Stories from the Sewing Room

Note: Blogger is displaying my photos without proper alignment. Sorry. I can't figure out how to fix it. 

Here is my second finish of the year. It's the knitted selvedge rug!

    

I thought I was close to being done with it last week. Then I researched common rug sizes and most are a 2:3 ratio. My rug is 22" wide, so that meant it should be around 33" long to be visually pleasing and such. Ratios are so useful! I used to teach my high school students ways to solve story problems using ratios.

I made some good progress on Nancy's quilt last week. In case you missed the OMG link up post Sunday, here is its current status. (To read more about it, scroll back one post.)

I thought about quilting and binding the quilt I picked up at the history center yard sale. I want to make a Frankenbatting for it and I haven't done so yet. I also need to press the entire backing. I did find a piece of fabric in my stash that was just big enough to get the binding out of. It doesn't totally match the style, but the colors are close enough that it will be fine. And it will use up basically the entire piece of fabric, so that is a major win. I don't even know where that particular piece came from. It's not something I would normally buy. Quilt and binding fabric pictured below.

I made a hanging sleeve for one of the quilts I entered in the IHQS. I need to stitch it to the quilt back. Quilts are required to have labels as well, so that needs to be done before the Saturday morning drop off. I know, I know, I should always label my quilts. I normally don't. Sue me. 

I have quite a bit of prep work for the two 1/2 day classes I'm taking. I was prepared to spend $80 on a fat quarter bundle, but then shopped my stash instead and came up with this. I only need five inch squares of each color and 10" squares of the center and backgrounds. Stash for the win. Of course I need to press and cut everything by next week.

I also need to quilt three 12" squares and find some other yardage for the second class I'm taking. 

My back is still painful and it's so annoying. I didn't do anything to injure it. Most meds aren't doing anything for it. The only thing that has helped so far is Excedrin Migraine. I don't normally take two pills of that because it makes me really jittery, but it did knock down the pain for four or five hours the other day. I saw that its ingredients are acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine. I bought some straight aspirin and it's working reasonably well without the jittery side effect. I'm trying to tough it out as much as I can. Getting older is so fun. As my mom says, beats the alternative, right? 

In other family news, my daughter came down Thursday night and we promptly had a tornado warning--in February. (We are totally fine. The tornado went through the main/north part of town and lifted before it hit campus. No casualties other than the Humane Society's building and a 5/3 bank's roof.) She does tend to bring the weather. Her last visit brought the giant snow storm and we've had several other times she's visited and we had tornadoes go through. Anyway, she has paid for her new-to-her car, she and my husband went and got it from Michigan, and we've titled and registered it. My son's summer internship is now in jeopardy due to government issues. Pfft. He was really looking forward to it and the mentors were excited too. Fingers crossed, maybe it will work out somehow. I'm so fed up with all the nonsense.

My husband has purchased a radon monitor for my sewing room. It's been throwing elevated readings the last few days. Usually if your reading is 4 pCi/L you need to do something. It was spiking over 4 over the weekend and Monday night to Tuesday it went up to 5. We already have a whole-house radon mitigation system in place, but my sewing room is the farthest point away from it. Radon is a leading cause of lung cancer and I've found that most people don't even know about it. Your local health department can test for you, generally free of charge. Or you can buy a meter and watch it yourself. The American Lung Association offers inexpensive testing options too. You can view a radon map of the US here. 

My son and I found some woodcocks Friday night. Check out these totally awesome pictures I took. 😂 The first one shows a bird sitting in someone's yard. The next one shows two birds flying.

        

Zoomed in so you can see--two black flecks above the moon

We all went out looking Saturday night. My son even set up his tripod and his camera with the paparazzi lens. We got some really good looks at them (except my son, who was somehow facing the wrong direction the entire time). I didn't attempt any photos, but I did get one really glorious look while the setting sun highlighted the bird. My daughter took some video, but didn't share with me. It was sooo cold out. We woke up to a dusting of snow on Sunday morning. 

I'm still trying to get work done. I am moving pretty slow and trying to give myself some grace on the speed or lack thereof. I quilted three of Jeri's quilts. It's so fun looking at all the individual fabrics. I still need to do the binding on these. 

This tumbler quilt is quilted with Leaves in the Wind.

This one is quilted with Rosemary.

And Gulf Stream was the choice for this one.

 

Toni selected Music Notes for this one. You can't really see it in the picture, but the quilt is a giant treble clef. She pieced a backing with little strips of vibrant guitar fabric. Can you see it in the picture?

I quilted Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut on Shireen's t-shirt quilt. She's a runner and these are shirts from some of her events. 

This is a group of six placemats that Melissa made and stitched together. She requested Fall Foliage for the design. I like that it mimics the shapes and fabrics. I'm not sure what her plan is for finishing them. 

Until next week--