Stories from the Sewing Room

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.