Stories from the Sewing Room

After a brief period of calm, things are starting to go haywire again. Most of it is completely out of my control, but I keep letting it eat at me. The worst things are that the post office has misplaced a box of quilts and Mom is sick again. So far they haven't been able to figure out what is wrong.

I haven't done any sewing other than what I showed in Monday's OMG post. I am about halfway done stitching down the binding on that quilt. 

I am trying to finish off the last quilts of the year. I have 8.5 quilts to quilt and eight to bind. 

Here are the quilts I've worked on since last week. 

First up is Deb's, quilted with Pumpkin Seeds. It came out so cute. 

Next is Teah's, quilted with Arches. 

Cynthia's quilt is quilted with Graceful Vines. Fun aside: she already made this quilt once before with the same patterns and fabrics, but she gifted it, so she recreated it. 

I finally finished up all the bindings on Pat's quilts.

I quilted Cosmos on Hannah's quilt.

Marsali requested Thread Garden for this one.

My quilt, quilted with Lovely Loops.

Jeri's quilt, quilted with Cactus Flower.

I'm slowly working on Cindy's mom's quilt. They finally decided on Blackbird for the quilting. There's some fullness, so I would not generally recommend this type of quilting design for this situation. You'd generally want to use something like Ground Cover, Oil Spill, Identity, or even stipple that has a lot of curvy movement back and forth in smaller areas. I did what I could. I hate when I can't make it perfect or perfect-adjacent.

Another of Jeri's, quilted with Love Blooms. We're having fun with different styles of designs in this group of her quilts.

You can stop reading here if you're only interested in the quilting.

I have managed to get outdoors a few times this week. Between work and the mostly lousy weather, it's been a challenge. I was really surprised to see this lone clematis flower on a mostly dying back plant. 

We had a couple great sunsets. My husband captured this photo. 

We got a chuckle from this license plate.

On Thursday night I sat through the fourth installment of the county planning board meetings regarding the lack of sidewalks in our neighborhood. The developer's family finally filed for the plat amendment to strike out the language requiring the sidewalks and street trees. The board debated it yet again. They took public comments. There was a tense moment when one of my neighbors spewed legalese and dubious statistics apparently in favor of sidewalks? I don't think he's even attended any of the other meetings. 😳🙄 Thankfully another neighbor got up and spoke in calm tones against the sidewalks. In the end, they voted 6-1 in favor of striking the sidewalk requirement. So I guess we're done? 

After the meeting and after dinner, we went for a walk with our friend. By this time it was pretty dark out. We noticed that there seemed to be some flames or at least a fire-like glow coming from the stubby road up by the new construction. We walked up there and there was a vehicle none of us recognized. The guy led with "I'm a property owner and I'm not doing anything wrong." He claimed it was a nice night so he was enjoying some "embers". It was odd. I ended up texting the property owner to let him know someone had a what appeared to be a fire on the road next to his new driveway. He came out and made the guy leave. Yes, I'm the nosy neighbor. 

We went back up there a couple days later and sure enough, there were ashes all over the road. So weird.

The menfolk surprised me with a new-to-us computer to upgrade from our failing 2019 Mac. This one is a 2021, but super, super fast with more bells and whistles. The transfer from one computer to the next took all night. The next morning, I could not access any of our Office products (where much of my business stuff resides) because our license was too old. Panic ensued. We purchased an updated license and I could not get it to activate. After my son got home from school, he got it activated in minutes doing the same things I tried. I guess I'm old now. 

Well, if you made it down here, thanks for listening/reading. I'll try not to be such a downer next week. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, my wish for you is to spend it with people you care about. 

How did you do with your goal this month? It's time to share your progress.

My goal this month was to completely make a surprise quilt from start to finish. It was pretty clear part way through the month that I wouldn't have enough time to make it, quilt it, and bind it, particularly since I want to stitch this binding by hand. Here was my project at the beginning of the month. The fabrics are Andover Sequin in Ocean, Dashwood Sapphire Skies, and Kona white.

November 4: I had everything cut.

November 10: sewing some units.

November 15: Trimming a ton of HST.

November 22: Assembling the rows. I'm cutting it pretty close.

November 22, after dinner. Just two seams left to go. Plus borders.

    

November 23: I have a finished top. I pressed five yards of fabric and seamed the backing.

Then I started quilting. This ended up being the fourth design (Lovely Loops, always a winner) I picked. By the time I had the top done, I didn't have a lot of hours left to spend on quilting if I also wanted to get the binding attached to the front before I needed to do the link up post. 

My new goal is to have the binding stitched down before the end of the month! Stay tuned. 

I don't know what's gotten into me (actually I do know; it's panic mode), but I've finished off the last of the race car quilt blocks. I'm hoping to get this one done in this calendar year. Fingers crossed!

I have been making amazing progress on the knitted baby blanket. I now have 11/13 repeats done! I never dreamed I'd be in sight of a knitting finish in this calendar year!

I've been working feverishly on my OMG project this month. If you missed that, it was to make a quilt from start to finish this month. I'm making good progress, but I definitely won't have a full finish by the time I have to post the finish link up on the 24th. I'm hoping to get it at least to the quilted stage by then. We'll see. I still don't have a completed top, but the rows are all made. 

I trimmed a bazillion HST over the weekend.

I've completed more quilts for my clients, though I am falling behind on my pre-holiday progress. I may have over-promised. My vacation time is getting shorter by the day. 😞

The quilts are great though. Here's the latest batch.

Four completed bindings for Jeri's quilts:

In other news, my son accidentally broke one of my CorningWare casserole dishes. I was able to find a replacement on Mercari. I'd never used that service before. The seller was fantastic. The dish was in near-perfect condition (my previous one was almost 30 years old and this one looks just like it--I am very careful with my belongings). The packaging was very robust. I'm thrilled with this purchase and seller.

Last week Tuesday night we were able to witness the northern lights again. What a fantastic show Mother Nature gave us. 

I'll be back Monday with the November OMG Finish Link Up. Happy sewing to you.

I can't believe it, but I actually finished sewing some of the blocks for the dreaded race car quilt. 

They are supposed to be 8.5". Mine are all over the place. I think they are the least square blocks I've ever made. 

I think the error might have started with sewing the strip sets. I never have super-great accuracy with that method though it is certainly much faster than cutting individual blocks. The next error came with the stitch-and-flip corners. Maybe it's even before that and my cutting was off? At any rate, these are some very wonky blocks that will be challenging to fit into the final quilt.

Besides that, I've been busy working on my secret project.

I've been knitting in the evenings and have added another pattern repeat to the baby blanket. Four more repeats to go. Side note: I thought I had one more repeat done than I did. I was sad about that.

I haven't made any further progress on the Magnificent Mystery. I still have to finish the month three hourglass blocks. Clue five came out last week and darn it, it's more hourglass blocks. I bought this to help mark more accurately. I had a similar marking tool years ago and I think I donated it since I can't find it. We'll see if that helps with my accuracy. 

I've completed a bunch more quilts. I quilted Day Tripper on Jeri's quilt. I will fully bind this one along with the two I quilted for her last week.

I bound Hannah's quilt and shipped it and the two from last week back to her.

I quilted Sugar and Spice on Twilla's quilt. This is her first quilt and she did a great job! I'm a bit bummed out because while looking for this photo, I realized that the pictures I took of her finished quilt and one other did not record in my phone. I've already returned this one, so no more pictures. 😞 I still have the other one, so I can retake those.

I quilted Graceful Vine on Kim's quilt. This one took a couple days to quilt.

I quilted Jeri's Snowflake quilt with Sea of Snowflakes. I will bind this one too.

I quilted Keetah's quilt with Spiral Feather. This also took two days to quilt. She used a lightweight canvas fabric along with the broadcloth.

I quilted Gulf Stream on Pat's quilt. More binding. 

And I started quilting Fly Fishing on another of Pat's quilts. I'll finish this one today. And do some more binding. 

Meanwhile, we've had all sorts of weather. The end of last week was quite pleasant. Saturday was in the 60s, but we were forecasted to have cold and snow starting on Sunday, so I harvested the peas. 

The plants are still covered in blossoms and bees were feeding on the them while I was harvesting. We covered them up Sunday until Tuesday. Hopefully they can survive a little longer. It's supposed to be back in the 70s this coming weekend. 

Here is the deck on Monday morning. 

The lighting was kind of cool while it was snowing and I got this picture of a blue jay.

Switching gears, over the weekend we went to the History Center garage sale/fundraiser. I found two intriguing books. 

This note was inside the brown book.

It's not super-clear in the photos, but it is labeled "Dicken's Child's History of England". According to Wikipedia, this is indeed written by Charles Dickens. Not sure why the spine has his name wrong. 

I saw, but did not purchase, this lovely....

They had an extensive selection of dolls and I saw the creepiest doll I've ever seen. No picture. No need to induce nightmares. 

I also found a little quilt kit that I couldn't pass up. I'm looking forward to having some time to sew this up. It finishes at 10.5" square.

I lost my mind for a second and almost bought a baggie of corner trimmings, but put them back. I have enough of my own triangle cutoffs to deal with. My son bought another camera and some speakers. There's now a steady thumping bass coming from his room most afternoons. On the topic of the used cameras, he's bought several that still have photos on the memory cards. 

I'll leave you with some cool sunset photos taken a few minutes apart.

Until next week, happy sewing.