Stories from the Sewing Room

Last week I took a class, Beach Bumz, with Linda J. Hahn at the IHQS. Linda is known for her New York Beauty blocks. She's published several books and developed her own stencils, templates, patterns, and techniques to make the blocks. I signed up for this class because it was a small project that used techniques I need more practice with: paper piecing and curves. {Have you noticed that curves are everywhere right now?}

Linda's method uses leave-in foundations. I think the foundation felt like an embroidery stabilizer. Unfortunately, our class kits were short two of the templates. I had time to trace off all four of one of the missing templates, but only one of the other. She will mail us the missing parts, but I won't be able to advance my project until I receive them.

I purchased one of her books so that I had the basic instructions since those weren't included in the class kit. 😕 I also purchased the mini quilt set because she said that you can create mini versions of each quilt using the trimmings from the bigger versions. You can see the difference in size in the curved templates in the photo below.

Backs of blocks. Foundation in the pointy part.

Can you see the marker on the foundation showing?

In the meantime, since I finished my main OMG project in a matter of days, I decided to quilt another UFO from my list. It's another of Cheryl's mystery quilts, the Melodic mystery. I believe this one is from two years ago. I chose a fairly small scale of the Pluma design for the quilting. Each pass was at least an hour and I finished it well into the evening. I love how the quilt looks on the frame with only the longarm's lights on it. Maybe I should take all my quilt photos in the dark. LOL.

Our state robotics competition was held on Saturday. Half of our team (2/4) are seniors this year, so this was it for them. Our matches didn't go as well as we'd hoped, partly due to random part failures (we've been plagued by those this season), partly due to alliance partners who did not help us, and, in some cases, hindered us. 

We also had an unfortunate judging experience with one of the pit judges, who was also a room judge at our last QT. The boys generally don't complain about judging and they did both times with this guy. We did make a formal complaint that probably didn't really accomplish anything, but I felt it was important to pursue it, particularly after learning at least one other team had the same issue. It also gave the boys a chance to be heard. 

We ended the robot matches in 24th of 28th place, but, much to our surprise, were chosen as an alliance partner for the finals playoff by the number five ranked team. 

Unfortunately, the other robot failed at the beginning of the first playoff match. We moved to the loser bracket and lost our second match as well. One of the opposing team's robots was illegally pinning our robot so that we couldn't score. This is not at all the spirit of FIRST. Intentional contact is not allowed. We were very disappointed that the judges didn't penalize that team--it should have been at least a yellow card if not DQ, but it wasn't. There weren't even penalty points awarded. My son rarely gets angry and he had steam coming from his ears for more than a day afterwards. 

The boys were awarded another Connect award--we've won two other Connect awards and one Inspire award this season--and just missed (by one award place) moving on to a premier event. It's not how we would have chosen to go out. Too bad all those years had to end on a sour note. 

Friday night we were out for our evening walk. We got near our neighbors around the corner's driveway and my son thought he heard a frog. I said no way, it's been too cold for that. But we paused to listen and he said it really sounded like an American Woodcock. I'm like, how do you know what that sounds like? And do we even have those here? Meanwhile, my husband pulls out his phone and opens Merlin, and I'll be darned, but it was a woodcock. I wanted to get closer and try to see them--if you're familiar with them at all, you've probably seen videos on social media of them "dancing". If not, look up a video. They are fun! Anyway, it was late, getting pretty dark, and we still had more prep to do before leaving at the very crack of dawn for the tournament, so I was shot down. Oh, and my son recognized the call because he'd watched a video of them a few days prior. This is what all teenage boys watch, yes? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sunday evening we heard them again, on a different part of the neighbors' property, on our own property, and across the street from us. My husband is more aggressive with wildlife than I am and flushed one out of our woods by playing the mating calls from Merlin. It swooped around my son and I, who were up the street. We heard at least one Monday night too. 

The spring weather makes it really hard for me to want to stay inside and complete my work. But we have bills to pay, so I sacrifice. Here are the quilts I've completed over the past week. 

Carol's wine quilt, quilted with Persephone 3.

Ann K.'s baby quilt, quilted with Scribble Hearts. Ann has me add the binding to the front of all her quilts.

Ann K.'s dog quilt, quilted with Paw Prints.

Ann K.'s doll quilt, quilted with Scribble Hearts.

Ann K.'s rocket quilt, quilted with Shooting Star. 

And finally, Ann's other doll quilt, quilted with Basic Swirl. 

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

I've been looking over my PHD list, trying to figure out what to work on next. I decided to work more on the race car quilt I talked about a few weeks ago. I'd already constructed two of the three types of blocks that make up the center. That left two blocks that have the "peaky/spike" or "tri-recs" units. 

I couldn't remember exactly how to sew these when they aren't trimmed off with the specialty rulers. Hmm...maybe I can use my Tri-Recs rulers to nip the points? Well, these don't line up, do they? Now what?

I turned to the internet and watched part of a video from Holly Anne Knight on how to make this type of block without a specialty ruler. It looked like she was making two sets at a time in her method, but it gave me a point of reference for how to line it up. 

Or maybe not. The blocks seem to have grown. I feel like the cutting instructions weren't quite right for these parts. I decided that since the strip was the correct size on one side, I'd center it on the other and then just trim off the excess. Obviously this isn't the right way, but it worked well enough for a project I don't really care much about anymore. 

After I trimmed the blocks down, I assembled the central portion of the quilt. Definitely not my best work as far as points being accurate, but considering I cut this thing out 15 years ago, it's okay. 

It has four sets of borders next. After that there is another round of pieced blocks. I've set it aside until I feel like adding borders. I find adding borders really tedious.

I'm not sure what I'll work on next. I'd like to start working on my fitting pattern, but I am not sure what size to cut, so need to look into that a bit more. I'd also really like to get my Marble mystery quilted, but I'm a bit behind on work, so it may need to wait a bit.

Speaking of work, I completed two large quilts and a table runner. 

The first quilt has such a fun story: the maker is a pre-teen young man. It's his first quilt and he's planning to enter it in the IHQS in a few weeks. He requested Diamond Squared. It has a minky/cuddle backing. It took me two days to quilt.

The next quilt belongs to Annie and it's a large quilt at 103" x 103". The quilt pattern she used is called Lyla Jean. She wanted Thread Garden for the stitching. It took two full days to quilt--over nine hours in just the actual stitching time, not counting loading, advancing, etc. It also took almost 1000 meters of thread (one small cone) for the front. I wound 60 wt bobbins from a different thread.

Finally, I started working on Trish's group of quilts. I got one of her table runners quilted with Interlocking Orange Peel. The quilt pattern she used is called Jolly Balls Balls of Jolly. I must admit that when I saw that name come through in my quilting request form, I wasn't sure what to expect. LOL. It's a cute little table runner.

In my personal life, our weekend robotics competition did not go well. The boys won another CONNECT Award, but their robot and/or alliances didn't perform as well as we would like. They think their expansion hub is failing in a similar fashion to the control hub last month. When we got home, my husband looked at the robot and discovered a bunch of screws had come loose too. So the robot got torn down and repaired again. The state competition is on March 8. 

Rain poured down all day Saturday and I think I even saw a flash of lightning that evening. I was super surprised to wake up to three inches of snow Sunday morning! 

We've had a hawk hanging around our mailbox for almost a week. I think all the critters are getting desperate for more food. Sorry it looks so grainy. I took it through the screen.

Speaking of critters, Beaker the hen had her last dose of antibiotic this morning and she goes back to the vet next week. She's trying to bear weight on her foot. The bad toe, which is the one in the middle, seems to be "loose" according to my husband. I don't want to look too closely. 🫣

My daughter visited Friday night to check on Beaker. While the menfolk were at robotics, we watched the Barbie movie. I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but it wasn't that. I had a hard time staying awake. Am I turning into my mother? She's famous for taking the kids to the movies and then sleeping through the whole thing.

My son had another appointment for his hand and he's now done with the brace unless he feels he needs it. Maybe he can start driving himself to things again soon. 

I've been reading through more of my quilt history books in the evenings. We're up to date on most of our current Hulu watches, which include Abbott Elementary, High Potential, and Celebrity Jeopardy. We've also started rewatching Superstore episodes when we only have a short amount of tv time. It's still funny and I don't even remember parts of the very early episodes. We have a few episodes of My Name is Gabriel left, but we need to read the subtitles on those. For our PBS watches, we're still working on the current season of All Creatures Great & Small. We've finished Miss Scarlett and haven't started Vienna Blood yet. I've watched all of this season's available Finding Your Roots episodes. What are your favorite PBS shows?

The February OMG finish link up will be available starting Saturday. 

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

It's hard to believe it's the end of November. My PHD report looks the same now as it did at the end of October. I haven't finished anything else. 

I have made some progress on the Batesville quilt. Here it is at the beginning of the month.    

And this is how it looked last night. I thought I would have plenty of HST, but as you may be able to see, I am short four. I have enough fabric left to get those last four, but they won't be on the bias like the rest are.  I'll also need to figure out something for the corners because there won't be any of the lighter fabric left after I make those last four HST. Maybe just plain squares of one of the pinks, or maybe a pieced block. I don't know.

Once I get past this border, the remaining two are just straight fabric, so they should go a little faster. I will need to figure out a backing.  

The only other major project left to finish this year is my Bedford Tiles quilt. The blocks are hanging on my design wall, waiting for me to add the sashing and borders. This picture is from the end of October.

I'm having a tiny amount of FOMO on the latest Bonnie Hunter mystery. I'm downloading the clues, but really can't justify starting a new quilt right now, particularly when I still have two unfinished BH quilts. I decided to pull out my Unity quilt and work on that instead of the new mystery. I highly doubt I'll be able to keep up the pace, but any work towards it is still progress. Here is clue 1 of Unity. I started this way back in 2020. I made the center block and then could not decide what to use for the border. I am not sure why this was the stumbling block because it really doesn't matter. I contemplated this so many times and put it back away. It's done now!

I also finished my little Nessie cross stitch. 

I started working on the chicken one I shared last week, but there's not enough progress to justify a picture.

I've completed three quilts for others. The first one is Shirley's, quilted with Radiate.

Next is Jeri's, quilted with Toss Up. It's a bit hard to tell, but I used Glide Pale Mist (a really light mint green) thread.

I stitched Cobwebs using Glide Peacock for Jeri's Halloween quilt. 

I have one more of Jeri's to go in this batch, plus completing the binding for all three. 

If you're wondering about how the helium balloon drone competition went, it was rather anti-climactic. They spent all morning working on fixing everything. After lunch we moved buildings and watched the end of the college competition, though I'm not really sure what it is we were watching! It was very slow-motion. The college-level balloons are much larger and are able to play defensively (not something that is allowed in our regular FTC robotics events), capturing the other teams' balloons or impeding their progress. The photo below shows the remnants of the college competition. You can see the purple and green balloons. They had to capture these balloons and then fly them through a circle, square, or triangle hanging from the ceiling (over a story up from this picture) in order to score. 

By the time the high school matches were ready to start, several of the teams' drones had completely stopped working, so those teams got to use the college drones. They did much better than those of us using the high school version. I think we got 3rd place out of 6. Our kids had to knock over foam bowling pins, knock foam X shapes off the table, and pilot through a square. 

I'd also mentioned that my regular machine was in for a cleaning and I was using my backup machine, which was making loud pounding noises whenever I sewed with any speed. I got out the C + S one instead. I knew it was lighter than my regular machine, but I didn't realize how much smaller it is until I tried to put it into the hole in my sewing desk. Yeah, this isn't going to work. LOL. It's a bit hard to tell, but not only is the free arm a good bit shorter, but it is also not as tall overall, so it was about 1/4" under the plexiglass insert.

I ended up putting a piece of MDF under it, which lifted it up high enough that I could use the slide-on table to fill in the gaps enough to use it. I received notice that my regular machine was done while we were at the drone competition, so I picked it up on Saturday morning and dropped off the pounding 430 for service. I'm glad to have my beloved 440 back. The shop owner did point out that my machine is getting up there in age. Shh!

I'm hoping to get the quilts bound, a few more quilts quilted, the Batesville BOM borders, and the re-do of my Marble Mystery square-in-a-square units done over the long weekend. I also need to write my business newsletter and get that sent out. If I manage to pull off all that, then I will perhaps work on more of Unity. Realistically, it will be finishing up Jeri's quilts and bindings and maybe getting a few more quilts done for others. I believe I'm under 15 to go now. Oh, and the newsletter, because that has a firm deadline. I'll be back Sunday with the December (!) OMG goal post.

I'm pleased to share my completed Malted Mystery quilt top. 

I thought it might be fun to solicit opinions on how I should quilt this. My household is split on which design I should use. I had a definite favorite before making these mock-ups, but now I'm second guessing. I do have to quilt and bind this in the next week or so to finish my OMG before I need to post the finish link up, so time may end up being a deciding factor.

Option 1: Peak Blooms

Option 2: Mallow

Option 3: Orange Dream

I've worked on several quilts for others. I fully machine bound all of Pat's quilts that I shared last week.

I quilted Annie's Indigo Way quilt with the Starry design and Glide thread in the Celery color way. 

I already returned her quilt, so here's one more picture that shows some of the backing as well.

I quilted Lauren's Kaffe quilt with Curly. I have second, matching quilt to do and will also fully machine bind both. The quilting barely shows on the front, but it looks awesome on the back.

My plans for the rest of the week include quilting Lauren's second quilt and binding both, quilting Jo's Chilhowie, and hopefully getting my Malted quilted and bound.

I'm hoping to run to a local quilt shop today to pick up fabrics for a class my small guild is holding next month. I tried to shop my stash first, but I don't buy enough of most fabrics to meet the requirements of the pattern and have something that looks good together. Pfft. 

We had our robotics state championship tournament on Saturday. We knew going in that this would be the end of the line for us. Only two teams advance to the Worlds--the captain of the winning robot alliance (group of three teams) and the Inspire award winner. We ended up ranked 7th at the end of the regular robot runs. Our boys were selected by the number one ranked team as their first alliance partner and we made it all the way to the last match before losing. It was thrilling, yet also heartbreaking, because we lost due to penalty points and we aren't the biggest fans of the team that ended up winning, who were ranked third going in. The other local team (ranked second going into finals, but lost right away due to odd decisions) won the Inspire award. As we tell the kids, the rankings and the judging are both quite subjective. Our boys won the Design award for best robot design. My son was thrilled! The robot design and build is his main responsibility.

I ended up feeling ill and spent most of Sunday sleeping or resting and Monday taking it easy. My kids are both on spring break this week. My daughter mentioned last week that she had to do an exit interview for her student loans--she is graduating in May. I asked her how much she owed and how much money she has. She has enough to fully pay off all of them! I was a bit shocked, but also happy and relieved. I've been pushing her to determine her next steps and apply for local full-time jobs while she decides. I also found an online certificate to masters program in her potential goal field and we've been discussing pros and cons of that. She is not amused by any of it. 

I have done absolutely zero gardening. It's probably good because we've had a few mornings with hard frost. The other days it seems to be raining. I'm still about two months away from our last frost.

We had a surprise announcement last week that the school board and the superintendent have agreed to part ways June 30. The school corporation does have to pay him $228k to buy out the contract. I'm upset that the money could have been spent in much better ways, as could much of the money he handled in the last three years. I'm glad he will be gone. He has caused much harm.

My sister and her kids are coming to stay with us Easter weekend, so we need to clean up all the robotics parts so that we can access the Murphy bed in the living room and clean out the spare bedroom, which is used for storage, so that we can set up a bed in there. The robotics parts are still strewn everywhere in the house, but the menfolk did clean up the OSB sheets we use for a partial robot field, so I can now access the closet in the living room. I was able to put many things away in the closet. Now I have to deal with the giant pile of boxes I save to use for return shipping of quilts that my family moved from the spare room to the living room floor. It's probably time to recycle many of them. 

One last thing, remember the eagle cam I mentioned last week? Sadly, it looks like none of Shadow and Jackie's three eggs were viable. It became really heart-wrenching to watch. On a positive, as of March 12 the Goose Pond barn owls have laid seven eggs .

Linking with Quiltery, My Quilt Infatuation, Alycia Quilts, and From Bolt to Beauty.