It is sunny and thus warm but very humid outside today - all that rain is still around. :)
I walked out to collect our mail for the week and got a pleasant surprise. Earlier this week, I bought a vintage, hand-embroidered quilt top from Mary Stori who is selling a collection online for a friend. The top came into my home today and I got to unwrap it - soooooo pretty! Very high quality background fabric (this is _not_ one of those sleezy cheesecloth muslins that poor housewives had to make do with during the Depression) ... and wonderful stitching. Here are more photos that I took to show the designs a little better:
I am really excited about this top. As it is, the size is about sofa/generous lap big ... so I'm debating whether to finish it as it or to add some kind of fabric border before having it quilted. Either way, it will be lovely. :)
Yesterday the Columbia area group of Friends Who Quilt from the Baltimore modern guild got together at Joann's to sew for the day. I managed to show up around 1 p.m. (just as everyone else was leaving for lunch:). I took my Flower Sugar quilt, the roll of binding I had made for it, and Blue. The quilt has been sitting around since January, waiting for me to finish it at long last. ;)
Now, I have not sewn on Blue since February some time ... but she's just been sitting in a corner of my living room, minding her own business ... and worked very well the last time I used her. Sadly, yesterday, I could not get her to sew. I cleaned her out (had to go onto the sales floor of Joann's and find a lint brush and machine-sized screwdrivers as I didn't have any in Blue's tool bag) ... rethreaded and scoured the manual thoroughly to try to figure out the problem. All I could tell is that the bobbin race is not catching the top thread correctly to make a stitch. Sigh. I will have to take her to be looked at soonest.
Luckily for me, Janet Schoenfeld came to the sew in and had to leave in the afternoon to go shopping (for work clothes). She very generously let me use her Janome (Gem?) while she was gone ... I worked hard at it and managed to sew the entire binding onto my Flower Sugar quilt (queen sized, finished by machine with a stitched chevron pattern in dark red thread). Hooray!! I got to put it on my bed last night - I'm so happy to be sleeping under it at last!! :)
Today I decided to persevere and go back to working on my octopus foundation project. Teeny tiny slivers of fabric were sewn (slowly) in between doing dishes, retrieving snail mail, and cooling off. I have about 1/3d or so of the beast sewn now. Here is how I left it for my next sewing session:
I've sewn sections X, W, V, R, P, Q, O, and N already. :)
Tomorrow is another day to dig into my messy second bedroom and work on clearing space for a sewing area.
:) Linda
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