Stories from the Sewing Room

*Photo-heavy post*

First off, here is my PHD report for April. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs

As you can see, I didn't make any progress this month, which is disappointing to me. I started and finished one additional knitted selvedge rug from the giant balls of selvedge. I don't have it listed on the starts, but I did start a third one. It's in the picture below. I am retiring from these after I finish the third one. 

I did not work on a single other thing from my list during April other than some additional piecing on the Magnificent Mystery. I think my photo makes it look like the blocks are sewn, however, only the partial/half blocks are completed. The other two sets need to have the rows joined together.

Moving along to Paducah, we made a quick trip down there to see my quilt. I was feeling pretty anxious about it, like I thought my work would look like amateur hour. Thankfully it looked pretty decent hanging up. I grabbed a catalog for myself and for Connie, the maker. 

Here are some of the quilts that caught my attention. I didn't get photos of the tags on most of these. Sorry about that. These first two quilts were in the "if I were an emoji" exhibit.

The next group are in the minis. I always marvel at that section.

This one was by Kestrel Michaud. There are two detail shots and then the full quilt.

These are part of the national parks exhibit.

Loved these art quilts.

Amazing quilting on this Aspen quilt.

My son and I had a selfie taken with Ricky Tims by his quilt--he took the selfie on my phone. That was fun. I didn't end up getting the picture of the quilt that I was trying to take before the selfie. It's okay because Ricky gave us cards with his quilt on them.

I also really enjoyed the Cherrywood Challenge exhibit. I started taking pictures of it all, but then saw I could purchase a book (turns out I had to order it), so quit. They were all fantastic! The colors and the artistry were top-notch. Here's just one group of them.

 

My husband purchased a pattern and some templates to make it for me. We also made a brief stop at Hancocks so that my son could have that experience. 😜 No purchases there either.  It seems silly to me to buy stuff when I don't have time to sew it. 

I've completed a few more quilts. Here is one made by Trish, quilted with Interstellar Lite. 

Here's Linda's quilt, quilted with Prairie Wheat. This one took me over two days. 

I got Donna's quilt bound. 

I quilted Loop the Loop on Sara's quilt.

Jan S. picked Hiding Out for her quilt.

I also got part way through Amber's quilt, but had to stop and rip out a row I wasn't happy with. Unfortunately, that is a lengthy process. This fabric is funny (ripping in progress here).

Out in the garden, we have harvested some kale. We got a few of the shrubs and plants planted.

My husband saw an oriole on the feeder. I've only seen house finches at the oriole feeder. 

I have also seen a downy woodpecker on the hummingbird feeder and a hummingbird one other time. My feeder blew down in Monday night's storms. Luckily it fell mostly straight down and didn't break. We had a tornado warning late Monday. I don't think there were any tornadoes and most of the storm missed us.

The chicks continue to change every day. They are now just about 4.5 weeks old. The jury is still out on whether they are hens or roosters. I'm pretty sure two are hens. The third is a mystery still. 

Peanut has gone broody. My daughter was home over the weekend and kept moving her back out into the run. She tells me that they can stop eating and drinking while sitting on the nest. The roosters are being themselves. Here are Henry, Smoky, and Peanut.

I'll be back Friday with May's OMG link up.

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts. 

It's time once again to share your monthly progress.

This link up will remain open until April 30 at 11:55 pm EST.

My goal this month was to get my Magnificent Mystery quilt pieces sewn into a top. Here's how it looked at the beginning of the month. 

And here's how it looks now. I completed all the partial blocks and made some good progress on the piecing, but it's not done. 🫤 The pink and blue blocks just need the rows joined. The green and blue blocks need one more unit sewn to each row before I can join the rows together. 

Someday I will have time to sew again. Someday I will be caught up on all my chores, garden tasks, and my inbox. I'm trying. I feel like I've done a ton of tasks and work lately, but it just doesn't translate to feeling like I'm making progress.

I've sewn a few seams of my Magnificent Mystery block units. All seams on pink/blue rows are sewn. Some need to be pressed. I'm halfway through the seams on the green/blue rows and they all need to be pressed. I had to clean up quite a bit so that I could get to the ironing table. While the tidying is complete, I still haven't made it to the pressing part.

My goal this month was to get this sewn into a top. The OMG link up opens Friday. I think we can safely say that this goal is not going to be met. 😩 I always have such high hopes.

I have completed more quilts. This first one belongs to Shirley and is quilted with Spring Thing.

I finished Jeri's quilts and got them shipped back to her. This binding was the last task to complete. It was hard to see where the edge of the binding was. 

I quilted Boho Boxes on Janice's quilt. I was totally in love with the backing fabric and asked her about it. She purchased it in an estate sale and therefore does not know what it is. It would have made some really lovely clothing. The quilt looks great and the fabric and pattern were from Crimson Tate.

Carol T.'s quilt got Prairie Wheat quilted on it. You can barely see it in my picture or, really, even just looking at the quilt.

Trish wanted Wobbler on this quilt. I love how it shows up in the border fabric and adds another layer of detail.

Donna picked Soho for this quilt. I will bind it.

I started quilting Prairie Wheat on Trish's quilt. This one will get finished up today. The design is gorgeous, but it is definitely a slow stitch-out. I still have one more quilt to stitch this design on this week. I did a partial picture of this one so that you could see the detail of the quilting design better.

I think we all see why I don't get much sewing of my own done. Last week I was looking at jobs in my area to see what is out there (not much). My husband would like to retire long before our mortgage will be paid off and I think I need to contribute more to this effort. I am not thrilled with the idea of being out of the home full time and not having control of my own schedule. Add social anxiety and some health things to it, and yeah, I haven't found anything that pays enough to give up my longarm business. Maybe I'll need to shift some things around to feel like I contribute financially.

In the midst of looking at available jobs, I received an email from Connie letting me know that a quilt I custom quilted back in 2024 has been on display at the AQS shows in Daytona Beach and Hartford this spring and will also be on display in Paducah. 🤯 Never in my lifetime did I think something I worked on would be admitted to a juried show, let alone one of the biggest. So we're taking a very fast trip to Paducah later this week. I'm even letting my kid skip school for a day so he can go. Here's the quilt and here's where I wrote about it at the time of quilting.

Out in the garden, the peas have sprouted. No lettuce has germinated for the second year in a row. The asparagus is completely ferned out. We bought three Brussels sprouts plants and they are still alive. The kale from last year is quite prolific this year. I did start some tomato and pepper seeds in my AeroGarden.

We have purchased some perennials and shrubs but haven't gotten them in the ground yet. No more weeding has been accomplished. Some of my irises are blooming. They are very stubby this year, but the Immortality irises have tons of blossoms.

The early clematis is blooming, as are the alliums. The lilac is also blooming, but I noticed the flowers I can see from my sewing room window are white instead of purple. The peony is really close to blossoming. Everything is just so early.

I saw my first hummingbird yesterday. I need to clean the oriole feeder and get it out.

The chicks have been growing rapidly. The Barnevelder's feathers changed completely over a course of a couple days. The brown one looks like it's molting right now. The two-tone is starting to get a tail. They are active little things. (First picture, running away from scary lady.)

Last weekend my small guild had a "sewcial" day. Besides the business meeting, we also had a workshop on natural fabric dyeing presented by Kate (sorry, didn't catch her last name). She prepared pots of avocado, marigold, indigo, and madder. We each got four pieces of prepared fabric--one Kona, two other cotton, and one linen. My friends were adventurous and creative and made beautiful pieces. Here's just a few.

I was not so creative. I dipped my piece of Kona into the avocado dye. Funny how it comes out peachy. I can't recall if this dye was made just from the skin or if it had the pit as well. It was light peach when it came out of the pot and it's getting much darker now.

I tried various ways of dipping my other three pieces in the indigo. By the way, indigo dye smells. We took that one outside before opening the bucket. I did one where I attempted a gradient (linen) and then did a fold and a tie-dye on the other two (cotton). I should have done the gradient on the cotton rather than the linen. Here are my pieces hanging to dry--they are supposed to drip dry in the dark. Once they are fully dry, I have to rinse them until no more loose dye comes out. 

I also had some sewing time that I spent working on my Magnificent Mystery. I completed all the half blocks. It sure helps when you use thread in your sewing machine. 😉 I made decent progress on the pink and blue blocks. I didn't get to the green and blue ones yet. This is my OMG this month. It's not looking like I'll get it done, but we'll see. 

Everything fell off the green/blue block board during transport. I was lazy and didn't fix it for the picture.

I did complete a second knitted selvedge rug. I wish I would have done two more rows, but it's fine. I have enough selvedge prepared to get probably at least half way through one more rug. I still have all the selvedges that a guild mate gave me, so if need be, I can sort through those to try to get additional length. 

I'm not sure how to record this one in my PHD list. It's an old project--I'm using fabrics that I rolled onto the ball four years ago--but I only had one rug on my list because I didn't think there'd be enough for more than that. Right now I have it listed as a new start. I don't know, where would you put it? 

I've gotten a few more quilts done. I stitched Saffron Blossom on Jeri's sister's quilt. I'm working on the binding.

I stitched Marmalade on Jeri's quilt. 

This one is bound. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd inadvertently made an invisible/pattern-matched join on the binding.

I also bound Jeri's two quilts that I quilted last week. 

I quilted Cassava on Keetah's quilt.

I quilted In the Swirls on Toni's quilt. 

Out in the garden, we were able to make a sizable asparagus harvest. 😏 

We planted peas and lettuce. We bought a few Brussels sprout plants to try. The kale I planted last spring (and wasn't able to harvest at all) is going like gangbusters right now. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We were able to do some more weeding in the lower garden. We had a giant patch of some kind of weed and a bunch of Johnson grass. That stuff is awful. We're probably 40% done now, maybe a bit more. There's one swath remaining on the right side. I think most of that is spearmint. We can pull it, but it's kind of pointless. The far left side has a lot of weeds. We have a large weeping cherry tree that gets a lot of weeds and unwanted saplings under it because it's a favorite perch of many critters that drop seeds. 

Finally, here is this week's chick picture. These guys kinda scare me. They are so much bigger than the silkies and they are trying to fly and get out of the tote. Right now they are still under a heating plate, but I think that will change soon. We may need to locate a larger container to house them. They are almost three weeks old now. I think the Barnevelder (striped one) is a hen, but I'm concerned about the other two. Time will tell. Photos courtesy of my son.

Worshipping the queen? She mostly hides between them if we are looking at them.

One last picture to share from our walk last night. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.