Better than nothing

I had a busy afternoon and evening so all I got done on the rail fence quilt top was getting two more rows sewn together.

I had my monthly appointment with my wellness guru and he was running behind. After I was done there, I stopped at the grocery store then headed home. I needed to update my little containers for my supplements I get from my guru. I have a group of containers for morning and one for evening. This is my evening group. I already had some set up, but I needed to add the new supplements I just bought. Now I have enough set up to last me 11 days.

We got a little bit of rain sometime early this morning. My coneflowers are starting to bloom.

It is forecasted to get up to 90 today! Too hot too soon! Next week it is supposed to be in the 70's which will be much more tolerable!

Progress on the rail fence top

I now have the bottom four rows sewn together and the next two rows staged on the design wall.

After that I decided to go ahead to prep the rest of the blocks by pressing and trimming them. There are 90 blocks in this quilt top.

Working in the studio and haul

I tried to get some stuff done despite being tired from the two shows and late nights. I worked on getting all the fabric I had cut for more tote bags.

I now have a bunch of handles topstitched so it will be easy to whip together some bags quickly. Right now we are in pretty good shape at the merch booth.

My next project is to quilt and bind a quilt top that belongs to a friend of one of the ladies I work with. I started out pressing it but came to realize that all the pressing the world was not going to help this top lay anywhere near flat. Look at how crooked this edge is and see all that excess in the middle of the top row?

See how wavy it is at the bottom of the part hanging over the side of my table?

There is only one course of action and that it to take the top apart and recut the blocks. Look at how crooked this block is!

Every block is a different size! I don't understand why the person didn't at least make a cardboard template to at least try and get the blocks somewhat the same size.  Here is the back of the quilt top

and this what the back looks like after trimming and sewing together the blocks.  As I was taking the blocks apart there were places where seams were so tiny they got missed.  I am trimming the blocks to the size of the smallest block in the quilt so they will all be trimmed to 9 1/2" square. 

The bottom two rows are sewn together and the other two rows are trimmed blocks ready to be sewn into rows.

Here is my pile of blocks ready for pressing and trimming

This is what is left of the top to rip apart. I will do some of that at lunchtime today.

I finally found some time to open the boxes of stuff I have bought.

The King Tut quilting thread was $3.30 a spool; normally it is $10.99. I saved $200.00! The pink will be used for the quilt I am remaking. The lady included a dark pink sheet for the back so this pink thread will be prefect.

I bought a few more pieces for thread beds and project bags. I had a $12.00 off coupon, everything was at least half off and I got free shipping.

I picked up two pieces of very nice quality flannel that were only $5.00 a yard.

I did have left over cookies and the guys at work are happy!

Thursday and Friday's shows

Thursday we headed to Sandusky OH for Ohio Bike Week

The merch booth was a long ways from the stage

There was a pretty sunset

These are all the cookies that were left for Friday's show

so I made another double batch of oatmeal raisin and then made a double batch of pan banging chocolate chip. I had some leftover and I will take those to the guys at work.

I had finished the six tote bags for Thursday and made two bigger bags for drumheads on Friday.

Both nights I got to bed at 12:45 am. I'm a bit tired. LOL!!

Lunch, cookies, and tote bags

Yesterday was crazy but I got thru it. After a meeting the woman who runs our group took us to lunch; there must have been money in the budget that needed spent! I had salmon and it was delicious!

When I finally got home after doing a few errands there were some loose ends I needed to tie up from work. I then started making cookies for the show the band has Thursday night. Oatmeal raisin - two double batches!

After that I worked on the tote bags and they are ready for assembly. I will be working on these all summer. I need just one day to just work on them and try to get ahead.

3rd finish for 2026, tote bags and a car repair

Now the Harley quilt is done! It finished at 79" x 88".

So what's next? Tote bags! I got started last evening pressing the fabric for the handles. My friend, Cherie, gave me fabric for tote bags already cut to size which makes it so easy for me to get some bags put together quickly.

Yesterday my brother stopped over to replace my passenger side mirror. He had "fixed" it a week and a half ago with wire ties after I knocked it off trying to back into a too small of a space while trying not to hit my SIL's car.

I clipped the mirror on a branch. My brother watched YouTube videos and bought a mirror off of FB marketplace or ebay. The mirror had a brown cover on it, so we just switched that out.

The broken mirror was easy to remove. There were three bolts and a screw.

15 minutes later and the mirror was fixed!

My brother had called the dealership to find out what a mirror would cost which was $700 plus $500 for installation! He bought the used one for $80.00.

Almost done

My poor fingers hurt, but I got the binding sewn. Now all I need is a label and it's done!

I took a break from hand stitching the binding at 6 pm to go out and mow the back yard. It took about 35 minutes. I still need to do some trimming, but at least it doesn't look like a hayfield anymore! I only had a couple of feet left to stitch so I did that and then went to bed.