Stories from the Sewing Room

I'm sticking with my to-do list format for a while until I feel like I have things more under control. 

1. Forever Neverland 🔜

I attempted to finish this over the weekend, but I neglected to read the instructions. As a result, I messed up the outer border fabric and had to order more in order (an ordeal in itself; not everyone shares my shipping timeframe standards) to get closer to the look I wanted. You know what happens when you assume...🤦🏻‍♀️

2. Race Car quilt 🆗

I have created all the strip units and paired them with their stitch and flip corners. I'll start on these after I finish all my work binding.

I did watch more of the video content from the class. I have one video left to watch plus all the tweaking of my own sloper. I don't mind the sewing part as it goes pretty quickly, but getting the muslin ready to cut each pattern version feels like a lot of work. 

4. Work on the postcard from big guild 🚫

5. Cut Meadow Mist Magnificent Mystery quilt ✅

6. Figure out the Beach Bumz class quilt 🚫

7. Continue working on the behind-the-scenes tasks for business 🚫🔜

I have found a plug-in that should do what I want for one of my more major tasks. It does cost money, but on the plus side, it's not subscription-based. I do have to learn Java and/or CSS in order to use it. It will probably take quite some time to implement, but it will be easier (I think) than what I was planning to do as a work-around. I have a few smaller tasks to complete too.

Here are the quilts I've completed for work over the past week:

Annie's, quilted with Hopscotch. It looks like I used a light thread, but it's actually 60 wt. Bottom Line Tan, which is a light gold color. 

April's, quilted with loopy meander.

Sara's, quilted with Unwind.

Leslie's quilt, quilted with Diagonal Plaid Bias. I need to fully bind this one.

Mary Ann's quilt, quilted with In the Swirls. She wanted fuchsia thread to match the cornerstone fabrics that are not pictured. 

I started quilting Box Tie on Sonja's quilt. This is a more advanced panto that requires care to align, particularly since there are so many seams to take into account. 

I have completed the binding on one of Gina's quilts. 

I have 2.5 more quilts to bind at the moment. I'm looking forward to getting them finished so that I can sew my own things.

If you're wondering about how my podiatry appointment for my injury went, I ruptured/tore my plantar fascia. I should have been in a boot at the time of the injury (late May), but it's too late now. I have various orthotic options to explore, some stretching exercises to do, and have been instructed to buy new shoes as well. I already had a new pair of shoes, but hadn't switched over yet. I had been feeling pretty good, but all the prodding of the foot hurt and set me back a bit. Additional shoes and various orthotics have been ordered and a follow-up appointment scheduled. 

Meanwhile, the optometrist has me trying some different contact lenses that I'm unsure about. I have a follow-up on these this week. This middle-age vision change stinks.

Out in the garden, we had a surprisingly large harvest of cucumbers and tomatoes. The cucumber plants are burning out. The tomatoes all appear to be intact, so maybe we really did have just the two hornworms? Seems odd to have just a few, but I'll take it. We also harvested one green pepper and have one other that's just about ready. 

The pepper looks somewhat like a cucumber in the above photo. 😄 I actually have about two pounds of tomatoes, but they didn't all make it into the picture. I added two pounds of grocery store tomatoes and made spaghetti sauce. It turned out okay, but not great. It's very bland. The grocery store tomatoes probably didn't help. They were labeled on the shelf as local, but when I got home, I saw that they had product of Mexico labels. Oh well. We did not starve.

We have four watermelons that look promising. I'm super-excited about this because I don't think we've ever successfully grown a melon. Two of the three pumpkins are already changing color and we found a fourth start that might make it. I might get one more zucchini. I've harvested six this year, which is a record for us. I grated the three I had in the fridge, made a loaf of bread, and froze the rest.

My husband has thankfully cleared the debris (all the damaged wood and foam insulation boards) out of the front garden, so I have to weed that part in preparation for the termite treatment. He finished the last of the house repairs over the weekend and is moving on to prepping the porch for new cement. Hopefully this nightmare will be over soon. That being said, we will still have to replace the drywall in the dining room and office once the outside is done and that will be a different kind of dusty nightmare. 

A few other, random things that made me smile:

I caught my car's odometer at just the right moment. Don't worry; I was sitting in a parking lot and happened to notice the mileage. My car needs to be detailed. 

This hummingbird sitting on a hummingbird. Sorry it's blurry. I was taking the picture through the screen.

Two female hummingbirds sharing the feeder instead of fighting each other. 

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

Guess who almost forgot to make the link up post? Yup, that's me. 😅 Coming in on time, but at the last possible second, here is the post!

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

I have counted out the number of units and corners needed for each color way of the blocks. If I ever complete all the binding that's in my work queue, I'll start working on these. 

I'm feeling frustrated by technology. I currently cannot email anyone with a Yahoo email address, which includes ATT and SBC Global amongst others. I have a general idea of what the issue is, but without spending a lot of money for additional email services, I can't fix it. I will post responses directly on my blog post if I can't get my email to go through. I am sorry. 

In other news, I have done some really boneheaded things in my sewing lately. Somehow I managed to suck a piece of batting off a table and get it stuck in the long arm bars while I was loading a quilt backing. Sadly, this is not the only dumb thing I've done.

I decided to take a break from all the binding and spent an afternoon working on my own things. Here's how my updated to-do list looks.

1. Add last two borders to Finding Neverland quilt. Seam backing. 🔜

I have the inner borders on. One more set of wider borders and the backing seam to go!

I forgot to unfold a strip set I was sewing and then realized I had been sewing without bobbin thread for like 100". At least the fix was easy. 

3. Fix the elastic in the gingham skirt. ✅

Of course this didn't go smoothly. I put a safety pin in one end of the elastic and forgot to do the other. The safety pin opened while in the waistband channel and hooked in the lining. The other end shot way back in the channel. I had to undo more seam to be able to fish both out. It was not fun at all, but I stuck with it and got it done. 💪 I removed 4.75" of elastic. 

4. Resume work on the sloper. 🚫

5. Work on the postcard from big guild. 🚫

6. Cut Meadow Mist Mystery quilt. 🚫

All the fabrics are washed now.

7. Figure out the Beach Bumz class quilt. 🚫

8. Continue working on the behind-the-scenes tasks for business. 🚫

Like I started off with, I am feeling very frustrated with technology and the services I use right now. I'm waiting a bit til I cool off, plus I have other things that are more urgent.

Out in the garden, there's more weirdness in this odd growing season. I had harvested enough cucumbers to make a batch of freezer pickles. {Link to recipe. Note that it says they keep only 6 months in the freezer, but I haven't noticed much degradation in a year.} I had part of them laying on the counter because they had a ton of dirt on them. I had the cleaner cukes in the crisper drawer. The ones in the crisper drawer got moldy and had to be discarded. 😫 I did have enough to make a half-batch of pickles, so I guess it turned out okay. 

My daughter was home over the weekend and I asked her to go out in the garden with me Sunday morning to plant another crop of peas and lettuce. We had heavy rains Saturday night into Sunday and the soil was too wet to also plant lettuce. I was looking at my tomato plants and I discovered hornworms. 😫😫 She got the two I found onto the shovel and fed them to the chickens. I couldn't bring myself to look for more. 

After she fed them to the chickens, she looked them up and discovered that they grow into hummingbird moths. She was sad to have destroyed them. I was not. There are also army worms on my vegetables. 🤮 We think we found a few spongy moth caterpillars on the road. I really hope Google's ID was wrong. No more scourges!

On the plus side, we are growing several baby watermelons. 

We have three pumpkins growing (that I can find).

Several of the sunflowers are blossoming. Most of them got eaten by the deer and the ones that are blossoming are plants that regrew after being nibbled. They are resilient.

I wish I was wealthy enough to hire a gardener. I don't do well with bugs and critters and snakes. I can't keep up with my big flower garden by myself. I haven't even tried to deal with it since I hurt my foot in May. Speaking of the foot, my podiatry appointment is this week, three months after the injury.

Most of the repairs are complete on the house. My husband is now moving towards re-forming the front porch. The step heights will be different than before and we're trying to wrap our heads around how they should be spaced. We can't actually have the termite treatment done until all repairs and porch forms are done. 

In the quilting area, I have stitched Good Vibrations on Jeri's quilt. 

I also bound this one. I like this backing fabric.

I bound both of Jeri's quilts that I shared last week.

I quilted Moons and Stars on Shirley's quilt.

I quilted Hopscotch on Gina's quilt. I will fully bind this one.

I quilted Squatty Squares on Gina's quilt. Another full bind. 

I'll leave you with this cool sunset from Monday night. 

I made this to-do list last week in an effort to focus. My list, annotated as necessary, follows:

After vacillating between custom and edge-to-edge for months, I just couldn't work up any amount of enthusiasm for custom quilting this quilt. I didn't want to invest the time in something I don't totally love. I have determined that asymmetrical quilts are not my favorite. My son likes this quilt and said he would take it. I guess that was a nice surprise. No one usually wants my quilts. I looked back to an old post from 2019 about this quilt and read that I hadn't picked binding yet. My son said it needed blue binding. We tried several blue fabrics from my fabric bins. We finally found the correct one. The quilt pattern is Pink Grapefruit by Coleen Merte.

3. Make any amount of progress on the race car quilt. 🚫

I know what I'd like to create for mine, but I wasn't in the mood to be creative while at guild. I had spent the day talking down my daughter, I was stressed about my house, my friend shared some sad health news when I got to guild, and my son managed to lock himself out of the house and didn't tell me for half an hour, and I just wasn't feeling up to it. It was a really nice, well thought out program. I'm hoping to find some time to play with this kit soon.

7. Make housewarming gift for friend. ✅

I drafted a cardinal FPP block in EQ8. At first I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't "section". I'd left out a line. Fixed that, printed the foundation, got to stitching. Well, crap. Get out the seam ripper. 

Tried a few different things, ended up with this border. Managed to turn backing fabric sideways. Finished in time to bring it when I visited her new place the next morning. 

    

8. Cut Meadow Mist mystery quilt. 🚫

Switching gears, Friday night I attended my small guild. One of our members, Nancy, passed away a few months ago. She left a very large quilting stash, loads of scrapbooking things, oodles of Longaberger baskets, and a large teapot & cup collection. Her family gave one of the other guild members her quilting stash and she brought things to share with us. I was late into the rooms and most of the things had already been claimed. I brought home four Sew Sampler boxes. Nancy had purchased the finishing kit for the Bonnie & Camille one and I will make that one in her honor. I'm also planning to make the Rise & Shine project at some point, but will need additional fabric. I also brought home a partial bolt of fabric. At least one of the ladies had a full grocery cart of things she claimed. 😳

Moving along, here are the quilts I've worked on over the past week. I quilted Teah's sister's quilt with Branching. 

I fully bound both this one and the one from last week.

I quilted Ann's quilt with Shooting Star. I also added the binding to the front of all three of her quilts (not pictured).

I quilted my quilt with Mandelbrot.

I quilted Jeri's quilt with Marmalade. I will fully bind this.

I quilted another of Jeri's with Sea of Stars. Again, full binding will happen.

Out in the garden, we harvested the green beans. We might get a handful more. This is the smallest green bean yield I've ever had even though I planted more than usual. My plants never got any height and keep dying off overnight.

My son started school last week and the day started with drama as he was unhappy with his schedule. He wasn't alone; many of the kids had really messed up schedules. Budget cuts, both at the federal and state level, have made things difficult. He was lucky that his issues were resolved by the end of the first day. He has been driving to and from school. The bus no longer drives down our road, so I guess driving is good. He can get an additional half hour of sleep and get home half an hour sooner. The trade offs are that we had to put new tires on the car and need to pay for gas now. Plus he has to brave the school parking lot. Monday he texted me a picture. 

He said he had opted not to let the white car behind him go in front of him because he just wanted to get home and it felt like one more car in front of him would be too much. Then the black car pulled out of their parking space directly into the side of the white car. 😳

One last, totally random, thing. My husband loves Menards. We've been going there a lot as he needs things to fix the house. I found this miniature five gallon bucket near the paint department and had to have it. Actually this is my second one as my daughter stole the first one I bought. I'm going to throw my empty magnetic L bobbins in here until I have enough to send back for recycling.