Stories from the Sewing Room

It's time to share your February progress.

This link up will remain open until February 28 at 11:55 pm EST.

My goal this month was to quilt something from my PHD list. I fully finished my Runway Quilt #2. 

I quilted it with the Infinity design and Limerick (green) thread. I opted for machine binding since I was unhappy with all the shadowing issues I had. Runway measures 55.75" x 66.25".

I've only done utility sewing over the past week. I have made three Frankenbattings--one for my own project, one for a customer, and one for my small guild. I used three different types of battings for these: Quilters Dream Blend for my own (seams beautifully), QD 80/20 Natural (more challenging to seam nicely), and Hobbs 80/20 (it's stretchy). Using my walking foot, I zig-zag stitch my batting scraps after straightening the edges where I'm planning to sew.

Here's the QD Blend. If I had trimmed the batting to be even on the edges, you wouldn't even know there was a seam.

I normally try to make the seams in my pieced battings run horizontally. I'm not sure why other than that's the way my scraps usually make the most sense. Maybe because horizontal seams are better in the backing on the longarm? I ended up running the QD 80/20 seams vertically just because it's easier to have the excess batting hanging down rather than off to the sides on the longarm. And, yes, I realize I could have trimmed it, but that's more work and this was a fairly small quilt. I find that the 80/20 tends to get a bit wavy when you stitch chunks together.

The Hobbs ended up having horizontal and vertical seams. Much to my surprise, one of the remnants I was sewing already had a seam in it. Then one piece ended up too small and another was very oversized, so I cut the excess off and used it to fill in the small part. Hobbs is a pretty stretchy batting, so I figured this is okay. It's for a donation quilt, so it's not like it needs to be show-quality.

As far as the regret portion of my post title, I was slightly unhappy with my thread color choice on my Runway quilt, but I wasn't upset enough at it to spend time ripping out all the quilting. What I am regretting is that in my haste to get my project quilted, I forgot to check for seam shadowing. Of course, by the time you are part way into the quilting and notice it, it's too late (unless you want to spend hours ripping out the quilting to fix it). The seam shadowing is pretty bad in this quilt. I am so disappointed in myself. I decided this one isn't worth hand binding. I will probably donate it. Look for a finish soon.

Good from a distance, but not great up close.

I have completed five quilts for others.

First is Marsali's Happy Stripes quilt, quilted with Whoop-de-Doo at a 50% offset.

Then I quilted Toni's quilt with Honey. I probably should have scaled up the design more, but it does look cute.

Next is Marsali's Star Pop quilt, quilted with Thread Garden. She gave me a minky/cuddle fabric for the back and the quilting looked amazing on it.

Jae's baby quilt is quilted with Mallow.

This guild donation quilt is another variation of Bedford Tiles (remember mine from last month?). One of my guild mates made the center, another added the borders, someone pieced the backing, I'm quilting it, and others will bind it. I chose to quilt it with Lovely Loops and used the Hobbs Frankenbatting. I'm pretty sure I've quilted four of these now, including my own. 

If you're wondering how I'm doing personally, I'm still full of rage and despair. Federal workers are not your enemies. They are your family, friends, neighbors, and people in your community. Cutting funding and jobs doesn't just affect the federal employee or the scientist receiving research funding; it also affects the support people such as lab assistants, lab animal caregivers, admin assistants, janitors, food service, security people, contract specialists, shipping and transportation people, etc. It all ripples out. 

My hair is still way too short and still sticking out everywhere. I say it represents my currently prickly personality. 

I managed to catch my pinky fingernail on the long arm needle while advancing a quilt. I have no idea how this even happened. The needle broke and the lower half of it was lodged in my nail bed. It was very painful. It's been five days and I still get occasional sharp twinges of pain. I did not get blood on the quilt though!

Beaker the hen had a costly vet visit last week Wednesday. She had x-rays. Her toes are not broken, but she does have frostbite on a few and a growth ("lesion") on one. The vet wasn't sure if the lesion is a tumor and/or is cancerous. She prescribed an antiseptic foot soak, a pain medication, and an antibiotic and advised that medication requires two people to administer. The first two and a half days it was pretty easy to get all the medicine in. Saturday Beaker must have started feeling better because it is now really hard to hold her still enough and get her beak pried open to squirt the medicine in. In case you wondered, I am the medicine squirter, not the chicken holder. The growth is still pretty ugly and big, but Beaker is starting to put a little pressure on her foot now. We'll see. I'm having a sale in my Etsy fabric shop to help raise money to cover the unexpected bill. I think I've covered almost two prescriptions so far. That was the affordable part of the bill. 🫣  We're supposed to have a follow-up appointment in two weeks with more x-rays. We have her isolated in the garage now to try to help her rest and not be jostled or mounted.

Meanwhile, my son was still having range-of-motion issues after his fall. I talked to a nurse at his doctor's office and she advised me to go to the orthopedic walk-in clinic, which must be done within 14 days of injury. Otherwise you have to get a referral and wait for an appointment. We just snuck in on our last day of eligibility. More x-rays, a brace, antibiotic, and a follow-up appointment were the result. I think we've easily met his deductible for the year. 

My daughter visited over the weekend while the menfolk traveled to the very northern part of the state for their next robotics tournament. I really enjoyed having girl time. We hung out, got groceries, and watched the robotics tournament live stream. I found this cute little cake to surprise her with. If you can't tell, it's a little dog. It looked better than it tasted.

Our robotics team had perhaps our best event showing ever. We were ranked third after the regular matches and selected by the number one team to be in the finals alliance. We dropped a match in the playoff, came back from the loser bracket, and won the tournament! Our team also won the INSPIRE Award, the highest award possible, for the first time ever! It was possibly the nicest day I've had in 2025.

Here are some birds that were flying above me as I walked in the sunshine Monday. My Merlin app tells me they were sandhill cranes. This is as zoomed in as my phone camera could go.

First off, thanks to everyone who has linked up or commented here lately. Things in my life and the lives of people I care about are still very uncertain due to situations outside our control, I'm angry, and I'm tremendously behind on answering emails and/or visiting blogs. I'm trying to respond as I'm able.

I'd meant to share my PHD progress last week, but with everything else going on, I completely forgot. I finished two pieces in January: Bedford Tiles and a table runner from my UFO pile. You can scroll back to my previous posts to see pictures if you want.

Linking with Ms. P Designs PHD

I attended two days of the big guild's retreat last week. I completed my Runway #2 quilt top. 

Or so I thought until I laid it out to take the above picture and was unhappy with the fabric placement. I selectively seam-ripped and am working on inserting new blocks. 

I had also packed one of my older UFO projects, the race car quilt. I purchased a kit while we lived in Maryland and had intended to make it for my son for when he moved from the crib to a "big boy" bed. He can drive now, so it's been a while. I discovered that I'd cut out the entire quilt, but never started sewing it. I completed several blocks at the retreat before packing it in. I'm impressed that I was able to get the fabric direction right on all of the blue/green blocks. I think I may donate this one to Habitat whenever it gets finished.

Thankfully, work has started to pick up and I quilted several things.

Jo Ellen requested Stipple for her table runner.

Jan left the design for her table runner up to me and I picked Curly.

I quilted loopy meander for a shy quilter (not allowed to share). I thought this batik fabric was really pretty. Sorry the picture is shadowy; I was working at night again and it was hard to photo just that without sharing anything else.

I started on Marsali's group of quilts. She requested Whoop-de-do for this one.

My son is finally on the mend--thank you to all who sent get well wishes. Beaker the chicken will be going to the vet today since she's having trouble walking. Never in my life did I think I'd be paying for a vet visit, particularly for a chicken. The roosters have been going at each other, unless we interrupt them, in which case they go for us instead. After seeing their behavior, I wonder if Beaker got caught in the crossfire. Or maybe she slid off the coop ramp in the poor weather. Who knows?

We have another robotics tournament this weekend and my daughter is coming home to visit, which I am really looking forward to. We've been housesitting for our neighbor for months and months. They've had another offer on their house and it was inspected this week, so I'm hoping for everyone's sake that this one goes through. 

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

 Another month has flown past. I feel like I've accomplished a good amount. First off, here is my PHD report for the month.

I'll be linking with Ms. P for my report. 

I finished two projects this month, the In and Out mini and a donation quilt. For more details on the In and Out mini, scroll back to my last post. 

I was able to get the donation quilt (Runway from Quilter's World Spring 2024 issue) bound over the weekend and it will be turned in to the guild at our next meeting.  Look closely at the binding. I used all the leftovers from the quilt top, including the block trimmings, to get the binding made. Only thing I wish I would have done differently is to press open the seams from the block trimmings instead of leaving them to one side.

The RSC quilt is coming along nicely. I made four blue RSC blocks this month. I made two right at the beginning of the month using light/medium blues. I made two more using medium/dark blues. I now have 16 of the 20 blocks that I want for my quilt. This has been a really fun process so far. If you want to make your own, visit Sandra's blog for the free instructions.

Linking with So Scrappy RSC

I'm still keeping busy quilting for others. This week I quilted five quilts. The first one belongs to Barb. She picked Ginger Snap for the quilting and I suggested Glide Sand for the thread. It's a light gold that looks good when there's a big color difference between the background and the blocks. It also helped accentuate the gold metallic in the background print.

Next, I quilted Retro Lines on Trudy's mini. This design is pretty intense! I had to slow my machine down so much that it took several hours to quilt a mini. I used 60 wt thread on the top and bottom to help avoid heavy thread build up from all the backtracking. It looks really good though, so it was worth the effort. 

I quilted van Gogh on Toni's quilt. I selected Glide Khaki this time. It's still in the yellow tones, but not as intense as the Sand was on this quilt.

Connie requested Circle Drama for this quilt. I need to bind this one.

Next up was another of Connie's, quilted with Honeycomb with Bees. She wanted it fairly small, so this was another where I had to really slow down the stitching to get it to look accurate. Another long stitch-out and another one to bind.

Moving on, we've really been enjoying the birds lately. We have parents bringing in their babies to the feeders and I've also seen birds that don't come in to the feeders foraging in the edges of the yard with their young. All the young can fly, but they seem to still be dependent on their parents to feed them. I've watched grackles, Baltimore orioles, orchard orioles, and house finches with their young. We also have some hummingbirds coming in. 

Baltimore oriole

orchard oriole

Friday we all went down to Spring Mill State Park to look at a juvenile brown booby that somehow made its way into south-central Indiana. It's been there for almost a month, so the naturalists think it will stay for the summer. I borrowed this picture from the American Bird Conservancy to show its usual range. You can click on the link under the picture to see what the birds look like and learn more about them.

https://abcbirds.org/bird/brown-booby/

The bird was across the lake from the observation dock. We could see it well enough with the binoculars, though we don't own powerful enough equipment to get great photos.  

Can you spot the booby?

Last week I mentioned I was starting a project from my PHD list, a donation quilt made with a jelly roll that had been donated to me. Everything was going along merrily until I attempted to add the solid rectangles to the strip sets. 

At first I thought I'd cut the rectangles incorrectly. Nope. They matched the pattern instructions. 

After a bit of head scratching, I measured one of the jelly roll strips. Bingo. They were not 2.5" wide from outer point to outer point, but just a thread shy of 2.75"!

I eventually decided to try to cut new pieces to match the strip sets. I had just enough fabric left from the piece I'd cut the original ones from. 

Once the new pieces were cut, everything went together quickly. My quilt ended up being four inches wider than the original. I had enough backing, so this wasn't an issue other than the quilt is now almost square instead of oblong. It's a donation quilt, so it's fine. One other comment, this jelly roll only had five different prints, which made the color layout less than ideal.  On the plus side, no overthinking because my options were very limited.

I was able to quilt it over the weekend using the Echo Blossoms design. 

I was hoping to get it bound before today, but that didn't happen. I'm going to have to piece together every scrap I had left to try to get enough length in binding strips. 

If you're wondering what I'm going to do with the 33 rectangles that didn't work, I purchased a Ruby Star jelly roll to try again. It has arrived and its strips are actually 2.5". I'll be honest here, I almost never buy precuts (jelly roll, layer cake, charm, mini charm). I like yardage and I love cutting fabric. :D

I also prepped all my Bedford Tiles tubes into the appropriate strips. I looked at Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips instructions for guidance since the author of this pattern based it on Bonnie's. I may be the last person on Earth to find out about ripping every few stitches and then just pulling the seam apart. Of course Bonnie would have a quick technique. I got all the pieces separated in no time. 

I've still been busy quilting for others. I quilted Loop the Loop on Annie's quilt. I'm so pleased with how this one turned out--she left all the decisions to me on this one (though I did ask for design approval).

I quilted Windswept on Melissa's quilt. I also bound this one.

Next up was Jae's little quilt. We went with Starry.

I quilted a pair of quilts for Ann K. She picked Cakewalk for the pink one and Twist Tie for the purple. I partially bound these. 

Trudy picked Champagne Bubbles for her ocean panel quilt. Such a cute panel and coordinates.

Out in the garden, I harvested the peas. This is the entire harvest. I'll be lucky to get more than a couple more pea pods this season. There's a very obvious line in the big tank of where things grew or didn't. I think that the trees outside the garden have gotten tall enough to shade part of the tank too much.

I weeded the green bean tank. I was wearing my Farmer's Defense sleeves, but neglected to put on bug spray and now I have probably 40 bites on my legs. Oops. I was only out there 10 -15 minutes. The beans are struggling. 😞 

The Coolapenos are starting to form peppers. 

The tomatoes are doing great. 

I started four pepper plants from an "assorted bell pepper" seed pack. Two of the four plants have these. I don't think these are bell peppers....possibly banana peppers or Hungarian wax. I guess the amount of heat will help decide.

I knew it would be a gamble. Last year I direct-sowed some seeds from the same pack and ended up with a few very late plants with odd little peppers on them. The chickens adore all types of peppers, hot or not, so it's no big deal either way. Quite frankly, I enjoy the surprise of what grows from them. 

The chickens are molting. Smoky only has one tail feather right now and poor little Agatha (the darker hen in the front of the pictures) looks like she has no tail. Henry looks pretty plush and bushy in comparison to the rest. 

I found these fruits growing in the yard. My husband tells me these are blackberries and the red berry picture from last week shows black raspberries. The wild blackberries have a lot of seeds and the centers don't come out.

The OMG finish link up will open on the 24th and I'll share June's PHD report next Wednesday. 

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