Stories from the Sewing Room

After a brief detour into grief for my friend (please send positive thoughts her way) and a small medical procedure with the attendant prep and recovery, I've gotten back to my sewing. 

I prepped some Halloween napkins for my daughter. I thought this would be the easiest project to accomplish, but I didn't have the right shade of orange thread. So I have four large squares cut.

Moving along, I decided that I need to work on creating the backing for my RSC quilt. I wanted to use only older things from my stash. I pulled out fabrics in each of the colors I used on the front, but I didn't like how they looked together. 

So I went back to the bins and pulled out similarly-themed, brightly colored fabrics. I was pressing them and had to laugh because many of the selvedges read 1999 (or close to it). I think it's time to use up the 25 year old fabric! Creating this back is taking for-ev-errrr. The fabrics are all different sizes and some have pieces cut out of them. Plus I'm trying to make it not totally ugly. 

First try with second fabric pull.

Starting to come together. Why is this taking so long?

While we're on the topic of old fabric, I made (but haven't attached yet) all the hanging sleeves that I need for the guild quilt show in a few weeks. I decided to use natural muslin. This fabric is probably around 25 years old too. When I first started quilting, I often used either white or natural muslin for my background fabrics. I can say that the old stuff is way higher quality than the muslin you can currently buy at the big box craft store. 

I've completed quite a few quilts. I spent a second day on Susan's quilt I shared last week.

I quilted Loops and Swirls on two similar baby quilts for Susan.

I quilted Windswept on her scarecrow quilt.

I quilted Echoed Curves on her absolutely ginormous quilt. (110" x 121"). This one was a tight squeeze on the machine.

And I quilted Windswept on Cynthia's quilt. Cynthia told me that the batiks she used were from astronaut Karen Nyberg's collection.

Meanwhile, it really looks like fall outside. I was struck by how yellow everything looked the other day.

My tomato that grew in the former chicken coop location finally ripened. I have one more growing on this plant, so I'll need to keep an eye on it in case the temps start to fall before it ripens. That looks like a split, but it was just a yellow streak in the skin.

Lots of leaves are falling; way more than I think we normally get. My husband read that chickens love piles of leaves, so he blew all the leaves off the driveway and into the coop. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Here are four of five chickens--Peanut is feeling broody and staying in the coop right now. Also, we've only had like one egg in the last week, so I'm not sure what she thinks she's sitting on. 

From left to right: Agatha, Smoky, Henry, Beaker I had just fed them broccoli, strawberries, and scratch, so the girls are looking down.

The squirrels are still entertaining with their antics. We have a lot of rabbits this year too. It's really weird to see large crowds of rabbits and squirrels sitting in the yard together. 

I've seen a few more unusual birds. We caught this yellow-throated warbler on my daughter's bird feeder cam. Sorry it's a bit blurry; I had to grab a still from the video. I typically only see warblers at the feeders during migrations.

I also saw a summer tanager high up in the trees. We do have these regularly, but they are difficult to spot and don't generally come in to the feeders. There's another bird I haven't been able to identify that landed briefly on the feeder and then I saw it out in the trees.