Stories from the Sewing Room

Today is a day to celebrate! Kelly from My Quilt Infatuation's new book, Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs, is now available everywhere you buy books--Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Connecting Threads, and many quilt shops. Or you can buy a signed copy right from Kelly herself!

               

Here is the back of my quilt. Isn't it fun! 

And here is the front of my fully finished Tall Tales quilt. I made this quilt top over two summers, several years apart, during quilt alongs. The book block pattern is available here. I quilted it with a modern Baptist Fan design using 60 wt thread so that there was texture without being too thready over the novelty prints.

                            

               

 

               

               

 

               

Visit the following bloggers to see more quilts inspired by Kelly's book:

Sandra @ mmm...quilts

Rose @ Something Rosemade

Diann @ Little Penguin Quilts

Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts

Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal

Anja @ Anja Quilts

Nancy @ Grace and Peace Quilting

Vasudha @ Storied Quilts

Kris @ Sew Sunshine

Leanne @ Devoted Quilter

Rebecca @ Rebecca Grace Quilting

Preeti @ Sew Preeti Quilts

Susan @ Quilt Fabrication

Kate @ Katie Mae Quilts

Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts

Linda @ Flourishing Palms

Anne-Marie @ Stories From the Sewing Room You are here!

Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty

Gail @ Quilting Gail

Kat @ Scrapbox Quilts

Julie @ Julie's Quilts and Costumes

Jan @ The Colorful Fabriholic

Are you ready to set your goal for this month? 

New to One Monthly Goal?  Welcome!  To join, share a photo of your project plus some words about what you want to accomplish in a blog post or Instagram post and add that photo to the link up.  Return at the end of the month and share your results.  (Results link up opens for the last 7 days of the month.)

Patty at Elm Street Quilts and I are co-hosting  One Monthly Goal. You can link up at either of our blogs and your project will show in the same link party!

My goal for this month is to finish my Tall Tales quilt. I need to quilt and bind it. Here's the top, completed last July. 

If I get this one finished up, I'd like to move another project from my UFO list up to the ready-to-be-quilted stage. I'm feeling pretty motivated at the moment. We'll see if I can keep that feeling and translate it into more progress this month.

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on May 25.  Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal May Link Up

I got it done! It felt impossible, but here it is, done ahead of time. This is my Tall Tales quilt.

What should I tackle for next month?

My husband and I traveled to Carroll, Iowa, last week to take a maintenance class from APQS maintenance guru Amy Stuart. Want to see what APQS headquarters looks like?

This was the first time I'd been to Iowa. My impression was corn, soybeans, wind turbines, and trains. There were very few political signs, which I found very refreshing. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wind turbines we saw. I did a bit of research since we spent many, many hours in the car. Wind power accounted for 57% of Iowa's power generation in 2020 and their goal is to be 100% renewable by 2050. I think this is totally awesome and I wish Indiana would make more of an effort. I also noticed a lot of trains. I found this juxtaposition interesting.

We did a bit of outdoor sightseeing as well. This is Elwood, the world's largest concrete gnome. He is housed in the Rieman gardens on the Iowa State University campus in Ames.

There was an exhibit at the gardens as well. Here are a few of the sculptures we enjoyed.

We took a trip to Audubon, Iowa, one evening to see Albert, the world's largest bull.

On our way out of Iowa, we drove toward Des Moines. This is a sculpture outside the library in Waukee.

We also visited the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. It was literally 100 degrees outside, so we walked very quickly around the block. Here are a few of my favorite photos.

Since we got back home in the middle of the night, we took a day to recover from the traveling. Then it was back to work for me. Here is one of Susan's quilts, quilted with More Square Drama.

Our carpet re-do part three was scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Monday they tore out the awful carpet from round two. Then we had some cleaning to do and also my husband had to fill lots of holes in the cement from the tack strips and the drill holes from who knows what.

They left fairly early, so I snuck in another quilt. This is Amber's, quilted with loopy meander. 

Yesterday was day one of the carpet replacement. I spent my time watching some Intelliquilter courses and following along with my tablet until the battery ran out. Then I cleaned and also worked on cutting a project I'm testing. The workers stayed quite late, 5:45 or so. They just snuck out without saying anything. Uh-oh, that brings back bad memories from round two. I sent my husband down to get some parsley from the indoor garden and he came back up and said it looks like they're done. 🤔

I went downstairs and it does, indeed, look like they're done. I don't see any hugely visible seams at the moment, but as you can see, it really needs to be vacuumed. So maybe this nine month nightmare is finally over. We'll see. If it all looks good, we can uncover the trim and finally get the slider door switched out and trimmed. And move our furniture back into the living room.

Out in the garden, things are looking jungle-like. My kids were supposed to water the veggies and harvest while we were gone. My son said he did the garden on Friday and he picked a cucumber. I went out Sunday morning and here is part of my harvest. I also had a few peas and a good handful or two of green beans. I'm like, "I thought you said nothing was ready." He's like, "I didn't see anything." I show him the harvest. Ummm....these things don't get this big in a day or two. LOL

My mother in law sent me a bunch of zinnia seeds. Here's one little patch.

Well, it's my birthday and I'm going to go do whatever I feel like. TBD. 😃 See you next week with next month's goal.

Woo! Indeed, woo hoo! All 70 of my Tall Tales blocks are ready to be sewn into a quilt top. I might just be able to get the whole top done this month. Here are all my cute little blocks.

I got four quilts quilted this week.

This baby quilt for Jess, including full binding.

Three quilts for Susan. This one is quilted with Beleaf it or Not.

I made time to go out into the garden and harvested some green beans and a zucchini and a couple peas.

Then I went out again a few days later and got a few more peas, more green beans, and a cucumber. 

There are also a few more coolapenos, but I left those on the plant for now since I wasn't ready to use them yet.

We watched a bee pollinating all the cucumber flowers. There are lots and lots of baby cucumbers, so hopefully I'll be making more freezer pickles soon. And then some relish later on if there are enough. 

We were out on our nightly walk the other day and saw a beautiful rainbow. Then it started sprinkling even though it was sunny overhead. I didn't have my phone with me, but my husband got this shot of the full arc. This is one instance where it was so much better in real life than in his photo. I'm kind of laughing at whatever he did to get this photo because it looks like our construction outhouse is leaning.

There was also a secondary rainbow, which you can see a bit better if I turn down the light on the photo.

I have reached the end of the block making for the Tall Tales quilt. I rewarded myself with sewing something different (more on that below). Here are my last few blocks. I'm proud to say that all of the polka dot background fabric is from quilt back trimmings and the spines of 99% of the blocks are from my scrap bins. 

My son helped me tear out all the foundations yesterday, so now I just have to add the block borders and assemble the top. And then make a backing, quilt, and bind.  And I have seven available sewing days left this month. No sweat. Yeah, right. Hopefully I can at least get the top done since that was my goal.

When I finished sewing the last of the blocks over the weekend, I did not want to deal with tearing out all the papers, so I switched back to my Chalk quilt to give myself a break. I have all the rows made now and am working on sewing them into rows. I really liked how these blocks in progress arranged themselves as they fell from my table.

I admire those of you who can start to finish one project at a time. I really just cannot work that way. I don't enjoy it. I need to do a little of this, a little of that. I think this is why I don't enjoy quilting retreats much either. I cannot just sit and sew for the entire day/days at a time. I also find it hard on my body to just sit all day. As part of my foundation removal avoidance, I also cleaned and rearranged my fabric closet a bit.

You've probably heard me mention Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs' mystery quilts many, many times. She released the fabric requirements for the Melodic Mystery last week. I had fun shopping online for fabrics, and then reminded myself that I have plenty and I need to shop my stash first. I wasn't sure what I would find because I don't typically buy yardage of anything except neutrals and backings, but I thought I need to at least try.

Here is my fabric pull. A few of these might look familiar to you--3/4 of them are leftovers from my Flower Patch SAL. I added in the jade colored one--that was one I ordered for my art quilt that ended up looking nothing like it was pictured online, so I'm glad it will get a new life in this quilt. I'll figure out backing and binding in the future, but now I'm ready to start cutting when the August clue is revealed.

Meanwhile, I've been working like crazy on the quilting in anticipation of the upcoming seven day hiatus. 

This first one is a group project one of my guilds made. Quilted with Scribble Hearts.

Next up is Trish's quilt, quilted with Pretty Paisley.

Then one for Haley, quilted with A Fishy Tail. I partially bound this one as well.

Mary Ann's, quilted with Turtle. 

Elle's, quilted with More Square Drama.

Nothing much to report in the garden. I haven't been out much. We did get some much-needed rain Thursday and Friday. I harvested lettuce Saturday after all the rain. Probably should have waited til things dried out a bit. It (the lettuce) was so muddy. I noticed some of the baby zucchinis are rotting at the blossom end, so we removed those. We have a few coolapenos that are ready, but those are my husband's to deal with. There are some baby cucumbers on one of the plants and I should be able to harvest more green beans this week. The flower gardens need to be weeded. Every time I go outside and stand in one spot too long I get chigger bites, so the weeds can just be there for now.

My sweet new friend Trish brought me some fresh lavender from her garden when she picked up her quilt. 🥰

Tune in next week to see if I get those block borders added before my hiatus.