Stories from the Sewing Room

I’ve spent most of the last week working on a custom quilting project. I’m happy to say that after around 30 hours of quilting, it is done and back with Carol, its owner!

Here it is in progress.

For this quilt, I used the Lavender Lines Ruler from White Arbor Quilts for the curved design and the shorter straight lines because it’s the only ruler I have that has 1/8” lines. Why don't more long arm rulers have the 1/8" markings? Soooo useful! I used a straight ruler from The Quilted Pineapple for the stitch in the ditch along the borders. I also used the open toe foot and it was fantastic. I found it much easier to accurately hit marks with the ruler than when using the regular ruler foot.

I also used a long, skinny strip of paper. The paper functions like a custom, no-math ruler. You simply make a strip of paper (adding machine or cash register tape would be perfect) the length of whatever you want to evenly divide, in this case, one of the borders, and keep folding the paper until you get the division you desire. That’s probably clear as mud!

I didn’t have quite enough extra backing fabric to be able to get all the way to the edges with my ruler base on, so I created a pattern in IntelliQuilter to stitch out what I wanted for the outer border.

I also quilted this one for Deb.

And this baby quilt for Sharon, quilted with Scribble Hearts.

I have all the pieces for bird mini (OMG this month) cut out. No sewing yet.

I finished my Sew Tiny Sampler. The pattern is by Kitty Wilkin. This has been waiting for quilting and binding forever. And now it’s done! As you can probably tell from the photo, I struggled with keeping these consistent. It's still cute though, and a real challenge! This finishes at 7.5" square. Yup, the whole thing is only 7.5". I might try making one again someday. After I finish all my other projects. 😄

Over the next week, I am hoping to start sewing my bird mini, work on my Flower Patch SAL blocks (new one is out today!), sew some burp cloths, and put together my Macaron Mystery quilt. I’ve seen lots of finished tops posted on Cheryl’s Facebook page already. People are fast! I'm also hoping to get five customer quilts done. This seems overly ambitious. We'll see....

I harvested my lettuce this week. I waited about a week too long. It was super crowded in there and some was beginning to wilt. I had the light all the way up and definitely didn't have the four to six inches of clearance.

It tasted good. I made an Italian dressing to go with it and my husband bought me some surprisingly tasty little Roma tomatoes that I enjoyed with it--I'm the only one who will eat actual tomatoes in my household. Seriously, best grocery store tomatoes I’ve had in years. 

Also, the stupid snail escaped the fish tank again the other day. 😒

See you next week.

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

It's time to decide on my goal for this month. I have plenty of choices. I looked at the list of potential projects that I submitted for my small guild's UFO challenge and picked a few choices that I felt called to work on. 

Here are my potential picks for this month:

1. Apple quilt--This is from the way back pile--maybe 1999 or 2000? I attempted to quilt it before Christmas, but my iQ went crazy and totally screwed up the pattern. (I tested the pattern on scrap fabric immediately following the actual quilt attempt and the pattern stitched out perfectly. 🤷🏻‍♀️) I have been slowly ripping out the first two rows of quilting and it is now ready for another quilting attempt. I am probably going to go for custom this time instead of edge to edge.

2. Sew Tiny Sampler--Needs to be quilted and bound. I have quilted and unquilted it twice so far. Nothing looks quite right on it. It's so small and my sashing strips are so far off. I just don't know what to do with it. Maybe just some light stitch in the ditch?

3. Pink/green baby quilt--Another from the way back pile, this dates to 2006. I used my embroidery machine to quilt the square blocks, did some stitch in the ditch, and then attempted the border freehand on my sewing machine. 🤣😅 And that's where I quit. It was too unattractive to continue. I recently showed my husband this one and he thought it was a current project. He was like, "What happened?" I am working on ripping out the ugly stitching right now.

The embroidered blocks are perfect.

There's nothing in the setting triangles because the design I used didn't come with a triangle version. The border is so ugly and jagged!

This is the saddest little flower you will ever see!

4. Grassy Creek--I need a break from this one. Maybe I'll pick it back up next month.

5. Flower Patch SAL--Still in progress, so can't yet count for a finish. I am keeping current on the blocks, though I don't feel like that's a great OMG.

6. Macaron mystery--My best guess based on past mysteries is that the reveal will be this month. I am up to date, but the mystery element makes this an iffy OMG choice. If you're making a Macaron, I am offering 15% off edge to edge quilting on Macaron quilts for the rest of the year.

7. Guild BOM from 2021--Need to assemble the top and then finish. 

8. One item not on my list--my bag of selvedges is full and I need to add these to my existing "yarn" balls. Maybe after I finish ripping out the quilting on the pink/green quilt.

9. Elizabeth Harman bird kit--This one is calling my name. It's small, but will be a challenge to get done in a short month.  I think this is the ideal candidate. It's my Valentine's gift to myself, working on something just for fun. My goal is to finish this, start to finish, this month.

I have mostly caught up on my clients' quilts. I even took off two days like a normal person instead of going full blast seven days a week. This is my goal for the year, to only work five days a week, or even just four!

Here's what I worked on last week. 

Elle's king size broken star quilt, quilted with Swirling.

Elle's cheerful quilt, quilted with Propel. We debated thread color on this for quite a while and finally went with the red Glide. It was the perfect choice!

Keetah's king size quilt, quilted with Lei.

And Sara's memory quilt for a friend, quilted with Soho. This one has a lot of photos, so I selectively photographed it.

Next up for me is a hand-guided custom. I'm estimating it will take me a week because there is a lot of ruler work and I can't work for long periods without my back hurting. I probably won't have much to share next week due to this. We'll have to wait and see though.

Oh, I do have another finish. This quilt is also at least 10 years old. I got the top finished and then couldn't figure out what to do for a backing or for the quilting, so it sat. I found some more of the fabric in an Instagram de-stash and had enough leftover pieces remaining to create a back. I kind of like the back better. I messed around with creating custom blocks using the iQ and tried out several patterns and elements I hadn't stitched before. Not my best work in any category, but it's done. 

Finally, here's an update on my lettuce. I'm at 3.5 weeks since starting the growing process. I have moved the light up twice over the past week. It's supposed to stay 4-6" above your crop. The Deer Tongue variety of lettuce is growing, but it's very tiny. The rest is basically ready for harvest.  

I'm seeing buds on some of the trees outside. It's been very cold lately and we are scheduled for some sort of winter event this week, but buds mean spring is on its way!

Linking with For the Love of Geese and My Quilt Infatuation.