Stories from the Sewing Room

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.