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. 

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. 

I think I can share this since the pattern, Gemstones, is available for purchase now. I was really hoping to have a completed quilt, but it was not meant to be this week. This was made from a Denyse Schmidt layer cake and some green yardage from my stash.

You know I can't stand wasting triangle cutoffs, so I incorporated them into a panel for the backing. However, I wasn't paying much attention (giddy at finally, finally having some time to just sew something) and promptly created a "design opportunity." LOL. My plan was for all the triangles to be going the same direction, and now they are not. And it's a quilt back, so I'm okay with it. Once I get this finished, it will be donated to the guild's community quilts program.

Well these don't look right. Oops.

I spent four days quilting a little custom quilt last week.

During this, the switch in my brand new, fancy handlebars went haywire and my machine would take off stitching uncontrollably any time I was trying to do needle up/needle down. Options for this are either replacing the rocker switch with a spare (that I didn't have) or one from the rear handlebars, or just a replacement handlebar set from them, I guess. APQS sent me instructions to change it out and a replacement set, so I didn't attempt to do the switch exchange since it was only a few days. My new set should be here today or tomorrow, depending on the PO and it is really easy to change out the whole handlebar assembly.

After completing the custom, I got back into my happy zone and quilted Ikat on Pat's quilt. I will be binding this one too.

Next was Basic Swirl for Trish.

And then Echo Blossoms for Penny.

Now for a great find: years ago (probably 20+), I bought a Marti Michell block of the month program. It was way above my skill level at the time and I quit when I got part of the center medallion done because it was so far off. Not sure how I was that far off considering it used templates. Of course I didn't have any extra fabric and it's long gone from stores. A couple weeks ago I was scrolling through eBay and found kits for three of the months. I won the auction at a whopping $4.95 plus shipping. And now I have some extra fabric to try to fix this thing some day.

Another nice thing from last week is both my prizes from the Tall Tales QAL arrived. I won a $25 gift certificate to Cottoneer and a pin cushion from Storts Market. 

Over in the garden, I decided to make more sweet relish with more of the giant cucumbers. It only took 2.5 cucumbers and I got seven more half-pints. Do we need 15 half-pints of relish? No. But I made that much anyway. I kept a few of the smaller remaining cucumbers to eat (I am the only one who eats raw cukes in my household) and sent the rest in to work with my daughter. Hopefully someone can use them.

We picked a big dish of overgrown green beans and I got massive contact dermatitis from the plants.  One of the two zucchini plants is totally gone and the other looks like it started regrowing. Something already ate all the blossoms off the new growth. Many of the baby cucumbers look diseased and the plants are dying back and I am okay with that.

Our weather has been quite cool compared to normal (only around 80 degrees) lately, so I'm hoping to get the garden cleaned up and weeded this weekend. The flower gardens will have to wait. I can only take so much dermatitis at once. ha.

We had some turkeys visit the other morning. It's nice to see them around the neighborhood again. There's also been a group of three hanging around.

Meanwhile, the month is half over and I haven't even started working on my OMG yet. Hopefully I'll have some progress next week. Stop back and see how I did.

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and True Blue Quilts.