Stories from the Sewing Room

It's time to officially report in on my October progress for this year's PHD program. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs' PHD program.

Unfortunately, not much has changed since last month. I have not made any additional progress on items 4, 6, 8, or 10 on my UFO list. I was sick for the first half of October and stayed out of the sewing room for a week as a result.

I have made a very small amount of progress on #11, the race car quilt. I have laid out the remaining blocks and started piecing them. It doesn't show well in my picture, but the blocks in the top set are joined into rows.

You'll notice that I added one more UFO to my list, #14, the knitted baby blanket. I've been working on this in the evenings since I haven't gotten any quilting done recently. I knew this project was old, but I wasn't sure how old. I looked back through my past finishes to see when I finished the baby quilt that I ended up making instead and found that it's from 2017! High time to get it done! I'm part way through the eighth repeat. I think there are 13 total repeats to knit, so I'm a little past half way. I only have one more skein left, so I'm wondering how that's going to work out. 

I am the world's slowest knitter, so it's probably not likely I'll get this done this year, but a girl can dream.

Meanwhile, I have added another project to the 2025 Starts column (though I added it November 1). I need to get this project completely done this month. I have everything cut. 

I have made a small amount of progress on #6 on the starts, the Magnificent Mystery. This one doesn't even count for PHD because the clues don't finish until 2026, but I am trying to keep it from becoming yet another long-term UFO. I have completed 1.5 of the sewing steps so far: the Irish Chain units are done and I have made all the half-square triangles required for the hourglass blocks. The next clue releases tomorrow.

I'm feeling bad that I probably won't earn the PHD this year. At least I have completed eight things that weren't done before. 

Meanwhile, I'm keeping plenty busy working. 

I stitched Champagne bubbles on Hannah's quilt.

I also bound her quilt.

   

I stitched Ring Toss on this quilt of Hannah's.

And bound it. I have one more of her quilts from last week to bind.

    

I stitched Jungle Party with Flowers on Jeri's quilt. I will bind this one.

I stitched Doing Doughnuts on Jeri's next quilt and will bind this one too.

I stitched a very tiny scale Van Gogh on Cynthia's Starry Night quilt using 60 wt thread.

I have lots more quilts and bindings to go, plus I need to pattern match the seams in a backing. 😬 I do not think I can charge enough money for that.

Out in the garden, we harvested our pumpkins on Halloween. We gave one to one of the kids in our neighborhood and had these three to set on our porch. 

We had maybe 30 kids come to our door for Halloween. Many more went by, but did not walk up our driveway to our house.

The remaining pumpkin had some bugs, so the chickens got it for a treat.

We also picked all the peas and the two remaining tomatoes that didn't have bugs. This harvest of peas was significantly more than we got from our spring crop.

Other than that, things are much quieter this week than they were last week (so far). Mom's back home, no one has stayed home sick, and my husband has avoided furlough for another week or two. I'm a little frustrated that my steamer (which I use on all the quilt backings) isn't working. I cut my inner wrist when things fell out of the cabinet I was digging in while trying to find the steamer brochure. It looks great. 🙄 I also managed to cut my thumb with a fork while reaching into the dishwasher. It required bandaging. My husband enjoyed making jokes about being "forked". My skin is definitely paying the price for all the stress I've been under lately. 

I asked my husband to fill the bird feeders (haven't done that since last winter, I think?). I hadn't seen a lot of birds around lately, but there's lots now that there's food. Nothing too exotic, however, there have been quite a few goldfinches. That was nice. They've been rather scarce in the past few years. I'm not sure whether that's due to habitat loss or issues during migration. I should also note that the juncos have been back for several weeks and they are typically only in my yard in the winter even though their range shows they should be here all year. 

So that's my week. From here on out I'll be quilting, sewing, and going to tons of appointments. 

 Let's set a goal for this month.

My goal for this month is to take this from a pile of fabric (Andover Sequins in Ocean, Dashwood Sapphire Skies Hummingbirds on White, and Kona White) to a finished quilt. 😬 

I think I may have lost my mind completely this time. I am currently blessed with a lot of work, 2/3 of which needs quilting and full binding, which will make my personal sewing time extremely scarce. But I have a pretty firm deadline, so here I am, a day late and a dollar short.

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

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on November 24.  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 November Link Up

Welcome to another installment of One Monthly Goal.

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

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.

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. 

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and Alycia Quilts.