Stories from the Sewing Room

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. :)

Finally, 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.