Stories from the Sewing Room

It's been a busy week here. I've already completed this month's Marble Mystery clue. September and October clues are pictured.

This is only the second month we've been sewing and I've used most of my parts already. Hmm.

The local quilt shows were held over the weekend. My husband and I went to both on Friday afternoon. I found eight quilts I'd quilted at the guild show where I'm not a member. I had four of my own and five I'd quilted at my guild's show. I hit the treasure shops at both. I ended up with 10 yards of fabric for $40. The one I don't belong to had a lot of very current fabric on offer. The top row of fabrics are from the smaller show, the bottom stuff from my guild. Do you notice there's some Kaffe in there? That will be for my Tessellations quilt. I might use the purple polka dot for that too.

My husband decided to buy me a nice maple clapper--I've never used one before and I don't typically use steam, just spritz with water, so we'll see how it goes. I also bought two charm packs from one of the vendors. 

My guild has a raffle basket thing at the shows. I donated a basket at our last show that was all quilt-themed things for the home. This year I didn't have enough capacity to donate. They went with various themes that weren't necessarily related to sewing this year, such as a coffee basket, a sports basket, pet care, diapers and baby things, etc. My husband bought one card of 25 entries--you pick how you distribute the entries amongst the baskets. I let him decide what he was entering. He won two baskets--the Missouri Star and the state parks baskets. I'm not sure what we're going to do with all this stuff, but it was for a good cause.

I have quilted my RSC. I chose Over the Rainbow for the quilting. It seemed fitting for a rainbow scrap quilt. The block pattern I used is available for free from mmm quilts.

As you may recall, I pieced a backing using lots of old prints and a few new ones, as shown above. I generated a pile of scraps! It wasn't as bad as this pile looks because two of the pieces left over after trimming were about a half yard each, so those went back into the fabric yardage bins. And of course I removed the little strips of excess batting. I donate batting scraps to someone who makes dog beds. It usually takes me about a year to get a kitchen trash bag full.

The binding was made from leftover backing from a previous project. I had to use batting from my roll instead of the Frankenbatting I'd planned because I actually didn't have enough scraps to make a large enough batting. 

Linking my RSC finish here. 

I bound two very large quilts from last week's group of quilts and I've quilted just a few quilts. The first one is Amber's. She picked Sugar and Spice for the quilting and it looks so pretty. As you can see, it's a pretty large quilt. I couldn't get the white fabric to actually show up as white. 

Jae picked Cakewalk for her baby quilt. Sorry, it's pretty hard to see the quilting on this one whether it's on the frame or not. The thread blended into the fabric really well.

Let's start with my September PHD report. I did not have any UFO finishes, but I have moved my RSC quilt a bit closer to completion--more about this down below. I started and finished a set of Halloween napkins in September. I'm hoping to finish the RSC this month and I've picked sewing a clothing item as my OMG for the month, so maybe I'll get two finishes?  Stay tuned.

View the PHD link up.

Last week I shared that I'd purchased a new serger/coverstitch combo machine. I sold both my former machines last Wednesday, both to younger people. I was reluctant to sell my old faithful Bernina serger, but I had to. It made me feel a bit better that it went to a 14 year old who'd saved up her money to buy one. I also gave away a ton of commercial doll clothes sewing patterns. That felt great. I need to keep the momentum going and destash other things I am not going to use again (hair bow making supplies and fabrics I selected for doll clothes that are too small of cuts to use for humans come to mind immediately). 

I received a question about what doll clothes patterns were available for the Fisher Price My Friend dolls back in the day. I took photos of my pattern stash and have added them to the My Friend dolls page. 

I have accomplished some sewing. I completed September's clue for the Meadow Mist Marble mystery. There are nine blocks and 36 flying geese units. The next clue comes out tomorrow.

I also have completed piecing the back for my RSC quilt! This feels like a huge accomplishment; no idea why. It's pretty ugly! All the prints mixed together kind of assault the eye. LOL. Now I have to piece some batting and figure out what I'm going to quilt on it.

I mentioned last week that many of the fabric pieces had selvedges circa 1999. One piece of fabric had Debbie Mumm for Jo-Ann printed on the selvedge. That was surprising to me. I don't think this even looks like most of the Debbie Mumm fabric I had back in the day. I'm pretty sure I bought this around 2009 because the wedge that was cut out was used for a baby toy. 

I've sewn hanging sleeves onto all four of the quilts I entered in the guild show. I opted to write the quilt info directly on the sleeves instead of making and attaching separate labels. If you're remotely close to my area, I hope you'll consider attending the shows this weekend. 

I have several quilts to share. First is Terry's second IU quilt, quilted with Arris. This one has Glide Apple thread on the front and white on the back. 

Next is Terry's flower quilt, quilted with Doing Doughnuts, which is one of my favorite pantos. This one is quite large and took me two days to quilt. She wanted orange thread. I used Glide Bronze on the top and Glide Mango Smoothie on the back. I am working on the binding for this one.

Keetah wanted Winterfest quilted on her Santa panel quilt. I used Glide Wheat for the thread. It's a tan with some yellow. Not too noticeable on the white, not too stark on the panel.

Melissa requested Hiding Out for her Halloween quilt, along with purple thread (Glide Lilac). It's so fun! I opted for Hobbs black since the back is solid black. This helped avoid the very visible pokies that regular Hobbs seems to produce, particularly when the backing is more loosely woven. I will be binding this quilt also.

Out in the yard, our chicken Peanut has finally gotten over being broody. There is a persimmon tree just off the back of our property line. It is loaded with fruits this year. We looked up whether they were safe for chickens to eat and they are okay in moderation. So we picked up three from the ground and the chickens LOVED them.

We have had lots of unusual birds in our yard, probably due to migration, though many of them are year-round residents in my area according to my bird book. My daughter's bird cam captured this rose-breasted grosbeak. We normally have grosbeaks for a week or two in spring and fall during migration. I saw one in the spring for one day only this year. The one in the photo below has been spotted a couple times.