Rebecca Grace Quilting

Sunday, August 9, 2026

Cara's Surprise Progress + Spilled Coffee Is Better Than Mold

Behold, I cut up little pieces of fabric and sewed them to other little bits of fabric:

Prep In Progress, Stonefields Blocks 30-32 "Cara's Surprise"

So now I have finished piecing the plus sign centers for all three of these Stonefields "Cara's Surprise" blocks. La-dee-da. I will be making circles from those plus blocks, to be layered on top of slightly larger circles out of the fabrics placed immediately beneath them in the photo above. The serged squares on the bottom of each pile are the background fabric for each block, and the the print fabric right on top of each background fabric is for a big star.

Two things need to happen next with these blocks, not sure which will come first. I need to prep the plain and plus-pieced circles (I will be using my Karen Kay Buckley Bigger Perfect Circles templates, starch and press prep method). And I need to trace off a template for the big star, cut out these stars from fabric, and appliqué them to the background fabric. That gold floral fabric on the right is a Tilda print, I think, and it has plenty of body so I will likely just needle turn that one. The pink paisley print in the center pile is very lightweight, translucent and filmy, as is the blue and white floral Liberty print I've selected for my star in the pile on the left, so I'll probably use the leave-in washaway stabilizer prep method for those to beef up my stars and prevent their seam allowances from showing through and looking ugly on the right side of the finished blocks. But I cannot possibly muster a smidgeon of motivation or energy for any of that right now, because MOLD, y'all -- apparently it's not enough to douse my pretty white studio carpet with coffee and spend the better part of two days trying to get the stain out. Now MOLD has crashed my house party, and I am not pleased about it! 😱

Bernie happened to look up and notice some staining on the ceiling yesterday in a basement storage area, just below the new tub and shower in the primary bathroom. He wasn't sure if these were old stains or new, but he climbed up on a ladder and cut out a piece of sheet rock to see. Sure enough, a brand new pipe put in during our renovation wasn't crimped/sealed properly and has been dripping water inside the ceiling above a room that isn't even air conditioned, all throughout June and July while we have been having temperatures soaring into the high nineties day after day...

Drip, Drip, Drip, For Weeks and Weeks and Weeks...

If we were deliberately trying to grow mold in our home, these would be the ideal conditions to ensure our success! Our builder sent a plumber out yesterday to resolve the leak, but we saw mold on the dry wall and who knows where else it is in there. We've danced the mold dance before with previous homes so I am dreading what all may need to be ripped out in order to get a clean and clear mold test and move forward. I am trying to make a deal with God where they can rip out the whole basement ceiling if they want to, but please don't let them rip out all the tile from my pretty new bathroom that I have not been able to use even once... I know, I know -- God has more important prayers to answer, but I am getting to the point where I don't feel like I can handle one more setback in this project. I just want these builders OUT OF HERE so I can move my furniture in and put food in my refrigerator, cook on my stove, and sleep in my own bedroom.

This will be addressed tomorrow morning with the builder and I'm sure it will all be fine, but I can't imagine it's not going to cause more delay, and that's discouraging. I'll come back to my fiddly Stonefields blocks later in the week when I'm in a better mood. If not, well, I've got my work table all cleaned off now so I could piece that Scrappy Celebrations quilt backing and get it loaded. Maybe the sound of my long arm machine purring away will cheer me up. But for now, I'm going to go read a book and wrap my brain up around someone else's troubles for the rest of the afternoon!

I'm linking up with some of these favorite linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Monday Musings at Songbird Designs

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

FRIDAY

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SATURDAY

Scrap Happy Saturday at So Scrappy

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

One More Hexie Rosette, Fabric Picks for Next Stonefields Blocks, + Coffee Catastrophe in the Studio

UGH!!! Let’s start with the worst first! This morning I sat down at my desk and set down a full, steaming cup of coffee, apparently partly on the desk and partly hanging over the edge to defy the laws of gravity. And then gravity won. BLAM, SPLATTER, SCREAMS… Because, you know, white carpeting in my studio that is brand new from just a year ago. After blotting and water rinsing and blotting some more as best as I could, I spent the rest of the morning tidying up my studio in preparation for Stanley Steemer’s arrival with the giant carpet cleaning contraption. If I’m being honest, the clutter was the culprit to begin with — too many stacks of papers and fabric swatches and sewing tools and notebooks on too small of a desk did not leave much room for cups of coffee or anything else.

By the time the carpet cleaners arrived at 2 pm, I had most of the room cleaned up with the chairs and rolling carts moved out of the room and was just working on folding and putting away mountains of fabric on my worktable. I did stop to finalize my fabric picks for those next three Stonefields sampler quilt blocks. The pile on the left is the one I’ve already started stitching, with the dotted background fabric and the orange plus sign pieced into the Tilda print:

Fabrics Selected for Next 3 Stonefields Blocks

These three blocks are the same design, but the other two get plain background fabrics. I also finished another EPP hexagon rosette for the Stonefields outer border last night.

The Latest Hexie Rosette

I’ve decided that I can’t just pile up more and more fabric on the worktable for Stonefields because, duh, that prevents me from working on anything else in between these fiddly little blocks! Now that I’ve picked the fabrics for the next three blocks, which should keep me busy for at least a couple weeks, a clean worktable will allow me to piece that Scrappy Celebrations backing, right? At least that’s the plan.

I apologize for the enormous file size of today’s photos, by the way. I can’t resize them on my iPad the same way I normally do on my desktop computer, and I don’t like how the Blogger app is annoyingly different on my iPad, too. Sadly, I have to stay out of my studio tonight and can’t even put my desk chair back until morning because the carpet is still wet. The guy from Stanley Steemer said he didn’t get the stain out completely, which is annoying, but it has to be better than it was, right? My husband will say something snarky about how he told me white carpet was a bad idea, but it’s not like I was going to choose chocolate brown carpet instead just to disguise spills. Anyone have a favorite miracle carpet stain remover that works even better than the commercial carpet cleaners’ stuff? Let me know in the comments, please!