Stories from the Sewing Room

I'm feeling frustrated by technology. I currently cannot email anyone with a Yahoo email address, which includes ATT and SBC Global amongst others. I have a general idea of what the issue is, but without spending a lot of money for additional email services, I can't fix it. I will post responses directly on my blog post if I can't get my email to go through. I am sorry. 

In other news, I have done some really boneheaded things in my sewing lately. Somehow I managed to suck a piece of batting off a table and get it stuck in the long arm bars while I was loading a quilt backing. Sadly, this is not the only dumb thing I've done.

I decided to take a break from all the binding and spent an afternoon working on my own things. Here's how my updated to-do list looks.

1. Add last two borders to Finding Neverland quilt. Seam backing. 🔜

I have the inner borders on. One more set of wider borders and the backing seam to go!

I forgot to unfold a strip set I was sewing and then realized I had been sewing without bobbin thread for like 100". At least the fix was easy. 

3. Fix the elastic in the gingham skirt. ✅

Of course this didn't go smoothly. I put a safety pin in one end of the elastic and forgot to do the other. The safety pin opened while in the waistband channel and hooked in the lining. The other end shot way back in the channel. I had to undo more seam to be able to fish both out. It was not fun at all, but I stuck with it and got it done. 💪 I removed 4.75" of elastic. 

4. Resume work on the sloper. 🚫

5. Work on the postcard from big guild. 🚫

6. Cut Meadow Mist Mystery quilt. 🚫

All the fabrics are washed now.

7. Figure out the Beach Bumz class quilt. 🚫

8. Continue working on the behind-the-scenes tasks for business. 🚫

Like I started off with, I am feeling very frustrated with technology and the services I use right now. I'm waiting a bit til I cool off, plus I have other things that are more urgent.

Out in the garden, there's more weirdness in this odd growing season. I had harvested enough cucumbers to make a batch of freezer pickles. {Link to recipe. Note that it says they keep only 6 months in the freezer, but I haven't noticed much degradation in a year.} I had part of them laying on the counter because they had a ton of dirt on them. I had the cleaner cukes in the crisper drawer. The ones in the crisper drawer got moldy and had to be discarded. 😫 I did have enough to make a half-batch of pickles, so I guess it turned out okay. 

My daughter was home over the weekend and I asked her to go out in the garden with me Sunday morning to plant another crop of peas and lettuce. We had heavy rains Saturday night into Sunday and the soil was too wet to also plant lettuce. I was looking at my tomato plants and I discovered hornworms. 😫😫 She got the two I found onto the shovel and fed them to the chickens. I couldn't bring myself to look for more. 

After she fed them to the chickens, she looked them up and discovered that they grow into hummingbird moths. She was sad to have destroyed them. I was not. There are also army worms on my vegetables. 🤮 We think we found a few spongy moth caterpillars on the road. I really hope Google's ID was wrong. No more scourges!

On the plus side, we are growing several baby watermelons. 

We have three pumpkins growing (that I can find).

Several of the sunflowers are blossoming. Most of them got eaten by the deer and the ones that are blossoming are plants that regrew after being nibbled. They are resilient.

I wish I was wealthy enough to hire a gardener. I don't do well with bugs and critters and snakes. I can't keep up with my big flower garden by myself. I haven't even tried to deal with it since I hurt my foot in May. Speaking of the foot, my podiatry appointment is this week, three months after the injury.

Most of the repairs are complete on the house. My husband is now moving towards re-forming the front porch. The step heights will be different than before and we're trying to wrap our heads around how they should be spaced. We can't actually have the termite treatment done until all repairs and porch forms are done. 

In the quilting area, I have stitched Good Vibrations on Jeri's quilt. 

I also bound this one. I like this backing fabric.

I bound both of Jeri's quilts that I shared last week.

I quilted Moons and Stars on Shirley's quilt.

I quilted Hopscotch on Gina's quilt. I will fully bind this one.

I quilted Squatty Squares on Gina's quilt. Another full bind. 

I'll leave you with this cool sunset from Monday night. 

I had a good showing at the county fair. I entered four pieces. The first one is the table runner that you've seen recently. I made it the weekend before the entry day and finished binding it the night before. It won Champion in the table runner entry.

The judge's comments were: 

• Love these fabric coordinates
• Piecing nicely done
• Nice quilting!
• Nice job on binding!

Next is the one I thought would do the best, the appliquéd wallhanging I finished earlier this year. It won Champion in the wallhanging class. As you may recall, this one has a double batting and came out really stiff. It was displayed in the glass case and it just sort of curved over the shelf. 😄

The judge's comments were:

• Beautiful (in the fabric mark)
• Applique is nicely done. 
• Quilting really kicks it up a bunch and gives it dimension
• Good job!!

The one that I thought best represents my style out of these entries is the Loves Me, Loves Me Not sampler (pattern by Patty Dudek). It also won a Champion ribbon in the smaller quilts (less than 60" x 60") entry. 

The judge's comments were:

• Pretty fabrics!!
• Piecing is nicely done!
• Quilting is complimentary (sic).
• Love the flange in the binding.

And finally, the Jamestown sampler, AKA the Batesville quilt. If you've been around a while, you've heard me grumbling about it at length. I entered this one because it had a lot of intricate piecing and also the judge from last year was really into more traditional fabrics. I don't mind traditional fabrics and of course I do some more traditional projects now and then, but they are not what my first pick is going to be. Anyway, this one won Grand Champion and got to be displayed on the stage with the other GCs from all the categories. While I figured this would get a champion, I was not expecting the Grand Champion, so that was fun!

I won a premium of $4 ($1/champion ribbon). It does not cost anything to submit entries to the fair. We paid $15 (3 adults) to visit the fair once I found out I'd won Grand Champion. We looked at all the open class entries, the 4-H pigeons and the chicken/turkey barn. It was super hot and humid the afternoon we went, so we opted to skip the other animals. One of the people I quilt for sent me this picture of many of the Grand Champion exhibits.

I've been busy quilting for others. (I really could use that second machine right now.) The first quilt I completed belongs to Deb and is quilted with Spring Thing.

Next I quilted Jae's quilt with Christmas Garland.

I was able to get Tamara's quilt in over the weekend for a rush job. Quilted with Cakewalk.

I quilted Sara's quilt with Neon Hearts. 

I quilted both of Susan's monster quilts with Cakewalk.

The big porch tear-off project has started. All of the columns are now removed from the porch. It looks so weird. 

I guess the deer needed to check out what was going on. 

Thankfully the white part of the columns and the stone bases came off with minimal damage.

The garden has been bare here for a week or so and is now growing lots of weeds, particularly spurge (hard to get out) and horse nettle. My husband has started to make a few cuts in the cement. I think the siding needs to come off soon. 

Local, state, and federal news are all depressing. I think it's time to take a media diet again. My son scored well enough on his AP Lang test to get college credit for the college freshman English class. Guess what he's signed up to take as his English class this fall? LOL. School starts in less than a month. The budget cuts are going to hurt. 

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.

It's time to share my PHD progress for June. Spoiler...not much got done. 

Linking with Ms. P Designs

I made a small amount of progress on 2025 Start #2, the Forever Neverland quilt. I've prepped 11 blocks. After that, it's just assembling lots of different borders around the panel.

My sewing time over the past week was devoted to working on my Cashmerette Sloper. I did a 3/4" narrow shoulder adjustment and a 3/8" round back adjustment. I also had to size up the skirt. 😒 Things look a lot better now. I still need to shorten the stomach curve, move the elbow and bust darts, and add length to the adjustment line on the skirt. And something with the underarm area. I'm not sure what else I have left after that, but we are very near the end of the class. 

I also worked on my secret project for my small guild. I'm about 1/3 of the way done with that project.

I worked on two quilts for others. The first one belongs to Shirley and is quilted with Cosmos. It took me two days to complete.

This Circle City Sampler belongs to Haley. She requested Baptist Fan and a light peach thread. I used Sunkissed Peach. I do still need to make the binding and apply it to the front. Something fun about this quilt is that I have a kit to make the same one! I collected mine from a 2023 shop hop. The pattern is now available from the designer here.

I harvested a few more peas from the garden. The plants are looking pretty bad now, but the other things I've planted are finally starting to have some good growth. Oh, note about the peas: I selected the purple peas because they are easier to see for harvest. I can't really remember, but I might have also originally picked this variety because I thought my picky son would be willing to try something that looked exotic. Not every pea the plant produces is purple. The leaves look very different than that of the more standard Burpee peas I also planted this year. The purple peas (and green beans) turn green when cooked. Look at last week's post for more info.

This used to be a hosta. 🦌 Surprisingly, they left all the transplanted day lilies in the front garden alone. They did eat all the lily buds in this side garden.

Besides that, I am blessed with an abundance of work and a pile of chores and some stress over a very large, unexpected medical bill. The second longarm is put back together again and most of the intelliQuilter is installed. The cable that runs to the handles is not compatible with my machine and we've ordered what we hope is the correct thing. If not, I'm gonna be out a lot more money. Fingers crossed it works out. My husband is about ready to start tearing off the front porch. I'm a little stressed right now. 

• make 15 guild items (secret) In progress.      

• keep up with quilting workload Still one behind where I'd like to be, but on track.

• figure out what to do with sloper for class

• tighten elastic in tiered gingham skirt & hand sew shut the weird waistband gaps

• make progress on Forever Neverland quilt

            No further progress. I have all the remaining pinwheel blocks (11) prepped and laid out, ready to sew.

• table runner

I had laid out my fabrics ahead of time to have good color balance. I don't know what happened, but the colors aren't balanced at all. Oh well.

• figure out fair entries prior to June 25

• make progress on race car quilt prior to OMG post on June 24 posted yesterday
• weed all three flower gardens

• figure out how and where to transplant things I want to keep from the upper garden to prepare for porch repair

        He had me show him which plants I wanted to save and next thing I know, he's weeded the flower beds and replanted part of the plants to fill in holes in the two upper gardens. I helped a bit with moving the rest to the side of the barn. The upper bed transplants are doing well. The ones by the barn and struggling. I think they sat out too long before being replanted. We'll probably lose most of them. 

Freshly weeded and with several transplants that look like they've always been there.

The area next to the porch to the right of the front door is now barren. I need to get back behind that tree and weed there now that it's accessible. It's been so blooming hot and humid that I'm waiting until the temperature breaks.

This was Friday night. By Sunday the rose bush looked totally dead and everything else, mostly bee balm and day lilies, looked very worse for wear.

• continue to work on business website issues No progress
• make muslin of shorts pattern to see if they fit/if so, make some shorts (Why are all the shorts I see this year so short--like 3" inseams? I'm too old for that.) No progress
• continue working on things needed to set up second longarm & iQ

        We started doing the foot change-out. This involved basically undoing everything we had done for setup so far. We removed the old foot shaft and inserted the new one. As you put in the new bushings, you have to put in a special glue and then, once in place, you have to rotate the shaft every five minutes for half an hour and then every 15 minutes for the next half hour. At that point, you have to leave it perfectly level on its side for eight hours. Mine sat longer than that  until we could work on it again. We have reinstalled the innards and moved the machine back onto the carriage. We had to remove the hook to get the shaft out, so reinstalling and retiming is our next task. Once we get all that done and the table reassembled, I think we can proceed with starting the iQ installation. I still need to fix my silly goof with the extra SewTite bar as well. I think I can bring my travel sewing machine over there and just unroll the leader a bit without having to fully remove it again.

Here's the inside with several parts missing.

Another of Terry's quilts, quilted with Simply Sunflowers. She requested turquoise thread on this one. I used Lagoon. 

Next is Valynda's quilt, quilted with Basic Swirl. 

Finally, Shirley's sheep quilt, quilted with Cinnamon Roll. I just love the border fabric she used for this! I think it really sets off the whole thing. Also, I think this is the first of this quilt pattern (Coriander Quilts?) that I've received for quilting. 

One thing I think I should try for next year is putting straw on all the beds. We have it on the asparagus container and it stays so much more moist than the other containers.

I'll be back Tuesday with July's One Monthly Goal and Wednesday with my regular post. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.