Stories from the Sewing Room

I had a good showing at the county fair. I entered four pieces. The first one is the table runner that you've seen recently. I made it the weekend before the entry day and finished binding it the night before. It won Champion in the table runner entry.

The judge's comments were: 

• Love these fabric coordinates
• Piecing nicely done
• Nice quilting!
• Nice job on binding!

Next is the one I thought would do the best, the appliquéd wallhanging I finished earlier this year. It won Champion in the wallhanging class. As you may recall, this one has a double batting and came out really stiff. It was displayed in the glass case and it just sort of curved over the shelf. 😄

The judge's comments were:

• Beautiful (in the fabric mark)
• Applique is nicely done. 
• Quilting really kicks it up a bunch and gives it dimension
• Good job!!

The one that I thought best represents my style out of these entries is the Loves Me, Loves Me Not sampler (pattern by Patty Dudek). It also won a Champion ribbon in the smaller quilts (less than 60" x 60") entry. 

The judge's comments were:

• Pretty fabrics!!
• Piecing is nicely done!
• Quilting is complimentary (sic).
• Love the flange in the binding.

And finally, the Jamestown sampler, AKA the Batesville quilt. If you've been around a while, you've heard me grumbling about it at length. I entered this one because it had a lot of intricate piecing and also the judge from last year was really into more traditional fabrics. I don't mind traditional fabrics and of course I do some more traditional projects now and then, but they are not what my first pick is going to be. Anyway, this one won Grand Champion and got to be displayed on the stage with the other GCs from all the categories. While I figured this would get a champion, I was not expecting the Grand Champion, so that was fun!

I won a premium of $4 ($1/champion ribbon). It does not cost anything to submit entries to the fair. We paid $15 (3 adults) to visit the fair once I found out I'd won Grand Champion. We looked at all the open class entries, the 4-H pigeons and the chicken/turkey barn. It was super hot and humid the afternoon we went, so we opted to skip the other animals. One of the people I quilt for sent me this picture of many of the Grand Champion exhibits.

I've been busy quilting for others. (I really could use that second machine right now.) The first quilt I completed belongs to Deb and is quilted with Spring Thing.

Next I quilted Jae's quilt with Christmas Garland.

I was able to get Tamara's quilt in over the weekend for a rush job. Quilted with Cakewalk.

I quilted Sara's quilt with Neon Hearts. 

I quilted both of Susan's monster quilts with Cakewalk.

The big porch tear-off project has started. All of the columns are now removed from the porch. It looks so weird. 

I guess the deer needed to check out what was going on. 

Thankfully the white part of the columns and the stone bases came off with minimal damage.

The garden has been bare here for a week or so and is now growing lots of weeds, particularly spurge (hard to get out) and horse nettle. My husband has started to make a few cuts in the cement. I think the siding needs to come off soon. 

Local, state, and federal news are all depressing. I think it's time to take a media diet again. My son scored well enough on his AP Lang test to get college credit for the college freshman English class. Guess what he's signed up to take as his English class this fall? LOL. School starts in less than a month. The budget cuts are going to hurt. 

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.

It's time to share my PHD progress for June. Spoiler...not much got done. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs

I made a small amount of progress on 2025 Start #2, the Forever Neverland quilt. I've prepped 11 blocks. After that, it's just assembling lots of different borders around the panel.

My sewing time over the past week was devoted to working on my Cashmerette Sloper. I did a 3/4" narrow shoulder adjustment and a 3/8" round back adjustment. I also had to size up the skirt. 😒 Things look a lot better now. I still need to shorten the stomach curve, move the elbow and bust darts, and add length to the adjustment line on the skirt. And something with the underarm area. I'm not sure what else I have left after that, but we are very near the end of the class. 

I also worked on my secret project for my small guild. I'm about 1/3 of the way done with that project.

I worked on two quilts for others. The first one belongs to Shirley and is quilted with Cosmos. It took me two days to complete.

This Circle City Sampler belongs to Haley. She requested Baptist Fan and a light peach thread. I used Sunkissed Peach. I do still need to make the binding and apply it to the front. Something fun about this quilt is that I have a kit to make the same one! I collected mine from a 2023 shop hop. The pattern is now available from the designer here.

I harvested a few more peas from the garden. The plants are looking pretty bad now, but the other things I've planted are finally starting to have some good growth. Oh, note about the peas: I selected the purple peas because they are easier to see for harvest. I can't really remember, but I might have also originally picked this variety because I thought my picky son would be willing to try something that looked exotic. Not every pea the plant produces is purple. The leaves look very different than that of the more standard Burpee peas I also planted this year. The purple peas (and green beans) turn green when cooked. Look at last week's post for more info.

This used to be a hosta. 🦌 Surprisingly, they left all the transplanted day lilies in the front garden alone. They did eat all the lily buds in this side garden.

Besides that, I am blessed with an abundance of work and a pile of chores and some stress over a very large, unexpected medical bill. The second longarm is put back together again and most of the intelliQuilter is installed. The cable that runs to the handles is not compatible with my machine and we've ordered what we hope is the correct thing. If not, I'm gonna be out a lot more money. Fingers crossed it works out. My husband is about ready to start tearing off the front porch. I'm a little stressed right now. 

Please join me in selecting a goal for July. 

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.)

This month I would like to make progress on my Forever Neverland quilt. I currently have three star blocks sewn and 11 that are laid out, ready to sew. After that, it's time to start assembling the top. 

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

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on July 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 July Link Up

• make 15 guild items (secret) In progress.      

• keep up with quilting workload Still one behind where I'd like to be, but on track.

• figure out what to do with sloper for class

• tighten elastic in tiered gingham skirt & hand sew shut the weird waistband gaps

• make progress on Forever Neverland quilt

            No further progress. I have all the remaining pinwheel blocks (11) prepped and laid out, ready to sew.

• table runner

I had laid out my fabrics ahead of time to have good color balance. I don't know what happened, but the colors aren't balanced at all. Oh well.

• figure out fair entries prior to June 25

• make progress on race car quilt prior to OMG post on June 24 posted yesterday
• weed all three flower gardens

• figure out how and where to transplant things I want to keep from the upper garden to prepare for porch repair

        He had me show him which plants I wanted to save and next thing I know, he's weeded the flower beds and replanted part of the plants to fill in holes in the two upper gardens. I helped a bit with moving the rest to the side of the barn. The upper bed transplants are doing well. The ones by the barn and struggling. I think they sat out too long before being replanted. We'll probably lose most of them. 

Freshly weeded and with several transplants that look like they've always been there.

The area next to the porch to the right of the front door is now barren. I need to get back behind that tree and weed there now that it's accessible. It's been so blooming hot and humid that I'm waiting until the temperature breaks.

This was Friday night. By Sunday the rose bush looked totally dead and everything else, mostly bee balm and day lilies, looked very worse for wear.

• continue to work on business website issues No progress
• make muslin of shorts pattern to see if they fit/if so, make some shorts (Why are all the shorts I see this year so short--like 3" inseams? I'm too old for that.) No progress
• continue working on things needed to set up second longarm & iQ

        We started doing the foot change-out. This involved basically undoing everything we had done for setup so far. We removed the old foot shaft and inserted the new one. As you put in the new bushings, you have to put in a special glue and then, once in place, you have to rotate the shaft every five minutes for half an hour and then every 15 minutes for the next half hour. At that point, you have to leave it perfectly level on its side for eight hours. Mine sat longer than that  until we could work on it again. We have reinstalled the innards and moved the machine back onto the carriage. We had to remove the hook to get the shaft out, so reinstalling and retiming is our next task. Once we get all that done and the table reassembled, I think we can proceed with starting the iQ installation. I still need to fix my silly goof with the extra SewTite bar as well. I think I can bring my travel sewing machine over there and just unroll the leader a bit without having to fully remove it again.

Here's the inside with several parts missing.

Another of Terry's quilts, quilted with Simply Sunflowers. She requested turquoise thread on this one. I used Lagoon. 

Next is Valynda's quilt, quilted with Basic Swirl. 

Finally, Shirley's sheep quilt, quilted with Cinnamon Roll. I just love the border fabric she used for this! I think it really sets off the whole thing. Also, I think this is the first of this quilt pattern (Coriander Quilts?) that I've received for quilting. 

One thing I think I should try for next year is putting straw on all the beds. We have it on the asparagus container and it stays so much more moist than the other containers.

I'll be back Tuesday with July's One Monthly Goal and Wednesday with my regular post. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts. 

Another month has flown on by. Did you complete your goal?

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

After failing to finish my May goal, I decided to go easier on myself this month. My goal was to make any amount of progress on the race car quilt. I am happy to report that I added one more set of borders to the quilt (only a few days ago). 

I have started working on the 34 pieced blocks. I discovered that the pattern had me making one more strip set than was needed for each color way. I suspect that these blocks are going to be fiddly and tedious and may take me multiple months to complete. BUT...I am a step closer to being done. 

I've reposted last week's to-do list below. I made some progress, but it didn't really feel like I did much. The things with strikeouts are completed. The things I made progress on I updated with the bold italic. The rest had zero progress.

• make 15 guild items (secret)
• bind one client quilt
• keep up with quilting workload

• figure out what to do with sloper for class/attend live class later today

• tighten elastic in tiered gingham skirt & hand sew shut the weird waistband gaps

• make progress on Forever Neverland quilt

            I have all the remaining pinwheel blocks (11) prepped and laid out, ready to sew.

• table runner?
• figure out fair entries prior to June 25
• make progress on race car quilt prior to OMG post on June 24
• mend shorts
• find & apply correct fertilizer in vegetable garden
• weed all three flower gardens--my foot and the rainy weather are slowing me down
• figure out how and where to transplant things I want to keep from the upper garden to prepare for porch repair

• continue to work on business website issues
• make muslin of shorts pattern to see if they fit/if so, make some shorts (Why are all the shorts I see this year so short--like 3" inseams? I'm too old for that.)
• continue working on things needed to set up second longarm & iQ

I have made progress on installing the SewTites. This involves sewing a channel in the leaders, then inserting the metal bracket part of the SewTites into the channel. The first step is to remove the leader from the bar. I suppose if you were super awesome and confident, you could sew your parts while they were still on the machine, but I'm not cool like that. If you ever wondered what the bar looks like without the leader, here it is:

Once the leader is free, make a mark at the center edge if you don't already have one. I press up a 7/8" fold. 

Then I stitch along the loose edge, 1/16" from the edge. 

Next I sew right down the middle, perpendicular to the fold, and then slide in a metal bar all the way up against that seam. (You will work from the center out on each side.)

The bars are 4" long. I sew a seam 6" from the previous one. This allows for some flexibility of magnet placement to better fit each individual quilt. Don't forget to slide the bar all the way to the side, away from where you are sewing the next seam.

Once all the bars are sewn in, you just have to tape the leader back to the correct bar in the correct orientation. I could refer to my original machine for this, but if you were starting fresh, it would be very helpful to take pictures to help guide you. 

I did run in to another issue. The person I bought the machine from did not use the quilt top leader--she floated her quilts. I generally do not float my quilt tops. Anyway, she had painters tape wrapped around that leader and when I removed it, it left tons of goo in four 8" strips up the leaders. I'm trying to figure out how I want to address that. I think I'm going to have to remove that leader and cut off the goo, then treat the edge so it doesn't ravel. If you have a better idea, let me know!

I did get a few quilts done. I had to make and apply bias binding to Sherri's quilt from last week. It had been years since I made any large amount of bias binding. Once I got it all made it went well.

Trish picked Lovely Loops and we decided on Magic Mint for the thread on this one.

Moving back to my own quilting, amongst our other Saturday activities, we went to the history center's garage sale fundraiser. I couldn't resist this quilt top. It's quite large at 80" x 92". I paid $20 for it. I love the weird 80s/90s cow print. I'll have to find a reasonable backing and some binding and get it quilted. I may donate it to one of the big guild's programs. We'll see.