Stories from the Sewing Room

It's time to share your April progress.

This link up will remain open until April 30 at 11:55 pm EST.

Want to see everyone's goals? Check out the April goal page. 

My goal was to finish binding my Melodic Mystery quilt. With a week remaining before the finish link up opened, I still had one full side to go. Would I finish in time?

I'm proud of myself for getting it done ahead of the due date!

Melodic Mystery was Meadow Mist Design's 2022-2023 mystery program. My top is made from batiks and white Kona. The back and binding are also batik. The front and binding were all made from stash/leftovers from previous projects. I purchased the backing. The quilting design I used is Pluma from Jess at Longarm League. My quilt finished at 67" square.

Now it's your turn to share your finish (or your progress if you didn't quite make it to the finish line).

Take a few minutes to visit others, offer encouragement, and make new friends!

This link up will remain open until 11:55 pm EST on April 30. Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room April One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

I was unable to send or answer emails for five days. 😡 This appears to be a known Squarespace issue that started over the weekend for many people--Squarespace acquired all Google domains a while ago--a year, two years? I don't have enough technical ability to know how to fix it and Squarespace doesn't seem interested in fixing it either, based on the help forums and Reddit posts I've read. I used one of the workarounds listed in the forum and I think that has it working temporarily. I also had an issue with my Mailchimp blog feed last week that I thought I had resolved. Maybe it was related to the Squarespace issue?  

On to sewing. I have done ZERO personal quilting/sewing in the sewing room since last week. I had to spend some quality time with my seam ripper on a quilt for a few days and I spent a ton of time trying to figure out this technology snafu. 

I did work on several quilts for others. These three all belong to Paula. They ended up being much more challenging than I anticipated. The backs were all fleece and she sent two layers of QD Green for each. I learned that designs that require precise alignment and have backtracking/overstitching are not suitable for this fabric/batting combination.

The first quilt is quilted with Dino Tracks.

The next one is quilted with Paw Prints. Paula's piecing is always so precise and well-done. My in-progess picture of this quilt has disappeared from my phone.

And the final one is quilted with Mod Dotz.

I started Jeri's next group of quilts. This one is quilted with Sugar and Spice. I used Glide Vegas Gold and it really blended into the fabrics. She noted that this quilt was made in 2009 and I laughed because that's probably an average age for my own projects. I'll be binding all of her quilts.

In other sewing-related news, I have signed up for Cashmerette's sloper school. It starts next week and runs through July, I think. The pace looks manageable and as part of the class, the Cashmerette team will offer personalized fitting advice for each step. If you aren't a garment sewer, a sloper is a personalized fitting block that you can use to either create your own designs or use as an aid for fitting other patterns. I'm looking forward to learning the proper way to measure myself, diagnose my personal fitting issues, and then maybe create some wearable garments that are more flattering than what I can find to fit me in ready-to-wear. I've already started watching some of the fit library masterclasses (over 15 hours of instructions/lectures separate from the class lectures, which unlock each week of class). Edited to add that while Cashmerette focuses on those with a curvy build, they do offer inclusive sizing from 0-32 on the vast majority of their patterns. All club patterns have the full size range.

Over the weekend, we traveled to Indianapolis to see our daughter. We took a leisurely walk through IKEA and on the way home the menfolk saw a sign for Micro Center and wanted to stop. It was conveniently located near Jo-Ann, so we girls went to Jo-Ann. This one had a lot more selection than my local one, but the prices were not that great, in my opinion. There was still TONS of yarn. I purchased one novelty print for a donation quilt and one still-wrapped bolt to use as backing on a project I started prior to 2000! I am quite certain I paid more than they were worth. I also got two skeins of scrubby yarn and a package of elastic. Those were reasonable, not great. That will probably be my last Jo-Ann purchase ever. One local store is closing for good this week and the other has a few more weeks to go. 😥

My second order of the Vego tanks arrived at the end of last week. I got one assembled Friday night and we finished the other three Sunday afternoon. We planted the asparagus starts Sunday evening and covered the tank with a piece of chicken wire until we can get more dirt and get the fence installed. Not pictured is the rest of the retaining wall on the far side of the garden. My husband mowed the spare lot and worked with the retaining wall rocks and got poison ivy. 

Last week I was singing the praises of my meadow-like front yard. After rain and hot, humid temperatures, I must now admit that it is mostly weeds (but cute, flowering weeds) and does need to be mowed. We dug more of the lamb's ear out of the lawn. 

This is a picture of the buds and flowers of the unusual crabapple tree in the front yard. I noticed while taking this picture that the branches are either full of flowers or have none at all.

I briefly saw a Baltimore oriole Monday. It was on the hummingbird feeder instead of on the fancy oriole feeder my husband found in the freecycle area of the recycling center. 

I was going to share a picture of the three tulips I have blooming in my sewing room window well, but something ate two of them. 😒 Here's a picture of the stalks and the one remaining. I am originally from west Michigan and tulips are a thing there. I can barely keep them alive in my yard here in south-central Indiana. 

We attended Fine Arts night at school, my husband's graduation ceremony for the leadership class he's been taking since September, and also Underclass Honors night at school over the past week. The vast majority of kids receiving honors did not attend. My son has been slacking a bit this year and did not receive any academic excellence awards like he has in the past. He got a certificate for having above a 4.0 for eight trimesters, recognition for National Honor Society, and a certificate for Outstanding Achievement in Indiana Mathematics League. That last one was a surprise. We got to enjoy our third evening of jazz ensemble performance--they were at NHS, Fine Arts, and Honors nights. 

I'll be back tomorrow with the One Monthly Goal finish link up. 

I've been busy working outdoors, so not much sewing is going on. I made the fourth block of the Free Block Friday program I've been s-l-o-w-l-y working on for a year or so. These blocks were a joint project between Marti Michel and Angie Wilson of Gnome Angel. They use Marti's templates. Here is the block all cut out--I think it takes longer to cut this way than to sew. I was able to reuse the triangles I cut out of block three. 

And here is the finished block. 

Here is my design wall with the blocks sort of in their layout. 

I took the clear foot class for my serger yesterday. The clear feet are all used with the coverstitch. The clear regular foot is extremely helpful for coverstitching as it gives better visibility for lining up your stitches. I don't think most of the additional clear feet are as useful as the additional metal ones for regular serging. 

I have plans to make a tiered skirt using Love Notions' Caprice pattern. I have the pattern cut out and I have my fabric. I was trying to decide between two sizes and also whether to line the skirt since the gingham I have is not fully opaque. I decided to wait until after the serger class so that I wasn't switching everything back and forth. I might try it today. 

I've completed three quilts for others. The first one belongs to Melissa. Can you believe this is the first Exploding Heart quilt I've quilted? I feel like that pattern has been everywhere for a while now. I love the hot pink thread (Glide Rhododendron) we decided on. I also fully bound this quilt. Oh, quilted with Freehand Hearts and Loops, perfect choice.

Next is Trish's Bear Paw quilt. She selected Malachite for the quilting and we used 60-wt thread so that it kept the focus on the fabric and piecing rather than the quilting. She did a really great job. Everything, front and back, was so square.

Finally, Shelly's first quilt. This one has a surprise--the backing is baseball team and IU fabrics! It's quilted with Boho Boxes. 

Now, on to the gardening. Here is how the new vegetable garden looked on Friday. 

We built tanks on Saturday and Sunday. These are the sky blue color from Vego Garden. We picked this color because it was the cheapest. 🙂 It's kind of a blue-ish gray. After building the four, we decided we could comfortably fit four more. Those are on order. I hope they come soon. 

It's been a challenge to buy dirt because the weather has been spotty again and they are open when it's nice out. The current plan is to build and fill with dirt the remaining four and then put the fencing around the posts. My husband's been pulling some of the rocks left over from blasting out the basement to use as a little retaining wall around the outside. I need to get the asparagus starts planted, but haven't made it there yet (due to weather and being tired after work). Plus, how am I going to protect them from the deer until we're ready for fencing installation?

As you can see, our crabapples are staring to blossom.  We have this one that is a nice shade of bright pink, a more common reddish pink one, and then one that starts with pink buds that open to white. I'll try to get a picture of that one some time. It's really unusual. 

I also dug out a bunch more of the lamb's ear, this time on the outside of the sidewalk. The kids and I weeded the side and back garden beds. I still have a lot more lamb's ear to remove. I haven't even started cleaning up the big lower garden yet. Many of our neighbors have started mowing and poisoning already. I've had to close my windows due to the strong chemical odor. 😒 I'm enjoying my poison-free meadow in the front. I love dandelions and so do our local bees. Several of my neighbors maintain hives.

I saw an orchard oriole on the bird feeder Monday. I guess that means the Baltimores aren't that far behind and I need to put out the jelly feeder. I bought a new hummingbird feeder over the weekend and need to put that one out too. I haven't seen any hummingbirds yet, but I'm expecting them any day now. 

We had my son's NHS induction last week. I was shocked that 176 kids, almost totally juniors, were admitted. That's more than my total graduating class, more than my husband's, more than my sister's. It's probably about 1/3 of his class. Afterward I was trying to take a picture of him with a few of his friends. I didn't have on my reading glasses, so I didn't really know what I had captured. He asked if I had "L" in the picture. I didn't, so I made everyone pose again and took another picture. I thought it seemed like it would look nice. I didn't look at the first one until we got home and it was truly awful! One kid was way further forward than everyone else so he was much larger, one kid was eating cake and really blurry, and my son's head was turned so that it looked like he was sniffing a flower as large as his head due to the perspective. I laughed and laughed. So glad we took the second photo. Wish I could share, but don't want to publish photos of other people's kids.

Thursday afternoon I took a break from work to go out to a celebratory lunch with my husband, who had just completed the leadership class he's been taking most of the school year. We went to DSW so I could try to find some shoes. I tried on so many, but no luck. I did find one pair of Clarks that fit, but in a color I didn't need. I came home and found those shoes online in a different color and ordered some additional Clarks too. Not always the look I want, but at least they fit. I should be set for shoes for quite some time. I wear out tennis shoes really fast, but other than that, I usually have my shoes for years on end.

We finished watching the current season of Vienna Blood. My prediction for the culprit was the correct one. I got another side of my Melodic Mystery quilt bound. One more side to go. Will I make it before the OMG link up? We have another busy week with lots of events. Stay tuned.

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.

I don't know what got into me, but I had a very productive weekend. I got the vast majority of the house cleaned, I convinced the menfolk to pick up and put away all the robotics stuff so that my basement living room is clean, and I completed some big sewing tasks!

I've been very slowly working on a Gnome Angel/Marti Michel Free Block Friday quilt. I kept staring at the block 3, thinking I needed to switch out one of the colors. I finally did it. Here is the before.

And here is the after. It might be a bit hard for you to see, but I switched out the gray bits in between the green for pink pieces. I'm happy with the switch. It looks more cohesive with the other blocks I've completed and I just really prefer how it looks.

I also prepped my Palmer Pletsch fitting pattern, pressing, taping, and marking seam lines, so that it is ready whenever I can get someone to help me with it. This photo does not make it look like I've pressed the pieces. 🤨

My daughter came home for the weekend. The kids and I started watching the current season of Vienna Blood and I got another side of my Melodic Mystery quilt bound. I'm now halfway! I think I have two weeks or so to finish up before I need to do the OMG finish post. Also, I'm really glad she's planning to come back again this weekend because I really want to finish watching the show!!! And I like seeing her.

Saturday we were having very heavy rain. I cleaned, worked, and then decided to finally deal with my fear of quilting a double batt with wool on top. This little piece is a kit I bought from Julia Quiltoff. It came with backing, top background fabric, laser-cut fusible appliqués, fabric to make a binding, and two pieces of batting. The top piece of batting is wool. I'm not sure what batting the bottom piece was other than a general guess at a cotton/poly blend or maybe just cotton. There was a free video class on how to appliqué (by machine, nothing groundbreaking or new there) and also a video class on quilting (mostly watching her quilt, which is nice to watch, but doesn't necessarily translate to success). I had tried to quilt it one other time but struggled to fit the double batting under my longarm's foot. 

I really didn't want to have to adjust the foot height, so I used one of my low-profile feet, which meant no ruler work. I had to add extra fabric "leaders" to the top and bottom of the backing piece so that I had enough clearance for my actual longarm leaders. I had to be really careful at the edges because the wool batting was fluffy and loose. I did catch the foot in the batting fibers a few times and had to stop and untangle. I quilted this piece similarly to Julia's sample piece. 

Off to a pretty good start.

Things I learned/noticed/remembered:

    1. I get really tired after 15 - 30 minutes of quilting in this style. I should stop and take breaks because my quality and accuracy decrease, however, my personal quilting time is very limited, so I pushed through on this piece. It took me about two hours to quilt this 20" x 21" piece. 

I can tell I'm starting to lose the plot. You can really see the wool batting poof in the unquilted areas.

    2. The less-quilted parts have nice loft, especially the bigger butterfly, but the end product is so stiff that it can almost stand up on its own. I'm not sure if it's due to the quilting density, the fabrics, the battings, or some combo of the three. 

I'd forgotten to quilt a small bit here and you can really see how much the batting compresses with quilting.

    3. I think the scale I quilt in gets smaller and smaller the more tired I get. 

    4. If I could practice this style of quilting more often, I think I would have less bobbles and mistakes. Maybe my backtracking would be more accurate. Practice makes perfect. 

    5. I think the front looks pretty good, but the back shows every single mistake I made.

I believe I'm going to enter this in the fair and they require some hanging method for small pieces. I added hanging corners during binding because this thing is so stiff I don't want to try to sew on a hanging sleeve. These corners may be a bit small, but I just used backing trimmings, so it is what is is.

Linking with Quiltery, Alycia Quilts, Andree's Free Motion Mavericks, and From Bolt to Beauty.

I am thankful to have a steady stream of work right now. I completed five quilts for others since last week.

The first two belong to Charlene. She picked Taffeta for this quilt.

And Van Gogh for this one.

Trudy selected Ginger Snap for her quilt.

Hannah requested Lovely Loops for her adorable baby quilt. I bound this one and sent it on back to her.

Finally, Sonja picked Cloud Nine Petite for this quilt. She is a master at mixing yardage and reclaimed fabric in her quilts. The back of this one had the most darling little 3/4" HST section. I quilted this one from the bottom up to make sure I used as much of that little panel as possible. That means that I attach the bottom of the backing to my back roller and the top of the backing to the roller closest to me. Then I quilt from the bottom of the quilt top up to the top. I do this if I have a backing that already has a label attached so that I can make sure the label is right where I want it. If you try this technique, don't forget to flip your pattern over the X axis, particularly if it's a more directional design. 

If you look closely, you can see the tiny HST Sonja included in the backing right along the edge of the photo.

We've not made much progress on getting the vegetable garden up and running. The weather has made it basically impossible. We've had tornado warnings, loads of rain, flooding, and now freeze warnings. The asparagus crowns arrived Monday and they are chilling in the fridge until we can get the tank set and get some dirt. I did start a few tomato and pepper plants in my Aerogarden. A bit late, but it will be okay. I don't think a week either way will make too much difference. 

I like that our yard has plenty of "weeds" with lots of little flowers right now. It looks like a nice meadow. We have some violets (and more lamb's ear that has hopped the barrier) in the side yard. 

If you do not wish to read about my personal life/beliefs, please stop reading here. 

I like to make note of things that maybe my kids will like to look back at someday. You can read it or not. I reserve the right to delete rude or weird comments.

I've had a few wins: a better haircut this time (though I might have offended her by saying I didn't want it as short as she did last time; she didn't style it, but I was actually pleased with that choice as I don't like tons of product in my hair or on my sensitive scalp), the clean house, and I found a few pairs of jeans that fit. They're a size bigger than I'd like, but not as big as I thought I'd have to go. A few hits too: I cannot find dress shoes that fit my weird feet. I ordered and returned four pairs in different styles from two companies. While I can learn to sew my own clothes, I don't think I can become a cobbler. My washer's mother board appears to be going out. We purchased the machine in August 2020. The replacement part is 1/3 the cost of the machine. Thankfully my husband is very talented and can do the repair himself. 

My son is getting inducted into National Honor Society tonight. Nothing requiring dress shoes for me. He does have to wear nice clothing, which he will pair with his tennis shoes. At least they're new. 😏 Next week I'm taking another serger foot class and we're attending my husband's leadership class graduation. 

Everything seems so fragile in the world right now. I'm trying to be very aware of purchases and budget. I'll put things into a cart and then wait several days to see if we actually need whatever we're thinking of buying. Jobs seem tenuous. I will never cheer for people losing their jobs. We've been in that position too many times for me to wish that on anyone except some elected people. I've had to seriously cut back my news and social media consumption to preserve my sanity. 

I adore PBS. We were watching a Rick Steves special episode about Poland the other night--my son knew that Poland as a country had disappeared multiple times throughout history; I did not. I was aware, thanks to PBS and Finding Your Roots, that Poland was part of the Pale of Settlement. Rick Steves included clips from the museum at Auschwitz-Berkinau and I was close to tears and I am worried that we are perilously close to another world tipping point. Our politicians have cut funding for libraries, for public media and education, for world and local disaster relief, for food and medicine for the less fortunate, for medical research and environmental and safety protections. It hurts my heart. 

It's time to share my March PHD progress. 

Linking with Ms. P.

In March I completed item #1 on my list, the Marble Mystery quilt. 

I quilted and am in the process of binding #3, Melodic Mystery quilt.

No progress was made on items 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

I had one new start, a project from a class I took with Linda Hahn at IHQS. No further progress has been made because I felt that the templates, foundations, and book had a smoke scent that I'm trying to eradicate before working on this project further. This is a mini, so hopefully it will be a finish this year.

I did make one block from another UFO that isn't on my list.

I had a busy March with quilting and lots of bindings. I have just a few to share from the last week. The first one belongs to Jeri and is quilted with Longwood. I fully bind Jeri's quilts.

This one is also Jeri's. She selected Fusion for this quilt.

And this is Deb's, quilted with Malachite.

I had planned to quilt another of my UFOs over the weekend, but instead I worked in the upper garden and assisted my husband with placing poles for the new vegetable garden's enclosure. I'm super proud that I dug out most of the lamb's ear by myself in this section. I almost filled our 24" cube weed bag. Sharp eyes will notice I left a little clump. I might rip out a bit more of that, but think I'll leave most of it right there because the bees love the flowers. I'll need to be vigilant so it doesn't take over the sidewalk again.

Unfortunately, I have a long ways to go with the rest of that garden. Plus it has spread all over the lawn and I'll need to dig that out too. This part is going to be tricky because of all the iris rhizomes. All those lighter spots along the top of the sidewalk out in the grass are also lamb's ear. All of this came from one plant. 

Here are the poles for the vegetable garden. They held up through the storms we had Sunday night. Sunday started off breezy and overcast, transitioning to really pleasant, warm, sunny weather. Lots of people were out for walks in the late afternoon. Then at dinnertime, our power started flashing and browning out before completely going out for the next five or six hours. The tornado sirens started wailing right as the power went off. We didn't have any damage other than lack of power. I guess the storm was a lot stronger several miles closer to town. I saw social media reports of loud noises like a train or a jet, and have seen lots of downed trees, but the NWS has determined no tornadoes came through my area. Edited to add: now the NWS says an EF-0 did go through briefly, touching down for less than 1/4 mile.

Sunday late afternoon

My husband kept working on the enclosure Monday and Tuesday and has the top boards on. We bought fencing, but he hasn't had time to add that yet.

Tuesday afternoon

I noticed that the redbuds are starting to have a purple-y haze. If you look closely at any of my pictures with trees in the backgrounds, you can see they are starting to bud out. 

The tree branches in the center are redbuds. I didn't capture the color very well.

I went to Jo-Ann on Friday, hoping they might have some thread left. Nope. Only a little bit of machine embroidery and serger threads remained. There were some zippers, but no other notions. No interfacing. No batting or anything else usually stocked in that area. Most yarn was gone and all cross stitch supplies. There was still quite a bit of fabric, but the sales aren't that good on them and everything was a minimum of two yards. Upholstery fabric was a three-yard minimum. I also saw a bit of vinyl and it looked like there was still a decent amount of jewelry findings. The whole thing is just so sad. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.