enough blocks to make a quilt in my desired layout.

Linking with So Scrappy blog

Here are all the blocks laid out on the design wall. I'll add a narrow, probably 1", strip of sashing between them and maybe a tad wider around the outside edge. I need to decide if I want to add sashing cornerstones or not. If I add them, what fabric would I use?

I also spent some time at the guild sewing day over the weekend. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped because I spent a lot of time talking, plus we had a lengthy (for us) business meeting. I now have all the chunks of two strips sewn together for each block. I am working on pinning them to the existing chunks to start forming blocks.

I left sew day early because my daughter came home Saturday to see us. Someone hit her car in the parking deck at work on Friday and left a big paint smear. Of course they didn't leave a note or anything. 😒 On the plus side, my husband was able to buff it and remove the vast majority of the paint smears. It was a white car in case you're wondering, and my daughter's car is silver. There are still a few scratches, but it could have been worse. 

Sunday morning we drove to Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area (a 9000+ acre state-owned marsh and wetland) because I heard they have a small flock of pelicans and four ibis there. This is the first time we've been there in the summer; we typically go in February or March to see migratory pelicans, snow geese, and cranes. It hadn't occurred to me that what is open in late winter/early spring would be fully grown in in the summer months. There was a lot less open water. Much of the water is filled in with lily pads and other grassy plants. So it was very difficult to see the birds. You could watch them come in for a landing and once they landed, they basically disappeared in the growth. 

We saw two bald eagles, various songbirds, I think a whooping crane, some herons and/or egrets (we aren't skilled enough to determine whether something is a heron or egret without clear comparisons, particularly from the distance we were viewing from). And we found the pelican flock after hiking quite a distance into the fields.

These are the pelicans.

We didn't find the ibis.

After my daughter left, I got back to quilting. Yes, I quilted on Sunday. Last week had a few unexpected things pop up, so I needed to catch up in order to meet my commitments.

Here's what I've completed over the past week.

I quilted Trish's quilt with Echo Blossoms. Isn't it pretty?

Next was Linda's, quilted with Crocus. Fun aside: I made a quilt with this fabric last year and I have enough scraps left to make another.

Then I quilted Deb's with In the Swirls. I went rogue on this one. Hope she likes it!

I quilted Linda's mom's hand-stitched quilt with Stipple. She doesn't appear to have used any papers to make this, just marked the hexagon shape on the back and stitched. No ironing. I made an error and didn't notice, so I spent several hours ripping stitches and redoing. As a result, this one took me two days.

On the home front, everything is pretty quiet. I'm adjusting to being home alone three days a week--I used to be home alone five days a week pre-Covid. We've gone through so many changes in the past 4.5 years. My son is a junior this year. His current favorite class is Etymology. The other night he and his friends were discussing where they want to go to college. They are all go-getters. Surprisingly, he was the only one who wanted to stay local out of those who commented. Although, maybe not. I guess I can understand the desire to move away and try things on your own, outside of the weight of expectation or preconceived notions from those who know you. We are looking at it from a more practical consideration--cost. 

I'll be working on a custom quilting project for the next few days.  Hopefully by next week, I'll be back on my normal schedule. Wish me luck. 

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.

Today I have a finish to share. My Spooky and Sweet (free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop) is complete!

I quilted it with the Moon Flower quilting design. 

I added hanging corners on the back and they make me happy.

The only thing I purchased for this is the gray background since I didn't have enough gray yardage in my stash. My daughter claimed this and she picked the quilting design. 

I've also made some progress on my OMG. I quilted the Swiss Star quilt. This one is also my daughter's. She chose the color arrangement, the quilting design, and the thread. 

I have mixed feelings about this one. I loved the colors she picked. I did not enjoy piecing this quilt. I like the concept of the rainbow snails, but she also wanted the rainbow thread on the back and it was not a great choice. It's a thick 40 wt Signature cotton. I think maybe the snails were undersized for the thread weight because their antennae or dinglies or whatever those things are didn't stitch well. My daughter does not care and is in love with it. 

This leads to my dilemma: do I stick with my original plan and hand stitch the binding and stew in my disappointment, or do I machine bind it and be done with it? She doesn't care either way. As I type this, the answer has become clear!

Okay, moving along. I haven't done any other sewing this week. I've been busy working on redoing the design images for my website. I'm getting faster at using Pro-Stitcher Designer and Graphic. I am a bit limited on the image compression since the website I'm using only allows a certain number a day for the free version. I guess it's good that it has an enforced stop each day so I don't sit for tooooo long.

I also did a technical edit on a long, complex pattern which might have melted my brain--it's super cute though!

I had an accident with my steamer. This is actually the second accident in a week. The first time, I tripped over the cord and knocked it to the ground. My husband was able to fix it. The second time, it leapt to its death and blew apart. No fixing it this time. 😩

This model doesn't appear to be sold in stores anymore. I could get one on Amazon, but it was going to be at least three weeks for delivery. I use it on every quilt, so I had to brave Wal-Mart to get one so I could continue working. I don't love the new one, but at least it's not as top-heavy as the other, so it should theoretically take less falls. I'm considering a stand steamer if anyone has any recommendations for something that works well, heats quickly, and doesn't cost $700. 

Of course I've been quilting. Here are this week's batch. 

First is Jeri's quilt. She selected Suzy's Boho Birds for this one. I also fully bound it.

Next is Jae's triangle quilt, quilted with Turbo.

Sara's quilt, quilted with Mod Dotz.

Janice's quilt, quilted with Gulf Stream.

Jo Ellen's quilt, quilted with Orange Peel. 

And finally, Trish's quilt, quilted with tiny Stipple.

In other news, my son started his junior year today. My daughter seems to like her new job, but she hasn't really said much about it. Her supervisor was fired last week and she complained about sterilizer machines being down this week. That's about all we know. No news is good news?

I'm a bit disappointed (actually a lot) because my Graffiti Quilting book from Karlee Porter is now touring the US. In case you aren't familiar with it, Opa Locka, Florida, is near MIAMI!

I don't know what is going on with the Indianapolis sorting and distribution centers, but many of our packages make it to Indianapolis and then spent a week or two bouncing back and forth between Indianapolis and wherever they misroute them multiple times. So frustrating! We ordered something for my daughter that spent a week bouncing between the annex (sorting) and her post office, back and forth, back and forth. 

We also have had a few weird things with FedEx lately. How about this one? LOL.

Even weirder yet...my husband got a flat tire, took the wheel off to fix it, and found a dead and partially decayed mouse stuck to his rim. How does that even happen? Clearly it had been there a while.

Switching over to the garden, we harvested the tomatoes. There were not many that were edible. They get black rot spots within hours of harvesting. I looked it up and it looks like anthracnose. Great.

I have one single zucchini growing.

I did find another pumpkin (this will be number three) in the volunteer pumpkins and the volunteer tomato plant is growing one single tomato.