Making Progress a Little at a Time

Staying in the sewing room has definitely been the way for me to beat the heat this summer.  Even though my sewing room is the warmest in the house, it's still cooler than going anyplace else. It's summers like this I really miss having a basement.  Our fist house here had one and it would have been an awesome sewing space had we not had to transfer to Texas all those years ago. At this point I'm hoping those long range forecasts that are predicting an early and cooler then normal fall are correct.  We could definitely use a cool down. 

Why does adding borders always seems to take longer than it should?  I made some progress with the borders for Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter). 

 

The narrow black border was always planned. The neutrals border was added when I decided to use the split HST blocks as a pieced border.  

I needed one more inch so those blocks would fit. The neutrals border is also pieced. When I opened the project box there was a pile of 1.5" x 8.5" neutral strips. Rather than cut new strips from the left over yardage, it just seemed prudent to use up what had already been cut.  So that border took a bit longer to assemble. That strategy was definitely wise, the border used up most of those left over strips.  The last neutrals border is pieced, but I didn't get it pinned and sewn on last night.  That should happen today.  Fingers crossed Good Fortune is a finished quilt top by the end of the week.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday. 

Stitching Stuff: Week 33 of 2026

 

Summer is still in full effect.  The weather man says we'll have 100 plus days till mid week and then it cools off to the low to mid 90s.  Not a lot cooler, but I'll take any type of cool down at this point.  Hopefully this week will be the last of the 100 plus temps.  

The one advantage of the high temps is that you don't want to leave the house to do anything. It makes picking the sewing room really easy, which is perfect for getting in your stitching time. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Aug = 15/15 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 223/227 days
• Success rate = 98.24%

Another good month on the stitching front.  Even with all the stitching time, I still feel like I'm not making good progress on my projects.  My UFO list isn't going down as fast as I'd like. It would help if I'd stop starting new projects, but that doesn't work either.  So I need to just accept that and keep plugging.  

When I visited My Girl back in June, she purchased a recliner.  She's been wanting one for a long time.  There's been one problem with it. 

Queenie has decided it's prime napping space.  My Girl has to get there first. Even then, if My Girl gets up for a snack or anything else, Queenie will grab it. I hear about the recliner wars just about nightly.  But I agree with My Girl, Queenie is just too cute to kick out of the chair.   

How is your stitching time going?  

 

To Do List for the Week of 8/11/2026

Summer continues in full force here, so my air conditioned sewing room is my preferred place to hang out most days. Though I did concentrate more on getting chores done this last week. I'm behind there after my back and knee issues last spring. I still got lots done in the sewing room, just not as much as planned.  

To Do List for 8/4/2026

1. Glowing Hearts: Finish sandwiching, start quilting - progress

2. 2026 Guild BOM: Make September's block ✔

3. Good Fortune: Continue assembling quilt ✔

4. Celtic Solstice: Work on chain blocks - no progress

5. Wild and Goosey: Continue working on teal blocks ✔

Good progress on everything but Celtic Solstice, which is still a good week.  I'll get to that project eventually, probably once Good Fortune is a finished quilt top. But that probably won't be for a few weeks, so it will drop off this week's list.  

To Do List for 8/11/2026

1. Glowing Hearts (Sandra Walker): Start Quilting

The quilt is sandwiched. I'm still mulling over quilting designs.  Diann, who blogs at Little Penguin Quilts, has been quilting her scrappy hearts with a cross hatch and I really like how that looks on those blocks.  So that may be my inspiration for how to quilt these hearts.  

2. 2026 Guild BOM: Finish October's block

I've already made good progress on this to do. All that's left is to sew the component parts together.  I should be able to finish that tonight at late night sew. 

3. Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter): Work on borders 

I've made good progress on the split HST blocks, and should finish those off this week. I decided to use square in a square blocks for the corners of that pieced border.  Those are under construction too.  It won't make finished quilt top this week, but maybe next week?  

4. Marigold Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Work on August blocks

Normally the August instructions for the Meadow Mist Designs mystery are just cutting instructions. Cheryl changed it up this year so that we'll cut as we go.  That meant I needed to finalize my fabric choices.  The black paint spatter is the background, the white dots is fabric A, which is the block background, the bright blue is the accent color and the dotted fabrics are the "scraps" for the blocks.  I plan to mainly use the fat quarters, but have the scraps if I need a good accent for a block.  The pin dot fabrics are left overs from another project.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue to work on teal blocks

I need to check how many more teal blocks are needed to finish out that color.  It will probably take most of the month to finish out the teal blocks. 

That's my list for this week. It's pretty doable.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Time LIne of a UFO

Last week was appointment free and so is this week. So I'm looking forward to not only getting lots of stitching done, I'm hoping to make progress on a few household chores that I've let slip lately. But I won't get carried away on the chores front, those are amazingly easy to put off till another day.  

On the other hand, it's been so much easier to stick with my stitching plans, most weeks anyway.  My goal the last few years has been to clear out my UFOs.  I have a lot of them.  Good Fortune is the latest UFO to finally get it's turn to become a finished quilt top.  GF was the 2018 Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.  In 2018, My Girl was off at college, so we were past all the weekend high school activities, but I was still working full time.  Good Fortune was my 6th BH Mystery.  I had my fabrics picked early in November. 

We were actually home that year for Thanksgiving, family came to us, so I was able to start the mystery quilt that weekend after Black Friday, Bonnie's typical kick off day for the mystery.  The challenge of a BH mystery is there is one clue a week. I've always admired those quilters who finish the clues that week. I've never been one of them.  Based on my photos, I kept up till the third week.  Then the holiday or work, most likely both, got busy.  I played catch up the week after Christmas. 

 

By December 31st of that year, this is where I was on clues 1 to 6.  By the middle of February I had finished approximately 2/3 of the blocks I planned to make. 

Then for some reason Good Fortune went into a project box.  Which is pretty typical for most of the BH mysteries I've done.  Then they sit in that project box for a while. This one waited for 7 years before I pulled that project box, took stock and started piecing on it again in May.  Yesterday, I got all the blocks and sashings sewn together. 

When I pulled these blocks out of the project box and put them up on the wall, I wasn't sure I liked it.  Now that the blocks are all sewn together, I do like it.  The project still needs borders before it's a finished quilt top.  In an effort to use up the fabric that was already cut, two of the borders are going to be pieced.  One with short strips, the other with what I've been calling the split HST blocks. 

There are still a lot of these border blocks left to make, but I'm hoping most of them will be finished by the time I get the two narrow borders added.  The plan is to have this project to finished quilt top by the end of the month. That should be doable.  Then it goes onto the to be quilted list.  I have 4 graduation quilts that come first, plus a whole lot of other quilt tops.  Not sure when the time line on this particular UFO will actually end.  It probably won't be this year.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, along with Sew & Tell Monday.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 32 of 2026

We expect warm the first week of August here in Oklahoma.  The weather definitely didn't disappoint.  The sewing room is the warmest room in the house, but it's still cooler than outside.  That made it easy to get in all my stitching time this week. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Aug = 8/8 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 216/220 days
• Success rate = 98.18%

It's definitely been a good year in terms of getting in my stitching time most days.  I've only missed 4 days so far. I'm hoping to keep it less than 7 for the year.  We'll see, I don't want to get too committed on that front because as we all know, life happens.  

How is your stitching life going so far this year? 

1. Gretchen 2. Julie in GA 3. Karen

4. maggief 5. Jennifer in Indy 6. Bonnie in Va

7. Quilting Gail 8. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 9. Marsha's Spot

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