Stories from the Sewing Room

It's time to review my PHD progress. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs' PHD project

In September I did not complete anything. I started two new projects, the Jimothy paper-pieced pillow cover and the Krista Moser BOOtiFall quilt along.

Jimothy is entirely pieced and awaiting my daughter's next visit so that she can decide on quilting and pillow finishing techniques. I expect this to be a fairly quick October finish.

I bought a kit from Krista Moser to make her BOOtiFall pattern. The purchase came with a free class/stitch along. I watched last Tuesday's class and started working on it over the weekend. The pattern is well-written and the parts are going together well, but it is A LOT of work. I am not yet done with week one and week two was published yesterday. Here's my progress on week one. I was supposed to make two full and two half blocks of each color way. I have no blocks so far. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I made a small amount of progress on August's new start, the Ghostie Girls table runner. I'm making two. It doesn't look like much yet. I'm hoping another hour or two will get the tops done.

As far as my actual PHD list, the only thing that has had any progress is the Range quilt. It is fully quilted and awaiting binding. I need to decide what fabric I'm using for binding since I'm not sure I want to commit to the original plan of royal blue.

The other thing I've been working on this month is actually a half-done project, but it wasn't included on my list. I've been working on a cross stitch project and made a good amount of progress. 

I've been studying how to start addressing my fitting issues with the Cashmerette patterns I own since I need to make a dress to wear to a wedding in November that has a specific dress code. I need to make a mock up of the bodice. I know how important it is, but it feels so wasteful when I'm working on a knit mock-up/toile because there really isn't much very inexpensive knit fabric out there these days. The planned dress is made with ponte and that definitely isn't cheap. 

I need more hours in my days. September has felt like a real struggle, ending with a real kick in the pants yesterday (more at the bottom). I'm finally starting to feel healthier after last month's bout of Covid. The brain fog is lessening, but still lingering. I have more tasks to complete than feels remotely possible. It's hard to prioritize what to do. I usually put work first to avoid letting anyone besides myself down (Plus, you know, money). Then I feel upset that I can't take care of the housekeeping and yard work to the standard that I want. And I feel a bit sad that I don't have enough time to do my own projects. I've been trying to set aside some weekend hours to sew, but like I said, the struggle is real. 

If you're reading this and you'd be willing to take over hosting One Monthly Goal for 2027, I would be most appreciative.

Okay, so moving along to the quilting I did last week, I completed five quilts. The first one belongs to Sara. She picked Scramble.

Next is another of Jeri's quilts, quilted with Fusion.

I bound one of her quilts from last week and have three more to go.

I quilted Midnight Sparkle on both of these quilts from Cindy.

Cindy wanted Peace quilted on this one.

Moving along, we found a good sale on pears, so we bought five pounds to can. This is the first time I've ever had a canning failure--one lid did not seal. We opted to just put them in the fridge and eat them right away instead of trying to seal it again. I think I might have overfilled that jar. I was working alone and trying to rush a bit and I just didn't get them divided into the jars equally. And now I know what happens when you do that. I can say that the pears we ate were really good, so the four jars that did seal will be yummy.

Over the weekend I washed the front door. I also vacuumed all the window screens, cleaned all the windows (on the inside), dusted some of the walls, and vacuumed blinds and light shades. It took way longer than I expected, so I didn't get much sewing time. But the front door isn't quite so tragic now, so there's that. I also found out that my husband's insulation helper for the barn had to leave part way through and he did the rest totally by himself. Oops. If I'd known, I would have gone to help.

I was really surprised the other night to see what I think are two monarch butterflies on the zinnias. I haven't seen hardly any all summer. Actually, taking this picture through the screen is what prompted me to clean all the windows. 

We also made a quick trip to the orchard (not so quick since it's at least 40 miles away, but very efficient once we got there) to buy my favorite combo of Golden Delicious and Jonagold apples. No one closer sells the Jonagolds. These apples make a very nice apple sauce without needing to add any sugar. I haven't had enough time yet to to take care of these, but it will need to happen very soon. 

On the way to the apple orchard, we saw this gem. Sorry it's so pixelated. I had to zoom way in because they were driving faster than we were. 

Yesterday my day started with getting a water bill that was double what I expected. I wondered if we had a leak. After logging in to the utility website, I discovered that the payment I sent electronically via my bank was apparently not received by the utility, so the bill was for two months plus a $1.95 late fee. The employee at the water utility had only been on the job for a week and was trying to tell me that my check was lost in the mail. ?? I paid electronically and the bank sent it electronically. The bank thinks there may have been an issue with the Bill Pay service. I suspect the real issue was at the water utility since I've never had an issue with it in all the years I've been using Bill Pay. Plus I found out at least two other people had the same issue with their bills too. It is not yet resolved. While I was on the website, I noticed that the current fee to get a water meter is over $2500. We definitely won't be getting a meter for our garden on our spare lot. Geez.

It's time to share your September progress.

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

My goal for September was to quilt my Range quilt. I'm pleased to say that after a weekend spent quilting, I was successful.

I decided to try something new and change threads as I went down the quilt. I pulled out these eight threads to match my fabrics. I only ended up using six of them, omitting Rock Navy and Blizzard. I used only white thread in the bobbin.

The quilting design, Rich Girl, has eight lines per design unit. I did split out one of the lines to change the color sooner, but overall I just went with where it felt right to make the transition. I split the quilting over two days. I've tried to photo each of the transitions, but the pictures didn't turn out very well. It's been very dark and gloomy the past few days. Only the bottom picture with the backing is the correct color.

Now I need to decide what to use for binding. I have the Royal Blue set aside, but I think maybe it's too dark for the upper half of the quilt. It's color number six of eight as you progress down the quilt. It's the bottom blue on the picture right above with the backing. Which color would you use?

It's been a week of feeling really busy and yet nothing really seems to have been accomplished. My fabric and pattern orders came in and now I have to go about the challenging process of completely altering the top portion of the pattern in order to get something that fits reasonably. 

I started prepping the fabrics for the Krista Moser BOOtiful stitch-along. I'm so glad I didn't start cutting yet because the first video instruction came out yesterday and I realized I had completely missed one of the most critical cutting instructions.  I think my strategy for this project will be to wait until each Tuesday, watch the instructions, and then do the cutting and assembling.

I have made progress on the Ghostie Girls table runners, though not as much as I would have liked. This picture isn't particularly exciting, but it shows almost all of the stitch-and-flip pieces that are required in order to actually start piecing the ghosts. I think the only ones left are for the hair bows, but that comes in at a later step.

The chicken cross stitch has moved forward though I haven't worked on it yet this week. We are still missing poor little Peanut the hen. I'm pretty concerned Henry will be next.

Of course I've been busy with work. I stitched Stipple on Deb's quilt.

Jeri selected Stellar for this one. I'll need to fully bind it.

I bound all the memory quilts. I only took pictures of three of the four.

I stitched Mod Moon on Jeri's quilt. Again, need to fully bind.

Melissa requested Peace for her Vintage Lace quilt. This is a big quilt and had a very long stitch out time. It used almost 2000 meters (two small cones) of thread.

Jeri wanted Sparkle 1 for this quilt. More binding upcoming.

Other than that, I completed some house chores. Those seem never-ending, even with just the two of us here. Our entire county was under a boil water alert from Sunday midnight until mid-morning Monday. We were attending a scholarship ceremony with my son on campus Sunday evening and due to not being able to use the water for cooking or eating, it was very light hors d'oeurves and bottled water or soft drinks for dinner. We sat with him while he ate dinner afterwards in the IMU. No drinks available. Good thing I'd grabbed him a few extra bottles of water on the way out of the ceremony. 

Side note from the scholarship ceremony: this was for students who received awards directly from the Office of Scholarships. That accounted for one of the four my son received. The director said there were 9800+ incoming students and only 61% of them received a scholarship from her office. "Only." So doing the math, that's around 6000 students who received money. There were maybe 50 kids at this event. 

Moving back to the water situation, we'd been to the grocery store earlier in the day and most of the produce was missing since it had been sprayed with the water system. They had notes taped up. The health department suggested using disposable dishes and silverware. Luckily we had enough clean dishes to just wait it out before running the dishwasher. The worst part was trying to brush teeth and rinse using bottled water. It is difficult and I'm thankful I live somewhere where that is not part of my daily routine. 

We had a pretty heavy thunderstorm Friday evening that apparently caused the water issue--they'd lost power which increased turbidity above legal limits. I took this picture after the storm. Everything was very yellow. The sun was't flaring like this, but this is how my phone translated what it saw.

A random news post from last week: 

I'd rather it was for something like this rather than something life-threatening. My son said that two kids in his dorm (not the one from the post above) decided to have a boxing match in one of the lounges which resulted in one kid having a black eye and a broken nose. I guess one of the kids was drunk and tried to ride down the stairs or something. It might have even been the same kid. 🙁 I do not understand this type of behavior. My son is definitely having his eyes opened to how other people live and behave. I'm not sure that he is very impressed.

Last week I was trying to plan out my projects. I'm happy to report that I made a small amount of progress. I was able to piece the Jimothy block. He's going to be turned into a pillow cover. We need to decide if it will be a bound pillow or a stitch and turn out-type. And he needs to be quilted first. But it's progress! Something to remember for next time is to really reduce the stitch length on the tiny pieces. The pattern is from Getting Jazzy with It. Her instructions were good and I really liked that there were alignment marks on the bigger units so you knew where to line up adjoining paper chunks.

I have decided on a pattern (actually a mash-up) for the dress to wear to the wedding and ordered appropriate fabric and have had the patterns printed. I'm waiting on both to arrive.

I've decided to tackle the smaller of the chicken cross stitches first and have made a small amount of progress. For some reason, I'd stitched one comb and a little bit of body on each project before setting them aside. Anyway, I figured if I started with the smaller, easier one, I'd feel like I accomplished something because it would be easier to finish.

I've considered how to recover the dining room chairs and might go with the easy selection there as well. I'll need to remove the seat from one of the chairs to measure how much fabric I might need and go from there. 

No further progress on anything else. I did order a quilt kit that has a six-week stitch along starting next week. I thought maybe I'd try to work along with that so that I'm not left with yet another UFO. I'm not that into Halloween, but somehow I always get suckered in by cute Halloween projects (see Ghostie Girls runners, still not sewn). Speaking of Halloween, I found a pumpkin vine growing in the rock retaining wall behind my house. The pumpkins in the garden are ready to harvest.

I have made zero progress on my OMG. I have one week. Yikes, thought I had two. Weekend plans, perhaps?

I'm still trying to make my way through my quilting queue. Here are the quilts that I've worked on since last week.

First, three more memory quilts for Annie, quilted with Diagonal Plaid Bias. These all have a strip of t-shirts down the back as well, which you can see in the first picture. I still need to make the binding from the backing and bind three of the four memory quilts.

And Lacy Loops on her other quilt.

Jae decided on Ground Cover for this one.

Other than that, life has been happening. My husband requested help with the blown-in insulation in his barn ceiling. He thought it would take about two hours to put in 30 bags of insulation. He would be up on the ladder and I would feed the batts into the hopper. Despite wearing PPE, I was covered in dust. I was sweating profusely and my nose was running and my mask was soaked in sweat, so it probably didn't really keep me from breathing in the dust. My eyes were in misery and are not yet fully recovered. The hopper did not work well and I had to break every bale into little chunks to get past the safety fencing and push it down in with a stick. Plus I'm still not at 100% health-wise. I made it for two and half hours, in which we got 14 bags installed. His boss kindly came over and helped him finish the job (in another 2.5 hours). At this point, half of the ceiling insulation is in place. I'm not sure how I feel about having to repeat this process to complete the other half of the job.

We met up with my son for lunch on Friday. While leaving campus, we saw a delivery robot. 

He also came home briefly Friday night and we brought him a camera lens Monday evening. I enjoy every second. I won't get to see my daughter for another couple of weeks.

Smoky the rooster has started to do some really creaky crowing most mornings. We're taking that as an encouraging sign because they stay silent when they're ill. Henry leaves the coop most days but has to be put back in at night. Peanut had really been struggling and we unfortunately lost her last night. 😭 Here's a picture of her and Smoky from back in April before all this started. 

Monday morning I heard some weird noises and looked out the window towards the coop. The three bigger hens were in the garden and they were making alarm noises (at a much lower volume than the alarm noises Silkies make) because there was a FOX! NOOO! Smoky wasn't alarming, but he was patrolling the area under the coop. Luckily Henry and Peanut weren't out. The other hens (Penny, Poppy, and Nugget) hopped up into one of the garden tanks and froze. I went out two separate times and circled the entire area, hoping to scare away the fox. Ugh. Not how I wanted my day to start. The entire area is as reinforced as we can get it, above and below ground, but I would hate for a clever critter to figure out how to sneak in and kill our pets. 

Finally, this gem from Kroger. 

The lemons weren't even on this table at all. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I've been thinking about all the things I need to do or would like to do. I probably spend more time thinking about what to do than I do actually doing. Maybe you can relate?

I have two pieces of mending. For one, I haven't been able to find the right color thread. The other isn't immediately urgent, but would be nice to have done and out of my sewing room.

I have plenty of projects that are half-done and several small, new start projects to complete. My daughter wants a Jimothy pillow (from Getting Jazzy with It). I had pulled part of the fabrics about a month ago and one of the times she was home, she picked a background from my stash. However, the fabric I had selected as the main raccoon fur was too close in scale to the background she picked. She really, really wanted to stick with the background fabric, which is a Debbie Mumm print. That should give you an idea of its age. Anyway, we went to the fabric store over the weekend and we eventually agreed upon a new fur fabric. The new fabric is a linen print that they had in the cotton markdown section. I'll need to wash it before I can get going on this one. 

The original and the replacement are the bottom two fabrics.

Since my daughter was home, I made her help me switch out the quilt on her bed. Thankfully the sides are long enough to cover the mattress (at least until I wash and dry it at some point in the future). Here are a few views of it in place, one in natural lighting (dark) and one with the light on. As you can see, she likes her stuffed animals. She is the personality type that likes all her things to be on display (outie) and I'm not (innie), so I usually don't go in her room unless I need to since it's too overwhelming for me. 

It's hard for me to get used to the purple in there. She had a very light pink quilt for 20+ years and four houses plus a rental or two. I'm trying to remember, but I think we've had three different paint colors in the various houses. One more thing from her room. This thing is just about as tall as she is. She puts her clothes on it.

I still haven't started sewing the Ghostie Girls runners that I cut out a few weeks ago. I haven't been able to drag myself down into my sewing room the last few weekends. I did organize all the pieces to try to make it easier to find each one.

I am in need of an evening handwork project, so I pulled out a few knitting projects and a few partially completed small cross stitch projects to pick from. Or, more realistically, to rotate through. One of the knitting projects is a blanket on size 8 needles, so that will be a major commitment. I guess I'm kind of missing the utter mindlessness of the selvedge rugs.

I need to replace the fabric on our dining room chairs. They came with removable slip covers. I can only find two of the six. And they are just light natural canvas, so they show everything. We bought these chairs over 15 years ago and I put laminated cotton on them since the kids were little. Half of them are stained and torn now. It's hard to find laminated cotton these days. I'd prefer that since it's a quick job. Otherwise I'd need to recreate the slip covers and then I'd still have a hard time finding suitable fabric since Jo-Ann is gone. I really miss Jo-Ann.

Finally, we have been invited to an outdoor wedding with a semi-formal dress code. I have about two months to figure out something to wear. Since nothing ready-to-wear ever fits me correctly, I need to choose a pattern, find an appropriate fabric, do all the fitting, and complete it. 😬 I'd kind of forgotten about (or blocked?) this event, probably at least partially due to the dress requirement. 

I found it really hard last week to get any work done. I didn't feel all that great until Thursday and I also had 14 people stop by during the week with their quilts. I did finish a few quilts somehow. These are from Wednesday to Tuesday.

I completed Trudy's quilt, quilted with Star Spangled Banner.

I quilted Cinnamon Swirl on Heidi's quilt.

I bound Carole's t-shirt quilt that I shared last week.

I quilted Winterfest on Heidi's other quilt.

I quilted Diagonal Plaid Bias on the first of four memory quilts Annie made. These will be a bit of a challenge for me with the pieced front and back and the wide variety of fabrics included. I decided to do the most challenging one (front denim overall pocket with snaps) first. I'm supposed to bind all of these. I need to measure and see if there's enough backing fabric left to do the job.

Paula W. agreed to In the Swirls for her quilt and wanted purple thread. 

Jumping over to the great outdoors, my husband harvested a few tiny bell peppers and a watermelon. I've consumed one of the peppers. We haven't cut open the melon yet to see if it's even edible.

We made jalapeño poppers with our 11 coolapenos. They were quite tasty. Definitely better right out of the oven than reheated though.

We'd been discussing how the street sweeper hadn't been through our neighborhood this year. Friday it did come through, but it wasn't the normal one. It didn't use any water, mostly it just seemed to be blowing the dirt around and redistributing it. I couldn't see any of the brushes actually turning.

The sky was rather dramatic Saturday evening. I have a video of some lightning within a cloud, but I'm feeling too lazy to try to upload it. All the clouds we could see had lightning during our walk, but only just flashes within the clouds, never any bolts or anything.

This cloud is lit up mid-lightning flash. Not as fun as the actual flickering, but easier to upload. :)