Stories from the Sewing Room

I've been working more on all the little subunits for Unity Part 2. First I made some HST.

Then I started on the square-in-a-square pieces. Definitely not my favorite thing to make, but better than quarter-square triangles!

I didn't have quite enough of the pink to get all the dark pink/green square in a square units (three sets short). We decided it would look most intentional to make the corners out of a different pink fabric. Then I only needed to cut one additional set of triangles and set one of the original aside.

Now it looks like this and I have to piece together all the rows/rounds. This quilt is assembled in a round robin-type fashion. Some of the rows are inverted right now. The colors are so much prettier in real life. My camera really struggles with the lighting near the design wall.

I remembered to take a picture of the knit selvedge rug. I'm really close to a finish now.

I've also been slowly plugging away at the 16 items I need for our guild advent calendar. I'm just about half way done. I need to submit my items at our November meeting, so that means I have just over three months to finish.

I haven't started on the whole cloth quilt yet since I haven't pressed the fabric. I think that will be my project this weekend. 

Then I quilted Trillium on her other quilt.

She brought me a bouquet of sunflowers, mums, and roses when she picked up her quilts. They are so pretty. 🥰

I quilted Toss Up on Christi's baby quilt.

Sharon selected Two Simple for this super-large quilt. 

She also had me attach binding to the front.

Out in the gardens, I have weeded all of the upper front garden and most of the barn garden. We harvested a small bell pepper, a coolapeno, and a tomato from the vegetable garden. I forgot to take a picture of the bell pepper before I cut it up for dinner. As you can see, it was pretty tiny, but perfect for topping our pizza.

There are a ton of beans, tomatoes, some peppers, and maybe the watermelons ready for harvesting. We just haven't made time to do it, unfortunately. We really have to pick through the tomatoes because most of them have been eaten by bugs. Most of the plants themselves look pretty terrible with the exception of the peppers. I'm not sure if it's bugs, lack of water, or a combo of both. It's pretty gross out there right now.

I've decided to clear out the lower garden during the winter. I know this isn't ideal, but between all the weeds, the bugs, potential snakes and other critters, I think it makes the most sense. I'm still avoiding the side garden since I know snakes like to lurk in there.

The chickens are all still alive. Penny will be out of quarantine and able to go back in the coop on Friday. She's doing really well. Smoky has started eating feed again, so that is good.  We aren't sure Smoky, Henry, or Peanut are able to go back out and function on their own. Peanut's eyes have continued to be closed for the last week, so she unfortunately seems to be regressing.

The big college dorm move-in day will happen next week. We went to Target to buy a mini fridge that had a freezer and I decided I needed to treat myself to the new LEGO E.T. set. I've been slowly building it. He has a small phone and a tiny replica space ship inside. You can see the phone(red) and the ship just above the wide light blue piece if you look really closely. I thought it would be funny to move it around and hide it in various shelves (think doll closet in movie).

Finally, one for the "what's going to break in Anne-Marie's house this week" category...our water pressure has been quite low for several years now. We knew that the water company needed to add infrastructure to meet increased demand. Our neighborhood has gone from sparse to built out in the last few years and they are always adding new subdivisions. Our neighbors haven't noticed having less water pressure. Our is so bad that if I'm running the washer or dishwasher, nothing else can be run. If someone flushes the toilet while a shower is running, the pressure decreases very noticeably.

I had a great July progress-wise.

Linking with Ms. P Designs PHD program

I finished three projects, for a total of nine so far in 2026. First is #22, the Athena bag. Scroll back two posts to see all the details. This project was a pain for me, but I persevered.

I also finished #23, the Linda J. Hahn Beach Bumz quilt. 

I also made progress on #24, the Kaleidobloom class. I made the first four blocks. The colors didn't photo well. They are Kona Celestial and Kona Maize.

The remaining templates needed for monthly lessons three through eight have been printed. I started to prep month three, but decided my green fabric needed to be rewashed because it looks blotchy and just not right somehow. Hopefully washing will take care of it and I won't need to replace it.

How old do you think this fabric is? My guess is early 2000s. Could be older. 

Here is all of my progress so far. The center block was clue 1 and all the flying geese are part of clue 2. There are still HST and square-in-a-squares to make for that one, plus assembling it all. And then there are like five more clues after that. 😅

    

I've completed more quilts for others as well. First up is Paula's, quilted with Triangle Meander.

Next is Deb's, quilted with Lacy Loops.

Then I took a day to bind all of Jeri's quilts.

Next is Charlene's, quilted with Windswept.

And Marilyn's, quilted with Winterfest.

Cynthia picked Daisy Bounce for this one.

Finally, a giant table runner to match Marilyn's quilt, also quilted with Winterfest.

Zoomed in view right below.

Finally, Friday I was trying to take a picture of Penny peeking up out of her tote to send to my daughter. Penny's one eye was still bulging and gross looking, so I tried to capture only her good eye in the photo. When I returned home two hours later, the eye was almost completely back to normal and the thing in it was gone. This is excellent news, kind of a small miracle for us.  She's continued to improve and is eating like a pig and making lots of noise. She still has a few more antibiotic doses and another week of quarantine, but I think she'll be able to go back into the coop then. Her sister Poppy seems okay and Nugget is fine. They are both out in the coop still.

Unfortunately, all of the silkies are still struggling a bit. Peanut's eyes are back to being closed all the time, so it seems she has regressed. We aren't feeding Smoky with a syringe anymore. He and Henry both seem to be eating and drinking on their own now, but none of them are ready to go back into the coop.

 Join us in choosing a goal to work towards this month.

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.)

My goal this month is to press 20 yards of fabric, sew them into a quilt top and quilt backing, and quilt and bind them into a new bedspread for my daughter. She's had her current one (a Pottery Barn kids pink quilt) for over 20 years! It's been in at least five houses throughout her childhood. Anyway, I thought it was time to replace that one since it's worn and stained. She wanted purple. I've moved it a bit more towards lavender since it's in my house and she is not. The walls are light blue and I'm not planning to repaint them.

This goal might be a bit aggressive. August will probably be emotionally tough for me since our son will be leaving for college. Maybe it will be good to have a challenging project to work on. I don't know. If I can get this done, it will remove two bolts of fabric (which are fluffy and big since I've already washed them) from my sewing closet. That would be great! I need more room in there.

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

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

Take a few minutes to visit others, offer encouragement, and make new friends!

I re-boarded the struggle bus and powered through completing the Athena bag. 

I figured out the zipper pocket that I was struggling with last week. I discovered that I needed to read one line at a time and do only that. Do not read a section at a time, do not look at the diagram. Just one line and do what it says. I didn't love that I had to topstitch some of the pink more than once on the same line. 

Here are the front and back pieces of the bag and the carry strap. As you can see in my picture, I didn't do the best job at rounding the corners. 

Next I had to do another zipper insertion, which went okay. Then you had to sew another piece to that.

I finally figured out that they weren't supposed to bind, but rather, cover. If I looked very closely in the pattern cover images, I could just make out a stitching line that led me to this conclusion. That obviously worked out a lot better. I think the piece could have been a bit narrower, but oh well. I should also add here that every direction instructed me to stitch 1/8" away from the edge of all these binding pieces, but I did 1/16" because why would I want a flappy edge on everything?

Next I had to add binding pieces to the wrong/insides of both sides of this circular piece. I had a bit of a brain struggle to figure out how to join the pre-cut bias pieces because I didn't have long enough pieces to do my usual join. I really screwed up this one and had to do a straight join. It's inside the bag, so it probably doesn't matter one bit. 

Here I was trying to sew on the first one. It didn't require a straight join, but I did end up with a weird triangle situation where I did the bias join. You can just barely see it.

After the binding was sewn to both sides of this piece, it was time to do the final assembly of the bag. It was a bit challenging for me to wrap these thick foam pieces around the rounded corners, but I eventually managed. 

And both sides. One thing the pattern didn't remind you to do that I thought was very important: open the zipper before sewing the final piece on! Maybe I sewed it together in the wrong orientation and that didn't matter? It should still be mentioned. I had to unclip this to undo the zipper.

I really struggled with sewing down the binding and actually catching it on the bottom side. Clearly I did a lousy job. And had to re-do it. I think maybe it would have done better if I'd sewn from this side like I would a quilt binding by machine--topstitch on the front so that you know the stitching will look nice and even. I didn't, it didn't. At least it's on the inside of the bag.

Almost there. It looks like a lunchbox at this stage.

Ugh, such ugly stitching.

But I got it done! I felt like it was a "why is this being done this way?" scenario the whole way through. It's a useable bag, the outside looks decent, the inside doesn't. I was originally planning to do one for my daughter as well, but I think I'd rather pay for a pre-made one at this point. 

Moving along to things I do better than bag-making, here are the quilts I've worked on since last week.

Jeri's, quilted with Flower Swirl. I still need to fully bind this.

Another of Jeri's, quilted with Marmalade. Another full bind to complete.

Teresa's, quilted with Circle Drama. I fully bound this one. 

Heidi's, quilted with Stardust.

And one more of Jeri's, quilted with Cosmos. Still need to bind this one too.

Keetah's, quilted with Honey.

Amber's holiday version of Lupine & Laughter, quilted with Bright Lights.

Jan's, quilted with Loop the Loop. This one needs to be bound.

Finally, one more of Jeri's, quilted with Avalon. 

Out in the garden, we harvested the last zucchini. We had to pull out the plants because they got hit hard with squash beetles. I'm worried the beetles are moving on to the other plants. I'm particularly worried about the watermelon vines. Something is definitely eating the pole bean plants and the tomatoes. Not sure if it's the same or different. Most of my tomatoes have holes in them. Hornworm? Stink bug-like creatures? Plague of locusts? Who even knows at this point. We also picked 12 tomatoes that didn't have holes and one pound, 10 ounces of beans. 

The yard in general has gone from looking somewhat tidy and fresh to tired and overgrown. The weather was really nice for a few days, but I didn't make it out into the gardens to catch up on weeding and trimming. It's back to being so humid you can't breathe and I've been avoid going outside. I also noticed that some of the leaves in the trees are starting to change.

Both Barred Rock hens now have the scourge. Penny's been in the garage for almost a week. We are out of bins/cages, so we left Poppy in the coop with Nugget (chocolate Orpington). Nugget is the last one standing, but we're giving her precautionary meds. She's very skittish and surprisingly fast for her girth, so the menfolk are treating both in the coop at night when they can't run since the door is closed. My husband also noticed there was raccoon poop in the extended garden run, so he had to take the fruit netting off the top and put on cattle gate and fencing as a precaution. I'm rather over nature at the moment--snakes, raccoons, wild and creepy yard, chicken bacterial diseases, spiders (a garden spider? has built an elaborate web in between the window and the screen in the sewing room so I can't open my window), etc. Except I like all the fluttering butterflies I'm seeing in the yard. We have a swallowtail chrysalis on the doorframe of the barn.

So that's about it for this week. All my check-up exams were good last week. Somehow my doctors always seemed surprised that I'm perfectly healthy. We have two and a half more weeks or so until college move-in. I'll be back Saturday with the August OMG link up. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.