Stories from the Sewing Room

I'm happy to report that things have calmed down in our lives. I finally did some personal sewing! I think it's been close to a month since I last sewed something other than binding for clients. My skills have grown rusty in that time. I cut out all the pieces to the Free Block Friday block 5. These blocks were a joint venture between Angie Wilson of Gnome Angel and Marti Michell in 2022 and use Marti's templates.  

I struggled to get anything to line up properly in this block. I'm not sure if my cutting was off, my seam allowance was off, or some combo of the two. I took apart and re-sewed many parts of this and it just didn't get any better, so I am leaving it. 

The rest of the week I will be completing my Cashmerette Sloper School assignment, which is to cut out and totally assemble the sloper from the pattern I assembled last week. My pattern grading was very simple compared to several of the participants' posts that I perused. I only had to grade the skirt in two sizes; no changes were required to the bodice or sleeves. I used to be fairly rectangular, but now I guess I'm an inverted triangle or a circle with legs. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Middle age hasn't been kind to my waistline. Depending how brave I'm feeling and how it fits, I may or may not share it next week. In the remaining eight weeks of class we will work our way down the sloper, making adjustments to one body area at a time, with the final week spent learning how to use the sloper to fit other patterns.

Zero progress has been made thus far on my May OMG. 

*free* I have two gallon bags full of selvedges up for grabs for anyone who can use them. I'll send them to you for free if you're in the US. If you're elsewhere, you'll have to pay the shipping. Leave a comment below or message me if you want them. 

I've completed quite a few quilts for others. This first one belongs to Mary Ann. She requested Interlocked Orange Peel for the quilting. I've stitched this pattern many times with no issues, but I think my machine had gremlins the day I quilted this. I think the overall effect is good; just use the galloping horse theory.

Next I quilted three quilts made by three sisters. It's fun to see how different the same pattern looks in different fabrics. Brenda left hers up to me and I picked Toss Up and lavender thread.

Jan also had me pick. I used Seagrass Pearls for hers. 

Jo Ellen requested Cakewalk for her quilting. It was a great choice. I love that these sisters all sew together. 

I moved on to Teah's group of quilts next. She wanted Cone Flower on her Groovy quilt. She repurposed an unused sheet for the backing and it coordinated so well. I have two more to go.

If you're wondering about how everything from last week turned out, I think my daughter's rent situation is under control with a fair compromise. No progress has been made on the front porch. One garden retaining wall is complete. One barn retaining wall still needs to be created. We'll need to get mulch and more stone to finish the retaining wall projects. 

Despite my neglect of the lower garden, one of my favorite Crater Lake Blue irises has started blooming.

As have the Caesar's Brother Siberian iris. The white Immortality iris always do well. They are re-bloomers.

I can't wait to see what this peony looks like. I think it's only ever had one bloom, and I think that was two years ago. I think the buds got eaten last year? Can't remember, but I know for sure it's never had this many buds.

Back indoors, I moved around many things in the basement in order to make room to set up the second long arm. We've set up the frame and are letting it settle into place in the carpet so we can level it prior to adding the machine & carriage. Its new home, in the former exercise alcove, is going to be a tight fit. It's on the opposite side of the basement from my sewing room--maybe I'll get lots more steps in moving between the two machines. We moved the treadmill into the guest bedroom (Yay! I can look out the window now!) and moved the ping pong table into the main living room where we used to host robotics. I've been waiting years to play ping pong! We'll need to deal with all the robotics parts after we finish our last tournament in June. 

There are many things in the basement that I need to find new homes for. We've done most of the donating, but have things we'd like to sell that I need to deal with, like collectible toys and some smaller furnishings--ooh, and my little fabric venture. Wouldn't you like to buy some fabric from me? I need to free up some space! Link is at the bottom of the page. 😉  

The main event from last week, the alleged attempted break-ins on another street in my subdivision, has had an interesting twist. We were originally told that three masked teenagers were attempting to break into two homes and that shots were fired nearby. The police were driving through the neighborhood, shining lights into people's yards. We personally heard the shots and saw the police. That was Saturday night. No one has responded to my query of who fired the shots and whether it was related. 

Wednesday our young neighbor friends texted about the flyer they received. WE didn't receive a flyer, but most of our surrounding neighbors did. The flyer, loaded with misspellings, had a security photo taken of two of the "hooligan" teens, one of whom was wearing a luchador mask. It said that teens were "vigorously pounding on the doors" and waiting in the shadows to see who answered the door. Okay, since when do robbers knock at the door and then wait for an answer? The flyer boldly asserted that the teens were "not adolescences performing childish pranks." Most of the neighbors we talked to felt that it was a case of ding dong ditch, but that wearing the masks was risky, particularly with shots fired. 

My husband texted another person in the neighborhood whose son is the same age as ours to see if they had received the flyer. They hadn't, but felt the need to inform us that these teens would receive an unwelcome surprise on their street since all the (two) houses in their cul-de-sac are armed. !!!!! So...you're going to fire your guns at kids?? Yikes. 

Anyway, we and our young neighbors are fairly certain we know who the (yes, neighborhood, "hooligan") kids are, but since we haven't been included and I think it was just a prank, and I don't want to falsely accuse, I'm keeping their names to myself. There are only a few other residents in the neighborhood that have been here longer than we have and I know most people at least by sight in our half of the neighborhood, but many of these people don't ever interact with their neighbors. I think it causes issues.

Sometimes I wonder what the police think when people call for things that aren't really things, like when another neighbor called the police because their elderly neighbor mowed a bit onto their lawn, or when same people called police because teens were being loud on a golf cart. 🙄 

I just realized that my son has just over a week of school to go this year. It sure has flown by, yet when I look back through my pictures from this year, it's also felt really long. He's opted not to attend the prom this weekend because he's unwilling to wear nice clothing. 🫤 And with that, I leave you until next week.

Take care, friends.

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

I've been busy working outdoors, so not much sewing is going on. I made the fourth block of the Free Block Friday program I've been s-l-o-w-l-y working on for a year or so. These blocks were a joint project between Marti Michel and Angie Wilson of Gnome Angel. They use Marti's templates. Here is the block all cut out--I think it takes longer to cut this way than to sew. I was able to reuse the triangles I cut out of block three. 

And here is the finished block. 

Here is my design wall with the blocks sort of in their layout. 

I took the clear foot class for my serger yesterday. The clear feet are all used with the coverstitch. The clear regular foot is extremely helpful for coverstitching as it gives better visibility for lining up your stitches. I don't think most of the additional clear feet are as useful as the additional metal ones for regular serging. 

I have plans to make a tiered skirt using Love Notions' Caprice pattern. I have the pattern cut out and I have my fabric. I was trying to decide between two sizes and also whether to line the skirt since the gingham I have is not fully opaque. I decided to wait until after the serger class so that I wasn't switching everything back and forth. I might try it today. 

I've completed three quilts for others. The first one belongs to Melissa. Can you believe this is the first Exploding Heart quilt I've quilted? I feel like that pattern has been everywhere for a while now. I love the hot pink thread (Glide Rhododendron) we decided on. I also fully bound this quilt. Oh, quilted with Freehand Hearts and Loops, perfect choice.

Next is Trish's Bear Paw quilt. She selected Malachite for the quilting and we used 60-wt thread so that it kept the focus on the fabric and piecing rather than the quilting. She did a really great job. Everything, front and back, was so square.

Finally, Shelly's first quilt. This one has a surprise--the backing is baseball team and IU fabrics! It's quilted with Boho Boxes. 

Now, on to the gardening. Here is how the new vegetable garden looked on Friday. 

We built tanks on Saturday and Sunday. These are the sky blue color from Vego Garden. We picked this color because it was the cheapest. 🙂 It's kind of a blue-ish gray. After building the four, we decided we could comfortably fit four more. Those are on order. I hope they come soon. 

It's been a challenge to buy dirt because the weather has been spotty again and they are open when it's nice out. The current plan is to build and fill with dirt the remaining four and then put the fencing around the posts. My husband's been pulling some of the rocks left over from blasting out the basement to use as a little retaining wall around the outside. I need to get the asparagus starts planted, but haven't made it there yet (due to weather and being tired after work). Plus, how am I going to protect them from the deer until we're ready for fencing installation?

As you can see, our crabapples are staring to blossom.  We have this one that is a nice shade of bright pink, a more common reddish pink one, and then one that starts with pink buds that open to white. I'll try to get a picture of that one some time. It's really unusual. 

I also dug out a bunch more of the lamb's ear, this time on the outside of the sidewalk. The kids and I weeded the side and back garden beds. I still have a lot more lamb's ear to remove. I haven't even started cleaning up the big lower garden yet. Many of our neighbors have started mowing and poisoning already. I've had to close my windows due to the strong chemical odor. 😒 I'm enjoying my poison-free meadow in the front. I love dandelions and so do our local bees. Several of my neighbors maintain hives.

I saw an orchard oriole on the bird feeder Monday. I guess that means the Baltimores aren't that far behind and I need to put out the jelly feeder. I bought a new hummingbird feeder over the weekend and need to put that one out too. I haven't seen any hummingbirds yet, but I'm expecting them any day now. 

We had my son's NHS induction last week. I was shocked that 176 kids, almost totally juniors, were admitted. That's more than my total graduating class, more than my husband's, more than my sister's. It's probably about 1/3 of his class. Afterward I was trying to take a picture of him with a few of his friends. I didn't have on my reading glasses, so I didn't really know what I had captured. He asked if I had "L" in the picture. I didn't, so I made everyone pose again and took another picture. I thought it seemed like it would look nice. I didn't look at the first one until we got home and it was truly awful! One kid was way further forward than everyone else so he was much larger, one kid was eating cake and really blurry, and my son's head was turned so that it looked like he was sniffing a flower as large as his head due to the perspective. I laughed and laughed. So glad we took the second photo. Wish I could share, but don't want to publish photos of other people's kids.

Thursday afternoon I took a break from work to go out to a celebratory lunch with my husband, who had just completed the leadership class he's been taking most of the school year. We went to DSW so I could try to find some shoes. I tried on so many, but no luck. I did find one pair of Clarks that fit, but in a color I didn't need. I came home and found those shoes online in a different color and ordered some additional Clarks too. Not always the look I want, but at least they fit. I should be set for shoes for quite some time. I wear out tennis shoes really fast, but other than that, I usually have my shoes for years on end.

We finished watching the current season of Vienna Blood. My prediction for the culprit was the correct one. I got another side of my Melodic Mystery quilt bound. One more side to go. Will I make it before the OMG link up? We have another busy week with lots of events. Stay tuned.

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.

I don't know what got into me, but I had a very productive weekend. I got the vast majority of the house cleaned, I convinced the menfolk to pick up and put away all the robotics stuff so that my basement living room is clean, and I completed some big sewing tasks!

I've been very slowly working on a Gnome Angel/Marti Michel Free Block Friday quilt. I kept staring at the block 3, thinking I needed to switch out one of the colors. I finally did it. Here is the before.

And here is the after. It might be a bit hard for you to see, but I switched out the gray bits in between the green for pink pieces. I'm happy with the switch. It looks more cohesive with the other blocks I've completed and I just really prefer how it looks.

I also prepped my Palmer Pletsch fitting pattern, pressing, taping, and marking seam lines, so that it is ready whenever I can get someone to help me with it. This photo does not make it look like I've pressed the pieces. 🤨

My daughter came home for the weekend. The kids and I started watching the current season of Vienna Blood and I got another side of my Melodic Mystery quilt bound. I'm now halfway! I think I have two weeks or so to finish up before I need to do the OMG finish post. Also, I'm really glad she's planning to come back again this weekend because I really want to finish watching the show!!! And I like seeing her.

Saturday we were having very heavy rain. I cleaned, worked, and then decided to finally deal with my fear of quilting a double batt with wool on top. This little piece is a kit I bought from Julia Quiltoff. It came with backing, top background fabric, laser-cut fusible appliqués, fabric to make a binding, and two pieces of batting. The top piece of batting is wool. I'm not sure what batting the bottom piece was other than a general guess at a cotton/poly blend or maybe just cotton. There was a free video class on how to appliqué (by machine, nothing groundbreaking or new there) and also a video class on quilting (mostly watching her quilt, which is nice to watch, but doesn't necessarily translate to success). I had tried to quilt it one other time but struggled to fit the double batting under my longarm's foot. 

I really didn't want to have to adjust the foot height, so I used one of my low-profile feet, which meant no ruler work. I had to add extra fabric "leaders" to the top and bottom of the backing piece so that I had enough clearance for my actual longarm leaders. I had to be really careful at the edges because the wool batting was fluffy and loose. I did catch the foot in the batting fibers a few times and had to stop and untangle. I quilted this piece similarly to Julia's sample piece. 

Off to a pretty good start.

Things I learned/noticed/remembered:

    1. I get really tired after 15 - 30 minutes of quilting in this style. I should stop and take breaks because my quality and accuracy decrease, however, my personal quilting time is very limited, so I pushed through on this piece. It took me about two hours to quilt this 20" x 21" piece. 

I can tell I'm starting to lose the plot. You can really see the wool batting poof in the unquilted areas.

    2. The less-quilted parts have nice loft, especially the bigger butterfly, but the end product is so stiff that it can almost stand up on its own. I'm not sure if it's due to the quilting density, the fabrics, the battings, or some combo of the three. 

I'd forgotten to quilt a small bit here and you can really see how much the batting compresses with quilting.

    3. I think the scale I quilt in gets smaller and smaller the more tired I get. 

    4. If I could practice this style of quilting more often, I think I would have less bobbles and mistakes. Maybe my backtracking would be more accurate. Practice makes perfect. 

    5. I think the front looks pretty good, but the back shows every single mistake I made.

I believe I'm going to enter this in the fair and they require some hanging method for small pieces. I added hanging corners during binding because this thing is so stiff I don't want to try to sew on a hanging sleeve. These corners may be a bit small, but I just used backing trimmings, so it is what is is.

Linking with Quiltery, Alycia Quilts, Andree's Free Motion Mavericks, and From Bolt to Beauty.

I am thankful to have a steady stream of work right now. I completed five quilts for others since last week.

The first two belong to Charlene. She picked Taffeta for this quilt.

And Van Gogh for this one.

Trudy selected Ginger Snap for her quilt.

Hannah requested Lovely Loops for her adorable baby quilt. I bound this one and sent it on back to her.

Finally, Sonja picked Cloud Nine Petite for this quilt. She is a master at mixing yardage and reclaimed fabric in her quilts. The back of this one had the most darling little 3/4" HST section. I quilted this one from the bottom up to make sure I used as much of that little panel as possible. That means that I attach the bottom of the backing to my back roller and the top of the backing to the roller closest to me. Then I quilt from the bottom of the quilt top up to the top. I do this if I have a backing that already has a label attached so that I can make sure the label is right where I want it. If you try this technique, don't forget to flip your pattern over the X axis, particularly if it's a more directional design. 

If you look closely, you can see the tiny HST Sonja included in the backing right along the edge of the photo.

We've not made much progress on getting the vegetable garden up and running. The weather has made it basically impossible. We've had tornado warnings, loads of rain, flooding, and now freeze warnings. The asparagus crowns arrived Monday and they are chilling in the fridge until we can get the tank set and get some dirt. I did start a few tomato and pepper plants in my Aerogarden. A bit late, but it will be okay. I don't think a week either way will make too much difference. 

I like that our yard has plenty of "weeds" with lots of little flowers right now. It looks like a nice meadow. We have some violets (and more lamb's ear that has hopped the barrier) in the side yard. 

If you do not wish to read about my personal life/beliefs, please stop reading here. 

I like to make note of things that maybe my kids will like to look back at someday. You can read it or not. I reserve the right to delete rude or weird comments.

I've had a few wins: a better haircut this time (though I might have offended her by saying I didn't want it as short as she did last time; she didn't style it, but I was actually pleased with that choice as I don't like tons of product in my hair or on my sensitive scalp), the clean house, and I found a few pairs of jeans that fit. They're a size bigger than I'd like, but not as big as I thought I'd have to go. A few hits too: I cannot find dress shoes that fit my weird feet. I ordered and returned four pairs in different styles from two companies. While I can learn to sew my own clothes, I don't think I can become a cobbler. My washer's mother board appears to be going out. We purchased the machine in August 2020. The replacement part is 1/3 the cost of the machine. Thankfully my husband is very talented and can do the repair himself. 

My son is getting inducted into National Honor Society tonight. Nothing requiring dress shoes for me. He does have to wear nice clothing, which he will pair with his tennis shoes. At least they're new. 😏 Next week I'm taking another serger foot class and we're attending my husband's leadership class graduation. 

Everything seems so fragile in the world right now. I'm trying to be very aware of purchases and budget. I'll put things into a cart and then wait several days to see if we actually need whatever we're thinking of buying. Jobs seem tenuous. I will never cheer for people losing their jobs. We've been in that position too many times for me to wish that on anyone except some elected people. I've had to seriously cut back my news and social media consumption to preserve my sanity. 

I adore PBS. We were watching a Rick Steves special episode about Poland the other night--my son knew that Poland as a country had disappeared multiple times throughout history; I did not. I was aware, thanks to PBS and Finding Your Roots, that Poland was part of the Pale of Settlement. Rick Steves included clips from the museum at Auschwitz-Berkinau and I was close to tears and I am worried that we are perilously close to another world tipping point. Our politicians have cut funding for libraries, for public media and education, for world and local disaster relief, for food and medicine for the less fortunate, for medical research and environmental and safety protections. It hurts my heart. 

The year has gotten off to a slow, fairly relaxing start. I've been doing quite a bit of personal sewing since I haven't received most of the quilts that have been booked yet. 

I've made all the blocks for the Marble mystery. I did have a bit of frustration with getting the flying geese units to line up properly from row to row within the blocks. I spent a lot of time selectively ripping and trying to realign better.

Here are the completed blocks. My colors for this quilt are Kona Regatta, Mango, Leaf, Bellini, and Bone. They mostly blend with the backing fabric. 

Obviously I still need to add all the sashing and such to get to a completed top. I was surprised that January was the reveal. I thought I'd have another month, not that it's really that big of a deal.

I also worked on a project from 2022--a Free Block Friday program (Space Oddity) from Angie Wilson of Gnome Angel and Marti Michell. I had completed the first block some time ago and then it sat, as my projects tend to do. These blocks all use the Marti Michell templates. It kind of takes me back to how I made my very first quilt in the 1990s with templates traced onto template plastic sheets. 

Each piece is cut individually. I was using my tiny rotary cutter because I thought it might make cutting off those corner bits easier, but it didn't make it that much easier. I'll probably switch back to my regular 45 mm cutter on the next block.

Here's how block two looked prior to assembly. The blocks will all be set on point.

The completed block:

I also completed block three before setting it aside to work on Marble mystery. I think I want to swap out the small gray interior triangles for pink in this one. In case you were wondering, I'm using Kona Pink, Royal, Leprechaun, Ice Frappe, Silver, and White. They look really frayed while they're on the floor, but not so much on the design wall. 🤔

No picture, but I'm about halfway done with the binding on my Bedford Tiles quilt (my OMG for the month). 

I spent two days quilting Orange Peel on Sonja's quilt. Orange Peel is very difficult to execute well with my setup. She made this from her binding trimmings and I think she said it took like 10 years to complete. 

I sent my daughter an image of the next quilt in my queue with some designs I was considering. She said it would be nice if there was one that combined them. Hmmm...I can do that! 

Meanwhile, we were part of the big snowstorm moving across the midwest. We had snow and freezing rain/sleet starting Sunday morning. Here's the view from my sewing room window Sunday afternoon.

And Monday mid-morning.

It finally quit Monday afternoon and my husband ran out to plow our driveway and two of the neighbors'. He said there was about 10". 

The plow truck came through late afternoon and made a big mess--like didn't clear out intersections or only plowed one lane in some places and parts of yards in others. We did go out for our walk since the snow was thinned and discovered that the road is a layer of ice now. He took his tractor back out and tried to clean up the giant ridges the plow truck left in the intersections and also cleared out the ends of the driveways that got reburied. 

My son was due to go back to school Monday after winter break, but he had a total snow day. Basically everything was shut down in our area and roads were under travel warning (emergency and essential worker travel only). Tuesday was an e-learning day and base was still shut down, so another day of telework for the husband. My daughter in Indianapolis was one of four people who showed up at her work Monday. She said the roads still hadn't been cleared Tuesday. They didn't have as much as we did.

Big guild got cancelled for last night. I was glad because I really didn't want to risk driving into town, especially with a passenger. Right now small guild Friday night is still on, but I think we're due for more snow Friday, so we'll see. I'm the presenter for that one and I am not in the least bit prepared. Plus there's high levels of all sorts of ick going around in our community right now and I'd prefer to stay home and hide away from all of that. 

We tried a new recipe, Poulet Yassa, over the weekend that turned out well. The only difficult thing was allowing enough time for it to marinate. My son and I have also resumed watching My Name is Gabriel (available on Hulu, subtitled) and are still really enjoying it. We have two and a half episodes left. We are also looking forward to the next season of All Creatures Great and Small, which will be available for us on January 12. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.