Stories from the Sewing Room

Art quilter Cathy Geier spoke Tuesday night at the large guild I belong to and showed us some of her quilts. 

On Wednesday, I took the workshop she offered. She had everything we needed already cut, which made the process much easier. I am not an artist by any means, but I think my piece mostly turned out. There are definitely a few areas where I could have done better, but I think it will be okay once it's fully finished. I am considering fixing one of my mountain edges, but I'm not sure I can change it at this point. I had to order some border fabric, so this project will be on hold until the fabric arrives and I have time to do anything with it.

Also, I am very thankful all the trees were pre-cut and had fusible already applied. This would be a forever-UFO without that!

I can also share one of my recent finishes with you. Lindsey at Yellow Umbrella Quilts published her new pattern, Churn Dazzle. Here is my version, made almost completely from stash (had to buy background fabric but used up every bit of it). 

I even pieced together some more fabrics for the back!

I quilted it with Twist Tie, which is such a cute pattern that gives good texture.

I am behind in my work life. I've still been doing a ton of binding, but did get a few quilts done.

Oh, and I am glad I went to USPS and not UPS Friday morning to ship quilts, because someone drove through the UPS storefront! I drove by it yesterday on my way to an appointment and the front is all covered with OSB now. 

On to the quilts!

This one is Karla's, quilted with Squatty Squared in a teeny tiny scale. It came out so cute!

Here's another of Toni's memory quilts, quilted with Music Notes, which came preloaded in my iQ, but I believe you can buy at Urban Elements too. I like how she does the window effect with the panels. And now that I'm looking at this picture, you can't see any of the actual memory part of the quilt. 

One of Ann's, quilted with Pansies. Love the colors!

I also dusted off my embroidery machine to stitch out something fun for Elle. I have touched my embroidery machine twice in the past two to three years. It had been so long I couldn't remember how to make it start stitching. Ironically, the program in my small guild last week was all about machine embroidery, though the presenter has a much fancier machine than mine. 

Out in the garden, many of the daffodils are still in bloom and a few more have blossomed. Our weeping cherry tree blossomed just in time for heavy rain, just like every year. The dropped blossoms look like snow.

I was able to get the peas and lettuce planted outdoors over the weekend and my indoor lettuce has shown surprising growth.

That's all I have. Stop by next week to see my progress on the Flower Patch SAL and some more lovely quilts.

Another month, so many choices, so little time. I have plenty of things I'd like to work on, including the following projects.

I've had this mini kit forever. 

I'd like to make a sunflower quilt. It's hard to find good brown fabrics. My husband was near a quilt shop while returning carpet samples, so I had him stop and pick a few. 

I sewed half of this Chalk quilt top at my day retreat a few weeks ago. I'd like to finish it off.

I need to get these two projects done. The first is my small guild BOM program I ran last year. I need to cut sashing and assemble.

And this is my Macaron mystery. It needs to have the backing pressed and seamed and then be quilted. Obviously this won't be happening any time soon. 😐

Duty is winning out over wants this month. My goal is to finish piecing my Grassy Creek top. I am tired of it being on the design wall. The last time I worked on it was in January, so it is time. 

I have sewed absolutely nothing for myself over the past week. I bound five quilts for others. My goal was to quilt more than five quilts last week. I failed. I had a needle break and do damage on Friday. Luckily, it is all repairable/replaceable, but I do need to remove all the stitching I'd completed, which was about 1.66 rows. It's slow going and depressing. I was hoping to get a bit ahead since some people have been waiting a really long time, but now I am more behind. If you're one of the people waiting on me, I am so very sorry.

On the plus side, I did hit my minimum requirement of quilting five quilts. 

Here's Elle's quilt, quilted with Augusta.

Next up is Connie's cute little table runner, quilted with a modified version of Raindrops.

Another of Connie's, quilted with Midnight Sparkle.

One of Janice's, quilted with Ginger Leaf.

And another of Connie's, quilted with Hiding Out.

Some good things happened over the last week too. APQS has some machine maintenance classes scheduled and my husband and I will attend the one in July. I'm a bit nervous because other than a few trips to see our parents, we have gone pretty much nowhere since Christmas of 2019. I'm also excited because I will visit a state I haven't been to before and I will learn a ton of stuff.

Another nice thing is that our neighbors gifted us a bunch of Norway Spruce saplings, so my husband installed them along our lot line. Hopefully they will make a natural fence/screen for us. We've been told the trees can grow up to two feet/year. We'll see. You can see some white stakes in the back of the picture. That's just a few of them. They make a right angle at the furthest one out and then run along the line, but I didn't want to put my neighbors' house in the picture.

We have our building permit in hand and my husband is eagerly planning his new garage/workshop. If you have eagle eyes, you might see a few of his orange stakes marking his space in the picture above. He installed the required silt fence over the weekend. I supervised. In other words, I stood there and watched him work. 😏

Our garden is starting to look good. I do see some more of the stinking spearmint sprouting, but I am too busy this week to deal with it. And it's supposed to rain a lot.

I'm taking a class today with Cathy Geier, who spoke at my large guild last night. I will be learning how to make a landscape quilt. This is pretty out of my comfort zone, but it's good to learn new things. The class was very reasonably priced and includes all the fabrics! And though I really can't afford time off right now, the break will probably do me good mentally.

Our replacement carpet is scheduled to be installed April 25 - 27. This is a good/bad. Good because maybe it will be done for good this time, but bad because I can't get in my sewing room while the installers are here.

My lettuce is continuing to regrow. Not a lot, but still a lot more than I ever expected.

I haven't gotten the lettuce and peas sown outdoors yet. Maybe this weekend. Have a great week.