Stories from the Sewing Room

How did you do with your March goal?

My goal was to completely finish my Malted Mystery quilt. I finished it with hours to spare. I quilted it with the Peak Blooms design and hand bound it. 

Now it's your turn to share your progress. Link up your project and then visit others, make new friends, and gain inspiration.

This link up will remain open until March 31 at 11:55 pm EST.

I have completed this month's RSC blocks. The color of the month is purple. 

I thought I had a good amount of purple scraps, but what I really had was a lot of scraps of a pretty limited amount of prints. I think the blocks are okay.

I like them mixed with the red and green blocks we've done already. The tutorial is by Sandra at mmmquilts.

I quilted my Malted Mystery quilt. If you voted last week, thanks! I went with Peak Blooms simply because it was the fastest of the three to stitch out and I feel like I'm drowning right now.

I'm working on hand binding now. Why? Who knows. I have until Sunday night to get it finished. 

I forgot to mention last week, but a quilt I donated to Quilts for Kids in December was in the March 7 newsletter! It's the robot quilt on the left.  I was pleased that someone picked it.

Here's the whole quilt. 

Moving over to quilts for others, I quilted the twin to Lauren's quilt from last week. She selected Curly for the design and Glide Sprout for the thread color.

I bound both of her quilts.

Next I quilted Jo's Chilhowie quilt. She picked Exes and we used Glide Peacock, a very pale purple color. This quilt is much more stunning in real life than what my camera recorded.

Next I quilted Annie's Dutch Treat quilt. The quilting is really hard to see, both in the picture and in real life. She picked Saffron Blossoms and I used white thread.

Then I quilted Trish's baby quilt with Pretty Paisley and cream thread.

I've been scrambling to get my basement picked up before my sister and kids come in another week or so. The menfolk have put away all the robotics things. They also moved my collection of shipping boxes out of the spare bedroom and into the living room. I was calling it Mt. Boxmore. I decided to keep only the boxes that I knew a quilt would fit into and took the rest to recycling on Monday. 

We got the bed set up and most of the stuff shoved into the closets. I'm pretty bummed out because I thought our suitcases would fit under the bed for storage. Nope. Okay, maybe the baby bed parts (it was a convertible baby-toddler-full headboard piece and my son uses the headboard) will fit under there. Nope. NOTHING fits under there. LOL figures.

I didn't take before pictures because it was too embarrassing. Here's where we are at now. I need to move the coffee table so that you can actually get in the door.

The whole expanse of living room was filled with multiple tables, robotics field, and lots of parts before this. The Murphy bed is in the middle of the book case on the right in the photo below.

I found one of the spare robotics paper airplane/drones and threw it at my son. It landed like this. 😆 I don't know if I could ever do that again.

Our weather has been pretty garbage the last few days. I figured that was coming because every time the cherry tree starts to blossom the weather turns. 

Come back on Monday to link up your OMG finish.

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and So Scrappy.

I'm pleased to share my completed Malted Mystery quilt top. 

I thought it might be fun to solicit opinions on how I should quilt this. My household is split on which design I should use. I had a definite favorite before making these mock-ups, but now I'm second guessing. I do have to quilt and bind this in the next week or so to finish my OMG before I need to post the finish link up, so time may end up being a deciding factor.

Option 1: Peak Blooms

Option 2: Mallow

Option 3: Orange Dream

I've worked on several quilts for others. I fully machine bound all of Pat's quilts that I shared last week.

I quilted Annie's Indigo Way quilt with the Starry design and Glide thread in the Celery color way. 

I already returned her quilt, so here's one more picture that shows some of the backing as well.

I quilted Lauren's Kaffe quilt with Curly. I have second, matching quilt to do and will also fully machine bind both. The quilting barely shows on the front, but it looks awesome on the back.

My plans for the rest of the week include quilting Lauren's second quilt and binding both, quilting Jo's Chilhowie, and hopefully getting my Malted quilted and bound.

I'm hoping to run to a local quilt shop today to pick up fabrics for a class my small guild is holding next month. I tried to shop my stash first, but I don't buy enough of most fabrics to meet the requirements of the pattern and have something that looks good together. Pfft. 

We had our robotics state championship tournament on Saturday. We knew going in that this would be the end of the line for us. Only two teams advance to the Worlds--the captain of the winning robot alliance (group of three teams) and the Inspire award winner. We ended up ranked 7th at the end of the regular robot runs. Our boys were selected by the number one ranked team as their first alliance partner and we made it all the way to the last match before losing. It was thrilling, yet also heartbreaking, because we lost due to penalty points and we aren't the biggest fans of the team that ended up winning, who were ranked third going in. The other local team (ranked second going into finals, but lost right away due to odd decisions) won the Inspire award. As we tell the kids, the rankings and the judging are both quite subjective. Our boys won the Design award for best robot design. My son was thrilled! The robot design and build is his main responsibility.

I ended up feeling ill and spent most of Sunday sleeping or resting and Monday taking it easy. My kids are both on spring break this week. My daughter mentioned last week that she had to do an exit interview for her student loans--she is graduating in May. I asked her how much she owed and how much money she has. She has enough to fully pay off all of them! I was a bit shocked, but also happy and relieved. I've been pushing her to determine her next steps and apply for local full-time jobs while she decides. I also found an online certificate to masters program in her potential goal field and we've been discussing pros and cons of that. She is not amused by any of it. 

I have done absolutely zero gardening. It's probably good because we've had a few mornings with hard frost. The other days it seems to be raining. I'm still about two months away from our last frost.

We had a surprise announcement last week that the school board and the superintendent have agreed to part ways June 30. The school corporation does have to pay him $228k to buy out the contract. I'm upset that the money could have been spent in much better ways, as could much of the money he handled in the last three years. I'm glad he will be gone. He has caused much harm.

My sister and her kids are coming to stay with us Easter weekend, so we need to clean up all the robotics parts so that we can access the Murphy bed in the living room and clean out the spare bedroom, which is used for storage, so that we can set up a bed in there. The robotics parts are still strewn everywhere in the house, but the menfolk did clean up the OSB sheets we use for a partial robot field, so I can now access the closet in the living room. I was able to put many things away in the closet. Now I have to deal with the giant pile of boxes I save to use for return shipping of quilts that my family moved from the spare room to the living room floor. It's probably time to recycle many of them. 

One last thing, remember the eagle cam I mentioned last week? Sadly, it looks like none of Shadow and Jackie's three eggs were viable. It became really heart-wrenching to watch. On a positive, as of March 12 the Goose Pond barn owls have laid seven eggs .

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, Alycia Quilts, and From Bolt to Beauty.

I had all sorts of plans to get so much done last week. Instead I spent a day and a half in bed feeling meh. Then I sat and watched the livestream of the robotics tourney (they had to travel overnight and I opted not to go) for an entire day. On the plus side, our boys did fantastic and ended the regular matches in first place. They decided that since they'd already earned a state bid, instead of inviting the second place team who also already had earned a state bid onto their alliance, they would select a team to join their alliance that hadn't yet earned a state bid in an effort to help get them one. 

Well...the second place team was furious and told a few of our kids that they weren't there to help anyone out. Great gracious professionalism. 🙄 The second place team won the robot final alliance matches and also won the Inspire award, which, ironically, is for best demonstration of the FIRST ideals--like good sportsmanship, helping others, promoting STEM, etc. 

In the end, due to the complex advancement rules, our boys' losing ended up getting TWO teams state bids. Best example of gracious professionalism ever! I'm so proud of our boys for trying to lift others and not just taking the easy win. And we won a much-deserved Control award for programming. Our programmer (who is not my child, btw) is outstanding. 

Anyway, back to sewing. I did get my art quilt quilted. It's fully custom. I planned to use 10 different threads, but in the end only used eight. I didn't use the salmon or the lavender. 

I did use the Fil-Tec invisible thread on the borders and on part of the sky. I didn't have to loosen the tension much, which I was surprised by. I did attempt to use it with the IQ, but the tension went really haywire and I had to rip out part of a border and switch back to hand-guided. It's really hard to see where the invisible thread is going. I used the blacklight on my Lucey and that helped some. 

I have a week or so left to get it bound to meet my OMG. 

Last week I hadn't finished sewing on the borders of my Malted Mystery. I finished those last Wednesday and haven't made any further progress--I was planning to add on the rest of what's left and get it quilted ahead of next month's reveal. Nope. I did wash the backing fabric though. 

I wanted to work on this month's RSC blocks. Nope. I have red scraps all over my cutting mat, but that's as far as I've gotten. 

I don't have much to show for client work either. It's been tremendously slow this year. I finished Carol's quilt that I shared last week. I started Sharon's yesterday. She wanted to have 9" circles cut out of the four corners so that she can add some appliqué after quilting. I seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take to edit the design to accomplish her vision. (In other words, I need to do a pricing adjustment if I do that service in the future.) Here's what my screen looked like for the first pass of the quilt. It had 22 tie offs. Yikes!

My Grassy Creek quilt is now fully ready to enter in the show. I sewed on the hanging sleeve over the weekend. I do not enjoy sewing on hanging sleeves. I'm so glad that part is done!

Here's a photo of the whole quilt.

I finished my Grassy Creek quilt on February 1! I entered it in the IHQS and I have attached the label. I still need to attach the hanging sleeve. Once that's on, I'll get a better picture of it. Here are a few pictures for now.

The quilt is 92" x 92" and very heavy. I had to move furniture and stand on a chair to photo this. {I took a lot of photos of my legs and feet. Oops.}

I have sewn two more rows of the Log Cabin Stars quilt together. Remember, my design wall is behind my longarm, so it's usually quite difficult to get a good picture of whatever is on there. This is one weird looking quilt. LOL. I should have worked harder on color placement.

I'm also working on this month's Malted Mystery clue. I have two more white borders to sew on and then another round of the light green. Next month will be the reveal. I think I can figure out the rest since I took the sneak peek. I may work ahead, but will keep it to myself so as not to spoil the reveal for anyone.

I haven't yet started the SCQG quilt along project--Sun and Sand. I couldn't make a decision on the colors for the first two months, so I decided to start with month 3. But then...these pieces are really tiny. Which is the appropriate ruler to use in this case? Also, there are cutting directions given, but the pieces seem to be twice as big as needed. I'll need to do a test block with the sizes I think should be cut. 

Help! Which ruler?

As far as my OMG, nope. Haven't had a chance. Maybe this weekend. 

I have completed a few quilts for others. The first two belong to Amber. She requested loopy meander on the baby quilt and picked Ginger Heart for the yellow quilt.

Next I quilted Lovely Loops on Trish's baby quilt. 

Right now I am just about halfway through Carol's quilt. She picked Denali and Cool Mint thread. I hadn't stitched Denali in a while and forgot how slow it is. It has a ton of backtracking. It does, however, look fantastic on her quilt.

We had a robotics tournament last weekend. I did end up volunteering and worked as a line queuer again. Basically you make sure the teams are lined up ahead of their match and send them out to the appropriate field at the appropriate time. Our boys had a tough day. They lost their first three rounds and you could see them becoming a little more discouraged each time. Two of the boys had band competitions, so could not attend.

We felt good going in to the fourth match. They were paired with a stronger team than their morning matchups had been. They had a great autonomous portion, scoring 50 points, but their robot's arm came down on the field enclosure and the head ref gave them a yellow card instead of a penalty. He then told them they weren't allowed to pick up their controller to run the rest of the match. Somehow they ended up winning that round, which was very sweet because they were going against the number two seed. I think we were ranked 20 out of 28 at that point. We looked at the rules and found out that the ref should have called that only a penalty and they absolutely should have been able to play the rest of the match, but decided not to contest it since we had won anyway. 

Their last match of the day they were paired with the other team from our town. They ended up putting up the highest score in the state with that match and it moved us up to #14. The other team went into finals alliances as the number one seed. They picked the number two seed and us as their alliance team. And we won. We were of more help to the #1 team than the #2 team was, which made it even better. Our pair ups with team #1 are now the top four scores in the state, I think. Since both of those teams already had gotten state bids, we were able to move up into the state bid for the #1 alliance. The boys were so pumped!

Then we won the Design Award, given for best function and aesthetic. That was totally my son's work and nice to see their very reliable robot finally recognized. (Teams #1 and #2 spend most of their time between matches repairing everything.) So we had a lot of highs and lows, but it worked out in the end and our very introverted boys were just beaming. They also got a 3rd place Control Award for programming.

We have another competition this weekend (I think I'm gonna stay home and sew this time), then the state championship in one month.

I've managed to avoid jury duty so far. They didn't call my number for last week's trial and no trials were scheduled this week.

Linking with Quiltery, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, From Bolt to Beauty, and Alycia Quilts.