Stories from the Sewing Room

Well, friends, we've made it through our school years. Of course there was one last hiccup. On my son's last day of school they were briefly under lockdown. No one was harmed and the whole thing lasted less than 10 minutes. Someone was spotted heading toward school with a gun. It was a BB gun and the person/student was apprehended outside the school doors. Graduation is this Saturday. More on that in a minute. 

You may have seen my finished Magnificent Mystery top on this month's OMG post, but if not, here it is. I have decided how I want to quilt it, so it's just a matter now of making the backing and finding time to get it on a machine. If you want to read a few more details about it, scroll back one post to the May OMG link up.

I also quilted a fat quarter's worth of Annie's Soft and Stable. It was my first time quilting it and it was a breeze. 

I have also been trying to work out how to make a dress to wear to my son's graduation. I decided on the Cashmerette Grafton pattern with the fitted, sleeveless bodice and a circle skirt. I looked at my size and what the pattern's finished measurements were and went with two sizes larger for the bodice since I didn't want it skin tight. I made just the bodice part using a similar weight and type of fabric as I'm planning to use. It was a total disaster! 

The cup size is one that is recommended based on my measurements, but it looked like I could fit a small chicken in each side of area just under the armpit. My chest is not where their chest is. Plus the bodice itself was a lot shorter in the front than the back. It barely covered the goods in front. The back wasn't actually too bad other than the copious amounts of excess fabric on the sides. But the bodice fit looked nothing like any of the models on their website. Theirs were all much longer, ending closer to their waistlines. 

I remeasured myself and entered the numbers in their fit calculator. My upper bust measurement varies by 1/2" or so depending on day and time. If I put in the half inch, I get one size. If I round it up (like I did for the first try), I get a completely different size and cup size. I wish I had someone close by who knows what they are doing who could help me fit this bodice. I've printed off the smaller size and cup size bodice and will try again with that. I might try to just have my son and husband help drape and trace me to get a general size idea if the second bodice doesn't work. It might scar my son. lol. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. Ugh.

Okay, moving along, I've quilted just a few things since last week. Thursday and Friday I had a ton of pick ups and drop offs, so I didn't accomplish anything those days. I took the long weekend off. 🎉

I quilted Interstellar Lite on Penny's quilt.

Heather selected Ansley Park for her quilt.

And Trudy went with In the Swirls. 

We stopped to get groceries the other night and Kroger had a robot doing inventory. My husband reached in to grab some asparagus near where it was scanning. It got confused and started spinning in circles. It has "eyes" that blinked at you on the other side.

My son and I went to the IU Surplus store to poke around. We didn't get there quick enough after they stocked all the small appliances and furniture after the students moved out. They did have tons and tons and tons of cleats of all sizes. This pair was a size 19 I think. It was huge!

And we were scouring Facebook for hens that were approximately the same size as Nugget. She is still being shunned by Peanut and Smoky. Peanut even tries to keep her from the food. Smoky is trying to keep everyone away from Peanut. I saw that Henry had some blood on his wing the other day. They haven't fought in quite some time, so 🤷🏻‍♀️. 

We ended up driving an hour each way to pick up two Barred Rock hens. I think they are a bit younger than Nugget, but fairly close, maybe six weeks instead of eight. Their integration into the coop seems to have gone a lot better. I think they were housed with a large flock of all ages previously, whereas we raised Nugget (with the two roosters we had to give back) from one day after hatching. We left them out in the dog cage in the run Monday and put them up in the coop that night. 

 How did you do with your May goal?

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

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

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. The half blocks were sewn and the rest needed to have the rows sewn into blocks.

Last week I had finally finished the pink and blue blocks. I think I sewed every intersection at least five times. 😟 

Saturday it was raining again and I thought I'd spend some time trying to get the green and blue blocks sewn. It took me around two and a half hours to get the seams aligned correctly and sewn on the 13 blocks. From there I thought I'd at least sew the half-block rows together before dinner. I almost wept with joy that there was nothing to really align. I could just sew, so I kept going. I got all but two seams sewn before dinner. I think it took about half an hour.

I finished up the last two seams yesterday! I really didn't think I'd be able to finish this goal this month, but, much to my surprise, I did. I am so glad this project is done. I like my fabrics, I like the quilt design, but I did not enjoy sewing this one. 

I'll need to figure out how I'm going to quilt it. It's definitely getting an edge-to-edge. But that's a goal for a different month. 🙂

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 May 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 May One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up

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Click here to enter

I decided to try the weekend to-do list again. Besides chores, I once again added "sew something" as a task. This time the sewing actually happened! 

I was able to cut out part of the pieces for the Athena bag I want to make--I still need to quilt part of it before cutting. The cutting isn't depicted here. This was just all the supplies and stuff while I was trying to decide color scheme. 

I made some flying geese units for the Unity quilt. 

The red color is more of a raspberry in real life.

AND...I sewed all of the pink/blue blocks for the Magnificent Mystery quilt. There was still a lot of ripping and re-doing, but I powered through and got them done. I'm not expecting the green/blue blocks to go any better. I think I have narrowed down the issues with these to 1. using two different sewing machines even though they are the same brand and use the same foot, and 2. the pressed-open seams on parts of the hourglass blocks are causing issues. I don't know why, but the intersections that have those seams are the ones that don't line up. Wow, looking at my picture, that pink block does not appear to line up at all. I really hope that's an illusion. 

I also washed 20 yards of fabric to prep for a bed quilt project. I can hardly wait to press all this. 😏

Before I launch into the next round of drama, here are the quilts I worked on since last week. I quilted Fizz on Sara's quilt.

I stitched down the binding on Donna's quilt. 

I quilted Diagonal Plaid Bias on Judy's quilt.

I got the binding made and attached on Maria's quilt.

I quilted Ginger Heart on Amber's quilt.

Marilyn selected Fall Foliage for her runner.

Toni picked Freehand Hearts & Loops for this one.

Boho Boxes got quilted on Linda's quilt.

Deb picked Bloomlets.

And Strawberry Fields was the choice for Linda's other quilt. 

I have been busy. I'm also currently blessed with an abundance of work, so I will be very busy indefinitely.

Meanwhile, the strangeness: last Wednesday after I published my post, I heard the silkies carrying on and doing alarm calls. I also heard a baby rooster in the garage trying to mimic the alarm. 🫤 I couldn't find anything outside that would have gotten them so riled up, but I was surprised to see that Henry was up in one of the tanks in the garden expansion of the coop. I haven't seen him up there before or after. And I could no longer deny that several of the chicks were roosters. 

Thursday I was going about my business when I received a notice from school that a suspected case of meningitis had been reported. I had a moment of panic before I decided I didn't need to worry about it. My son hadn't been around anyone for the amount of time it stated nor had he engaged in the behaviors listed. I continued working and then received a text from my daughter about coming down after work. I wasn't expecting her until Friday evening and we didn't have enough groceries. So I had to drop everything, make a meal plan and grocery list, and run out for groceries. Just as I was returning home I got a call from the health department. My son had been named as a potential close contact to the meningitis case. 😩 

The health department lady said I had to call the pediatrician to get a prophylactic antibiotic dose and then report back to her. I was on hold with the pediatrician for over 30 minutes. When I finally got to the nurse, he said that the case hasn't been confirmed yet, the medical director said that isn't standard protocol, why are so many people calling, and so on. Ugh! I told him what the health department lady said and he still said that isn't protocol and my son has had all his shots, but he'd leave a note for our pediatrician. So I had to report back to the health department lady, who was a little curt and told me that they are following CDC guidelines. We were able to get the single dose of antibiotic from her. 

Two of my son's friends also received calls. They deduced that there was a boy and girl in common between their classes that they figured must be the cause. I was amused that they did the detective work. Oh, and Monday morning I got a call from the pediatrician's office that they had called in the antibiotic dose. Ha. I definitely didn't have meningitis scare on my bingo card. 

Friday evening my husband and daughter took the two rooster chicks back to the lady we got them from. She was rehoming them as promised, but she no longer has any other chickens to swap. The hen chick cried a bit after the roosters went away. 😢 This is the last picture of them.

That meant we needed to try to get her integrated into the coop with the silkies right away. They'd all done fine when we had been leaving the three chicks or just her in the run in the little cage, but once we tried to put her in the coop with the silkies for the night things fell apart rapidly. They are currently shunning her. 😭 It's also difficult to get her back into the coop at night. I'm not cut out for all this. We tried to get another hen from the farm where we originally got the silkies, but he sold out of pullets over the weekend. Too bad, because they were about the same age as the little hen, who we are calling Nugget. 

Tomorrow is my son's last day of school. Graduation is next weekend, pretty immediately followed by college orientation. I'm not sure yet what date he will receive clearance to start his summer internship. He had to get fingerprinted for that over the weekend (see clearance).

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we planted all the flowers we'd purchased and sowed more seeds in the vegetable garden. It rained most of Saturday. Sunday was mega-hot and humid and we were struggling just getting the plants into the ground, but it had to be done. Of course after we filled the rain barrel in the vegetable garden using the hose, we had torrential rain Monday. And all last night and continuing this morning. I'm hoping it didn't wash away the seeds we put in. We did not do any weeding of the lower garden. That lower garden is really bumming me out.  

Here is the upper garden yesterday afternoon.

Linking with Alycia Quilts and Quiltery.

Another week, another bunch of stuff not sewn. I'm frustrated with the Magnificent blocks, which everyone already knows. When I get frustrated, I tend to set it aside and work on something else (hence all the partially done things). I pulled out my Bonnie Hunter Unity and picked out fabrics for clue 2, but never got a chance to cut and sew. I've successfully completed two Bonnie Hunters and started two others. I always have to read through the instructions multiple times to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. I do appreciate the options provided and also the accuracy. Anyway, moving along.

I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get Maria's quilt into the shape and size she requested. She hand pieces her hexies and does not have a sewing machine. The hexi portion of the quilt was a good bit bigger than it needed to be, so I had to overcome my fear and cut it down. I ended up folding it in half, marking with pins, and then trimming. 

I quilted it with a smaller scale Lacey Loops design. I will trim it, make binding using the remaining backing fabric, and attach it to the front. She will hand stitch it to the back.

I quilted Star Spangled Banner on Carol's quilt.

I also quilted Daisy Bounce on Toni's quilt. 

I am ready to do the final stitching on the binding for Donna's quilt from last week. 

Elizabeth selected Interstellar Lite for her quilt. She wanted light blue thread. That's what I'm stitching with, but it looks really light in my picture.

Marilyn picked Mini City of Fountains for this Ruby Star quilt. Somehow I hadn't registered that the backing fabric had a similar print on it when I had suggested the design. 😅

Things have been weird around here. My son was having a health issue, so we had an emergency appointment with the pediatrician since he hasn't had the intake visit with the adult doctor yet. I unexpectedly saw my friend and her baby there for a well-child. In the middle of our appointment, while a nurse was prepping to do a blood draw, she got pulled out of the room by our doctor for "an incident in room five". She eventually came back and was unsuccessful in getting his blood to flow. When we left the office, there was an open ambulance with no one in it outside the door. I'm not sure what happened, but we were fine and my friend and her baby were fine. It was unsettling to see the ambulance. 

We went to the hospital lab Saturday morning. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the hospital was nearly empty. We were in and out pretty quickly. I was amused that the man cleaning the cafeteria was jamming out to Michael Jackson that was playing from his pocket. Since the hospital was basically deserted, you could hear the MJ through the entire cafeteria.

Saturday was the main graduation day for IU. My husband wanted to go to a restaurant that is downtown on the edge of campus. It wasn't as crowded as I expected. We did drive past a fire truck that was responding to someone down on the sidewalk. I didn't look to see what was going on. There was someone in the restaurant with a stroller that had two monkeys or primates of some sort zipped into it. That was also weird but amusing to see peoples' reactions when they noticed. We wondered about health regulations.

Sunday afternoon my husband and I got enough plants to fill in the upper front garden from where we had to remove everything to fix the porch. Clearly this garden is not planted with natives (except for coneflowers and bee balm).

I also discovered that critters were decimating my newly planted side barn garden, so we had to get some stakes to wrap fencing around. Things that don't normally get eaten, like bee balm, were chewed right off. My cute little New Jersey Tea shrub was hit pretty hard. They also sampled the red twig dogwood and the liatris. 

Down in the messy lower garden, the peony is blooming. About half of the buds shriveled up, but the buds that have blossomed are pretty glorious.

 

The irises are still kind of blooming. This is a Siberian iris. I think it might be Caesar's Brother, but I'm not sure. My Siberian irises need to be divided.

My tomato plant starts are coming along nicely. The peppers are growing at a much slower pace. 

The peas aren't growing much, but my reseeded lettuce is starting to germinate.

So are some of the green beans. Can you see them?

The hummingbird camera feeder is out and no hummingbirds are drinking from it so far. The oriole jelly feeder has had fluff and nesting grass/twig stuff in it a lot. That is not fun to clean out. It's host to lots of orioles and house finches.

Meanwhile, my husband decided to start introducing the chicks to the chickens. The chicks are 6.5 weeks old now. They aren't fully feathered out yet. He put them in a little dog cage and set them out in the coop run for the day on Saturday and Sunday. The big chickens mostly have ignored them. When Smoky and Henry were crowing, I thought I heard a little crow from one of the chicks. We couldn't determine which one when we stood there watching. I thought it was from the Barnevelder, which I thought was a hen--though it does have a pretty good comb. 🫤 We're pretty sure the light brown chick is also rooster. These were supposed to be guaranteed able to switch out if they ended up being roosters, but the lady had a very unexpected change in lifestyle and has sold her farm and all her animals in the last six weeks. So 💩. Now what?

The silkies

Do you see those combs? Ugh.

Welcome to another week in my life. Last weekend I made a list of all the things I'd like to accomplish over the weekend. I even added "sew something" to my list. I accomplished almost everything except for sewing. I'm sad about the sewing, but very pleased with the rest of the stuff I got done.

I'm still trying to work on my Magnificent Mystery assembly. I have sewn these same 12 seams at least five times and they still aren't fitting together well. I do pin.

I'm trying to pinpoint where it all went wrong. All the sub-units were the correct size with the exception of some of the hourglass units being a hair off on one corner. I sewed the sub-units into rows with my travel machine, so I'm thinking that may be the culprit. Here I was after round three of ripping and resewing.

After five tries, I am down to one that needs to be redone. I've decided the rest are close enough at this point. Ugh. I do love the quilt design and my fabrics, so I will carry on. That being said, I am sooo ready to work on something different for a while. 

I'm also thinking that since I seem to struggle with accuracy on my travel machine, maybe I should only work on paper piecing or things that don't require accuracy (??) while I'm at sew days. 

Things are progressing slowly with the long arm quilting as well. Here are the few quilts I've gotten done since last week. 

Keetah's quilt, quilted with Christmas Bows.

Erin's quilt full of ultra-marathon shirts (think 40- and 50-mile races 😳), quilted with Diagonal Plaid Bias. I am biased towards Diagonal Plaid Bias for t-shirt quilts. 😏

And Donna's, quilted with Spring Thing. I will bind this.

We were able to finish planting some of the perennials and shrubs we'd purchased. We got the side and most of the front gardens weeded. I sowed pole beans and two types of bush beans. My husband got another load of dirt and filled in more of the low areas in the garden that were left after reconstructing the front porch. He worked more on finishing up the columns on the porch and got the yard mowed. Here's a few pictures I took yesterday. It was pouring rain, so they aren't the best.

the side garden

I'm trying to do mostly natives around the barn. We found a New Jersey Tea shrub (by steps) and I'm excited for that.

New dirt! I need plants and shrubs. Not sure what yet.

I thought I might have seen a female grosbeak on the feeder Sunday and asked my daughter to look at the camera feed and confirm. She sent me this.

I saw one male grosbeak on Monday. Mostly it's just females.