Stories from the Sewing Room: printable

IHQS Show & Free Printable Quilt Care Card

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Last week I visited the IHQS show. It's fun to see local quilters' works displayed alongside national and international quilters'. Another feature at the show the last few years is first quilts made by high school (or younger) students. Although I generally do not photograph these, it's so fun to see new quilters represented in the show.

This year's special exhibit was one I really enjoyed--mini quilts based on the National Parks. Here is more information on these quilts. I took pictures of a handful of the quilts on display. Although I used my cell phone camera, I feel they are still decent enough to share--please enjoy them!

This week I am gifting the baby quilt I shared last week. I made up a printable card with quilt care instructions. I am sharing it with you, free of charge, here. There are two cards per page. I'm planning to mount mine on a pretty background paper.

I haven't really accomplished a whole lot in the last week. I worked on a UFO and cleaned my kitchen. I think my taxes are done. I read a few books and kept up with the usual household tasks. My daughter and I have been watching a bunch of episodes of Case Closed and my son had his Pinewood Derby (which he did quite well at--two trophies!).

Many of the trees are budding out and more daffodils are blooming. We are supposed to have several inches of snow over the weekend. Next week is the big braces installation!

A Mishmash of Holiday Stuff

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

I have to finish binding this quilt. I fought with the long arm on the quilting of this one. Every time I went from right to left across the quilt, the thread broke or else had loose stitches. Tried new needles, resetting tension, new bobbins. Left to right was fine. I don't get it.

I am using a pantograph to quilt this one. The first four passes were great.

I ran out of bobbin thread, so reloaded a new bobbin, went to test the tension on the side of the quilt, and heard a big metallic clunk. The bobbin case had fallen off the spindle thing, but the bobbin was still on it. Loads of loops of thread were holding the machine hostage in the edge of the quilt. I picked out some of the thread, but need tweezers to get the remainder of what's trapped in there. The picture below shows what I still have to pick out. I hope this didn't do any lasting damage.

My husband is ready to start wiring in the basement. That means I have to decide the final layout of my sewing room pronto. I am not ready!! I still haven't decided what I need/want in this half of the room, which is where the sewing machine/serger/books/storage/embroidery machine/etc. will go. Suggestions welcome.

I still have to do the following:

doll outfit for my niece (have a week left)
wrap presents (a week also)
embroider two shirts (again a week)
decide the wiring and layout for sewing room (now)
365 Challenge blocks (currently 9 behind)
print new planner pages (didn't notice the monthly calendar I bought had Monday starts so I need to start over on this one)
Polaroid blocks for swap (due Jan. 31)
Guild swap (due Feb. 10)

Things I have completed:

gift shopping
decorating the house

Isn't this wreath gorgeous? Kathleen at Twin H/Harmony Gardens made it for us.
She is so talented!

I got this guy there too.

My son made this when he was in kindergarten. I'm not sure why he put a
disco ball in there, but it cracks me up every time I see it!

Updates for the Week

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

I feel like I didn't accomplish much in the past week or so. Here's a few things that I did get done:

I finally finished sewing down the last bit of binding on this mini. Fabric is Canyon by Kate Spain. This is the almost twin of one I sent in February for the birthday swap. Only the binding and a bit of the quilting is different. I will also post this on the 2016 Finishes page.

I quilted my cherries quilt and attached the binding. Now I just need to sew it down. This quilt is around 70 x 70 and the fabric is Cherries Jubilee by American Jane for Moda circa 2006. I love the fabric now just as much as I did back then!

I purchased planner month dividers on Etsy, printed them, and laminated them. I still need to trim them, punch them, insert them into the planner, and actually print out month and week views. I had been trying out a school year planner this year, which worked great until I needed to schedule things during the summer and my calendar quits in June. So I decided to get the Martha Stewart disc bound planner so that I can customize and keep adding months as needed.

I also worked on some printables. I went crazy laminating things yesterday! I made my travel list on my own (figured out how to use digital scrapbook paper to print things AND make a custom bullet in Word!), but the others are all things I found on Pinterest. You can check my boards to find the sources for these.

Finally, I've been working at my local quilt shop one day/week. While I'm there I can work on my own projects during down times. My boss rocks! I decided to take my Aviatrix fabrics and start cutting out the quilt. I thought I'd be able to cut out the whole thing and start sewing, but as it turned out, I only got the white and one color group cut out. It's going to take for-ev-er to cut.

Free Quilt List Printable

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

You've probably seen my Works-in-Progress post. I've been keeping it updated on the blog, but I'd like a hard copy to refer to when I'm not at my computer. I made up a printable for myself and thought I'd share it. It's free! There are spaces for 75 projects on it. To access my file, click here.

In other news, my sewing room construction has begun. Check out my Instagram feed (located to the right--scroll down a bit) to see a photo.

Stories from the Sewing Room