Is your Tree of life quilt the one you were working on at retreat?  That one was sure an outstanding piece of art.  I hear you on back issues.   We need an ergonomic cushy chair that we can move in different positions to take the pressure off our backs while working on our projects. Leaning forward isn’t the best on our backs.   And a design surface that works with the chair.  

The movie night sounds like fun with the Star Wars Geeks.  I haven’t been to a theatre in way too long.  I watched a little bit of the coronation in the afternoon.  Yes, it sounds like you are living it up. Ha ha!   

Wow, I clicked on the link and that quilt is gorgeous.  Good job on your progress so far.   I have a (hexagon quilt top) a work in progress it’s probably 2/3’s finished, that I haven’t picked up in years.  Partially because it is red fabrics with cream colored centers and some of the red fabrics bled.  I was afraid to finish it and then have it bleed throughout the quilt.  I have more confidence now that I can finish it and get the staining out with the encouragement from some of my quilt friends.  This pattern makes me wish I had waited the 23 years to start one.  Ha ha, yes I started that quilt in 2000, it was my traveling quilt project.  I’m too far along to stop now, so maybe when fall or winter rolls around again, I can pick it back up.   For summer I hope to work on some small projects. 

First your sewing room looks amazing!  Bravo!  Ditto what Pirate said, about your injuries and moving everything.   That’s a lot of work, I know I moved in late 2021.   We hired a moving service to move the big stuff, but I filled a lot of boxes with the help from my good friend.  I purged a lot which helped too.  You can collect a lot of stuff in 17 years.  I’m a really good collector.  :)

I had a sew day with 5 ladies at my house yesterday to start on the raffle quilt I am coordinating for one of my guilds.  We got about a fourth of the blocks done and learned a lot about how to organize this process.  I had tried using a new to me ruler for making folded corners (called Simple Folded Corners ruler).  It involves cutting away the waste triangle BEFORE sewing.  But a couple people definitely had trouble keeping their seam allowance at 1/4" all the way from end to end.  One lady in particular tended to veer over 1/4" at the end of the seam.  Which caused problems with some of the pieces.  So I think next time I'm going to have them mark the line and sew on that instead.  It's not a big deal - the result was some floating points which isn't too bad.  But sometimes the pieces were too small and had to be resewn.   And I definitely want to be the person doing most of the trimming, gives me a chance to check for problems before they are sewn into the block.  Overall it went very well, and the new room arrangement worked great.

Yes... it's the project I was working on at Retreat... still stymied on how to proceed with affixing the trunk of the tree... once I figure that out, it shouldn't take long to finish.

Might have to do some experiments to see what will work

What I need most is more room!

Your updated sewing room looks grand.

Cats are so funny about changes.

Love the raffle quilt.

The end result looks great!

Did you cut your own kit? I love your colors!

MelRN said:

Did you cut your own kit

yes and no.  We collected donations of 2.5" strips of batiks from the guild members.  Then we cut as we went on Saturday.  But I think I will precut before the next one just to save some time at the cutting table.  We were sewing oversized white triangles on, and that took a lot of time trimming.  If I precut the strips before hand, that will help keep things moving.  The sewing skills/accuracy in a group really vary a lot.