Stories from the Sewing Room

After visiting with family in Michigan for several days, I'm taking this week off. I decided to alternate between sewing and doing chores.  Sew a little, clean/sort a little. I'll start with sewing since that's usually what people want to see. I have been very slowly plugging away at the test quilt I'm working on, but can't show that yet. I also cut out clue two for the Bonnie Hunter mystery. Here it is, cut and ready to sew.

I started sewing yesterday afternoon and got half of the units done. I have to admit that I found these mind-numbingly boring. That's why only half of them are done. I guess I'd rather sort through boxes and put things away than sew. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I like how they looked in progress.

Here's the first half of the units. As always, visit the Quiltville blog to get your own copy of the instructions. Sorry for the kinda weird picture. I forgot and took the picture on my cutting mat, so had to remove the background.

I unloaded boxes of books into the newly finished bookcases. I'm pretty certain most of the books have been packed up for 10-15 years due to moving a lot and then having the basement under construction. At some point I had stashed some memorabilia from my grandparents in one of the boxes. There are a lot of postcards, some addressed to my grandma and some blank, with the blank ones all being tourist-type cards of landmarks or scenery in various locations around the US. Here's a selection (you know I had to include the flamingo one!) of the postcards. I'm guessing the ones with the kids on them are from the 1920s.

There were also some pictures of my grandpa during WWII, a mostly unused ration book, forms indicating how much pay my grandma would receive while Grandpa was away, and other war-related miscellany. I have no idea how I ended up with this collection of things, but I sure did enjoy looking through them. Here are some pictures of Grandpa along with a rupee that was in the things. I believe he was stationed in India and China.

Many of my fellow bloggers are recapping their years, so I will join in and add my top five posts of the year.

1. The post with the most views is this one from August.

2. The post that brought back happy memories for me is this one from April.

3. Something I am proud of.

4. This post from May because my garden looked really good.

5. This post from November that deserved more views than it got.

I've had a bit of a strange week. I feel like I'm saying that a lot lately. ha.

Friday night my husband and son were at a robotics scrimmage, so I forced my daughter to go on my evening walk with me. I noticed a strange, light orange, vertical line in the sky that looked like airplane exhaust, but it was pitch black out. We were looking at it, and suddenly it became a UFO! It was a line of very bright lights that was fairly slow moving. There was an airplane flying near it and the airplane looked like a speck in comparison. It was so eerie. My daughter thought to pull out her phone and video it. It hovered and then slowly faded away. We wondered what it could be. Our best guesses were something to do with the military or some drones. What do you think it could be? {Answer at the bottom of the post.}

I got a few more quilts completed. The first one is Jodie's Charley Harper quilt, quilted with Bora Bora. I also bound this one.

Next up is Connie's beauty, quilted with In the Swirls (I think this is my most popular design of the year?). This one also was bound by me.

Then I quilted an absolutely huge quilt for Dee. It barely fit on my frame. I'm not sure I will quilt something that large again as I really struggled with having enough space to quilt to the edges.

Finally, this antique one belongs to Beth's family. I quilted it with Diamond Loops and I still need to bind it.

I also took some time to myself and completed the first clue for the Bonnie Hunter mystery. It may be the only time I'm up to date on this one the whole time. 😕

And I took a step towards finishing my OMG for the month. I have block two of #Trending finished. It's a little wonky, but I will make it work. 

We had nice weather Saturday, so we got the flower gardens cleaned up. I do need to pull out more of the 🤬 spearmint since I abandoned my weeding part way through the summer when I got super busy with the client quilting, but most of the rest is ready for winter--just a few more weeds to pull out of the big garden. I got chased away by a mouse running amok.

I'm planning to finish up my last few client quilts of the year over the next week, and then I'm on vacation the rest of the year! I'm hoping to get caught up on more of my UFOs. Have I mentioned that my small guild is having a UFO challenge in the new year? We all know I have plenty of contenders for this challenge. (See my list of UFOs in the tabs at the top of my blog. I called them WIPs).

Oh, I almost forgot. Our UFO sighting was actually the SpaceX Starlink satellite. You can use this tracker to see when it will be visible over your area. It's worth seeing. We were able to see it again on Saturday night with the whole family, though it was definitely not as bright the second night. It looks like this is by design, based on the info on the tracker website.

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

I was feeling like I haven't accomplished much in this past week, then I looked through my photos and saw that I had done a ton of work. I'll share all the quilts I worked on first, then share my sole personal accomplishment for the week.

I quilted and bound Sandy's Haunted Mansion quilt. This is the most fun quilt ever, I think. I tried black batting for the first time and it was perfect for this quilt. Quilted with Malachite.

I quilted three of Amber's holiday quilts. They are all very similar, so just one photo. 

Next I quilted and bound one of Annie's commissioned t-shirt quilts. Her client wanted double batting on this. I had only quilted a mini quilt with double batting before, so this was another new experience. It worked really well, however, I have to say that this quilt was so heavy when complete.

Then I quilted and bound Janice's RBG quilt. This one is going to be a fundraiser. She gave me free reign on the quilting design. I felt that Dissent was the only choice for this.

I started this week by quilting four table toppers for Jae. 

Finally, here is my sole personal accomplishment for the week. I got part of the pieces made for block four of the Flower Patch SAL. Block 5 comes out today, so I'm a bit behind. 

I'm still working on my fabric pull for the next Bonnie Hunter mystery. I'm most of the way done now. I'm waiting until we're further in to choose the aqua and I'm not sure I have enough white yardage, but the rest is done. Annie and I are going to cheer each other on and keep each other on task for this one. 

Bonnie Hunter released her color requirements for this year's mystery quilt over the weekend. I have not yet finished last year's Grassy Creek mystery, though I'm fairly close. My goal for November is to have all units sewn. Here's how it currently looks after spending a little time trimming units over the weekend.

                        Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal November Link-up

Trimming all these was rather tedious. 

I used the Antler Quilt Design Mini Simple Folded Corners ruler {affiliate link} method from Bonnie's directions because I could match my piece and the correct line on the ruler to her instruction images. I was hung up on this step forever until I broke down and bought the ruler.

I also discovered that I'd cut all eleventy-billion rectangles a half inch too big, so I trimmed those to the correct size too.

I started working on my fabric pull for this year's mystery. This is my initial attempt, though I have changed a bit it since then. I decided to stick more to her color scheme for this year. I need to order a few more low volume pieces and will wait til later to purchase the aqua, per her recommendation.

Besides messing a bit with the mystery quilts, I worked on a few quilts. This first one is another of Toni's memory quilts. The backing fabric she used had really great colors. Quilted with In the Swirls and Glide Peacock (a pinky-purple) thread.

I completed two of Sonja's as well. First is the heart quilt, quilted with Ginger Heart and Glide Cotton Candy thread (pale pink). Sonja's been sending me Pellon Bamboo batting for her quilts recently. It is a really nice batting. I love how it quilts.

And her teal triangles quilt, quilted with Mike's Swoosh. She did another masterful job of lining up the pattern in the backing fabric.

I also quilted one of mine. I purchased the top several months ago in an Instagram destash with the intent of finishing it and donating it to the Community Quilts program our guild runs. I finally made time in my schedule to quilt it. My client Ann let me have all the trimmings from her king battings and I was able to seam them and use them for this project. I purchased some wide back fabric from Hancock's of Paducah, quilted it with the Calder pattern and bright green Glide Limerick thread, and bound it with what appeared to be trimmings from a quilt back from my stash. I donated it last night. 😊

Anyway, I used it on the donation top because I knew I wasn't very square on the bottom edge after quilting. In this case, I was pretty accurate after trimming the excess batting away, but you can see that that bottom edge is not square. 

Next, my cute little Highland Cow, last month's OMG, completely made, start to finish, in October.

And finally, my 365 Challenge quilt that I made in 2016 and finished in 2019. You can see my guild mate Natalie's amazing rainbow version next to it. She wanted me to enter mine so they could hang together. I actually caught a woman completely manhandling my quilt during the show. Ummm...are you new? We have white glove volunteers for a reason. My husband confronted the woman. And to top that off, I got to hear some women near her completely ripping apart my quilt and my color choices. 🙄 

PS--goodies from the show: a purchased quilt kit and a few Treasure Shop gems.