Stories from the Sewing Room

 It's time once again to share your August OMG finish.

This link up will remain open until August 31 at 11:55 pm EST.

My goal for the month was to completely finish my Swiss Star quilt. This is one that my daughter has claimed. She selected the colors, quilting design, and thread. My contribution was the background fabric and binding choices. Oh, and all the labor! I got it done pretty early in the month and she's already taken it back home with her. 

Yes, that is a snail quilting design. It sort of looks white in the pictures, but the thread is a variegated rainbow, front and back. 

I didn't have a fun time quilting this one, so I opted for full machine binding to get it completed quickly.

This project was also on my PHD list. I like to double-count whenever possible. 

Now it's your turn.

 It's a new month, so it's time to set a new goal. 

After looking over my project list and my PHD list, I have decided to finish my Swiss Star QAL. It needs to be quilted and bound and my daughter is eager to have it completed. 

Here is what it looks like now.

The backing is a skeleton flamingo print I have in my Etsy shop. The binding is the rainbow circles that we purchased from a LQS.

Anyway, she has chosen a snail quilting design and variegated rainbow thread. 😬😆 Wish me luck...

Now it's your turn.

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on August 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 August Link Up

I have completed the Swiss Star QAL top. The pattern was provided free on the Bernina blog. The original quilt was made of three colors. My daughter decided to recolor it into a rainbow. Everything except the background was from my stash. Though the pattern was labeled as advanced beginner/intermediate, I found this pattern to be very challenging and I would have labeled it as advanced based on the cutting techniques and construction methods used. Anyway, I'm glad the top is done. I'm annoyed that it came out a bit wavy (again, due to construction and large amounts of bias on the edges). We're considering options for backing fabric and I think my daughter will be okay with an E2E design on it. 

Today I am taking a class with Kelly Young from My Quilt Infatuation! We are doing the Churn, Churn, Churn quilt from her Scrappy Improv book. She spoke at our guild last night. It was so much fun!  

I attended the h+h americas trade show in Chicago last week. If you are a longarm quilter, it's probably not the best use of your time and resources unless you were interested in taking some of the classes or listening to the speakers. I was, but the things I was interested in were above my current budget. Plus, I only had one day to spend due to driving time and needing to be home in time for my daughter's Friday morning graduation ceremony. I'll spare you our selfie and just show the backdrop. 😄

There were a lot of really gorgeous yarns and knitted or crocheted projects. Truly amazing! Here are a few pictures of the Mochi Mochi table that my husband took.

Many of the major fabric distributors were also there, along with some of the notions marketers. Hobbs had a booth, as did a batting company I wasn't familiar with--Air Lite. It was very much a time to see products in person and place your orders for your retail sites. 

While I was there, I met LORI HOLT! She's just as nice as you'd expect. I didn't do photos with her or anyone else I recognized because I'm an introvert and it feels like invading their personal space. She was crocheting and had lots of her chunky yarn and granny squares on display.

Melissa Gilbert of Little House on the Prairie fame was also there. We didn't speak to her. She's got a new line coming out with Riley Blake. 

After Quilt Con and h+h, I am totally realizing my shortcomings. I need to be more outgoing and speak to more people and take more photos. Same things, I feel like I'm invading people's personal space and also, several of the people I did introduce myself to at Quilt Con seemed as if I was a bother or it was just very awkward. Or they didn't remember me at all from previous interactions. I guess I'm pretty forgettable. Maybe I should join the FBI. LOL.

I did decide to circle back to talk the the Villa Rosa people, and I'm so glad I did. I talked to Pat Fryer herself and thanked her for the quilt I won in the recent blog hop. She handed me a baggie of all of the latest VR cards free of charge!! I told her that was the highlight of my day and she kinda gave me side-eye. Oh well. I was thrilled!

If I go again next year, I'd like to go for more than one day and be able to take my time and maybe push myself by doing some meet-ups. I found the crowds and the lights overwhelming and felt rushed and unprepared, so I probably didn't take advantage of what was available to me.  

While we were in Chicago, we were able to have dinner with my husband's aunt, uncle, and cousins, who we hadn't seen in close to 15 years! We stayed overnight with the cousins and that was very enjoyable. Meanwhile, I noticed I had a rash popping up on my arms and I wasn't feeling the greatest. At first I thought it was chiggers, but it wasn't reacting the same and I was really dragging.

After the graduation ceremony Friday morning, I took myself to the urgent care. It turns out I have poison ivy. I've never had it before. It took all afternoon to get through the appointment and actually get the prescriptions filled. In a weird turn of events, one of the meds was being filled by robot and had gotten stuck in there. They said there was nothing they could do besides wait until it came out. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I'm finally starting to feel more like myself again, but I'm scared to do more yard work now because I don't know where I encountered the poison ivy. I had been weeding the lower garden and there is not any growing there. We considered that maybe it was on the gloves or the bag we put weeds in. We'll probably never know. I do have some Farmer's Defense sleeves that I wasn't wearing but should have been as I am prone to contact dermatitis anyway. I also think I have it in one of my eyes. 😒

Our lilac is blooming right now and is very fragrant. It's raining a lot of petals into my sewing room window well. Our yard zucchinis are looking good. It's about time to transfer my tomato starts out to the garden and get beans planted. My four little pepper starts look okay. I'll probably let them go another week or so before transferring them so that I don't accidentally pull them out. Our strawberry patches got neglected, but we were able to harvest a couple strawberries this week. 

Thyme and one dill in the left unit, four peppers and two tomatoes in the right.

the raining lilac petals

Amazingly, I have managed to get a few more quilts done:

Pat's Wisconsin quilt, quilted with Diagonal Plaid Bias.

Pat's other Wisconsin quilt, quilted with Taffeta.

Jae's quilt, quilted with Malachite.

And Hannah's, quilted with Circle Worms.

Three of these need to be bound my me.

No progress yet on the dress form since I was really trying to get the Swiss Star finished in order to enter it in the contest.

I guess this is totally long enough for now. Take care, and I'll see you next week.

Linking with A Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.

Another week has flown by. It's been a busy one. We're nearing the end of school and the end of college, so there are a lot of events coming up. My son's academic honors was Monday night. He was recognized for five trimesters of 4.0+ GPA and also received an academic excellence award for pre-calc.

I've managed a bit of personal sewing. Here is this week's progress on the Swiss Star QAL.

I got to sew with my small guild friends on Saturday. We were working on a project called Bedford Tiles that a local woman presented to us. It's basically a variation of Bonnie Hunter's trip around the world quilt. As of Sunday afternoon, I have all my strip sets sewn. Next I have to sew the strip sets into tubes, then cut them up and unsew certain seams. It might be a bit before I get back to this one. 

You can see I was also working on my Log Cabin Stars quilt.

I've quilted several more quilts and finished some of the binding. My Lucey decided she needed a few days off (random long stitches, no explanation, went away after it sat a few days 🤷🏻‍♀️). 

I quilted Linda's quilt with Toss Up.

This one also belongs to Linda and is quilted with Radiance.

The next two belong to Toni. This one is quilted with A Fishy Tail. 

And this one is quilted with Starry.

I'll probably be quilting most every day for the next few weeks. Keeps me out of trouble I guess.

I was able to get the rest of the vegetable garden tanks weeded and planted peas and lettuce. I also planted thyme, dill, and parsley in one of my Aerogardens. The dill and parsley are because I found some pre-planted tubes that I figured needed to be grown. I also started bell peppers and tomatoes in the other Aerogarden using the seed starter insert.

Our crabapple trees have put on a marvelous show this year. 

I've had a few tulips pop up and there are still a good handful of daffodils blooming.

I'm planning to spend a day this weekend getting the lower flower garden into shape.

I attended a trade show/convention thing with my husband yesterday and saw a smiley face in the clouds on the way back home.

Did you get to experience the eclipse on Monday? We were in the path of totality, so schools, college, banks, and more were closed. The experts warned us to be prepared for up to 300,000 visitors in town and to get gas and groceries ahead of time. The grocery stores were hit hard as early as Friday, with many things being sold out, and of course hotel room rates and gas prices soared. I saw a lot of people on Facebook trying to sell parking in their yards, though without takers.

I would suspect that "they" grossly overestimated the tourist count. There was a big show at IU with Mae Jemison, Janelle Monae, William Shatner, and other performers. I guess they prepared for 10,000 but only sold 2,500 tickets. Most of the pictures I've seen of various locations had small crowds, definitely not packed. I'm thinking that because the path was so broad this time, most people didn't travel long distances.

We enjoyed gorgeous weather and were able to witness the eclipse from the comfort of our own driveway. Many of the neighbors had small viewing parties and the closest neighbors had a pool and a blow-up slide respectively for all their kids to play on. 

It was quite hot out (~76 degrees) prior to the eclipse. My husband was outside working on his barn. The kids and I kept running out, looking, going back inside until something was happening. They did set up the GoPro camera in the chicken coop and my son set up one of his old phones to film out his window. He recorded with that for over two hours and ended up with a 20+ second video that shows the changing light. 

I was working at the computer and noticed that it had suddenly gotten much darker in the house. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and it kept getting darker and darker inside, though it didn't seem quite so dark outside until right at the moment of totality. Totality lasted a bit over four minutes for us. The songbirds got a little quieter. We thought the chickens would go into the coop. They headed up the ramp and then looked around and came back down. 🤷🏻‍♀️ The roosters did quit crowing during totality, but started up again after.

I did notice that the sound of humans carried much, much farther during totality. We could hear many people talking that were not our immediate neighbors. There was lots of cheering. I could have dealt without the profanity that carried and also the fireworks someone set off afterwards--like, it's light out, why do you need to shoot them off now? At least they weren't shooting them during the eclipse. Why can't we just appreciate the wonder of nature and not ruin it with stupid fireworks?

We were all taking pictures. My husband got the best shot using his Samsung phone using the pro mode (pictured top). The rest of us have iPhones, so our pictures weren't good (directly above). My son used my DSLR with its dying battery to get this shot.

After all that, it's back to work for us. I completed the center portion of the Swiss Star for the QAL I'm participating in. We also had to make blocks with the HST from last week and square in a square blocks.

I'm really itching to get this top put together. The pattern author included an assembly diagram along with the individual block unit instructions this week, so if I can complete all the client binding, I'm going back to it. 

I also need to assemble my Log Cabin Stars top still. I have about two weeks to get that done before I need to post the OMG finish link up. Other tasks that need attention are prepping for my small guild's class this weekend and making my yellow RSC blocks for this month. And I really should start working on the guild's QAL. I bought all the fabric and I am now three to four months behind. LOL.  And I never, ever run out of business-related tasks, quilting or otherwise. There's so much behind the scenes work.

I've still been keeping busy with tons of quilts. Here are the ones I've completed since last week. The first two belong to Pat. These both need to be fully bound. I quilted Flirtatious Leaves on this one.

And Sprawl on this one.

I liked the selvedge on her backing fabric! It's a bit hard to read in my picture. It says, "Nothing Haunts Us Like the FABRIC We Didn't Buy!" Two Wisconsins are printed after.

Then I quilted Flirtatious Leaves on Carol's embroidered quilt. I used 60 wt thread in cream so as not to detract from the embroideries, which were all done by hand. I would have probably picked pale green otherwise.

Next was Twist Tie on Maria's quilt. 

And Ginger Hearts on two little doll quilts for Maria. All of Maria's quilts still need to be fully  bound by me. This first one looks much cuter in real life than in my picture. I couldn't get the colors to show up correctly.

I quilted Loops and Swirls on Trish's quilt. 

Finally, I quilted Deb's with Stipple.

I took advantage of the $.88 pineapples on special last week and canned 11 pints of pineapple chunks from four large fruits. I did almost all of this by myself this time, with just a tad of help from my son grabbing extra jars and rings at the end. He also helped me weed the side, vegetable, and a bit of the front upper garden the day before.

I took apart and cleaned the tension assembly in my long arm by myself! I changed out the check spring because it had a very deep groove worn in. I really need to just put in the new tension assembly next time instead of messing with cleaning all the plating dust out of here. Sometimes I can be frugal to the point of cheap. 

Monday I had a bit of a shock when I was loading the doll quilt backings. One moment I was rolling the fabric on and the next, there was a large crash--the quilt backing bar actually fell out! It damaged my LVP floor. ☹️ At least it wasn't my foot.  

are all on the left side of the frame when looking at the machine. If you have this frame for your APQS, avoid unpleasant surprises and please check periodically!!

I found this gem left by sister. It took me three or four days after she did it for me to notice. LOL.

Here's one of my little squirrel friends. I feel like I'm often distracted by squirrels, literally and figuratively.

Happy sewing, friends.

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, and Alycia Quilts.