Stories from the Sewing Room

Last week certainly didn't go to plan. I'd been battling a headache for multiple days and thought I'd kicked it after large amounts of medicine and caffeine on Tuesday. Thursday I wasn't feeling great. I attributed it to the after-effects of the headache, plus we'd eaten celebratory (one night early for end of the school year) Dairy Queen the night before and I am somewhat allergic to milk. 🫣 I was struggling to figure out how to orient my next quilting job on its backing and I was sure it didn't fit, which didn't make sense because she's always meticulous and sends generously-sized backings. More on this down below. The weather was weird and I just felt off. So I decided to take a rest and work on paperwork.

After dinner we decided to try going for our evening walk. I hadn't been out to feed the chickens yet because it had been raining all afternoon and I didn't feel good. Over the weekend my husband and daughter had moved the chicken coop to the other side of the original vegetable garden and created a pass-through for the chickens to move between the coop and the enclosed garden. (Pictures at the bottom of the post.) It's much harder to see the chickens from the house/driveway now unless you walk around the trees. My husband went to give the chickens their scratch and discovered that our sweet little Beaker had died. 😭😭

I couldn't bring myself to go see her after he found her. He buried her out by the one of the pine trees and placed a big stone over it--I keep thinking it's a giant turtle. I had to call my daughter and tell her the bad news. We all were pretty bummed out and I was rather sick. Writing about it isn't making me feel so great.

Friday was my son's first day of summer vacation and my husband had taken the day off. His original plans to do some repairs for someone had fallen through, so he was working on the barn retaining wall. 

I decided to start weeding the lower garden Friday morning so that I could feel in control of something. I made my son help. He mostly took handfuls of weeds I'd pulled to the garden wagon, though he did dig out a few trees. This sweetspire is doing amazing this year. There's also a weed sticking up in it. Guess I missed that one. LOL.

I have done some work. I completed Marsali's quilt that I shared last week. I did the binding on Annie's quilt from last week.

         

I quilted Paula's quilt with Mod Dotz. This is similar to one I did last month. We agreed on adding interfacing to the central panel of fabric, which helped tremendously with the stretchiness. I got to quilt with Dream Puff batting for this version and shipped it back to her Thursday. 

I found out that our post office, which is usually only open in the morning, will be open extended hours (all day) for the next few months while they repair the tornado-damaged one. We have a kid working in ours now and I'm in there enough that he now sort of speaks to me. He had difficulties with the computer system while scanning my packages Thursday. Eh, it happens. Once when I worked there the system would not recognize a certain area in Canada. Anyway, when I checked their status Friday morning, the tracking showed that I'd created labels but hadn't dropped them off yet. Thankfully I had a receipt.

Friday afternoon I decided to take advantage of the extended hours to drop off a few orders. I was hoping the lady from the other PO would be working and could help me discover what had gone wrong. When we got to the PO, the kid was sitting out in his car and there was a sign taped to the PO door stating that the internet was down. He did go inside to scan my packages and said that the tracking wouldn't update until the PO got their internet restored. Great. I tried. Luckily most of the packages had their tracking updated Saturday morning once they were scanned in Indianapolis. 

Saturday morning I woke up with extreme pain in my foot and I couldn't bear weight on it. I'm guessing I strained it by standing on the steep incline in the garden while weeding. I took some anti-inflammatory and sat around. By Saturday afternoon I was feeling really behind at work and finally convinced my son to help me figure out how the quilt went on the backing. (I'd been asking the men for help, to no avail, for several days.) We walked downstairs, I laid it out, and he's like, what's wrong with it? I looked at it and it fit just fine. 🤦🏻‍♀️ We are wondering just how out of it I was on Thursday.

Here is Cindy's quilt, complete with a totally adequate backing, quilted with Good Vibrations. Good Vibrations is one of those patterns that seems easy and straight-forward. It isn't. It's kinda a pain in the butt. Many people can't stitch it in both directions without their thread breaking. I don't have issues with my thread breaking, but I do think that the stitching looks different enough that I generally only stitch it from left to right, one single line at a time. It takes FOREVER. But I want to return something to the client that looks nice. 

This was a pretty big quilt, so I knew it was going to be a really long stitch out time. I worked on the borders to my race car quilt in minute and a half chunks while Good Vibrations was stitching or waiting for the carriage to move back to the left side. Now I have two sets of borders on! It needs two more sets of inner borders and a border of blocks that aren't pieced yet.

I was also able to get a skirt cut out, but haven't had a chance to sew it yet. I thought the cotton/poly blend would be easy to work with, however, it wasn't. I couldn't cut on the fold because the fabric is slippery and wouldn't stay lined up. So I did every single piece individually (except the pockets, 'cause who's gonna see those?). I'm hoping to get it sewn soon. Another update in the clothing area is that my Cashmerette guide verified that I didn't need any vertical adjustments to my sloper, so I didn't have to do anything for last week's class. I'm working through the material for this week--shoulders.

I also drew up my vexing FBF block in EQ8 and tried some different color combos. I'm not sure I found the solution. I think I'm leaning toward the upper left version, or maybe the one next to it. The original color way is the lone block on the right.

Here are the blocks I've completed so far.

Returning to quilting, Cindy brought a second, coordinating quilt that she wanted Good Vibrations on. This was Tuesday's project. It is a smaller quilt than the first, so I had under a minute for each line. I stood on my still-painful foot and nursed both along.

Yesterday my son started his summer SEAP internship. It's going to be weird being by myself all summer for the first time in over 20 years. Today he's already taking a day off and going on a school trip to an amusement park--a reward for earning Panther Plus awards. These are sort of like student of the month, but only given once a trimester. He received three his freshman year, none last year, and two this year. I'm sure he'll have fun. 

Here are the pictures of the coop/old garden. My husband thought the chickens would like going up in the tanks and rooting around, but they don't. They run around on the ground a bit and try to drink from one of the overflow spigots. Chickens are weird. 

We have bluebirds in the nesting box on the end of the old garden. 

The clematis are putting on a good show right now. 

I know that was even longer than normal. If you made it down here, thanks.

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

Were you able to complete this month's goal?

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

My goal this month was to quilt my Pink Grapefruit in Blue. I am sad to say that I failed to complete my goal. I had a bunch of plot twists this month and it just didn't happen. I had planned to do an edge-to-edge design because I don't love this quilt. I purchased a different backing because I didn't want to waste fabric I love on a project I don't. 

Then I found myself unexpectedly purchasing a second long arm (a 2017 Lucey) and thought that maybe I'd custom quilt Pink Grapefruit in Blue after all since I now have a second machine that doesn't have a computer and therefore cannot aid in my work load. I don't really care for the replacement backing with the quilt top, but I was willing to overlook that. 

I haven't managed to come up with a hand-guided quilting plan that I like. Additionally, the machine is still not fully assembled since we've had a bunch of other things come up that needed our attention more than this did. 

So I failed to move my goal forward. I guess there's always next month. Will I choose this for a goal again or pivot to something else? Stay tuned.

I am feeling, I don't know, ill at ease, or maybe discombobulated. I keep looking at the block I made last week and feeling unhappy with it. Besides the points not matching, I think I might want to switch the center colors to something different. I wonder if it would be easier to remake the entire block or just switch out the center.

I made my Wyman sloper last week. I can shimmy into it. I see areas that need work, but I don't know what adjustments they need. I know that I need to address the too-tight back. I am unsure whether the reference lines for bust, waist, and hip are in the correct spots and they look like they all pull upwards on the back (probably due to the too-tight back). I think the bust darts are wrong. I have lots of wrinkles in the armpits, but I don't know how to address it--is it a bust issue or an armscye issue? There is a bunch of excess fabric in the lower stomach. I can't move my arms though there seems to be enough room in the sleeves themselves. The sleeves have odd drag lines too. 

This week's assignment was to make vertical adjustments such as lengthening or shortening the bust, the waist, or the length of the skirt. I don't know if I need those adjustments or if I should wait for the bust and back adjustment weeks. I'm just really at a loss on how to proceed. 

It's really hard to confront the reality of one's body. On the one hand, I'm surprised I look smaller than I thought in some areas. On the other, my back is very rounded now and I look pregnant from the side. And I no longer have any chin/neck definition. Aging is hard. 

I wanted to sew something for a quick win and I couldn't find anything to work on that would be quick. I looked at a charm pack quilt that I thought I had everything for, but I don't seem to have the contrast fabric. I pulled out a UFO from 2000, a Jo-Ann block of the month. Eight of the blocks are made and four need to be appliquéd. The eight blocks are okay, but not great. I don't really love appliqué either. I'm considering donating this to the big guild's orphan block program. 

I still haven't made any progress on this month's OMG, which was to quilt Pink Grapefruit in Blue. I thought I might do custom quilting since I have the second machine. The machine isn't completely set up yet and I also haven't come up with a custom plan for the quilt that I like. The link up opens Sunday. 

I have made a small amount of progress with my work quilting queue. I finished both of Teah's remaining quilts. She selected Mod Dotz for this one.

And New Moon Loops for this.

I started on Annie's project, quilting it with Tamarack Wood Grain. I still need to trim, create the binding, and sew on the binding.

I quilted hand-guided loopy meander for a shy quilter. I had an odd event on this. I heard a lot of metallic vibration while quilting and couldn't find what it was. After I took the quilt off the frame, I noticed that all of the screws on the throat place were very loose. This is so weird. I haven't had the throat plate off for a couple of weeks and there was no additional noise on any of the quilts I did last week. 

I'm blaming it on Friday night's weather.

We are totally safe. We had some thunder and a small amount of rain. It was sunny most of the time. The storm moved through a few miles north of us and ripped the roof and the front off one of the post offices and damaged like 75 other structures in its path. I found it amazing that the card rack and all the shipping supplies at the PO were still in place.

Link to story here.

Moving back to quilting, after tightening the screws, I started quilting Lovely Loops on Marsali's quilt. I'll finish this one today after my hair appointment.

A while ago my husband and son were extras in a short film, Rock, Paper, Destiny. We attended the screening last night. You could very briefly see them in the bleachers and I saw my husband's legs when people were exiting the gymnasium. Their names didn't make it into the credits. It was a cute film and we enjoyed watching it. 

One last thing, my peony has started blooming. I couldn't remember what color blooms this plant has. They're light pink!

I'm happy to report that things have calmed down in our lives. I finally did some personal sewing! I think it's been close to a month since I last sewed something other than binding for clients. My skills have grown rusty in that time. I cut out all the pieces to the Free Block Friday block 5. These blocks were a joint venture between Angie Wilson of Gnome Angel and Marti Michell in 2022 and use Marti's templates.  

I struggled to get anything to line up properly in this block. I'm not sure if my cutting was off, my seam allowance was off, or some combo of the two. I took apart and re-sewed many parts of this and it just didn't get any better, so I am leaving it. 

The rest of the week I will be completing my Cashmerette Sloper School assignment, which is to cut out and totally assemble the sloper from the pattern I assembled last week. My pattern grading was very simple compared to several of the participants' posts that I perused. I only had to grade the skirt in two sizes; no changes were required to the bodice or sleeves. I used to be fairly rectangular, but now I guess I'm an inverted triangle or a circle with legs. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Middle age hasn't been kind to my waistline. Depending how brave I'm feeling and how it fits, I may or may not share it next week. In the remaining eight weeks of class we will work our way down the sloper, making adjustments to one body area at a time, with the final week spent learning how to use the sloper to fit other patterns.

Zero progress has been made thus far on my May OMG. 

*free* I have two gallon bags full of selvedges up for grabs for anyone who can use them. I'll send them to you for free if you're in the US. If you're elsewhere, you'll have to pay the shipping. Leave a comment below or message me if you want them. 

I've completed quite a few quilts for others. This first one belongs to Mary Ann. She requested Interlocked Orange Peel for the quilting. I've stitched this pattern many times with no issues, but I think my machine had gremlins the day I quilted this. I think the overall effect is good; just use the galloping horse theory.

Next I quilted three quilts made by three sisters. It's fun to see how different the same pattern looks in different fabrics. Brenda left hers up to me and I picked Toss Up and lavender thread.

Jan also had me pick. I used Seagrass Pearls for hers. 

Jo Ellen requested Cakewalk for her quilting. It was a great choice. I love that these sisters all sew together. 

I moved on to Teah's group of quilts next. She wanted Cone Flower on her Groovy quilt. She repurposed an unused sheet for the backing and it coordinated so well. I have two more to go.

If you're wondering about how everything from last week turned out, I think my daughter's rent situation is under control with a fair compromise. No progress has been made on the front porch. One garden retaining wall is complete. One barn retaining wall still needs to be created. We'll need to get mulch and more stone to finish the retaining wall projects. 

Despite my neglect of the lower garden, one of my favorite Crater Lake Blue irises has started blooming.

As have the Caesar's Brother Siberian iris. The white Immortality iris always do well. They are re-bloomers.

I can't wait to see what this peony looks like. I think it's only ever had one bloom, and I think that was two years ago. I think the buds got eaten last year? Can't remember, but I know for sure it's never had this many buds.

Back indoors, I moved around many things in the basement in order to make room to set up the second long arm. We've set up the frame and are letting it settle into place in the carpet so we can level it prior to adding the machine & carriage. Its new home, in the former exercise alcove, is going to be a tight fit. It's on the opposite side of the basement from my sewing room--maybe I'll get lots more steps in moving between the two machines. We moved the treadmill into the guest bedroom (Yay! I can look out the window now!) and moved the ping pong table into the main living room where we used to host robotics. I've been waiting years to play ping pong! We'll need to deal with all the robotics parts after we finish our last tournament in June. 

There are many things in the basement that I need to find new homes for. We've done most of the donating, but have things we'd like to sell that I need to deal with, like collectible toys and some smaller furnishings--ooh, and my little fabric venture. Wouldn't you like to buy some fabric from me? I need to free up some space! Link is at the bottom of the page. 😉  

The main event from last week, the alleged attempted break-ins on another street in my subdivision, has had an interesting twist. We were originally told that three masked teenagers were attempting to break into two homes and that shots were fired nearby. The police were driving through the neighborhood, shining lights into people's yards. We personally heard the shots and saw the police. That was Saturday night. No one has responded to my query of who fired the shots and whether it was related. 

Wednesday our young neighbor friends texted about the flyer they received. WE didn't receive a flyer, but most of our surrounding neighbors did. The flyer, loaded with misspellings, had a security photo taken of two of the "hooligan" teens, one of whom was wearing a luchador mask. It said that teens were "vigorously pounding on the doors" and waiting in the shadows to see who answered the door. Okay, since when do robbers knock at the door and then wait for an answer? The flyer boldly asserted that the teens were "not adolescences performing childish pranks." Most of the neighbors we talked to felt that it was a case of ding dong ditch, but that wearing the masks was risky, particularly with shots fired. 

My husband texted another person in the neighborhood whose son is the same age as ours to see if they had received the flyer. They hadn't, but felt the need to inform us that these teens would receive an unwelcome surprise on their street since all the (two) houses in their cul-de-sac are armed. !!!!! So...you're going to fire your guns at kids?? Yikes. 

Anyway, we and our young neighbors are fairly certain we know who the (yes, neighborhood, "hooligan") kids are, but since we haven't been included and I think it was just a prank, and I don't want to falsely accuse, I'm keeping their names to myself. There are only a few other residents in the neighborhood that have been here longer than we have and I know most people at least by sight in our half of the neighborhood, but many of these people don't ever interact with their neighbors. I think it causes issues.

Sometimes I wonder what the police think when people call for things that aren't really things, like when another neighbor called the police because their elderly neighbor mowed a bit onto their lawn, or when same people called police because teens were being loud on a golf cart. 🙄 

I just realized that my son has just over a week of school to go this year. It sure has flown by, yet when I look back through my pictures from this year, it's also felt really long. He's opted not to attend the prom this weekend because he's unwilling to wear nice clothing. 🫤 And with that, I leave you until next week.

Take care, friends.

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

Friends, it's been a crazy ride around here. I've been feeling like I can't catch up or keep on top of anything in my life. I was toying with the idea of adding another machine to try to keep up with the workload better. I don't have space or really enough money, but I found a used Lucey on Facebook that had the specs I wanted (minus an IntelliQuilter). My husband negotiated the price, we loaned my business a bit of money to cover what I was short, and we drove to South Carolina over the weekend to pick it up. It's two years older than my current machine, but in really good shape. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds to add a computer right now, so it hasn't truly solved anything. I'm planning to quilt my own tops with it for now. This was a giant leap of faith. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Pray for me. 

My husband built a big, fancy box to transport the table in. I laughed when I saw it because it looked like a giant coffin. We wrapped the box in a new tarp. We had rain part of the trip down and most of the trip back. The machine stayed dry. We transported the table ends and the machine head in the car. 

He made special channels for the bars. Then there was a platform that the rest of the table laid on before closing up the box. We used plumbing insulation to protect the bliss rails on the table. It worked great. 

We got home quite late Saturday night, maybe 11 or so. We were working to unload everything, wanting to make sure nothing had gotten wet. I was in the house, went out to check what he was doing, and he told me he was pretty sure he heard small-caliber shots. 😦 He also saw a police car driving around, shining a light into everyone's yards. I also saw the police and lights. It freaked me out. We made sure the kids were safe in their beds, locked up, and went to bed. 

In the morning, there was a post on our neighborhood Facebook page that teenagers were trying to get into people's houses on one street, shots were fired reportedly at the other end of that street, police were called, and someone's Ring footage was turned in to the police as evidence. What no one is answering is whether the teens were from our neighborhood, who fired the shots, and were the teens really trying to break in or just goofing around knocking on doors (brave if they were, given people's propensity for firing shots). So now our feeling of security--we've been here 13 years with only minor incidents--has been shaken. Do I need to worry about random teens or worry about being shot? I have very little of material value (can they steal a heavy longarm?), but I have people that are irreplaceable. 

We also discovered in the morning that somewhere on the trip back home we lost one of the trailer tail lights. Like it fell completely out. Oops. 

Oh, we stopped at Buc-ees on our way down. It was the first time we'd been there. Please, someone explain why it has a cult following. 

Last week we discovered that we need to replace the front porch sooner than later. We've known since construction that issues were likely. We unfortunately hired an inept concrete person. He neglected to add in the rebar we'd left for him and the porch has been slowly sinking ever since (around 13  years). We did a temporary fix in the before-times where they drilled holes through the top and added some special cement to raise it up some. Anyway, I had noticed there was a spot on the trim in the corner near the door that looked dirty and I couldn't dust it off. My husband looked at it and said that it was drywall mud and the corner was damp. We've been having so much rain this spring, and though we are constantly sweeping the puddles away from the house, the water is still pooling a bit and starting to get in. So we have to figure out how to remove the columns, support the roof, tear off the siding, bust up the existing porch, and then redo everything. The hope was to put it off until next summer, but the time is now. 😫 This picture is the most recent I could find that shows parts of the porch--didn't wanna run outside in my pajamas to grab a new picture this morning. It's from 2020, back when my yard and garden were mostly under control and looking nice. There's one more column to the right. The porch runs along the entire front part. 

Meanwhile, my daughter's lease is up in a few months and her landlord sent her the new terms and that's been a source of anxiety for her. There was a rate increase and the loss of garage parking privileges. We're trying to work through that with her. Right now we're back to the original rent but with no garage. She likes living there, so we will deal. I guess.

I was really hoping to have some sewing to share. I've barely touched my own sewing in probably a month. I have most of the pieces cut for block five of the Free Block Friday sampler I've been slowly making progress on. 

I'm keeping up with the Cashmerette sloper class so far. Last week we had to submit our measurements and what sizes we thought we were for review. 

This week's assignment is to print out and assemble our pattern pieces. We have to submit photos of the pieces to make sure we've done them correctly. I have to grade in from my waist to hips on my pieces. I have about an hour of videos to watch before I do that. I'll be doing lots of cutting and taping. 

I had my large quilt guild meeting last night, have my small guild meeting Friday, and large guild sew day on Saturday. I'm hoping to attend the sew day, but I am so far behind with yard work, I don't know. I really miss sewing though. 

I'm doing okay at keeping up with my quilting work. I completed four quilts. The first one belongs to Linda. Most of the pictures came out with odd coloring, so here's the whole thing, quilted with Ground Cover. 

The picture of Deb's quilt on the frame is missing, so again, full shot. She selected Cassava for her quilting. 

Barb decided on In the Swirls for her quilt.

And Charlene picked Julie's Chicken Wire for her chicken quilt!

Out in the vegetable garden, we now have a gate. It's pictured here in progress. I hope he's made it tight enough to keep rabbits out. Squirrels can get in regardless. 

The peas are doing really well, we have asparagus coming up, and some of the carrots, beets, and kale have germinated. I'm not seeing any signs of lettuce. That is worrisome. I love fresh lettuce.

I'm growing Guelph Millennium asparagus. The stalks are about 1/8" across. It's amazing how quickly they came up and went to fern stage, maybe a matter of a week and a half?

My husband has placed rocks on the slopes on two sides of the garden. These are all rocks that came out of our basement during construction or out of the trench from putting in the barn electric line last year. We're going to plant pumpkins in the front along that bank and I want to try sunflowers on the side (pictured here). 

Lots of things are blooming in my yard right now. The weeds are also rampant! We've had so much rain everything is shaggy. Anyway, the Immortality irises are blooming, as is this mystery variety in the side yard.

A couple of the clematis are blooming. Sorry, I don't remember the names of these.

This clem is covered in buds. 

Once I get a minute this week, I need to transplant my tomatoes out to the garden and sow the warm weather seeds. Only half of my bell peppers germinated, so I replanted a few more Sunday. You might be able to tell one only grew lots of mold. Yuck.

I hope you find lots of time to take care of yourself and do something you love. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.