Tuesday, April 8, 2025

To Do List for the Week of 04/08/2025

I saw a meme on Instagram stating that someone should pour out Mother Nature's beer while she's doing all 4 seasons in 24 hours cause she's drunk enough.  I'm sure there are a lot in the US that agree with that sentiment.  Hopefully we'll actually see some spring weather this week (without tornadoes  and floods would be nice). 

It was a good week to hang out in the sewing room and work on last week's to do list.  


To Do List for 04/01/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR: Trim backing, start quilt top prep - progress

2.  On Ringo Lake: Finish assembly, start borders ✔ 

3.  Kate's Choice: Lean to use walking foot, practice - progress

4.  2025 Guild BOM: Cut fabrics for June blocks - progress

5.  Wild and Goosey: Finish blue, start red blocks - progress

6.  Summer Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders 


Only two check marks, but there was progress on the other items.  That counts as a good week.  The plan this week is more of the same. 


To Do List for 04/08/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Prep quilt for quilting

The quilt back is trimmed and prepped.  The quilt top will take longer, but I'll hopefully get to that this weekend. 

2.  On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter): Finish borders




The plan is to add one more narrow yellow border and finish the top with a wider red border.  That should happen this week.  

3. Kate's Choice: Learn to use the walking foot on my machine.

 



Last week I pulled out my machine manual and actually found my walking foot. I've also been reviewing some of the quilting books I have.  Several blog buddies have mentioned the book "Walk" by Jacquie Gering.  It's one of the books I've been studying.  Once Ringo Lake is a finished quilt top, the plan is to get the walking foot on and make some progress on this project. 

4. 2025 Guild BOM: Cut pieces for June blocks




Last week I managed to pull all the fabrics for June.  I need 17 fabrics for the Inverted Star block and another 6 for the sawtooth star border blocks.  Last month I remembered to check my 1.5" strip scrap bin for any white on whites that I could use for the Sawtooth Stars. This week I checked my 2.5" and 3" strip bins for greens.  I'm getting better about checking the scrap bins before I start pulling fat quarters.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish up blue and continue making red blocks.

I've gotten started on the red blocks, I just need 8 of the 3.5" blocks to have enough for the planned layout.  That should be doable this month. 

6. Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders project.

Pretty much the same projects from last week.  I'm hoping for a few more check marks this week.  We'll see.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Monday, April 7, 2025

Closing in on Finishes

We didn't see any snow yesterday, even though radar said it was snowing at our location.  We did see the cool temps which normally mean a whole Sunday of stitching for me, but after lunch a 2 hour nap under a warm quilt seemed necessary.  Once I worked through the groggy feeling, there was still time for a few hours of sewing. I finished another border for On Ringo Lake.



On Ringo Lake is my version of the Bonnie Hunter 2017 Mystery.  I have two more borders to add. A another thin yellow border and a final red border.  Yes it's a lot of borders, but I really like how the final version looks in EQ. Hopefully it will look equally good when those are finished.  

I also finished cutting and prepping the backing for the 2025 SAHRR.  Next is prepping the quilt to go out.  That will probably be on next weekend's to do list.  It's not one of my favorite tasks.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts

Sunday, April 6, 2025

Stitching Stuff: Week 14 of 2025

 


It's been a productive week.  I've gotten lots done in the sewing room and went on my first shop hop.  Even being on the road most of the day on Wednesday, I still managed to get my sewing time in.  

  • 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
  • 15 minute days/March = 31/31 days
  • 15 minute days/April = 5/5 days
  • 15 minute days/2025 = 90/95 days
  • Success Rate = 94.74%
March was the first month this year that I managed to sew every day of the month.  After last year's 100% success rate, I needed to break the momentum so I didn't feel compelled to keep it at 100% for this year.  It takes a lot of prep to be able to sew everyday and I didn't want that burden this year.  

Now that the Bonnie Hunter and SAHRR quilt alongs are done, yesterday morning I took some time to address my working scrap bin.  



Best I can tell from my photo records, I've not cut scraps since last July.  I've actually emptied this working bin a couple of times into my one remaining scrap bag and its full to overflowing. So it's definitely time to deal with a few scraps.  What's in the bin became these piles sorted by size.



These have all been put away in the scrap bins.  Not a lot of progress, but you have to start somewhere.  

How did your stitching week work out?  

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Week 136 Photo Challenge: Fairy Tale

It took all of us a month to come up with photos for the Week 135 photo challenge.  At that end of that post back on March 1st, I wrote that it might take us another month to pull together photos for the week 136 challenge.  



Looks like I wasn't wrong, it's been just over a month since that last photo challenge post. Grad Girl is still pretty swamped with trying to finish up grad school and I just couldn't come up with any ideas for how to approach this challenge.  Only My Guy had any photos. He wanted to move on, so I promised to figure something out and post whatever we had today.  These aren't the best photos we've taken, but they work.  

I finally took a few photos, but absolutely nothing was working for me.  So I got creative. 

Kate: Sleeping Beauty (and her cat)


This is not AI created. Wish I could blame it on that, but I did this with one of my photos and My Memory Suites. It's far from perfect, but it strangely works. At least I think it does. As My Guy said last night, we set the rules. I'm just glad to be done with this challenge. 

My Guy made a special trip out last night to get a toy for his photos. I think it paid off.  

My Guy: Classic Tale


That's one large frog and one small princess (Also known for her sleep habits, sense a theme?).  I don't know where he got the doll, but he improvised really well.  

Grad Girl has been insanely busy and stressed.  She really hasn't had much creativity to spare since she's trying to write her thesis.  So I went through the photos she's texted over the last month and picked one that worked if you had the right point of view. 


Grad Girl:  Rosina Leckermaul's Pantry


If you don't know who Rosina Leckermaul is, that's the name given to the witch from Hansel and Greta in an opera from 1892. The German translation of the name is Raisin Sweet-Tooth. The witch is given no name in the original story, but is also known as the Gingerbread Hag (thank you Google).  Grad Girl sent me this picture with the question, "Am I getting an Easter basket this year?". She dearly loves Peeps.  

So that's our efforts for this challenge. Did we do it justice?  I'm hoping it at least gave you a smile.  Sometimes that's the best kind of picture.  My Guy drew the next challenge card.



When I told Grad Girl what the next challenge was she texted "Oh good, an easy one". My sentiments exactly!  

Friday, April 4, 2025

2025 Quilting Ambitions: 1st Quarter Check In

The beginning of April is also the end of the first quarter of 2025. The year is already one third over. At the beginning of the year I wrote up my ambitions for the year. It's easy to get caught up in the every day and completely forget what you actually intended to do with your year. So it's definitely time to look back and see if I'm on track and following the plan. To do that I'm linking up with Quilting Jetgirl for her 2025 Quilting Q1 Check In.  




The first few months of 2025 went by quickly. Most of that time was focused on finishing up quilt alongs that started either last year or early this year.  So some of my goals didn't get much attention during first quarter, but that seems to be my normal.  I'm slower out of the gate on some.  Here's where things stood at the end of March. 

Ambition 1:  Make quilts.  The goal is to actually make as much progress as I can on my quilt plan for 2025.  Here's the plan for 2025. 




Here's how it looked at the end of March. 




Three quilts have moved to finished quilt tops and a fourth is at the assembly stage. Not bad progress for the first quarter.  If I can move every bar even a little this year, it will have been a good year.  

Ambition 2: Learn to quilt. I've been challenging myself with this goal for the last 2 years. I'm going to get serious about that this month since I have a break in quilt alongs. My fingers first typed that there was no progress on this goal yet, but then I remembered Grad Girl's second "learning to sewing" project. 



 

Back at the guild retreat in January, Grad Girl used this cute little kitty pattern to make a trivet.  I layered it with backing and batting and tried quilting it just using my normal machine set up.  It ended up being a bit wonky and we had to trim a bit off. Still it doesn't look horrible.  I did learn why a walking foot is recommended for quilting.  She made two of these, the second one still needs to be quilted. That will likely be my first practice project with the walking foot once I finish practicing a bit.  (By the way, she loves this trivet and uses it all the time in her kitchen. She wants to make some for her dad for next Christmas. Hopefully, I'll be up to speed by then).  

Ambition 3: Fabric Organization. I've been so busy with quilt alongs during the first quarter that I've done nothing on this goal. Last year I didn't make good progress on this goal till second quarter.  Looks like that will be the case this year too.  

Though I didn't have any official ambitions around new experiences, I do have two for the quarter.  One is learning how to write quilt patterns.  I started that process back in December with doing a simple block pattern. A whole quilt pattern is more of the same, but has some unique challenges. The second new experience is going on a shop hop. It was interesting, but it was a lot of driving!  

This year is off to a good start on the goal front. Hopefully I can keep it up.  Second quarter will be over before we know it.  

Thursday, April 3, 2025

March 2025 PHD report

We are a few days into April so it's time to look back at what got done last month and post a March PHD report and join the linky party over at Ms P Designs USA.  I appreciate these monthly look backs, especially when I have no finishes.  It helps me remember that I did actually do stuff even though there are no updates to my PHD tracking sheet.


No new starts either, so I'm at least not adding to my UFO list yet. There was some good progress on several projects this month.  

An oldie, but goodie made it back to my active project list in March. On Ringo Lake was the Bonnie Hunter mystery back in 2017. When I last worked on in January of 2019, 28 of the 30 blocks were finished.  The last two blocks were assembled pretty quickly and assembly was started. In an effort to just get this project to finished quilt top, simple sashing rather than Bonnie's pieced sashing is the plan.    




Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) has been my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for several years now.  Last year all the yellow and orange blocks were finished. The red blocks are almost done, but I still need a lot of the blue, purple, teal and green.  Since yellow was the color for March, I combined the yellow blocks into bigger blocks for assembly into the quilt. I also continued making more blue blocks.  




My long term leaders and enders project, the Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter) continued in March, but it switched from making 4 patches to actually starting to assemble the quilt.  I'm not sticking strictly to Kevin's layout, so I wanted to get that going and adjust the total of 4 patches needed as I go along.  There's been good progress on the center of the quilt so far.  





Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) became a finished quilt top early in the month.  





The April and May blocks were actually finished for the Guild BOM, but I can't show May's blocks till I reveal that color to the guild later this month. April's blocks were pink, it adds a nice spark to all the cool colors already finished.  I'm trying to work ahead a bit just in case life happens and I have trouble getting a given month's block finished.  



After finishing off the May block for the Guild BOM, I wanted to add back a project that needed the blocks pieced. The 2024 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Old Town, was put aside to keep up with the SAHRR.  It's the one project I had a lot of the pieces cut for, so I pulled out the pieces for step 2 and step 5 to work on the last day of March. I'm almost halfway done with step 5.





Most of my sewing time in the first quarter of 2025 was focused on this year's Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail). I got the quilt top finished before the quilt parade.  The backing is purchased and washed, but it still needs to be trimmed to size. Fingers crossed this will be my first finish for the year before the end of this month.  





As of the end of March, my progress tracker show four quilts with progress for 2025.  Two projects became quilt tops last month and one more shows good progress.  



So it was a good month on the progress front.  April's focus in the sewing room is to work on moving a couple of quilts towards finished. We'll see how that works out.  

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

To Do List for the Week of 04/01/2025

March was a pretty productive month, fingers crossed April is as well.  I did pretty well with my last to do list for March. 


To Do List for 03/25/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish May blocks ✔

2.  2025 SAHRR: Trim backing - progress

3.  On Ringo Lake: Make 2 blocks, start quilt assembly 

4.  Wild and Goosey: Making blue blocks 

5.  Summer Scrap Quilt:  Leaders and enders 


Four out of five is definitely not a bad week.  Progress has been slow, but steady.  I'm hoping for more of the same for this week's to do list. 

To Do List for 04/01/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Trim backing, start prepping quilt top




I was able to get the backing with 25% off on Saturday. It's got both the green and the blue, so works well with the quilt top. It's been washed, but needs to be pressed before it's trimmed to size.  I'd like to get this project sent out for quilting before mid month, so I'll start prepping the quilt once the backing is ready.  

2. On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter): Finish quilt assembly, start borders




Just one more row to add and the two halves can be sewn together. I'm happy with how this project is coming together. It feels good to get another of my older projects close to being a finished quilt top. 

3.  Kate's Choice: Learn to use walking foot and practice quilting



  

I finished the blocks for this sampler in August of last year.  One of goals the last couple of years has been to learn to quilt.  Trudy, who has done such a wonderful job with my quilts the last 10 plus years, is retiring from the quilting for others business sometime this year. She's going to quilt the 2025 SAHRR for me, but that's probably the last one she'll do.  So it's definitely time for me to learn.  I have several smaller quilt tops intended for donation that will look perfectly fine with straight line quilting.  So I'm going to start the learning process with figuring out how to use my walking foot.  I have one, I've just never used it. Getting the quilting going on the Kate's Choice blocks is my Chookshed Challenge project for April.  

4.  2025 Guild BOM: Cut fabrics for the June blocks

I'm trying to work ahead on this project so that if life happens, I'm still ready to go, plus it will help give me a head start on getting the quilt assembled to show in December/January.  

5.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish blue, start teal blocks

I'll probably need to cut some more teal scraps, there aren't very many left in the bag from last year.   

6.  Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders. 

Looks like I'm back to a longer list this week.  We'll see how well I do at getting it all checked off.  

Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Monday, March 31, 2025

Moving on with the Quilt Plan

It was a pretty low key weekend here. The trees seemed to have greened up overnight. And the spring storms have definitely started up.  Nothing too severe yet, thankfully, as we really need the rain.  

The Stay At Home Round Robin quilt had been my focus for most of first quarter. Now that it's a finished quilt top it was time to find something else to work on.  I signed up to play along with the Chookshed Challenge over at Dreamworthy Quilts this year, but to date haven't done a really great job of doing much with those projects.  For March, the 2017 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, On Ringo Lake, was my pick to work on. This month I actually made some progress on this challenge. 



The parts for two more blocks were cut and those were assembled.  I decided against Bonnie's pieced sashing and instead went with a simple sashing with corner stones.  That makes a cool secondary pattern. I'm happy with how it's coming together.  The last row is partially assembled.  By the end of today all the rows should be assembled and I'll have made a start on the borders. This should be a finished quilt top before the end of April. It does feel good to make some progress on one of my older projects.  

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Stitching Stuff: Week 13 of 2025

 


It was a really good week on the progress front, actually March has been a pretty good month in the sewing room. My stats from this week attest to that.  


  • 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
  • 15 minute days/March = 29/29 days
  • 15 minute days/2025 = 83/88 days
  • Success rate = 94.32%

So it was a good week.  Just two days left in the month, but looking back it was a good one.  I have lots of quilt tops finished, now to get those moved to completely finished quilts.

Did you have a good week in the sewing room?   

1. Melissa G
2. Frédérique
3. Julie in GA
4. Karen
5. DonnaleeQ
6. Quilting Gail
7. Gretchen
8. Bonnie in Va
9. Andrée at Quilting & Learning
10. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting
11. Marsha's Spot

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Tuesday, March 25, 2025

To Do List for the Week of 03/25/2025

This year seems to be moving ahead at light speed, when usually the first few months of the year usually seem to go more slowly. This is the last to do list for March.  I'm not ready for April. It's coming regardless, so no point in bemoaning. At least I did pretty well at getting last week's to do list checked off.  

To Do List for 03/18/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR: Finish borders ✔
2.  Guild BOM: Start May blocks ✔
3.  Wild and Goosey: Continue making blue blocks ✔
4.  Summery Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Last week's list was pretty short. My focus was on getting the 2025 SAHRR to finished quilt top and that happened.  So it was a really good week.  

The problem with finishing a project you've been focused on to the exclusion of the other stuff in your sewing room is then deciding what you pull out to work on in it's place. I may have a plan, we'll see how it goes with this week's list. 

To Do List for 03/25/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish May blocks



My version of the guild BOM is scrappy. I got lucky and found a number of 1.5" white on white strips in my scrap bins to use for the sawtooth star border blocks.  Made it much quicker to cut all the pieces I need for May's blocks.  

2. 2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail):  Trim backing

I found a wide backing at the local quilt shop, they have a 25% off sale on Saturday.  So I'll pick that up  then and get it trimmed up to fit the quilt. 

3.  On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter): Make 2 blocks, start quilt assembly



I just need to make 8 of the corner units to have enough to finish off the 2 blocks.  I've got the final layout worked out. I still need to cut the sashing strips and corner stones. I'm hoping to make some progress on assembly before the week is done. 

4. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making blue blocks

I've made good progress on the blue set of blocks. I should probably count and see where I'm at.  

5. Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders




I'm close on the number of 4-patch blocks needed to finish the quilt.  I decided to start assembling the parts of the quilt, the center requires 9 16 patch blocks made from the 4 patch blocks.  If I need more 4 patches of either color, I'll make them as I go along. I don't want to make more than I need, so this seems to be the best approach to keep moving towards a finish on this one.  

It's a bit longer of a list, but with no due dates on anything, I can relax and make progress on each item.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Monday, March 24, 2025

2025 SAHRR: A Finished Quilt Top

It seems my modus operandi these days is to take my projects with deadlines down to the wire.  The quilt parade link up for the 2025 SAHRR kicks off today over at Quilting Gail.  I finished the last borders on my version yesterday just before lunch. 


This has become one of my favorite quilt alongs.  Coming up with a block to meet the prompt and making it fit in the dimensions for that border is part of the challenge and the fun. It's also improved my piecing skills on small blocks.  

This is my third year participating in the SAHRR.  The previous two years I made quilts for My Guy and Grad Girl.  Grad Girl had asked me to make a quilt for her current roommate. Green is the roommate's favorite color so we started there. 




The green and blue Batik in the middle was the inspiration for pulling in the blue and the darker green. I had a light grey in the stash to use as the background.  After 6 rounds or prompts this was my finished quilt top. 



 

I was pretty happy with how all the rounds came out, but it felt unfinished.  Playing around in EQ, adding a simple border didn't help.  So I decided it need one more pieced border before I added a simple unpieced border to finish it out.  Here's my finished quilt top. 




The finished quilt top is 75" X 79", larger then my previous efforts.  But the quilt needed that last border to balance out that 4th border of just the green and blue.  I'm happy with how it came out.  Now to find a backing and and get it quilted so it can be delivered to the roommate before Grad Girl graduates this summer.  

Thank you Gail, Kathleen, Anja, Wendy, Brenda and Emily for another fun SAHRR.  

I'm also linking up with my usual Monday linky parties, Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Stitching Stuff: Week 12 of 2025

 


It's been a busy week in the sewing room.  The weather has been up and down. Warm and windy one day, cold and calm the next.  But that's just March. The sewing room has been the best place to ride out Mother Nature's mercurial moods.  So it was a good week on the stitching front.  


  • 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
  • 15 minute days/March = 22/22 days
  • 15 minute days/2025 =  76/81 days
  • Success rate = 93.83% 

I'm hoping to finish March out by sewing every day this month. I didn't manage that for January or February.  Having a success rate in the mid 90's is really good when you consider I've had some years where it's been in the mid 50's.  The important thing is projects are moving along in the sewing room. Though I may need to take day out and do a bit of cleaning this next week, especially a good vacuuming. 

How are you doing with your sewing goals as the end of first quarter approaches?  

1. Gretchen
2. maggie f
3. Julie in GA
4. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting
5. DonnaleeQ
6. Karen
7. Quilting Gail
8. Frédérique
9. Melissa G
10. Bonnie in Va
11. Marsha's Spot

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

To Do List for the Week of 03/18/2025

Even with lots of stitching time, I'm finding it hard to get to every item on my to do list.  Mostly because I still have a couple of projects with deadlines, the SAHRR and the guild BOM. I probably should have stuck to a shorter list for last week.  


To Do List for 3/11/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish April Blocks ✔

2.  SAHRR: Start on finial borders 

3.  Chocolate Marshmallows: Make backing - no progress

4.  On Ringo Lake: Cut pieces for last block - no progress

5.  Wild and Goosey: Continue making blue blocks ✔

6.  Summer Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Four out of six isn't a bad week, especially since I made really good progress on my two deadline projects.  I'm going to need to keep up on the BOM blocks as I'm the coordinator this year.  I realized that I'll need to have a finished quilt top for the December meeting.  I'd best get a bit ahead so I can make that happen. This week's list will be a bit shorter.  


To Do List for 3/18/2025

1. SAHRR (Quilting Gail):  Finish Borders




The link up for the parade of quilts is next Monday, so I really need to finish piecing all the blocks and get the borders assembled and attached.  This will be my priority project. I only have 2 more sets of hourglass blocks to make and trim. From that point the block assembly goes much faster.  

2. 2025 Guild BOM: Start May blocks

This may seem really early to start that month's blocks, but I have to have them ready for the April Meeting.  So far I've been completing my blocks the day before or day of the meeting. That's cutting it a bit close, so I'm going to work on getting a bit ahead.  

3.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Continue making blue blocks

4.  Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders

I'm going to keep it simple this week so I can get the SAHRR to finished quilt top. If I finish the list early, I'll work on a backing for the SAHRR. It needs to be finished by July, so I need to get it out for quilting pretty quickly. 

Normally I link up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday, but she doesn't have a post up as yet. If one goes up later, I'll link up.  

Monday, March 17, 2025

A Lot of Stitching, Not Much to Show

It was a quiet weekend once we got past the high winds of Friday.  We have elevated fire danger for most of this week.  It was so bad Friday, I did take the time to gather all our important documents and pack them so I could grab them and go if we had to evacuate. We live at the edge of town with open fields to the south and west, so it's not improbable that we might need to evacuate. Thankfully the winds this week are our typical March "breezes", hopefully the infrastructure is built to tolerate those.  

There was a good bit of stitching this weekend, but I can't show you much of it.  I've been working the Guild BOM blocks, but I can't post those until after I reveal them at the guild meeting tomorrow.  I've also been working on the blocks for the last border of the Stay at Home Round Robin project, but don't really have much to show there either.  The only other project that's up on the design wall is the yellow blocks for Wild and Goosey. 




These will finish at 7" in the quilt.  The yellow blocks form the center of the quilt.  The plan is to sash them with more black once I get to the point of assembling the quilt.  I wanted to wait till I had all the 3.5" units of a given color before I started assembling them into larger blocks.  That way I can distribute the colors better. 

With all the yellow ones finished, I moved back to working on the blue blocks.  




I need 64 of the blue for the planned layout. Based on the current block count, a little over a third of the way there. There's still  two weeks left in March. Hopefully I can get a bit closer to half way before the end of the month.  

Linking up with Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Stitching Stuff: Week 11 of 2025

 


How are you faring this weekend?  If you lived in eastern half of the US, it definitely was a weekend to remember.  I'm very grateful that the worst we got was the high winds, peak wind gusts of up to 67 mph on Friday.  There were a few small wild fires around town, you could smell the smoke most of the afternoon. But all were extinguished or contained by sundown. The blowing dust obscured the sun by late afternoon. Thankfully we didn't get the near zero visibility that happened in parts of Texas or the city devouring flames that hit other communities in Oklahoma. My heart goes out to all those that lost homes to fire or the storms that hit other parts of the US.  

I spent my Friday at the local quilt shop at open sew.  It was nicer to be with others while we monitored the alerts from our county emergency management system.  Overall it was a good week on the stitching front. 


  • 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
  • 15 minute days/March = 15/15 days
  • 15 minute days/2025 =  69/73 days
  • Success rate = 93.24%


I made good progress on the Guild BOM blocks and the last border for the SAHRR, but not much else.  I'm going to need to get busy today to have check marks on the rest of my to do list for the week.   

How did your week work out?


1. Frédérique
2. Gretchen
3. maggie f
4. Melissa G
5. Karen
6. DonnaleeQ
7. Quilting Gail
8. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting
9. Bonnie in Va
10. amanda
11. Stitching Loving Nana

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Tuesday, March 11, 2025

To Do List for the Week of 03/11/2025

There was a good bit of sewing to deadlines this last week.  I try hard to avoid that as my stitching time is supposed to be relaxing and meditative.  Of course it was my own fault, I had plenty of time to work on my projects, I just got sidelined with the new and shiny.  At any rate, it all paid off and last week's to do list has lots of check marks.  

To Do List for 3/04/2025

1. Marble Mystery: Finish quilt assembly ✔ 
2. 2025 Guild BOM: Start April blocks ✔
3. 2025 SAHRR: Finish 6th border and add final borders - progress
4. On Ringo Lake: Find project box, determine next steps ✔
5. Wild and Goosey: Assemble yellow blocks into 9 patches ✔
6. Summery Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Five out of six with check marks and progress on the 6th is a very good week. Unfortunately, I still have a couple of quilty deadlines to meet this month.  But I should be good on both of those as long as I don't get too sidelined with other stuff around the house. 

To Do List for 3/11/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish April blocks

All the HSTs for the Inverted Star have been made. The pieces to make 5 border sawtooth stars have been cut and assembly of those blocks has started.  I'm on track to have all those blocks finished before the guild meeting next Tuesday.  

2.  SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Start on final borders

The final quilt parade for the 2025 Stay At Home Round Robin isn't till March 24th.  So I have time to finish off the last pieced border I decided to add as long as I make steady progress over the next couple of weeks. 

3.  Chocolate Marshmallows (Seabreeze Quilts): Make backing



One of my big goals for 2025 was to finish off the quilt tops hanging in the closet.  If I'm going to have anything to show on that front for first quarter, I need to get moving on that.  I've played in EQ to come up with various layouts. My preference is the middle one. But it depends a lot on how much of the brown I have.  

4.  On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter): Cut pieces for last block



    
I found the project box and there are a few odds and ends in it along with the blocks.  After playing a bit in EQ, the plan is not to use Bonnie's layout but do a simple sashed layout instead.  One more block is needed for that layout.  The plan is to see what I have in the box and then cut the pieces needed to make the remaining components of the block. If I get the block made great, but I'm not counting on getting that far with what else is on the list.  

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




All the yellow blocks are sashed into the 7" blocks to make the quilt assembly a bit easier.  So I'm back to making blue blocks.  I use a lot of blue, consequently there a lots of pretty scraps to pull into these blocks.  Blue and purple have the largest number of blocks in the quilt, so there's still a lot of blocks to make in each color.  

6.  Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter): Continue as leaders and enders.  




This has been such an easy leaders and enders project.  It has definitely made a dent in my 2.5" blue and yellow strips.  I have had to go back to fat quarters to cut more, but I have a lot of both yellow and blue partial fat quarters.  The number of 4 patches is creeping up. At some point I'll need to make a number of two patches, but I'm not quite there yet.  

That's my list for this week.  I may not have check marks for all them next week, but any progress is good.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.