Tuesday, December 31, 2024

2025 Planning Party

I've decided I should try and set some goals for 2025. I'm a little reluctant since I had so little desire to make anything last year, but I am hoping my recently acquired motivation will persist.

I'm going to come up with a pretty short list of goals. I think it's better to have a short list that I can finish, than a long list I don't finish.

First, I would like to finish the Chilhowie quilt. I've got the flimsy finished, I've received the backing fabric, and I've got the quilting plan figured out.

Second, I'd like to make two more quilts for the living room in the same fabrics. Not the same pattern, but the same fabrics. I think one of them will be Judy Martin's Fall Foliage Spectacular from her Cookies 'n' Quilts book.

The border on this isn't quite right, but it's close enough.

Third, I'd like to finish (or at least do a lot of work on) one of the three UFOs in my stash. I'm not sure which one, but at least one of them. My choices are: 

  • the Stained Glass quilt (it takes so long to make the blocks),
  • the Desert Sunset (I got stuck at a point where the some of the blocks were the wrong size and I didn't have enough fabric to make more), and 
  • the Japanese Poppy EPP (I was dissatisfied with how the points were matching so I set it aside.)

Finally, I have some non-quilt projects I'd like to finish. My husband asked me to make him insulated shopping bags for buying cold items and I have tried, but I've struggled to find a pattern that doesn't end up with too many layers to fit under my sewing machine foot. So, I'm going to try again. And again, until I can get it. My husband doesn't ask for much, so I want to make these bags for him.

I struggled to finish much of anything in 2024, so I'll be delighted to get this much done in 2025.

Linking up with the 2025 Quilting Planning Party.

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Easy Street Finished...and Gifted

In usual fashion, I was in such a rush to get the Easy Street quilt finished that I didn't get good photos. It was really big and my husband didn't have enough reach to hold it up for me.

It was gifted right after Christmas when my husband drove down to see his family.

My brother loved it and I'm happy to have finished a UFO.

I used the Quilter's Dream Green batting and lavender Glide thread. I quilted it with Anne Bright's Feather Garden. It's a beautiful pantograph, but it took so long to quilt. It was more than an hour for each row, plus the time to advance the quilt and fiddle with realigning the design.

Linking up with:

Friday, December 27, 2024

Chilhowie Flimsy

My husband's mother is in her 90s, so he's made a point of visiting her every Fall to help her sift her belongings and spend some one-on-one time with her. This year, because he was busy working on election campaigning he didn't have time to go until December so I found myself alone on Christmas. 

Of course, that meant I didn't have to fuss with making food, or cleaning house for company. I just had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, a couple of cookies, and called it good. After about 12 hours sewing, I finished the Chilhowie Flimsy. Yay!

Last week, I ran across a batik fabric at Hancock's Paducah that appeared to have the same color palette as this quilt. I've been burned by batiks before, but it was on clearance, so I decided to go ahead and order some, even though there's a high risk the picture is a poor representation of the actual colors. I won't be receiving the fabric until after the first of the new year.

While waiting, I've been playing with my long-arm computer program to create a quilting plan. I spent an entire day trying to create a fall-themed design, but I couldn't come up with anything I liked. So, I'll probably compromise and use a nice set of pantographs from Christy Dillon with flowers. This is my tentative plan at the moment.

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Customer Quilt

Yesterday was my last chance to use the car before Jeff took it for two weeks to visit his family. I was hoping to find some more rust-colored fabric. It was slim pickings. Apparently rust is not in style right now. I went to three stores and I only found one decent match. That beige also isn't in style either. 

I had enough fabric to finish Chilhowie, but I'm hoping to make a second lap quilt from the same color fabrics (in a different pattern) and it would be nice to have some overlap.

Today, I worked on a paid quilting gig. It's a pretty scrappy baby quilt. I quilted it with Wholehearted by Christy Dillon. I used a bright fuschia Maxi-Lock thread and it turned out well.

Now that I have finished all the projects with a deadline, I can get back to finishing the Chilhowie lap quilt. I've prewashed the new fabrics so I'll try to finish cutting out all the pieces tomorrow.

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Chilhowie Sashed

Jeff and I have been pretty busy during the days so I mostly only take time to sew at night after he goes to bed. Of course, that means I often end up staying up pretty late. Oh well. Jeff will be leaving on a trip in a couple of days to visit his family so I'll have plenty of time to finish then.

I've started cutting out the border pieces, but that will take a while because I'm not using the Cricut. The Cricut is very fast, but it does waste a bit of fabric and I'm short on the rust fabrics so I need to conserve them. 

Someone dropped off a paid quilting gig so first I need to finish that before I get back to this project. I'm eager to finish this flimsy.

Linking up with

Put Your Foot Down

Monday, December 16, 2024

Chilhowie Progress

I sewed up a storm this past weekend. I've finished all the Chilhowie blocks. 
Now I still need to make the sashing and add a fairly detailed border. I'm happy to finally be in the mood to sew again.

But first, I actually need to turn my attention back to the Easy Street quilt on my long arm. I've received the extra piece of fabric and it's time to get it going again. I need to finish it before my husband goes to visit his family next week.


Monday, December 9, 2024

Chilhowie Started

I am finally making progress on my Chilhowie throw quilt. One drawback of buying fabric online is sometimes it can take a very long time to receive it. I decided I didn't want to wait for the brown fabric, so I went ahead and cut the burgundy fabric I had on-hand. 

I finished sewing Clue 1: The 9-patches and 4-patches. 

I'm using a new-to-me sewing machine and I've been having a bit of an issue with sizing my 1/4-inch seam allowance correctly. I think I've finally gotten it dialed in, but some of these nine patches are about 1/8-inch too small. I'm not quite obsessive enough to rip them apart and make them right. I'll fiddle with the seam allowance when I sew the quilt together.

I'm going to skip to Clue 3 next and work on the Hourglasses. I'm trying to make the block components first so I can start assembling the blocks, then I'll worry about cutting out the sashing and border.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday.

Friday, December 6, 2024

Maybe Chilhowie Next

I really meant to make Bonnie Hunter's Chilhowie Mystery Quilt when it first came out, but at the time I was working on several Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. But I've had it in my project queue since then.

I'm finally in the mood to make another quilt, so I'm thinking about making a throw-size Chilhowie in colors that coordinate with our living room. I dug through my stash and found these fabrics that match pretty well. I may replace that dark rust with a brown, as I ordered a brown batik when I ordered more of that quilt backing.

Now I'm trying to figure out the arrangement of colors in the quilt. It seems like it would be a straight-forward substitution, but when I put these fabric colors into Electric Quilt I worry the colors are too dark.

Then I started substituting some lighter fabrics. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but here are some of the other options I've come up with.

I'll probably make my final decision when my brown fabric arrives. When you order online, you can never be sure what the color actually is until you get the fabric.

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Just Missed It

I should have spent less time procrastinating and gotten to work on quilting the Easy Street quilt sooner because now I won't make it before the end of the month. I definitely underestimated how long this quilting project would take.

Each row took about 60 minutes to stitch out and then about 20 more to forward the quilt and re-align each row. There are eight rows. I started before Thanksgiving but didn't get back to it until this morning. I thought I would have been able to finish today, but then I lost at backing chicken. I expected it would be close, but I would make it. Sadly, not.
Fixing this is not an end-of-day project, I'd end up staying up too late. I'll have to figure out how to finish this tomorrow morning.

Update: I figured out where I bought that backing fabric (Marshall Dry Goods) and they were almost out, so I just ordered another piece. I guess it will be more like a week before I get this finished because I have to wait for it to arrive and then pre-wash it before I can continue on this project.

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Nine Patch Twirl Quilted

I finally got the Nine Patch Twirl on the long arm today and quilted it up. I decided to try a fun pantograph for this one.

I like the way this one turned out. I used inexpensive Navy MaxiLock serger thread and polyester batting scraps.

The pantograph is the Color E2E from Anne Bright Designs. It's a really large design but was fun.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Blocks Assembled

Over the past couple of days I've managed to get my Easy Street blocks assembled.

I still need to iron it, get the edges trimmed down, and add borders.

Linking up with:

Design Wall Monday
Monday Musings
Monday Sew & Tell

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Nov One Monthly Goal

It's been a while, but I think I'll give One Monthly Goal a try this month.

My brother visited last week and he really liked the color scheme of my Easy Street quilt so I've decided to finish and give it to him. (I'm also hoping it will help distract me from the sh** show going on in this country right now.)

I've spent a few hours assembling the pieces in the past week, but I think I can get it entirely finished this month.
It is too large for my design wall so I had to lay out the squares in two halves. 

The finished size will be about 100" square.
This is roughly how it will look when it's finished.

Linking up with One Monthly Goal.

Monday, October 14, 2024

Easy Street

Back in March 2023, I dove into Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street pattern (from her More Adventures With Leaders and Enders book), excited to use up some of my colorful scrap stash. I happily cut out and assembled all the block components. But, in a classic crafting twist, when I checked the original pattern, I realized I'd made a little goof—I had set the block size too large in my planning. Usually, I transfer patterns into Electric Quilt to test out fabric choices, which I had done here, but this time there was user error. (Sadly, this is not the first time I've made this mistake.) Maybe, someday, I'll learn to double-check the proper block sizes before I cut everything out.

By the time I spotted the mistake, all the pieces were already cut and sewn. Looking over the components, I realized I could cut them all down to resize them to the correct dimensions, although it would mean quite a bit more work. At the time, I wasn't quite ready to decide, so I dropped everything into a project tub and stashed it on the shelf.

Now, feeling overwhelmed by the election, I'm ready to immerse myself in a project, I've decided to forge ahead and finish this quilt. I can't quite bring myself to waste all the fabric from cutting down these pieces so I think I'll go ahead and assemble the quilt as is. It'll be a larger than planned, but I'm embracing the done is better than perfect motto.

Monday, October 7, 2024

Nine Patch Twirl

My husband left his full-time job with Intel last month and has been going full blast ever since helping out with canvassing and phone calls to encourage folks to vote this cycle. I am definitely more shy talking politics with people I don't know, but I've been helping out with writing letters. Other than these efforts, watching what is going on in the world is stressing me out so I've decided to go hide in my sewing room until the election.

Late last month, I decided to find a new scrappy pattern. I just wanted to try something new. The threaders on both of my regular sewing machines weren't working so I took the opportunity to bring them in for service. While they were there, I thought I would try sewing with my Pfaff Grand Quilter. I struggled to get the tension set properly, and I just didn't have the patience to figure out the correct settings. 

I spent one day sewing together this Nine Patch Twirl pattern, designed by Carolyn S. Vagts (from the Nine Patch Panache book). It is an easy and quick pattern. You make a pile of nine patches, cut them into quarters and then shuffle them into the final setting. 

The process was straightforward, but my choice of fabrics—a clearance batch of Flowerhouse Wildflowers fabrics by Debbie Beaves—didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. After assembling the blocks and laying them out, I realized the dark blues in the mix just aren't working for me. I suspect I would be happier if I'd stuck to just the light and medium fabrics. To be clear, the fabrics are pretty, I just didn't like how I laid them out.

Rather than unpick or redo the project, I've decided to finish quilting it as is and donate it. It might not be to my taste, but I'm sure it will bring comfort and joy to someone else.

Linking up with:
Design Wall Monday
Monday Sew & Tell
Monday Musings

Saturday, August 10, 2024

Mini Retreat

At the end of July, a friend came to stay with us for a week, and we dedicated three full days to a sewing marathon. I was incredibly productive!

During that time, I managed to finish quilting the last two quilts for Quilts Beyond Borders. I didn't get great photos of the quilts as I was rushing to get through them so I could quilt a quilt for my friend.

Quilted with Abbie 3 E2E
Quilted with Zen Roses 1

I also tackled the binding on the last of my quilts. Handling large quilts in my sewing space always feels like a bit of a wrestling match, which might explain why I often procrastinate on finishing them. But now, I’m thrilled to report that I’m completely caught up!

Last Saturday, we also attended a local guild fabric sale where I picked up some small pieces of fabric. By then I had finished my binding project so these finds prompted me to whip up a quick scrap quilt. I opted for the familiar Broken Bricks pattern. I considered trying something new, but the ease of this pattern—no need for complex calculations or meticulous matching—made it the perfect choice.

I quilted this one with Modern Stars E2E (rounded edges).

I've nearly finished sewing on the binding on this one. It should be finished tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Some Unpaid Gigs

Last week, I happily took on six quilts from Quilts Beyond Borders, thanks to the coordinator, Susan Schmidt, who graciously dropped them off. This charity provides a 108"-wide piece of backing, wide batting, and two lap-size quilts for each project. If your frame isn't large enough to handle them side-by-side, you quilt one first and then the other right below it.

I've spent the past few days working on the first four quilts. It's been a great chance to test out some new pantographs and use up those partially-full bobbins.

Quilted with Avril E2E.

I'm a little disappointed with this next one. The thread color blended too well with the fabric, making the pattern hard to discern. A different thread color, perhaps a light blue, might have highlighted the design better.
Woodlands B2B

I was tempted to use a nautical-themed pantograph for this shark row quilt, but unfortunately since I was stitching it on it's side, it would have looked odd stitched perpendicular to the fabric's rows.
Quilted with Marion Rounded E2E.

The last quilt in this batch proved quite tricky. It was serged with mismatched seams and uneven edges—truly wonky, as we say in quilting. Despite its imperfections, I continued working on it because I had started the batch and these quilts are destined for refugees who might just be thankful for a warm blanket, regardless of its flaws.


I quilted this one with the Florence B2B because it had no backstitching and
would be pretty forgiving of my fabric-easing efforts.

This quilt required significant effort to manage, as it wouldn't lie flat. I had to carefully guide the long-arm to ease the fabric and avoid pleating, even sewing down a pleat along one edge to keep it square. It was the most labor-intensive quilt of the lot, but the outcome was satisfactory. I hope it brings warmth and comfort to its new owner.

I still have two more quilts to finish, but I'm taking a short break to recharge.