Stories from the Sewing Room

I am happy to share my fully completed Loves Me, Loves Me Not quilt. 

I decided to do a flanged binding on this one. I haven't used this technique in quite a few years. I'm definitely rusty. It turned out okay, but not as nice as ones I did in the past. Maybe I need to gently press it so that it looks sharper. I think I might have had my proportions a bit off too. Oh well, the quilt is done, so it's good enough for me.

I'm struggling to get photos that accurately depict the fabrics. The background is white Blossoms by Riley Blake. I also used Moda Grunge (in turquoise?? can't find my order), Cotton + Steel Stitch and Repeat in Sorbet, and an old print from Denyse Schmidt. Backing is Riley Blake swiss dots in navy on white.

The pattern is by Patty Dudek (of Elm Creek Quilts and One Monthly Goal fame) and is available for purchase here. 

I've had a tough few weeks, nothing I want to discuss publicly, but it's been mentally exhausting. I am still working along to meet my commitments, and almost everything outside of my longarming jobs is complete. Woo hoo!

I've been thinking about what I want to work on next. Right now I think I'm going to assemble my Women's Voices blocks into a quilt top and get that finished. I have another block of the month-type program that also needs to have the setting pieced, and I'll probably work on that one after Women's Voices. And then reward myself with a new project. Maybe even in between those two projects. 😏 I'm no longer that interested in many of my unfinished things, though I feel like I should finish them if possible since I started them. 

I did manage to complete a few quilting jobs over the past week. The first one belongs to Lauren. She selected Boho Boxes for her quilting and we used Glide Sprout for the thread. I am working on binding this one.

Next up is a secret project belonging to K. It's quilted with Mountain Range. Very small portion of the quilt so as to keep it secret. :)

Finally, Charlene's LSU quilt. She picked Slick for her pattern and wanted purple thread. We picked Glide Raven since it matches the LSU purple. (I think it's Baltimore Ravens purple. 😀)

Things are moving along here, mostly slowly, but still forward motion. I completed my Melodic Mystery top over the weekend. In case you didn't see my OMG Link Up post Monday, here is my quilt top. I have a vague plan to custom quilt it at some point. I shared it on the Meadow Mist Facebook page and am feeling really flattered by all the positive attention/feedback it's getting. 🥹

I finished ripping out the stitching on my Loves Me, Loves Me Not top over the weekend and re-quilted it yesterday with my original pick, which I should have done in the first place. Here it is in progress. I quilted it with the African Foliage design. 

I'm planning a flanged binding on this one and will hopefully complete it within the week and do the full reveal after.

I'm also working on a secret project. I'm slowly making progress on it, but it doesn't make for decent blog content. 😏

I will soon have most of my personal quilt commitments completed and I am pondering what I might like to work on next. I picked up a recent copy of Quiltmaker magazine over the weekend and I really want to make this quilt. I don't think I actually have enough of the correct colors in my stash to do it, but it is sooooo tempting!

I would like to reduce my UFO list, so I probably need to look there first. I'm okay with having a ton of things in the to-be-quilted pile since my longarm time is at a premium, but I'm not okay with my quantity of half-done quilt tops. I think I will start assembling my long-neglected Women's Voices blocks. I liked the idea of this project when I started it around 2000, but the fabrics are not to my taste and times change and this pattern was written in a way that I found somewhat incomprehensible and I'm ready to be done with it.  {Side note: a good amount of people have contacted me over the years, asking me to provide copies of the pattern to them. This pattern is still available for purchase from the designer and I respect designers and their copyrights. Also--sketch out the block yourself; it will probably be easier to understand than what was provided.}

Unfortunately, past me didn't leave very good notes with the assembly instructions on what still needed to be done--maybe some sashing and definitely outer borders. Past me also didn't do the best job on piecing some of the blocks. We'll just say it adds to its historical charm. 

I've quilted just a few things over the last week. I hope I don't sound like a constant advertisement when I share these. That isn't my ever my intention. It's just what I did in my sewing room during the week and hopefully you like seeing a bit of what other people are working on. Kind of like a show and tell. 

This first one belongs to Sara. We decided on Grandmother's Bubbles for the pattern and she stepped out of her gray thread comfort zone to go with Glide Sprout. (I did use gray thread on the back though. 😄) It looks so good! 

Next I worked on Amber's Confetti Star. I love that Amber loves color. I picked Toss Up for her design and she wanted neutral thread. She hasn't seen it yet. I hope she loves it!

I also quilted Amber's baby quilt. I decided on Stipple for this one since there are a lot of seams and baby quilts get washed a lot.

Keetah wanted the Play Baseball design on her quilt. This is one I don't offer (not listed on my website) unless someone asks for it specifically because I don't love how the lacing part of the design stitches out. I'd love to find a better baseball design that isn't too fussy and that doesn't snap the thread on the lacing.

Out in the garden, things are slow. The weird weather is not helping things. We did clear out all the flower beds over the weekend, minus the 🤬 spearmint. I pulled out some of that, but there is always more and more. My irises are very stubby, but they are budding. I noticed a few in the neighborhood that are already blooming. It's way early for irises. Then again, the daffodils started very early this year too. The redbuds are about halfway through and the dogwoods are full force, as are my allergies.

My upper front garden needs a big re-do, but I'm not in a rush because sooner than later we need to remove the front porch and columns (ugh!) to fix what an incompetent subcontractor did--didn't insert the provided rebar, so the porch is sinking and pulling away from the house. Super UGH! We have this evergreen standard out there and I had noticed cardinals and robins going in and out. I cannot believe it, but they both have nests in there, with eggs, about 6" apart. 

We haven't seen any hummingbirds yet, but the orioles have returned. Edited to add: first hummingbird was spotted in the afternoon, after I posted this.

We are nearing the end of the school year. I volunteered for something in the community that I thought would be a quick thing. It's not. It requires a lot of time and effort and has a very quick, very firm completion date. So I'll be trying to meet my commitment while keeping up with everything else. No good deed goes unpunished, right? These next few weeks will be a bit stressful for me.

Let's leave with something more positive, shall we? You know how I've mentioned that people seem to drive into buildings a lot in this town? We went into town the other day and noticed this. Sure looks like someone drove into it. Okay, so maybe that's not really positive, but I find it amusing because I am just astounded at how many people drive into or through things here. 

And I made this Mexican Rice recipe for dinner the other night. It was easy and quite tasty. This one is a positive. 🙂

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation, For the Love of Geese, Alycia Quilts, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Last week we took a trip to one of my favorite places. 

We got really lucky because every single thing we went in for was in stock or able to be ordered and delivered within a few days. You might recall me discussing our 10-month quest to gather parts for a closet remodel. {Which hasn't even been started yet...} I've noticed that a lot of things have really gone up in price here, too. But I still love the simplicity and use of space.

We underestimated the size of some of the boxes. Everything just barely fit in the car.

My son was very excited that the desk he wanted was in stock. We didn't think that would be the case based on the website. It said the desktop wasn't in stock. They had tons. We did get the last Alex unit though. He has resurrected our ancient Mac (not pictured) and made himself a little workplace.

We are doing some customization on all the other pieces we purchased. My husband's been hard at work in the garage. Hopefully by next week I will have a clean living room with new, customized furniture that I can share. 

I had a bit of an accident with my sewing chair last week. It had been making horrible noises  every time I moved for a few months. I was talking to my husband on the phone, told him my chair felt funny, and boom. Down I went. The chair broke in half. I did not drop the phone, but my daughter was upstairs and heard me thud onto the floor. I bruised up my arm/elbow pretty good, but nothing else. The chair base used to connect there.

I already had a replacement chair picked out, but it turns out it is discontinued, so no chair for me. My husband found (he thinks) a replacement part for my existing chair. It's on order and I might get it within a month. We'll see. I'm back to using my antique bench, which is quite comfortable, but stationary. So I keep moving it back and forth between the computer and the sewing machine.

I've done a very small amount of personal sewing this week. I made some small throw pillows for our chairs.  This project has been in the purchased-but-not-started category since November. That's actually a pretty short time for me. The big delay came because I couldn't figure out how to insert the zippers. I finally found a tutorial here that made sense. 

Even though I lined up the zippers and matched centers and edges and so forth, when I sewed the zipper using the invisible zipper foot for my machine, the pattern did not line up. I took more care with the second pillow than the first and it still did not line up. Perhaps this is where the built in even feed on some machines would be useful?

I was successful at lining up the pattern on the tops of the pillows, so that was good enough.

The only other personal sewing I achieved this week is completing the next two blocks of the Loves Me, Loves Me Not QAL.

I did quilt a few quilts.

First is the quilt I teased last week. Paula expertly pieced this one and it is my most favorite quilt I've been sent ever. 😃 It's a quilt full of Harry Styles! How fun is that!?! The quilting design is Interlocked Orange Peel. 

This is an interesting pattern because the line drawing looks like this:

But when you zoom in all the way, it looks like this:

So the challenge is to try to get the intersections to line up as closely as possible to give the illusion of touching, but they will probably never touch. Here's a detail shot of one of my own quilts that I used the same design on. Can you see how they don't quite touch?

The next quilt I did is Ann's t-shirt quilt. This one, like Harry, has a minky backing. Ann graciously let me quilt Diagonal Plaid on it. 

Next I quilted Baptist Fans on Lyn's Irish Chain quilt. 

And then Swirling on Ann's Melodic Mystery quilt.

These last three are all very large quilts!

The only other things of note this week are that something ate all my tulips before they had a chance to bloom. 😭 This is the only spot in the yard I can actually grow tulips (until now).

The link up for OMG finishes opens on Saturday. Stop back to see if I will complete my goal or not. 😬

Linking with For the Love of Geese, My Quilt Infatuation, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.