Stories from the Sewing Room

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 made a rash decision (that somehow my husband was on board for?) last week and am the new owner of a bernette b68 Airlock. Really, I was sitting around wasting time waiting for him to be done with work so we could run errands, scrolled through the website, mentioned it to him, and he suggested we go try it out. 

This is the top-of-the-line serger/coverstitch machine in the bernette line up. It's less than a quarter of the cost of the top-of-the-line Bernina 890QE. If it had made sense financially, I would have probably gone for the 890, but I really can't justify that one. 

The b68 is primarily mechanical, has five thread capability, and does have air threading for the loopers and the knee lift thing like Bernina machines have. It also has free arm capability that I think will be handy. The shop owner threw in a set of clear feet to sweeten the deal since we couldn't do a trade-in for a bernette. 

The bernette comes with a quick start guide that is pretty inadequate in my opinion. You can download the actual 108-page manual from their website. I am looking into having it printed for reference. So far all I've done is take the machine out of the box and attach the thread holder. 

My gripes at this point are the lack of a printed manual and the lack of a dust cover. You can't even buy one from them. I'm gonna have to add making a dust cover to my never-ending task list. A dust cover is essential in my sewing room.

For the last 14 - 15 years, I had a Bernina 1150mda serger (which did come with a plastic/vinyl dust cover) and a Brother 2340cv coverstitch machine. The Bernina serger has been amazing and I'm a little sad that I have to sell it. It cuts through anything. My husband listed both on Marketplace and I have someone coming to get the coverstitch machine around lunchtime (knock on wood she shows). I think I only used the coverstitch machine a handful of times. It didn't even have any lint inside it. Prior to this set of machines, I had an Elna that was a serger/coverstitch and I used that one all the time, both for serging and coverstitch, until it needed service. The dealer had to send it to headquarters for a service issue and it was never the same after it came back. 

Anyway, hopefully this machine meets expectations. I'll need to dive into my clothes making adventures soon! I still haven't taken apart and re-stuffed my dress form (you're not really surprised by this, right?). I did receive the last batch of patterns I had printed in large format (A0). I have now had patterns printed by four different companies: Sublime Grafx, Pox Couture on Etsy, The Plotted Pattern, and Tape-Free patterns, in that order.

My experience with Sublime Grafx is that the ordering process was easy. The prints themselves are gorgeous. It took about a month with multiple emails sent from me with no response to actually get an update and get the patterns shipped. 

Pox Couture's interface for submitting the files was difficult to use. The quality of the printing is nice, however, they are printed on regular 20 lb paper, so that isn't ideal. The prints were shipped in a timely fashion once I was finally able to use their file submitting service. 

The Plotted Pattern was very easy to use and I like that each pattern came in a paper bag. I selected the 18-lb translucent paper. They also offer 20 lb and tissue paper and you can choose black and white or color printing. Pattern booklet printing and binding is available. They only ship on Wednesdays and Fridays. 

My most recent order was from Tape-Free patterns. The ordering process was easy. Patterns come in a nice paper envelope bag. I selected the 18 lb translucent. They also offer 20 lb and Pellon Easy Pattern. The Pellon was out of stock when I ordered or I might have tried that. Printing and shipping was fast. Delivery was slow, but that's on the Postal Service. 

If you're wondering why I didn't shop locally, the main reason is that the places that offer large format here charge $9/page and only have 20 lb paper. Plus, the online services I used offer options such as only printing certain sizes.

Most of you are here for my quilting. I haven't worked on any of my own quilt projects this week. I did get the napkins for my daughter hemmed and sewn. 

I have hanging sleeves attached to 1.5 of the four quilts I am submitting to the show next week Thursday. I still have to label them and the pillowcases that they have to be submitted in. I think I'm gonna just write on the hanging sleeves because I don't have time to do labels.

The main reason I haven't done much personal sewing is that I have been super busy with quilting (and buying that machine and just generally being kinda lazy).

First up is Jeri's. This is GE Designs' Mia pattern. We decided on Dave's Sunflowers for the quilting. I also did the binding. This was a big one, 85" x 85" or so.

Next is another of Jeri's, GE Designs' Ingrid. We picked Glide Limerick and the Bubble Glitter pattern for quilting. I also bound this one.

Sara's Quilty Friends was next. We picked Cakewalk 2 for the quilting. It makes me think of unspooled thread.

Charlene requested Hypnosis for her quilting. It looks pretty cool.

Marilyn's Paperdrop quilt was next. I quilted Malachite on it. I have a hard time picking more masculine patterns. Malachite is one I always think of, along with Diagonal Plaid. What designs do you consider more masculine?

Terry brought me two similar IU quilts. She requested Angled Squares for the first one, along with red thread. 

You'll have to stop by next week to see the other one (since I'll be quilting it today). I have one more of Terry's to quilt too. She's really artistic so you'll enjoy seeing that one next week as well.

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