October One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

Welcome to another installment of One Monthly Goal.

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

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


How did you do with your goal this month?

My official goal was to make any amount of progress on the race car quilt. I was really hoping to get all the remaining blocks pieced. I started the month in this position.


On October 5 I sewed on the remaining stitch-and-flip corners.
This week I laid out the units to be joined into blocks.

I got one row of the units sewn. 
Most of the points didn't line up well. I tried to fix them and they are not going to work out. So they are how they are. 😒 I don't think they will be overly noticeable once everything is quilted and finished. The fabric is really busy.

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 October 31. 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 October One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Magnificent Mystery Part Four

I made 60 Irish Chain blocks! These are part four of the Meadow Mist Magnificent Mystery quilt. Part one was fabric selection, part two was cutting, part three was making a bunch of hourglass blocks that I haven't done yet, and these are part four. Pictured are the Irish Chain blocks and the parts for the hourglass blocks. 

Do you have tips for making accurate hourglass blocks? Please share. I seem to always end up with one corner that is off. 

I've been busy quilting. I spent a lot more hours on Patricia's quilt from last week. I kept finding spots where the thread had broken during stitching, but not enough that it snapped the thread off. So. Many. Repairs.

I bound Terese's quilt that I shared last week.

I quilted three more quilts for Trish. This first one is quilted with Cassava.

So is this one. :)


The last one is quilted with Grandmother's Bubbles. I think that this design gives an orange peel effect, but is so much easier to execute.

I quilted Teah's quilt with Maureen's Oakleaf. She used a 50/50 vintage sheet for the backing and I keep thinking that either we or someone we knew had these sheets. 🤔 It just seems so familiar. Anyway, it quilted beautifully.

Finally, I quilted Soho on Gina's quilt. I will fully bind this one today.

Meanwhile, we've been having all sorts of weather. It was really windy yesterday and when I went out to check on my peas, one of the supports had blown over. 

It's hard to tell, but I have quite a few peas that are almost ready to pick. We have a chance of frost tonight and a chance of a hard frost tomorrow night. I think I might need to cover them...with...something? These plants look so much healthier than my earlier crop this year. Everything else in the garden is pretty much done.

I need to check on what I might need to do for the asparagus.

Besides this, I've been busy going to all sorts of appointments. My son had fall break for a few days last week. We did his appointment, flu shots (best shot-giver ever this time; no pain at all, even afterwards), then I had an appointment this week that will require four follow-ups plus lots of exercises for my stupid foot. We filed the FAFSA and are waiting for a college acceptance letter. I had forgotten about selective service--that is in our near future. I'm still hoping we can avoid furlough, but the federal situation seems bleak. My quilting income is nowhere near enough for us to live on. 

We went to the food bank used-book sale fundraiser twice. My son chose a bunch of CDs and several foreign language books. One is a Russian to German dictionary, one is in Danish, one is a German book of German maps from the 60s, and one appears to be a Chinese book about social order? We also picked up a Shola-English dictionary. I bought a ton of biographies/memoirs, a book of poetry by Paul McCartney, and this unusual book. I first picked it up because I thought the cover looked pretty. 


It was intriguing once I opened it up and saw that it was actually an advertisement for soap followed by Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby. This was in the "better books" section and was our most expensive purchase at $5.


I also found these French cross stitch books in the foreign book section. 

Stop back Saturday for the OMG finish link up.

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and Alycia Quilts.

Life

Things are still going a bit sideways. I'll discuss that at the end, so if you only want to see the sewing, you don't have to read it. I haven't sewn anything of my own over the past week, but I have been knitting a bit in the evenings. Some year I'll finish this baby blanket that was originally intended for a kid that is probably close to middle school age by now. 🤣

I finally got both of Pat's quilts bound and back to her. 


I've quilted a few more pieces. This one is Patricia's. She hand-dyed the fabrics using plants, which I thought was really cool. I used cotton thread she provided to do a hand-guided loopy meander. Keeping it real, it was a challenge. I knew up front that the thread would be difficult. It caused way more issues than I expected and I spent two days on what should have taken me half a day and it's still not to my standards. Hello, imposter syndrome.

I quilted Peak Blooms on Trish's quilt. 

I seamed the backing for her before I started. 

I had a brief moment of panic at the end when I saw that the batting had gotten skewed. It was cutting it close, but there was just enough.

I quilted Spring Thing on Terese's quilt. I still need to make and attach the binding. This is her first quilt. She did great.

On to my life. The front porch cement and a bit near the barn got poured.


My husband has started putting the siding back on the house.

I feel like I'm just in survival mode. I'm super worried that the furlough is coming for us and I'm so sorry for those it has already affected. 

My daughter was home visiting for the weekend and my husband wanted her to get her car washed. She went through the fancy car wash and it completely scratched and gouged the entire top of her car. She had to go file a claim. We'll see what they offer. I jokingly said it would be a lifetime of free car washes. 

We purchased a new grill a month ago and it was damaged when we removed it from the box. The replacement top finally arrived last week and it was more damaged than the original. Try number three should be delivered today. 

Meanwhile, after like five years of staking out and re-staking out house dimensions, construction has begun on the lot kitty-corner from our spare lot. I am totally devastated that they removed the entire tree line at the back of their property. This was yesterday morning. You can see the hole where the tall trees were. The entire treeline was as tall as the trees on the right and there were understory shrubs/trees that are critical for nature as well.

By the end of the day, it was wiped out. Like, they cleared every last bit of it. I am in shock. So many birds and other critters lived in those trees. They also removed the sycamore tree that is just behind the stop sign in the photo above, but left every single invasive Bradford pear in place. The only tiny bright spot is that they were hauling away the trees instead of burning them. Many of my neighbors are burn-happy. Several of them burn toxic things (garbage, plastics) that shouldn't be burned, particularly in a subdivision. Smoke chokes me. Sometimes it's so bad I can't even be outside. It is a very sore subject with me. Anyway, mid-day yesterday I looked out my sewing room window and saw this.

Went upstairs for lunch. So did he. 

Seeing a raccoon out in the middle of the day isn't a good thing. We think he got displaced from his home. We're worried he will get desperate and go for our chickens. 

I'm ready for all these issues to be over with. It's really dragging me down. This year has just been so much harder than I ever expected. 

Little Bits of Progress

I am feeling semi-human again and I was able to do a small amount of sewing. I started piecing the month two clue for the Meadow Mist mystery quilt. Obviously it's not done yet, but it's a start. I noticed that my pink print is really narrow. I think I'm going to have to cut one additional strip set to get what I need.

If you're wondering, I skipped month one's clue. I don't like making hourglass units, so I'm putting it off. 😆

I stitched the remaining stitch-and-flip corners for the race car quilt blocks. Now I have to piece all the units into blocks, then into borders. 

I was unable to work most of last week, so I've been busy trying to catch up and have lots of quilts to share. 

First up is Jeri's quilt, quilted with Banana Swirls. I bound this one. 

 
    

Next is Jeri's sister's quilt, quilted with Fall Foliage. More binding. The thread looks kinda light, but it is a light gold color, Glide Sand.

                                            

    

One more of Jeri's, quilted with Bubble Glitter. I also bound this one, but I forgot to take a picture. My photos have been turning out really weird and way overexposed since this latest iPhone update. The thread color here is an aqua color, Glide Magic Mint. 

Next I quilted Judy's wall hanging with Leaves, Loops, and Swirls.

Another of Judy's, quilted with Fall Foliage. 

And one last one from Judy, quilted with Cobwebs. The backing is a raven print too.

Finally, Sara's quilt, quilted with Loop the Loop. 

Today I'll be making and attaching the binding on Pat's quilts that I quilted a few weeks ago (remember the pizza and fish quilts?) and doing photos and invoicing of all these quilts. Then it's back to quilting Thursday. 

I had to miss guild last night since I'm not at 100% health-wise and I don't want to spread the germs. I'm hoping to make Friday night's guild. 

Our front porch concrete is being poured today. 🎉

We have been invited to the next county Planning Commission meeting in a few weeks, where they will be voting on the stupid sidewalk waiver. 

My husband started a new role at work. 

My son has applied to his first-choice college. I'm hoping they make a decision soon so that we don't have to go through a ton more essay writing and fee-paying. He wrote five versions of the essay to get one that was decent.

My daughter is coming to visit this weekend, which I'm really looking forward to. 

I took this picture last night (in the dark) of the full moon rising. It looks more like a daybreak photo. 
Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.

October One Monthly Goal

New month, new goal. Won't you join in?

New to One Monthly Goal?  Welcome!  To join, share a photo of your project plus some words about what you want to accomplish in a blog post or Instagram post and add that photo to the link up.  Return at the end of the month and share your results.  (Results link up opens for the last 7 days of the month.)

What should I pick this month? My options are race car quilt, Nancy's quilt, quilting one of my three remaining to-be-quilted tops, catching up on the Meadow Mist mystery, finishing the Beach Bumz class quilt, or going completely rogue with something not on my PHD list. I suppose I could also add figuring out how to fix my dress sloper too. 

I'm torn between going rogue and being responsible. Ha ha. 

The project I'd most like to be done with is the race car quilt, so that means sewing the remaining stitch-and-flip corners on to the block units and piecing the blocks. Big sigh. I find this project so tedious. I'm so close, though. It's just piecing these blocks and adding them and one additional, non-pieced, border. I do still need to figure out a backing. I'll quilt and then machine bind this eventually. 

My goal is to make any amount of progress on this quilt this month.

Now it's your turn to link up. The link up will remain open through October 7.

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on October 25.  Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just copy and paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal October Link Up

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

September PHD Report

First, I want to tell you that I appreciate all the comments you leave. I'm behind on answering, but hope to catch up soon. 

It's time to once again share my PHD progress. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs' PHD program

In September I completed one project from my UFO list, the Pink Grapefruit in Blue quilt. All stats on this quilt are two posts back. 

I quilted my Forever Neverland quilt from the new starts list and completed the binding as well. This quilt measures 52.25" x 67". I quilted it with the Interstellar Lite design. 




I made a small amount of progress on the race car quilt, prepping the last half of the pieced blocks for sewing.  

I have all the little paper pieces trimmed for Nancy's quilt. Or so I thought. I realized as I was pressing them that I was four sets (eight papers) short. 🤦🏻‍♀️ This quilt requires that you make matching pairs for the paper pieced parts, so I had to sort through what I had left and try to shuffle things to make pairs. The pieces are now sewn. I have 10 blocks laid out on my design boards. Once I get those 10 sewn, I'll move on to the second group of 10. 

I am ready to custom quilt my navy and white quilt once I have some free time with my long arm. 

No further progress has been made on any of the remaining items in my UFO and 2025 starts lists, but I did accomplish a tough (for me) technology task. I am proud of myself for bumbling through and setting up external SMTP service for both my blog and my business websites this month, so hopefully all my emails will get delivered now. 

I finished making the muslin top I talked about last week. It fits, but not well. Same old fitting problems as usual--too tight on the back, something weird in the sleeves, hiking up in the back (due to my very round back), plus this one needs to have length added. Some day I'll figure this all out. Between my Cashmerette class and my Gina Renee fitting book, I think I see some things to try. But it all takes time and a lot of muslin fabric. Plus it's hard to see what is going on on your back, you know?

I caught a cold from my son, so I haven't gotten much work done. I figured people wouldn't want me spreading my germs all over their quilts. 

I finished Keetah's quilt before the cold fully hit. This one is really big (114" x 114") and took me three days to quilt Bubble Glitter on. 

Join me tomorrow for the October One Monthly Goal link up. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.