Stories from the Sewing Room

I don't know what got into me, but I had a very productive weekend. I got the vast majority of the house cleaned, I convinced the menfolk to pick up and put away all the robotics stuff so that my basement living room is clean, and I completed some big sewing tasks!

I've been very slowly working on a Gnome Angel/Marti Michel Free Block Friday quilt. I kept staring at the block 3, thinking I needed to switch out one of the colors. I finally did it. Here is the before.

And here is the after. It might be a bit hard for you to see, but I switched out the gray bits in between the green for pink pieces. I'm happy with the switch. It looks more cohesive with the other blocks I've completed and I just really prefer how it looks.

I also prepped my Palmer Pletsch fitting pattern, pressing, taping, and marking seam lines, so that it is ready whenever I can get someone to help me with it. This photo does not make it look like I've pressed the pieces. 🤨

My daughter came home for the weekend. The kids and I started watching the current season of Vienna Blood and I got another side of my Melodic Mystery quilt bound. I'm now halfway! I think I have two weeks or so to finish up before I need to do the OMG finish post. Also, I'm really glad she's planning to come back again this weekend because I really want to finish watching the show!!! And I like seeing her.

Saturday we were having very heavy rain. I cleaned, worked, and then decided to finally deal with my fear of quilting a double batt with wool on top. This little piece is a kit I bought from Julia Quiltoff. It came with backing, top background fabric, laser-cut fusible appliqués, fabric to make a binding, and two pieces of batting. The top piece of batting is wool. I'm not sure what batting the bottom piece was other than a general guess at a cotton/poly blend or maybe just cotton. There was a free video class on how to appliqué (by machine, nothing groundbreaking or new there) and also a video class on quilting (mostly watching her quilt, which is nice to watch, but doesn't necessarily translate to success). I had tried to quilt it one other time but struggled to fit the double batting under my longarm's foot. 

I really didn't want to have to adjust the foot height, so I used one of my low-profile feet, which meant no ruler work. I had to add extra fabric "leaders" to the top and bottom of the backing piece so that I had enough clearance for my actual longarm leaders. I had to be really careful at the edges because the wool batting was fluffy and loose. I did catch the foot in the batting fibers a few times and had to stop and untangle. I quilted this piece similarly to Julia's sample piece. 

Off to a pretty good start.

Things I learned/noticed/remembered:

    1. I get really tired after 15 - 30 minutes of quilting in this style. I should stop and take breaks because my quality and accuracy decrease, however, my personal quilting time is very limited, so I pushed through on this piece. It took me about two hours to quilt this 20" x 21" piece. 

I can tell I'm starting to lose the plot. You can really see the wool batting poof in the unquilted areas.

    2. The less-quilted parts have nice loft, especially the bigger butterfly, but the end product is so stiff that it can almost stand up on its own. I'm not sure if it's due to the quilting density, the fabrics, the battings, or some combo of the three. 

I'd forgotten to quilt a small bit here and you can really see how much the batting compresses with quilting.

    3. I think the scale I quilt in gets smaller and smaller the more tired I get. 

    4. If I could practice this style of quilting more often, I think I would have less bobbles and mistakes. Maybe my backtracking would be more accurate. Practice makes perfect. 

    5. I think the front looks pretty good, but the back shows every single mistake I made.

I believe I'm going to enter this in the fair and they require some hanging method for small pieces. I added hanging corners during binding because this thing is so stiff I don't want to try to sew on a hanging sleeve. These corners may be a bit small, but I just used backing trimmings, so it is what is is.

Linking with Quiltery, Alycia Quilts, and Andree's Free Motion Mavericks.

I am thankful to have a steady stream of work right now. I completed five quilts for others since last week.

The first two belong to Charlene. She picked Taffeta for this quilt.

And Van Gogh for this one.

Trudy selected Ginger Snap for her quilt.

Hannah requested Lovely Loops for her adorable baby quilt. I bound this one and sent it on back to her.

Finally, Sonja picked Cloud Nine Petite for this quilt. She is a master at mixing yardage and reclaimed fabric in her quilts. The back of this one had the most darling little 3/4" HST section. I quilted this one from the bottom up to make sure I used as much of that little panel as possible. That means that I attach the bottom of the backing to my back roller and the top of the backing to the roller closest to me. Then I quilt from the bottom of the quilt top up to the top. I do this if I have a backing that already has a label attached so that I can make sure the label is right where I want it. If you try this technique, don't forget to flip your pattern over the X axis, particularly if it's a more directional design. 

If you look closely, you can see the tiny HST Sonja included in the backing right along the edge of the photo.

We've not made much progress on getting the vegetable garden up and running. The weather has made it basically impossible. We've had tornado warnings, loads of rain, flooding, and now freeze warnings. The asparagus crowns arrived Monday and they are chilling in the fridge until we can get the tank set and get some dirt. I did start a few tomato and pepper plants in my Aerogarden. A bit late, but it will be okay. I don't think a week either way will make too much difference. 

I like that our yard has plenty of "weeds" with lots of little flowers right now. It looks like a nice meadow. We have some violets (and more lamb's ear that has hopped the barrier) in the side yard. 

If you do not wish to read about my personal life/beliefs, please stop reading here. 

I like to make note of things that maybe my kids will like to look back at someday. You can read it or not. I reserve the right to delete rude or weird comments.

I've had a few wins: a better haircut this time (though I might have offended her by saying I didn't want it as short as she did last time; she didn't style it, but I was actually pleased with that choice as I don't like tons of product in my hair or on my sensitive scalp), the clean house, and I found a few pairs of jeans that fit. They're a size bigger than I'd like, but not as big as I thought I'd have to go. A few hits too: I cannot find dress shoes that fit my weird feet. I ordered and returned four pairs in different styles from two companies. While I can learn to sew my own clothes, I don't think I can become a cobbler. My washer's mother board appears to be going out. We purchased the machine in August 2020. The replacement part is 1/3 the cost of the machine. Thankfully my husband is very talented and can do the repair himself. 

My son is getting inducted into National Honor Society tonight. Nothing requiring dress shoes for me. He does have to wear nice clothing, which he will pair with his tennis shoes. At least they're new. 😏 Next week I'm taking another serger foot class and we're attending my husband's leadership class graduation. 

Everything seems so fragile in the world right now. I'm trying to be very aware of purchases and budget. I'll put things into a cart and then wait several days to see if we actually need whatever we're thinking of buying. Jobs seem tenuous. I will never cheer for people losing their jobs. We've been in that position too many times for me to wish that on anyone except some elected people. I've had to seriously cut back my news and social media consumption to preserve my sanity. 

I adore PBS. We were watching a Rick Steves special episode about Poland the other night--my son knew that Poland as a country had disappeared multiple times throughout history; I did not. I was aware, thanks to PBS and Finding Your Roots, that Poland was part of the Pale of Settlement. Rick Steves included clips from the museum at Auschwitz-Berkinau and I was close to tears and I am worried that we are perilously close to another world tipping point. Our politicians have cut funding for libraries, for public media and education, for world and local disaster relief, for food and medicine for the less fortunate, for medical research and environmental and safety protections. It hurts my heart. 

It's time to share my March PHD progress. 

Linking with Ms. P.

In March I completed item #1 on my list, the Marble Mystery quilt. 

I quilted and am in the process of binding #3, Melodic Mystery quilt.

No progress was made on items 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

I had one new start, a project from a class I took with Linda Hahn at IHQS. No further progress has been made because I felt that the templates, foundations, and book had a smoke scent that I'm trying to eradicate before working on this project further. This is a mini, so hopefully it will be a finish this year.

I did make one block from another UFO that isn't on my list.

I had a busy March with quilting and lots of bindings. I have just a few to share from the last week. The first one belongs to Jeri and is quilted with Longwood. I fully bind Jeri's quilts.

This one is also Jeri's. She selected Fusion for this quilt.

And this is Deb's, quilted with Malachite.

I had planned to quilt another of my UFOs over the weekend, but instead I worked in the upper garden and assisted my husband with placing poles for the new vegetable garden's enclosure. I'm super proud that I dug out most of the lamb's ear by myself in this section. I almost filled our 24" cube weed bag. Sharp eyes will notice I left a little clump. I might rip out a bit more of that, but think I'll leave most of it right there because the bees love the flowers. I'll need to be vigilant so it doesn't take over the sidewalk again.

Unfortunately, I have a long ways to go with the rest of that garden. Plus it has spread all over the lawn and I'll need to dig that out too. This part is going to be tricky because of all the iris rhizomes. All those lighter spots along the top of the sidewalk out in the grass are also lamb's ear. All of this came from one plant. 

Here are the poles for the vegetable garden. They held up through the storms we had Sunday night. Sunday started off breezy and overcast, transitioning to really pleasant, warm, sunny weather. Lots of people were out for walks in the late afternoon. Then at dinnertime, our power started flashing and browning out before completely going out for the next five or six hours. The tornado sirens started wailing right as the power went off. We didn't have any damage other than lack of power. I guess the storm was a lot stronger several miles closer to town. I saw social media reports of loud noises like a train or a jet, and have seen lots of downed trees, but the NWS has determined no tornadoes came through my area. Edited to add: now the NWS says an EF-0 did go through briefly, touching down for less than 1/4 mile.

Sunday late afternoon

My husband kept working on the enclosure Monday and Tuesday and has the top boards on. We bought fencing, but he hasn't had time to add that yet.

Tuesday afternoon

I noticed that the redbuds are starting to have a purple-y haze. If you look closely at any of my pictures with trees in the backgrounds, you can see they are starting to bud out. 

The tree branches in the center are redbuds. I didn't capture the color very well.

I went to Jo-Ann on Friday, hoping they might have some thread left. Nope. Only a little bit of machine embroidery and serger threads remained. There were some zippers, but no other notions. No interfacing. No batting or anything else usually stocked in that area. Most yarn was gone and all cross stitch supplies. There was still quite a bit of fabric, but the sales aren't that good on them and everything was a minimum of two yards. Upholstery fabric was a three-yard minimum. I also saw a bit of vinyl and it looked like there was still a decent amount of jewelry findings. The whole thing is just so sad. 

Linking with Quiltery and Alycia Quilts.