Stories from the Sewing Room

It's time to share my March PHD progress. 

Linking with Ms. P.

In March I completed item #1 on my list, the Marble Mystery quilt. 

I quilted and am in the process of binding #3, Melodic Mystery quilt.

No progress was made on items 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

I had one new start, a project from a class I took with Linda Hahn at IHQS. No further progress has been made because I felt that the templates, foundations, and book had a smoke scent that I'm trying to eradicate before working on this project further. This is a mini, so hopefully it will be a finish this year.

I did make one block from another UFO that isn't on my list.

I had a busy March with quilting and lots of bindings. I have just a few to share from the last week. The first one belongs to Jeri and is quilted with Longwood. I fully bind Jeri's quilts.

This one is also Jeri's. She selected Fusion for this quilt.

And this is Deb's, quilted with Malachite.

I had planned to quilt another of my UFOs over the weekend, but instead I worked in the upper garden and assisted my husband with placing poles for the new vegetable garden's enclosure. I'm super proud that I dug out most of the lamb's ear by myself in this section. I almost filled our 24" cube weed bag. Sharp eyes will notice I left a little clump. I might rip out a bit more of that, but think I'll leave most of it right there because the bees love the flowers. I'll need to be vigilant so it doesn't take over the sidewalk again.

Unfortunately, I have a long ways to go with the rest of that garden. Plus it has spread all over the lawn and I'll need to dig that out too. This part is going to be tricky because of all the iris rhizomes. All those lighter spots along the top of the sidewalk out in the grass are also lamb's ear. All of this came from one plant. 

Here are the poles for the vegetable garden. They held up through the storms we had Sunday night. Sunday started off breezy and overcast, transitioning to really pleasant, warm, sunny weather. Lots of people were out for walks in the late afternoon. Then at dinnertime, our power started flashing and browning out before completely going out for the next five or six hours. The tornado sirens started wailing right as the power went off. We didn't have any damage other than lack of power. I guess the storm was a lot stronger several miles closer to town. I saw social media reports of loud noises like a train or a jet, and have seen lots of downed trees, but the NWS has determined no tornadoes came through my area. Edited to add: now the NWS says an EF-0 did go through briefly, touching down for less than 1/4 mile.

Sunday late afternoon

My husband kept working on the enclosure Monday and Tuesday and has the top boards on. We bought fencing, but he hasn't had time to add that yet.

Tuesday afternoon

I noticed that the redbuds are starting to have a purple-y haze. If you look closely at any of my pictures with trees in the backgrounds, you can see they are starting to bud out. 

The tree branches in the center are redbuds. I didn't capture the color very well.

I went to Jo-Ann on Friday, hoping they might have some thread left. Nope. Only a little bit of machine embroidery and serger threads remained. There were some zippers, but no other notions. No interfacing. No batting or anything else usually stocked in that area. Most yarn was gone and all cross stitch supplies. There was still quite a bit of fabric, but the sales aren't that good on them and everything was a minimum of two yards. Upholstery fabric was a three-yard minimum. I also saw a bit of vinyl and it looked like there was still a decent amount of jewelry findings. The whole thing is just so sad. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.

 It's time to share your March progress.

My goal this month was to finish my Marble Mystery quilt. I finished much sooner than planned because I wanted to join in on the finish parade link up at Meadow Mist Designs. 

I won a QAL prize. I got a $50 gift certificate to Back Side Fabrics and picked out two yards of this Kaffe fabric. I'll use it for the backing of my tessellations quilt some year when I finish it.

I felt like I should make progress on something else too since I'd finished the binding in just a few days. I had mentioned maybe adding a border to the race car quilt or making progress on the Beach Bumz class project. I've done neither. I detest putting borders on quilts and my Beach Bumz project is in time out (sealed in bags with various odor absorbing products) because I feel like the stencils and foundations and book smell like cigarette smoke. 

Instead, I quilted my Melodic Mystery quilt and have started binding it.

I was planning on a nice, leisurely pace of binding for Marble mystery this month. Then I got a reminder email from Cheryl that the final link up day is today. The menfolk went off to robotics practice Monday night and I sat there and did binding and started watching a series about the Roosevelts. I finished up the last bit yesterday. Here she is:

We had very strong winds, so this is as good as it got. I'll try to take a better picture on a less windy day.

Blooper photo. So windy the camera couldn't even focus.

Meanwhile, I had to prepare my fabrics for the class I'm taking with Linda Hahn at IHQS tomorrow. I think I shall rename my project.

Last fall I had ordered a half yard bundle to use. The colors were all much more intense than I expected. I wasn't super thrilled with my choice, but I dug around in my batik bin and found a couple of fabrics that I thought could work with part of the bundle. The bundle is from Anthology Fabrics' Periwinkle Glow line.

I feel like I need to take a minute here to say that I did shop my existing batiks prior to buying the bundle, but didn't have the right amounts of yardage in things that worked together. The fabrics I picked from my stash are the background Moda Bella and the tone on tone blue and lime green (both Island Batiks left over from previous projects).

Anyway, I've gotten my fabrics cut and my supplies gathered. I'm not totally convinced this thing is going to be all that attractive, but we'll see. Hopefully I'll learn some new skills. If nothing else, I will be able to spend the day amongst other humans.

I have been trying to work as much as I can while I have the work. Here are the quilts I worked on since last week. 

The first two belong to Marsali. She requested Lateral for this quilt made with Art Gallery fabrics. I used a peachy-yellow thread called Shortbread. 

And Textures for this quilt. Textures took me two days to complete. Each pass, set as large as I could get it, took one hour to stitch.

Legene picked Flirtatious Leaves for this baby quilt. She was concerned about the quilting distracting from the panel, so I used 60 wt. thread for the quilting.

Deb wanted Stipple on her quilt and was hoping for a green thread. The only thing I had that was remotely close was a Bottom Line 60 wt in Sage, so that's what I used.

Carol picked Lei for her quilting and wanted me to use black thread. I find that dark threads on light fabrics tend to lose stitch definition, but I did as requested. What color would you have used? 

If you're wondering about Beaker the hen, she went back to the vet for a follow-up appointment. Her toe did fall off. The white, swollen-looking area that we thought was pus is actually dead tissue. We are to continue to soak her foot in the disinfecting solution. We put her back into the coop Wednesday night. She seems to be doing okay. Much to our surprise, when the coop was opened to put her back in, there was an egg in there. We've had three eggs this week. We hadn't had any at all for months. 

Last night at guild we had Tara Miller from Quilt District speak. She showed us some of her antique quilts. I thought I'd share. 

This was a southern quilt from the 1890s ( I think? Late 1800s anyway.) Clues that it was southern are the very thick sashing and the thicker weight of the batting. I don't know if it shows, but the Baptist Fan quilting went in every direction.

Improv piecing from the 1890s.

Various blocks from the late 1800s. The pineapple block is wool. She said that you wouldn't see solid, true black cotton until after the Civil War era.

I believe she said this was around 1910-1920. I hadn't seen a basket like this before.

1940s, again with the every-which-way Baptist Fan quilting.

1940s

1980s, based on a free pattern from Mountain Mist batting.

I feel pretty good about my February progress, particulary in light of everything I have going on in my personal life. Most days I just don't feel like sewing.

Linking with Ms. P's PHD report.

I fully completed one quilt on my UFO list (item 5), the Runway quilt made with Ruby Star Adorn fabric. You can scroll back one post to see more photos of it.

I have quilted my Marble mystery quilt (item 1) and have the binding attached to the front, ready to sew down by hand. I didn't realize my backing fabric was directional. Due to the way I needed to load that on the machine, I had to load my top sideways. That made me change my quilting plan to something non-directional. I picked Diagonal Plaid Bias. I quilted this one this week, but totally forgot to take any pictures of it in progress, so you get to see it after it's been quilted.

I have also changed out item 11 on my UFO list. It was "something fun from my stash" and it is now "race car quilt". I don't know that this is a very fun project, but it is one of my older UFOs and I'd like to get it out of here. Looking at it now, I do not like how the fabrics were put together to make the kit; I think it was one that was provided by the manufacturer. Anyway, I have the center completed. Next up is four sets of inner borders and then a pieced outer border. 

Items 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 10 all need to be quilted and bound. Number 8 needs to have all the appliqué applied and then it will need to be quilted and bound. 

That leaves one clothing item, tbd. I have a large stack of fabrics and lots of patterns to try. I want to do my Palmer Pletsch fitting pattern first so that I better understand where I need to alter patterns to get them to fit better. I have determined the size I need and have it cut out. There is some pressing and taping that needs to be competed before I can start the fitting process. 

In the longarm quilting part of my life, I've finished two quilts for Trish. We picked my custom hybrid design, which I call Lovely Roses, for her table runner.

Jeri wanted her Jewels quilt quilted in the same way that GE Designs had quilted their cover version. She reached out to them to find out which design they used for their cover quilt. It was the Fusion design, but stretched out. I couldn't make it as large as they did since it would exceed my available throat space, but I did try to keep it the same proportion as theirs. I'm quite pleased with the finished product. 

I quilted Baptist Fans on Jeri's log cabin quilt. I will bind this one today.

Amber loves the Ginger Heart design and picked it for her heart quilt.

Jo Ellen selected Bird Bath for her quilting. I actually love the Bird Bath design and no one usually chooses that one, so I was pretty thrilled. My favorite way to use this design is as a tiny background filler, but it's nice to see stitched out larger as well. 

First, I want to mention that a kind reader pointed out that my follow by email/subscribe button was not working. I'm guessing this change happened some time after Intuit acquired Mailchimp in 2021. Hopefully it was a fairly recent change. Acquisitions are so rarely beneficial to the users/customers, you know? But I digress. I believe I have it working now (and the new version sure is ugly, isn't it?). Please, please, if you find something amiss here, send me a message and let me know. 

We're totally freezing here. It's been single digits in the morning. On the plus side, it's been sunny and we had one day in the 30s, so the snow melted off the solar panels. We were off Monday for MLK Day and had two-hour delays yesterday and today. 

Moving on to sewing, I have a finish! It's a table runner.

The pattern I used is Cha, Cha, Cha by Atkinson Designs. It measures 34.25" x 14.25". The fabric line I used is Playground by Dylan M for Windham Fabrics. I'd received a free charm pack from the local quilt shop a while ago and was able to locate a hunk of matching fabric online last fall.

I quilted it using the Spark design, which requires some advanced setup techniques. I didn't spend a lot of time, but if I were to use it on someone else's quilt, I'd work harder to make the staggers more random.

I sewed together this piece from the cutoffs. I'll need to figure out a way to finish it. {One UFO generates another??} It's around 12.5" x 8.5".

Marble Mystery is getting closer to completion; I have the top done except for the borders.

I tackled part of my mending pile by repairing a hole in the arm sleeve of one of my son's shirts. I have to re-do the hem on another, but I don't have matching thread. No pictures because it's boring. 

January has been very lean for work. I've completed three more quilts.

Amy chose Windswept for her panel quilt and it looks great!

Toni sent me two t-shirt quilts and requested In the Swirls for both. 

My daughter came home for a visit over the weekend, so that was nice. I was finally mostly over the headache that plagued me last week--that thing stuck around most of the week. I've been getting quite a few headaches recently. I'm not sure what the cause is. Most of them start with the top of my scalp burning and my hair being very sensitive. Then my neck starts hurting. So weird. I should probably try to get in to my doctor, but most of the time they just send you to urgent care. No thanks. I guess I'm waiting until my next scheduled appointment in the summer. 😒

Our first robotics competition of the season is this weekend. We are not very prepared this year. I'll be watching the livestream from home.

Our One Monthly Goal Finish Link Up opens on Saturday. 

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