2026 Quilt Making Strategies: Second Quarter Plan

After reviewing my first quarter progress, my second quarter overall strategy won't need to change. But I will need to adjust the project list for the quarter since there is a lot that didn't get finished in first quarter.  

1. Guild BOM: The focus for April is to get the blocks for May, June and July finished. I should probably also finish off the flying geese needed for the borders. Before the end of the quarter, blocks for August, September and October need to have the instructions written and the blocks made. November will be an easy block, so I'll try to get that one done as well. Then I won't have to do anything on this project till 4th quarter.    

2. Wild and Goosey: Continue to use two blocks as my leaders project for the quarter.  

3. UFOs to move to finished quilt tops: The plan is to focus first on the projects that didn't make it to finished quilt tops in first quarter. Since two of those don't need that much work, I'm hoping to work in at least two UFOs from the January plan.  

2026 SAHRR, Magnificent Mystery, Old Town, Lupine and Laughter, Good Fortune

4. Walking foot quilting: I hoping now that I have a designated time to quilt that two quilts will get quilted this quarter. The plan is to tackle the 2 smallest ones on my list.   

Chilhowie and Glowing Hearts

5. External quilting: Since I didn't get one done in first quarter, I'm hoping to get two done in second quarter.  

2025 Guild BOM and Chocolate Marshmallows

If everything gets done, there will be 5 more finished quilt tops and 4 more finished quilts.  That's probably way too ambitious a plan considering that I've already lost half of April.  If there is half as much progress, I'll be happy.  

First Quarter Review: 2026 Quilt Making Progress

Back in January I posted my quilt making strategies for 2026.  My goal for 2026 is to move projects to finished quilts or as close as I can get to finished for as many projects as possible. I've learned over the years it's a good idea to review where you are at with your goals a few times during the year. It's easy to forget at the end of the year what you decided at the first of the year if you don't.  The end of first quarter seemed like a good time to see if my goals still make sense and I'm on track.   

First Quarter Strategy

1. Guild BOM

On track so far.  May's block needs to be done for the April meeting next week.  I have instructions written for May, June and July and I've started the instructions for August.  

2. Wild and Goosey leaders

The plan for last three years is to keep two Wild and Goosey blocks in progress while I'm working on other projects. It's been slow going, but there's been steady progress over those three years. The red, yellow and orange blocks were completed in previous years. The green blocks were completed this year. Just a few more blue blocks to make and those will be finished.   

3. 2025/2026 Quilt Alongs and Mysteries

Most of the quilt alongs and mystery quilts I enjoy start either at the first of the year or at the end of the year.  So first quarter I always have lots of new stuff in the works. The strategy in first quarter was to get all of those to finished quilt tops.  

Magnificent Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Full blocks finished, partial blocks in progress. So progress was just a bit short of the goal.  

Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter): Started block A. With deadlines on the other three new projects, this one didn't get much attention.  

2026 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Kept up with all the prompts, assembled the quilt center, but didn't get the last 2 borders added.  

Scenic Waypoint (Meadow Mist Designs): Wasn't part of my quilt plan for 2026, but it was a fun quilt along that used up some of my older stash.  It was the one project that made it to finished quilt top during first quarter.  At least one got that far.

 

4. Walking foot quilting: The strategy was to quilt both Kate's Choice and Betty.  The walking foot quilting isn't hard, but I'd so much rather piece that it was easy to just not do the quilting. I finally settled on Wednesday and Thursday as my quilting days.  Once I did that, there was steady progress on Kate's Choice and it was finished by the end of March.  Betty wasn't touched.  But I'm OK with that, one finish is better than none.  I'll take the finish of a 14 year old UFO. 

5. External quilting: The strategy for first quarter was to get Chocolate Marshmallow quilted commercially.  That didn't happen, so this strategy was pretty much a fail for first quarter.  

First quarter wasn't a complete success, nor was it a total fail.  As usual, I was overly optimistic about what one can accomplish with 4 WIPs with deadlines in progress. Back in January, I outlined a strategy for 2nd quarter. I'm going to review that and do some course corrections. I'll share that strategy later.   

To Do List for the Week of 4/14/2026

This is my first to do list for April.  My last to do list was back at the end of March, just before we left for vacation.  With vacation prep, I just didn't have time to get to much that was on the list before we left, but I did make some progress after we got home.  

To Do List for 3/24/26

1. SAHRR: Finish quilt top - progress

2. Magnificent Mystery: Finish blocks, start quilt assembly - progress

3. Chilhowie: Piece backing, start quilt prep- no progress

4. Wild and Goosey: Continue working on blue blocks ✔

One check mark, 2 with notable progress and one with no progress isn't so bad for a to do list before and after vacation.  I'm hoping to make some good progress this week so next week the list will have some other UFOs that need to get moved to at least finished quilt top this year.  

To Do List for 4/14/2026

1. 2026 Guild BOM: Work on May, June, July and Dec blocks

Just a few more flying geese to assemble and the December blocks will be finished.  I've started cutting the fabrics for the other three blocks. The May block needs to be done before next Tuesday, so I need to get moving on that one.  

2. SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Add final border

The final border is a blue/black batik. It will be a nice frame for the quilt.  I had hoped to get it on yesterday but between the headache that wouldn't go away and finishing up taxes (maybe why I had the headache), my sewing room didn't see that much action yesterday.  

3. Magnificent Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish half blocks, start quilt assembly. 

There are 5 more B half blocks to finish and then I can start sewing all the blocks together. I'm looking forward to getting this to the finished quilt top stage. 

4. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Piece backing, start prepping for quilting

This was on my last list and I just didn't get that far before vacation prep took over my schedule.  I'm going to stick with the plan to work on to be quilted projects on Wednesday and Thursday.  That worked really well with helping me get Kate's Choice finished.  Hopefully the quilting for Chilhowie will go faster.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue working on blue blocks

Just 9 blue blocks left to make, then I can start sashing them into blocks of 4. I probably won't get that far before the end of the month, but I'll be close.   

Other than Chilhowie, this is pretty much the same list I've had most of first quarter.  I'm hoping to make enough progress on this week's list so that next week's list looks a lot different.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Catching Up: The March 2026 PHD Report

Our trip to Texas started on April 1st. Between getting laundry done and packing, there just wasn't time to get all my project photos taken before we left.  I missed the April linky party at Ms. P Designs. Even though the link up has closed, I'm still going to publish a March report to reference at the end of the year (my memory is very short).  Here's my PHD report as of the end of March.   

There is finally a finish to report.  Kate's Choice is finally a completed quilt after 14 years on the UFO list.  

Kate's Choice is the first quilt I've quilted myself.  I learned so much while finishing it off.  If you want to read about the long road from start to finished for this quilt, you can find the whole story here.

Just the one finish, but there has been good progress on several of my other projects.  

With all the sewing that happened in March, there was a lot of progress on the blue blocks for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter).  More than half the blocks are finished. The blue blocks are almost finished, just 10 of the 3.5" blocks left to make.  The plan is to keep working on the blue blocks till they are finished unless either teal or purple is chosen as the RSC color of the month, then I'll work on those colors. If I can keep up the momentum, hopefully this will be a finished quilt top by the end of the year.    

 

I was hoping to have Magnificent Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) assembled into a quilt top before the quilt parade last Thursday.  All the full blocks are finished, but I'm still working on the half blocks. It's been such a fun quilt to make. I'm happy with how the color palette worked out.  Hopefully it won't take me too long to get this project to finished quilt top.    

The April block of for the guild block of the month was shown at the March meeting. That block has been finished for awhile, but I don't show the blocks on the blog till the guild has seen them.  Now I'm working madly on finishing up the next 3 or 4.  

After keeping up during the challenge, I fell a bit behind after the SAHRR (Quilting Gail) prompts were done.  The pieced borders were added before I left. There are still two borders to be added, but if there had been time to photograph it at this stage, I would have sent it on to the parade. We had to be in Houston by 6:30 PM the day we left, so there wasn't any wiggle room in our schedule and I just didn't have time to get it up on the design wall.  This project won't take much time to finish up.   

Scenic Waypoint (Meadow Mist Designs) was assembled before the end of the quilt parade for the Stash Busting Quilt Along.  It was nice to get some of my older stash made into a quilt.  Hopefully it gets quilted before the end of the year. I really like the way this project came together.  

A finish and significant progress on several projects, definitely not a bad month. All the consistent progress during first quarter paid off.  There are few more colored squares on the project tracker.  

Though I missed a number of my deadlines, there was still good progress in March. A finish really made my month. Not as clean of a slate as I had hoped to start second quarter with, but it could be so much worse!  

Linking up with the typical Monday linky parties: Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 15 of 2026

 

We were on the road for most of the last 2 weeks.  We visited My Girl for Easter.  We drove down the Wednesday before to attend a behind the scenes view of the Terracotta Warrior display at the Houston Museum of Natural History.  We saw this exhibit when we visited My Girl at Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful guide for the behind the scenes viewing, learned so much more than when we went through it on our own.  Since Our Girl had to work, after Easter we drove up to Chappell Hill for a few days and did some wildflower photography.  Unfortunately, we missed the peak for the blue bonnets, but we still found lots of other pretties to photograph. I'll share the best of the pretties sometime soon.   

There was room for my sewing machine in the car for this trip. But with all that we had scheduled, I didn't have a chance (or room) in the places we stayed to get it out. Most of my "stitching" time was spent writing up the instructions for the next four Guild BOM blocks. I needed to get that done as the May block needs to be ready to go in a little over a week.  I was able to squeeze out at least 15 minutes of writing time every morning before heading out for our day. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 10/11 days
• 15 minute days 2026 = 100/101 days
• Success rate =  99.01%

I was able to get back to my sewing room yesterday.  That felt so good.  I have lots of laundry and other stuff to catch up on, but I'm hoping to get in lots of stitching time around those chores this week.  

How did you do at making progress on your WIPs/UFOs? 

 

1. Julie in GA 2. Frédérique 3. maggie f 4. Kathy S. 5. Gretchen

6. Gretchen 7. Karen 8. Patricia in New Mexico 9. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 10. Quilting Gail

11. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 12. Melissa G 13. Bonnie in Va 14. Marsha's Spot

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.