You know that saying "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug"? It feels like that's my life lately. Anyway, I had big plans for sewing and none of them got done. Neither did anything else really, so I guess there's that. 🤷🏻♀️
I trimmed a few more of the pieces from Nancy's quilt. And I do mean a few--three sets, I think?
I got my Forever Neverland quilted, but haven't had time to make binding yet. I picked Interstellar Lite for the quilting.
I was pretty successful at getting a lot of beautiful quilts done, though right now I'm two behind where I hoped to be at this point in the week (though not actually really behind since I'll work extra days to get these done). On to the quilts!
First is Marsali's, quilted with Cassava. I do love blue.
Next is Teah's, quilted with Camo. This one has been pretty popular in the stories I posted on social media.
Another of Teah's, quilted with Beaded Clam. She picked the best pairing of fabric and design for this.
One more of Teah's, quilted with Maureen's Oakleaf. The photo does not do it justice. It's so vibrant in real life.
I moved on to Teresa's quilt. This one is interesting. When she brought it, the backing, batting, and top were all exactly the same size. This is, of course, not amenable to long arm quilting, where you really need a good amount of excess backing and a bit of excess batting. She gave me free rein on how I addressed it. The options I suggested were either trimming off a bit all the way around or removing an entire row and column. I decided to trim 1/2" off each side of the top. I felt like it was not noticeable at all.
Once the top was slightly smaller, I moved on to the backing, which is a corduroy she purchased in Australia. I added extra strips of fabric to the top and bottom so that I could load the quilt on the frame. The sides were going to be really close (like 1/2" only), but I've done it before. She provided me a second batting, so I used that rather than testing my luck at whether the first piece would be big enough, particularly since she chose a fairly dense design, which tends to make the batting shrink in.
Then things started going sideways. I have successfully quilted corduroy as backing several times before, so I hadn't expected issues, even with the less-than-ideal high loft poly batting she provided. This corduroy gave off a lot of fibers. This is the carriage of my machine and those things that look like ants are all the little fibers.
Those little fibers started accumulating in the bobbin case and on the bobbin thread, which I have never had happen before. I changed needles again, figuring the first one had a burr or other flaw. I still couldn't make it across the 39.5" width without issues.
I had to do quite a bit of ripping and repairing and in the end I had to stop halfway across each row to clean everything out. The little bits are also accumulating in the hook.
It took Monday and Tuesday to get this little baby quilt quilted. I will make and apply the binding today.
This experience was pretty heartbreaking to me because I want to do the best job I can and sometimes what I'm provided does not make that that easy. I am unsure if it was just the backing fabric or the combo of the poly batting and the fabric. I need to be better about turning down unsuitable materials instead of trying to be nice. The batting situation is difficult. Sometimes I'm provided with cheap poly stuff that works okay, but sometimes it doesn't work okay. If you really want poly batting, I highly recommend any in the Quilters Dream lineup. Those are meant for machine quilting and will turn out wonderfully.
I've completed one other quilt. This one is Cynthia's, quilted with Celebrate Petite.
Over in the garden, I was overrun with ripe Roma tomatoes. We decided to make spaghetti sauce again, only with a different recipe. I started off with this recipe. I did make a few changes: I started with the correct amount of tomatoes by weight per the recipe, but after cleaning out the seeds/juice and chopping the tomatoes as directed, I ended up one cup short. I threw in one can of petite-diced tomatoes (sooo glad those were in my pantry). I also added one six ounce can of Italian-style tomato paste. The only other changes I made were omitting the fresh basil leaves at the end, but adding in a bit of dried basil at the end of the cooking time. Finally, we pureed it in the blender because my kids (and husband) don't like chunky pasta sauce. As long as you like the taste of Balsamic vinegar, this is a really flavorful sauce. I will definitely make it again (with my changes).
In my personal life, my son has completed both his SAT retake and the three-day application for a chance to be chosen by the high school to apply for the college scholarship. Now he just needs to do the actual college applications. He and I are on our own this week, so he's been going on my evening walks with me and helping in the garden and with the chickens a bit. He ditched me Monday night when I went to check the hummingbird feeder. It needed to be filled, so I turned back around to go into the house to get the food and EEEEEKKKK! SNAKE! Stop reading here if you don't want to see it!
I couldn't go back down the sidewalk, so I bypassed the sawhorses blocking off the porch and climbed up into there and leaned over to the doorbell. Luckily he answered the door and fetched the container of hummingbird food I'd made. He also handed me my phone and told me to take pictures. 🤔 So I did. From a distance and zoomed in. Google tells me it's a gray rat snake. We see rat snakes fairly often around here, but they are usually black. I'm glad this one was fairly small.
After I filled the feeder and took the pictures, I climbed up into the house from the missing porch because you know I wasn't going back by that thing. My daughter loves snakes (why???) so I sent her the pictures. After a long text discourse on types of rat and corn snakes, she ended with "I hope you didn't do anything to it." Like what the heck was I going to do with it? I'm not going near that thing!
I have been avoiding the news other than reading headlines from the AP and avoiding social media as much as I can other than sewing-related things. I did see something online that piqued my interest: an article about when bed sizes became standardized. It's possibly AI-generated (don't get me started on AI, it's a hot-button topic in our household), but still interesting as a quick summary. I've been reading a few issues of Quiltfolk that I picked up at guild meetings. I also learned this week that many praying mantises are invasive (my son informed me of this as he learned it in AP Environmental Science). We have seen a couple this week and I don't like them! I think they are creepy, but everyone else in my house likes them.
The only other thing of note is that I believe I've fixed my business email. That took up a lot of time with trying to figure out what to do. Oh, maybe that's why I didn't get much sewing done? I was researching the email. I think I'm going to do the same thing for my blog domain email since it's also having issues. I just need to get my work done first.
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