Organizing success...............

This is the last part of the workbench to be cleaned and organized.  The 6 section cubby was shown before.  The blue plastic drawer unit has clothing patterns and misc. in it and it may be removed in the future.  I have some foam core board to prop in front of it to cover the window at night.

This is the whole 15' 9" of the work bench top.  At the left I still have a few notebooks piled there and they will be moved.  My friend came over yesterday to do the heavy lifting for me.  She lifted the box unit up there to put my long cutting dies in and we left a space between it and the next stack of storage units to put the rest of the tall dies.  They have to be stored up on end, not stacked.  We ended up moving the heavier weight fabrics from the bottom shelf of that stack over to the 6 cube cubby.  I'll decide what goes in that empty shelf later.  As we work to the right, more of my dies are stored there.  At the far right are the smallest of the Studio dies on their little rack.

As we turn the corner to the right, I had a lot of my dies on this bookcase and I wanted it converted back to fabric storage.  There is just one rack of dies left there that may remain.  To the right of this is the door to the fruit cellar, where the previous owner probably had all of her canned goods.

We also cleaned out the area under my longarm and have the storage area under there arranged much better.

Later in the afternoon I needed to check on the garden.  I planted a few Marigold seeds in each of the tomato pots.  This one has the most.  Some only have 2 or 3 plants.  I read that it is a good companion plant for tomatoes.

Those 2 tiny cucumber plants I bought May 1 have really grown.  I see I didn't get the top of the plant in the photo.  There are little curly feelers that are growing out of the largest plant and it is climbing up the cage.  The smaller plant doesn't seem to have any and I'm going to have to figure out a way to get it attached to an upright of the cage.  There are lots of male blooms and very few female blooms so I haven't seen any cucumbers yet.

The cucumber seeds I planted in 2 more pots are doing well.  I need to get some cages in these pots soon.

I have the first bloom on one of the Smooth Oxeye (or False Sunflower) plants.  There are lots of buds so there should be more yellow in the backyard soon.

Thinking ahead.........................

As I was working on cleaning off the last section of the basement workbench, I was thinking ahead to what quilts I want to make in the future.  One of my favorite blocks to make is the Bear Paw.  I looked back through my photos and these are the only ones I could find that I had made.  I thought there were more.  The 2 with Kaffe blocks on the left are just 2 layouts with the same blocks in 3 sizes.  I sewed the bottom one in 2013 and sold that quilt top. I had several of the largest size (14") blocks and a few of the smallest (7") leftover and used them in at least 2 more quilts, one as the center of a medallion, and 3 large and 3 small in an orphan block quilt.  The 2 quilts on the right were donated for raffles.  I could make another batik one easily because I have so many batik scraps.  Maybe I should made a one color quilt next time.  There are so many possibilities and I'll keep thinking about it as I work on the workbench reorganization.

Outside I cut off bottom leaves from several tomato plants.  I planted a few marigold seeds in each of the pots and they are starting to grow.  We had 2.25" of rain on Sunday.  They are predicting more rain Wednesday but we don't need any more this soon. 

2nd finish for June 2026...................

A Single Irish Chain layout seemed perfect for these quirky prints designed by Terrie Mangat.  I pieced the top in August 2024.  Robin, my longarm friend, quilted it for me.

The back and binding are also her fabrics. I was glad I had enough of the stripe for the binding since it goes well with both sides of the quilt.  It is 53.5" x 71".

I have the backing fabric in 2 colors but thought this one went best with the top.

You can click on the photo to enlarge it.  Check out the lavender background with the long skinny shapes.

We had light rain all day yesterday and I'm estimating at least 2".  I'll check the rain gauges this morning.

 

Binding................

I was going to start sewing the floral star blocks together into a top, but then I decided to do the binding on this quilt first.

I finished the binding at 10 p.m. so I'll take its photo today and have it on my blog tomorrow.  These Terrie Mangat fabrics are so bright and fun.

I needed a photo I could refer back to of the 4.5" and 9" finished fussy cut florals.  Now they can come off the design wall.  I'll continue cutting a little each week until I have enough to start designing.

I moved one pot down to the porch because the table was pretty crowded.  I have that vining plant in all of the pots except the one on the porch and the Geranium pot.  That plant needs to be up high to hang over the edge.

I noticed buds on the yellow Coneflower a few days ago so I checked it out yesterday.  There are weeds to be pulled there too, maybe today.

 

The last section....................

I went down to the basement and looked at the last section of the workbench but just couldn't talk myself into working on it.  The weather was perfect to be outside so I pulled weeds and cut volunteer trees from the front flower bed.  I watered the porch pots and all 22 of my Christmas/Thanksgiving cactus, filled the bird feeders and planted some Jack Be Little pumpkin seeds in a pot near my neighbor's fence behind my bird feeders.  They are miniatures and the package says 3" across and 2" high.  I thought about planting regular size pumpkins but I really don't have enough room for them to spread all across the back of the lot.

 

While I was doing all of that I was thinking about the projects that are stalled and hope I have come to a good solution for at least one of them.  

I have 30 of these star blocks and got stalled on whether I want to sew them together edge to edge, or border them with dark floral fabrics, and maybe put sashing between them after that narrow border.  Here is the post where I was playing with layouts, 2 1/2 years ago.......  I need to stop dithering and finish it.

Trim, binding, organize...................

It was trimming time for the quilt made with Terrie Mangat fabrics.

Then I grabbed the pile of her fabrics to look for a binding.

I was pretty sure I would use the stripe and it looks good with both front and back.

This was the next area for the basement workbench cleaning and organizing.  I had piles in front of this area.  The fabric is on my worktable to go through later.  I have a helper coming Tuesday so I (we) will so some brainstorming and decide what goes in the 3 bottom bins then.  The little stack of metal containers with handles were used as little table top wastebaskets when I had a group sewing here.  The metal bar is a fringe maker and I think I got it back in the 70s when I had a Viking sewing machine.  The white PVC thing is a little hand quilting frame.

I had to show a close up of the workbench top.  It was a working workbench for my son, with paint and putty marks on it.  We moved to this house when he was 11 (he's 65 now).  I have no intentions of refinishing the top; it has too many good memories attached to it.

This group of small size magazines was in this section of the workbench.  They are from 1990-92.  Most of them were opened to pages of work by Shirley Nilsson.

At the time of these publications I was teaching classes on thread sketching.  Even though I didn't use the same technique as Shirley, I was always inspired by her work.  Now I'll look through each of these magazines and then probably put them in recycling.  It's too hard to locate people who want vintage magazines with articles about people they have never heard of.  Since I was in the quilting community teaching (since 1976) I met a lot of the people who were popular and active in the 1990s so the articles interest me.

There was also a pile of photos I need to look through.  They were taken at QSDS in Columbus OH and the venues we visited that had art quilting exhibits.  I was there as a student 1991-1995 and 2002.  On the odd years we also were bused to Quilt National which was a real treat.

A little more................

I misjudged how many day in a row I could stand on the basement floor so I only cleaned 8" more on the workbench surface.  This wood thread holder had a thick layer of dust on it so that was the first job, cleaning it.  When I worked at Quilting Books Unlimited, a man visited our store and showed us these racks that he handmade.  We ordered some and this is the one I bought.  I think the only place I might use it now is near my embroidery machine, and I use that so seldom that this would just become a dust collector again.  It goes into the maybe sell container.

This was next to the thread rack.  It is from my childhood, 1950s, and I think my mother is the one who wanted it.

I remember enjoying listening to the records, 4 of them, 2 sided, so 8 sides to play.  I have a record player but I'm not sure if I have the center thing for these 45s.  Now you can see that it isn't only sewing things on the workbench top.

I didn't take yesterday's 12 squares off the design wall yet, but instead added 5 more that I cut yesterday.

Even though the steroid shots to my SI joints has given me some relief, I'm not pain free, so I continue to work at the pace that I'm able to do.  Good days, lots of progress, other days, a little progress and I always keep moving.

We got over an inch of rain yesterday morning and the severe storms mostly went south of us in the evening.