Stories from the Sewing Room

It's been super busy around here. I think that's good because my attention was diverted away from worrying over the election (I hope you went out and exercised your right to vote!). I opted not to look at the news and poll results until after I've published this; it all makes me anxious. 

Let's move along to the fun stuff. I went to my guild retreat for one day. It was at a place called Donkeytown. The route between my house and Donkeytown is full of very narrow, winding roads. I had to stop for a fairly large flock of turkeys on my way to the retreat center. Sorry about the very grainy picture. I zoomed in quite a bit to make them more visible and that yields grainy results through the car window.

I arrived at Donkeytown. Yes, there are donkeys. Yes, they roam pretty freely. There are also goats, sheep, chickens, and maybe more. I didn't go searching. There was a herd of at least 20 donkeys that stopped by the building looking for treats. They come right up to the door. I stayed inside and looked through the window! This picture shows only one donkey and two sheep.

I had been wondering what on earth I was going to bring to work on. I need to have projects that don't require a lot of attention when I'm sewing with friends. I didn't want to add anything new to my PHD lists for this year, so that left looking in my closet to find something older to work on. I changed my mind several times and settled on my long-term retreat project (imagine that 😏). This project used the cupcake papers from Miss Rosie's Cupcake Mix Recipe 3.

I sewed through most of a charm pack until I ran out of background fabric. I then started cutting apart some of the pieces, but didn't get a chance to start sewing more blocks. I wanted to get home before it started getting dark because those roads are not fun to drive. 

The picture below shows the stack of papers I've sewn that need to be cut apart. It's close to two charm packs' worth. The lower right shows the blocks I already had complete. The blocks finish at 3", I believe. I am using various lines of American Jane fabrics.

Saturday morning we had a robotics event at IU. The boys are going to participate in a drone competition in a few weeks. Saturday they received their kit, built most of it, and some of the participants at the build day got a chance to try to drive the helium balloon drone through a target. After the event was done, we grabbed lunch and then headed over to the Eskenazi Museum of Art (always free admission!) to check out John Mellencamp's art. 

We also walked through the rest of the museum since we'd never been there before. Here is one of the pieces I really enjoyed. 

After we finished in the museum, we wandered around trying to find the new statue of John Mellencamp. After a bit of bickering and a lot of wandering, we eventually found it. 

Someone put a flower in his hand and had also left one on Hoagy Carmichael's piano a bit further down the trail.

We were pretty exhausted by this point, but we had one more stop to go. We went to the local pottery, glass, and fiber show. My husband entered drawings from each of the guilds and we found out Monday that he won a piece of pottery. Not sure what yet because he can't pick it up until at least Thursday. I bought two skeins of alpaca blend yarn. 

Sunday we all slept in and then we had robotics practice. I've gotten a bit of work done on my Batesville quilt since then. 

Of course I have been busy quilting too. Tis the season. The first group of quilts all belong to Amber. I quilted Identity on the map and loopy meander on the other two.

Next I quilted Gulf Stream on Carol's quilt. 

Finally, Melissa selected JK Celtic for her Lord of the Rings quilt.