Stories from the Sewing Room

Did you get hit with any part of the big storm? We got around 12" of snow. My daughter had come home for the weekend and got stuck here until Monday since the roads were not safe for travel. These pictures were both taken part way through the storm.

I did a little sewing while I tried to process my grief over senseless murders and strange responses. I finished the December clue for the Magnificent mystery quilt, which you may have seen in my OMG post. 

I finished the "Cupcake Crossing Unit" blocks for Nancy's quilt and added the pieces to the design wall. I hadn't noticed that I needed to cut framing strips for the four patches, so I'll get to that at some point. 

I also helped my daughter make two units of her FPP snake quilt (Ouroboros by No Hats in the House). She didn't understand how to cut the pieces to fit, so I kept trying to talk her through that. I ended up doing a lot of the cutting, but she did the sewing and most of the pressing. She has picked all the color placements. We're using batik and broadcloth since they can go either way/no strict right/wrong side.

I made a tiny bit of progress on my knitted blanket. I'm still in the eighth of ten skeins, but really close to moving into the ninth. I think I'll only need to use part of the 10th skein. This blanket is so warm. Nice to sit under in these frigid temperature days.

Edited to add: I am using Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in the Dreamcatcher color way. The pattern I am using is Timberland Tweed Throw pattern by Mama in a Stitch. I am making the larger size that is approximately 42" x 54" when complete. This size requires 10 skeins of yarn. I bought mine at two different Michaels stores on sale. They were $6 or $7 each, I think. I ended up with two different dye lots, so I'm just alternating them. 

No progress at all on the paint by number. I can't remember if I said before, but I did do the clear gesso on the canvas, so it's all ready to go. I got a board for my daughter's, but haven't made any further progress on prepping it. She's planning to leave it here anyway since she doesn't have space at her place and she's worried her roommate's dog would get to it. Highly possible--that thing is super hyper and bouncy.

I've completed a good number of quilts. I was hoping to have a couple more, but everyone's been home so far this week and I decided to take a mental health day after working past 8 pm Monday.

I quilted Precious Pearls on Susan's quilt.

I quilted Triplet on Janice's quilt. Janice wanted gray thread. I suggested 60 wt thread for this one and that's what we went with. I believe this one will be entered in the IHQS.

I quilted Crazy Daisy on Susan's other quilt. All three are now on their way back to her.

I quilted Mod Dotz on Legene's quilt. Another IHQS entry.

I quilted Toss Up on Kathy's quilt. 

It's time to share this month's progress.

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

Want to see everyone's goals? Check out the January goal page. 

My goal this month was to get caught up on the Magnificent Mystery quilt. At the beginning of the month I still needed to sew steps 3, 5, 6, and 7. 

beginning of January

I've been slowly chipping away at the clues. 

Step 6/December's clue took me quite some time. I had to create 120 HST and sew them into blocks. Friday I cut apart and pressed the HST. Yesterday I trimmed all the HST. Last night I finished up sewing the green blocks. I'm now caught up. 

I do have some assorted background pieces left over. I guess we'll find out if I just counted wrong or there are a few more pieces needed. 

Now it's your turn to share your finish (or your progress if you didn't quite make it to the finish line).

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

This link up will remain open until 11:55 pm EST on January 31. Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room January One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Well. It has been a week. {Why do I feel like I'm always saying this?} 

I have made some reasonable progress on my Magnificent Mystery. I have completed parts five and seven.

Part seven involved making two sizes of flying geese. I didn't have the correct size Bloc-loc templates to trim these. Part way through I remembered I have the Wing Clipper tool. I really like this ruler. It has lots of sizes and is easier to use than a regular ruler. And it is more attractively priced than the other specialty ruler.

Here are the completed parts.

Part six involves making and trimming 120 HST and then sewing them into blocks. Will I be able to get it done in the next week and a half? It's anyone's guess. 

I'm still making progress on my knitted blanket. I was able to fix the mistakes I'd made in the fourth skein. I didn't take a picture of the mess. I sort of wish I had, just to show that I fixed it. Special shout-out to Mimi at Pastiche Knitwear for having the videos published that made me understand how and feel empowered to make the repairs. I have no affiliation with the person. Google suggested the videos and they were an a-ha moment.

Anyway, I am now part way through my sixth of 10 skeins on this project. 

My daughter was home over the weekend and brought some of her yarn with her. This yarn came in hanks and she wanted to turn them into balls/cakes to make it easier to work with. I had purchased a yarn swift and ball winder last year on a really good sale, so we broke them out. 

{You can also see her pile of fabric on the table. She selected and I purchased some things back in 2020 to paper-piece a snake quilt and I told her the time is now to start. But we discovered we'd never bought background fabric.}

Here are her finished cakes. 

I went to small guild Friday night and guess what? We are doing a UFO challenge this year. How serendipitous that I already have a list made (PHD).

Meanwhile, I felt like I haven't gotten much work done, but looking back over my camera roll, it's not as bad as I thought, at least for last week. 

I quilted Deep Waves on Ann's quilt. 

I quilted Sugar and Spice on Twilla's quilt.

Everly's quilt was quilted with Threaded and pink thread. This one is bound for the IHQS's youth entry category.

I quilted Triplet on Sara's quilt. 

I bound both of Ann's quilts and got them shipped back to her. 

This week got off to a really slow start as I had some things to attend to that took me away from the sewing room. 

So far this week I have quilted Rylan's quilt. He selected Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut. This one will be entered in the youth category as well. I love that young people are taking up quilting. Both kids chose great color combos and tried more advanced blocks.

Next up I have a custom quilt that I've been pulling and/or sourcing threads for. Almost everything else I have booked to quilt needs to go on the big machine, however, I custom quilt on the big machine, so...yeah. Not much money coming in this week. Some weeks it's like that. If you need a smaller quilt quilted, there's currently no waiting. ha ha

In other news, we thought the dryer sounded bad last week, so my husband figured the rollers and belts were going since it's about 14 years old. He ordered some parts for $35 and tore apart the machine. The rollers and belt looked fine but he did find a big hairball (thanks, daughter who doesn't even live here) and a lot of lint that had escaped the filter. I didn't get a picture of it, but one of the sound deadening strips on the drum had a spot that had fallen off and melted into a hard blob on the bottom of the dryer. My husband couldn't find any description of that issue online at all. I guess we're special. 

So if you ever wondered what the inside of a dryer looks like, now you know. 

Alas, my vacation time has come to an end. I am grateful to have plenty of quilts waiting for me. Before we get into that, let's look at what I've sewn this month. 

I've finished all the spire pieces for the Linda J. Hahn Beach Bumz project. I like that you can chain-piece these foundations. I don't love tracing them from stencils.

I took the time to grade the seams so that I won't have dark blue shadows (hopefully). Can you see it in the photo below?

I alternated trimming the Magnificent mystery blocks with piecing the Beach Bumz spires. There were 16 spires in all. They are all fully trimmed but I haven't removed the foundation yet. Linda says to leave the foundation in. I don't want to because you can see my lines through some of the fabrics I used and the foundations still have the faintest smoke smell.

I have been hard at work on the Magnificent mystery pieces too. There is sooo much trimming of blocks for this quilt. I have all of month three (large hourglass blocks) completed. I did month four (Irish chain) ages ago. I am part way through month five, which is smaller hourglass blocks. The blocks are all made now and I am working on trimming them. 

After they are all trimmed, another piece of background fabric gets sewn to one side. I haven't started months six or seven yet. The final design is revealed in February. I took the sneak peek, so I know what I'm sewing. Here's all the pieces of my project, minus the backing.

I put off working on this project for a while because I really dislike making hourglass blocks. They rarely come out with all four corners exact. I purchased some marking tools. It was a fail. Can you see how the marks were larger than 1/4"? In the end I just went back to using the markings on my machine and took care not to let the edges pull in towards the needle at the end.

Back to the quilting work...I got off to a slow start, realizing I needed to spend a day doing design work, tracking down quilts and setting up appointments and so on. I got the first quilts on the frames yesterday.

Toni picked Dragonfly Dance for her quilt. 

Ann K. requested Cakewalk 2 for this comfort quilt. I'll add her binding to the front so she can stitch it down when I ship it back. 

In other quilting news, I attended the big guild meeting last night for the first time since last August. I donated the race car quilt! Woo hoo, it's gone! 

I've been working on my knitted blanket too. I've finished four skeins, but made some mistakes that I need to fix. I have one missed stitch for sure that's about four rows down and it looks like I dropped a stitch in the same row too, but I can't find proof of it. I'm hoping to work on the repairs tonight. 

Finally, I don't normally take pictures of most of our food, but I was chatting with my sister and sent her a picture of my dinner. The recipe for Better-Than-Takeout Cashew Chicken can be found here. It's so good. When we have it for dinner, we usually serve it with rice. When I eat the rest as a leftover, I often just eat it as-is. Let me know if you try it. 

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