Stitching Stuff: Week 27 of 2025

 

We had a wonderful 4th of July holiday with my family.  Grad Girl made it home. She'll be here all this week, then she heads back home to pack and move.  I did pretty well at fitting in some stitching time most days.  

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/June =  27/30 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 175/186 days
• Success rate = 94.09%

I didn't get any stitching time in on the 4th, we were just too busy cooking and hanging out with family for me to have time to pull out my stitching.  But I did work in some time in the sewing room other than that day. So not a bad week. 

How are doing finding time to stitch this summer? Are you out and about in the garden or like me trying to stay cool in the sewing room? 

Happy July 4th!

 

2025 Quilting Ambitions: 2nd Quarter Check In

The end of June is not only mid year, it is the end of the 2nd quarter.  When I was working, mid year progress reviews were required. I don't have a supervisor anymore, but Quilting Jetgirl has a linky party up for the 2025 Quilting Q2 Check In, which is a good reminder to check how it's going with my 2025 quilty ambitions. 

It's so easy to set your goals at the beginning of the year and just forget about them.  I'm guilty of that, but maybe not so much this year.  I know what they are, but I'm not so sure I've done a good job at focusing on them.  So here's my progress on this year's ambitions. 

Ambition 1: Make Quilts.  My goal is to make as much progress as I can on the projects that are on my quilt plan.  Here's where things started in January. 

Here's where I'm at as of 6/30/2025.

One finish, one unplanned start and 4 projects that have hit major milestones on the road to getting finished.  I really need to concentrate on moving some of the finished quilt tops to finished quilts the last half of the year.  I'm hoping to quilt some of these myself and just send out a couple for professional quilting.  I have fabrics picked for the backings of several, but haven't done much else on those.  

Ambition 2: Learn to quilt. After several years of having this ambition, I finally did something about it. All the dread of learning to use a walking foot in hindsight was just silly.  It's not hard, keeping a straight line is still a challenge, but my quilt as you go project finally is a reality.  

Four rows of Kate's Choice are quilted.  Just two left.  Though I'm far from done with this project, it feels good to finally meet one of my long time goals of learning to quilt.  

Ambition 3: Fabric organization. Back in April I finally worked on scrap processing and pressing fabrics.  

 

But I've not done much since.  At least there has been some progress this year on that front. I hope to do more once our schedule slows down a bit.  

Summery for midyear:  There has been at least some progress on each of my ambitions for the year, but none of them are as far along as I had hoped.  For the last half of the year the plan is to focus more on getting a few projects finished and doing more on the stash organization goal.   

June 2025 PHD Report

Hard to believe we are half way through 2025.  Now that it's July it's time to take another look at my progress with the June PHD report over at Ms. P Designs. 

  

I've not done so well on the finishing up front, but I have been making steady progress on several other projects.  

While cleaning up the sewing room, I found a very old counted cross stitch throw started back in college.  It's been added to my traveling handwork projects.  Not a lot of progress on this, but at least there's been some. I'd forgotten just how much time it takes to do counted cross stitch.   

Another oldie saw some progress in July.  A few more blocks for  Grandmother's/Kate's Choice project were quilted this month.  Just 2 rows left to quilt.  

Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) also saw a lot of progress this month.  All the orange blocks were sashed as it was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for June.  Once those were finished, the remaining red blocks were finished and sashing of those started. 

In May, quilt assembly started for the Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter).  This month the center was assembled and the first border of the yellow 4-patches was added. 

Clues 6 and 7 for Old Town (Bonnie Hunter) were completed in June.  A good start was made on clue 8.  I'm really hoping to be assembling the quilt blocks by the end of July. 

 

The color for the July Guild BOM block was red. I've already started looking for my sashing options.  August blocks are already under construction as we've got some stuff going on this month, so being ahead will be important.  

Glowing Hearts (MMM quilts) became a finished quilt top.  It's in line for quilting, which I should really focus on this last half of the year.  This was an unplanned project, but it used up some older stash and was a lot of fun to make.  

There has definitely been progress, but other than Glowing hearts none of the other projects have hit a major milestone, so my tracking graphic doesn't look much different than last month's. 

Only Glowing Hearts shows any progress on the bar graph.  Some months are going to be like that.  We'll see what gets done in July, it's going to be a busy month.  

To Do List for the Week of 07/01/2025

The year is half over.  I'm always amazed at how quickly we get to this point.  We were in Crown Center in Kansas City last week for a conference. The Hallmark store there was setting up for this year's ornament display.  Christmas will be here before most of us are ready I'm sure.  

Let's not dwell on time passing, not much we can do on that front. I didn't have time to write up a post last week. Which works out as I didn't have time to stitch much last week.  So I had two weeks to work on my previous to do list. 

To Do List for 06/17/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish July blocks, start August ✔

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks ✔

3.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch one night this week ✔

4.  Wild and Goosey: Finish red blocks, start sashing red blocks ✔

5.  Old Town: Continue assembly during late night sew ✔

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

I'll definitely take six check marks even if it did take 2 weeks.  The list for this week will look pretty similar.  

To Do List for 07/01/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish August blocks, start Sept.

The color for July was red.  The blocks got done just in time for the guild meeting last month. I have all but one of the smaller sawtooth stars cut out for August. I've got one last set of 4 HSTs to make and then I can start assembly on the Inverted star for next month.  I've been auditing sashing and border fabrics for this quilt.  I'll need to have mine assembled for the December meeting, hence the need to work ahead a bit.  

2. Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks

I'm hoping to get in one solid afternoon of quilting and finish row 5 this week. 

3.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch on a project at least one night this week. 

We have a family get together planned for this weekend to celebrate Grad Girl finishing up her master's degree.  So I'm sure there will be time to sit and stitch for a bit. 

4.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish green, start purple, sash red

All the red blocks are made and sashing them is in progress. I went back to green to work on those blocks a bit. Purple is the color for this month, so I'll pull out all those triangles and make a few of those. 

5. Old Town (Bonnie Hunter): Continue assembly at late night sew

Clue 8 is more flying geese.  I need to some more of the neutral triangles, I didn't count correctly apparently and am short by quite a bit.  

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

The first yellow border for the center of the quilt is assembled and stitched on. Border #2 is still in progress. 

So pretty much the same list I've had for a few weeks.  With the family get together for the holiday weekend and having to help Grad Girl move later this month, I'm just hoping to keep these projects moving till we get to August then things will slow down a bit on the travel front.  

Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.   

Definitely Progress, But Nothing Exciting

There really was a plan to post last week, but I'd forgotten how hard it is when you have an early morning start and have to find coffee and breakfast before your first session.  Meetings all day and then social networking meetings in the evenings, left me pretty much spent at the end of the day. I don't do this type of stuff very often now that I'm not working.  It was fun though, I miss the technical part of being a research chemist and I definitely got to do some technical stuff during the meeting.  

The meeting did take me out of the sewing room for the better part of the week. But between a bit of weekend sewing and what I got done before I left, there is a bit of progress to post about.  

The row 4 blocks for Kate's Choice were all quilted just before I left for the conference. So just two more rows left to quilt.  

Clue 7 for Old Town (Bonnie Hunter) was also finished. 

Clue 8 is in progress.  It's more flying geese. I'm almost half way done with those.  I'm hoping to be able to start assembling blocks in July.  

So there's been progress, just nothing as exciting as a finished quilt top or finished quilt.  Linking up with Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 26 of 2025

 

I didn't mean to be absent from the blog this week.  We both attended a technical conference last week and our mornings were early and our evenings late. It was just hard to find the time to write a blog post.  I also didn't do so hot on finding time to stitch during the later half of the week, it was just too hectic and we both were pretty much wiped out when we got back to the room.  So this weeks stitching stats don't look so hot.  

• 15 minute days/week = 4/7 days
• 15 minute days/June = 25/28 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 169/179
• Success rate = 94.41%

I'm hoping for a better week this week, though we have some family stuff coming next weekend for the 4th of July holiday. Grad Girl is coming home for just a bit.  Saturday morning was spent unpacking and getting a start on laundry after our conference trip. It's going to be a busy week, but hopefully I can still fit in some good stitching time. 

How was your week in the sewing room?  

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

6. Melissa G 7. Karen 8. DonnaleeQ 9. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 10. Quilting Gail

11. Bonnie in Va 12. Andrée 13. Carol @Quilt Schmilt

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Stitching Stuff: Week 25 of 2025

 

It's been quite week on the storm front thankfully. Summer has kicked in. Hot and humid are the words of the week.  Looks like we are in for  a lot of that over the next few weeks.  It's a good reason to hold up in the sewing room during those hot afternoons.  Which is pretty much what I did this week, it definitely helps with the sewing time. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/June = 21/21 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 165/172 days
• Success rate = 95.93%

A good week on the stitching time front.  Not so good on the scrap processing or fabric closet organization.  The weekends have been a bit busy trying to get a few other things done around the house.  Hopefully I'll get back to that at some point this year. 

Were you able to make time to stitch last week?  

1. Gretchen 2. maggie f 3. Melissa G 4. Deb in Canada 5. Karen

6. DonnaleeQ 7. Julie in GA 8. Quilting Gail 9. Bonnie in Va 10. Stitching Loving Nana

11. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 12. Marsha's Spots 13. Frédérique

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Week 144 Photo Challenge: Vegetable(s)

We started this photo challenge almost exactly 4 years ago.  The first post was on July 2, 2021.  We gave My Guy the first deck of photo challenge cards for Father's Day that year.  Some cards have taken longer than a week to finish for a variety of reasons.   I took a several month hiatus from the blog in 2022.   The last year has been tougher as Grad Girl has been working hard to finish up her master's. She just didn't have the energy or time some weeks.  So there hasn't been a photo challenge post each week.  But we definitely aren't ready for the end but this week's photos are from the last card in the second deck. 

None of us had problems finding subject matter, the challenge this week is to make an interesting photo. My approach to that is typically to see what I can get with macro photography.

Kate: Red Pepper

Red peppers are one of my favorite raw veggies.  I can eat red, yellow and orange peppers with no problems. But green peppers tear up my stomach.  My favorite part of the photo is probably the texture in the stem.  

I went raw, My Guy went with a cooked veggie. 

My Guy: Pizza in Progress

This was Sunday dinner: caramelized onion with peach and prosciutto. We wanted something different on the pizza. It was supposed to be pear and fig pizza, but pears were out of season and figs are hard to find at our local small town grocery store. So he winged it. It was still really, really good.  

Grad Girl finished all the paperwork needed to get her thesis submitted and applied for graduation on Friday. It was a stressful week for the poor girl, turns out there's a whole approval process that had to occur, it wasn't as simple as just submitting the thesis to the website.  With all of her committee out of the country, that got tricky with the Friday deadline. She pulled it off, but not without losing a bit of sleep and sanity. But she still came up with a photo when I asked. 

Grad Girl: Grad School Garden

Like her Dad, Grad Girl likes to have fresh herbs.  With all the things she needed to do to get out this summer, her garden hasn't been thriving.  Hopefully, she'll have a bit more time over the next few weeks to nurse her basil back to health.  

So that's the last photo card from the second deck.  We've been discussing what to do going forward as none of us what to end the challenge. It's been a very nice way to do something as a family, even with Grad Girl so far away.  As luck would have it, Amazon came through and I found another deck of photo cards from a completely different company.  There are 100 cards in this deck. That's almost 2 more years of photo challenges.  Here's the first one: 

Hmm, it will be interesting to see what we all come up with. 

If you are interested in this photo card deck, here's the full info.  

100 Photography Ideas Cards from Tip Info.  You can find them at Amazon (no affiliation, just sharing if you are interested in doing something similar). 

To Do List for the Week of 06/17/2025

Do you ever look at your calendar and realize that you don't really have that much time to get ready for something?  Grad Girl will be moving home next month.  She's been applying for jobs and has had one video interview so far.  With the current job market, she's probably going to be here for at least a month, likely 2 to 3 before she finds a full time chemist job.  I've been using her old closet as storage for some of my quilting supplies, I'm going to have to find someplace else because she's going to need the closet.  I have time, but will need to add that to my decluttering to do list.  

Maybe it goes on my quilting to do list too?  It certainly wasn't on last week's to do list.  

To Do List for 06/10/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: finish cutting, finish assembly - progress

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks - no progress

3.  Old Town: Work on blocks at late night sew ✔

4.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch one night this week ✔

5.  Wild and Goosey: Finish red blocks - progress

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

It wasn't a bad week, three check marks, two with some progress and only one with no progress.  I'm finding it hard to get back to the quilting because I have deadlines with the Guild BOM blocks. My next deadline is in later July, so hopefully I'll have some time to quilt this week.  So it will stay on the to do list for this week. 

To Do List for 06/17/2025

1.  2025 Guild BOM: Finish July blocks, start cutting for Sept. 

It will take an hour or so to finish up the blocks for July. That's doable before tonight's meeting.  I'm going to try to get ahead on August. July will be busy.  

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks

The plan is to change over to the walking foot tomorrow and spend a couple of days quilting.  I'll just have to be disciplined and do it.  

3.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Stitch one night this week. 

I made a little progress Sunday night.  It's slow going, but to be fair that's only an hour of stitching time.  But progress is progress even if it's slow.  

4.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish piecing red blocks, start sashing red blocks

Just one last red block to finish paper piecing and I can start sashing the blocks with black.  Orange is this month's RSC color, but I finished all the work on those blocks.  So I'm continuing with a different color.  I'll be paper piecing a couple more green blocks this month too.  I'd really like to see this project be ready for assembly sometime next year. Hopefully, by doing a bit each month, I'll get there.  

5.  Old Town (Bonnie Hunter): Continue assembly during late night sew.

All the gold/neutral flying geese are made and I've moved on to making these subunits.  Hopefully assembly of the blocks will start in early July.  I've been working on this at late night sew because it's the only non-guild project I have everything cut for.  

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

Yesterday's blog showed the progress from last week.  The only change is that some of the yellow border blocks are sewn together.  It's been fun to see this start to come together.  It feels like I've been making all those 4-patches forever!  

It's the same list as last week, though I'm hoping to do a bit better on the quilting and the cross stitching this week. We'll have to see how that works out.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday. 

Not Much on the Design Wall

It was another wet weekend here. The kind that's perfect for just hanging out in the sewing room.  Sewing time was spent working on the 2025 Guild BOM blocks for tomorrow's meeting.  I'm making good progress and if I can work in a good afternoon of sewing, I'll have them done.  Other than those blocks, there's not a lot going on in the sewing room.  I did finish stitching all the flying geese for clue 7 of Bonnie Hunter's Old Town mystery.  

I've been stitching a few flying geese with every BOM block I've been making. Normally the previous year's mystery becomes my leader and ender project, but in an effort to empty my blue scrap bins, I've been working on the Sensational Summer Scrap quilt (Kevin the Quilter) as my leaders and ender project for most of the year.  

The scrappy center is now all sewn together and the borders are now in the works.  This is the only project up on my design wall currently.  It's been fun to finally see this project start coming together after months of making the four patches.   

I'm not planning to start anything new for a couple of months. I really should get back to quilting Kate's Choice, but the guild BOM takes precedence.  I'll need to do a better job of keeping up as life will be busy in July. One lesson I've learned is it's wise to work ahead on the guild BOM. I've already started on plans for next year's.  It will be a sampler, which means a written block pattern each month.  Best if I get on jump on that this year.  

Linking up with the usual suspects for Monday: Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 24 of 2025

 

It was another good week on the playing with thread and fabric week. Except I did a lot more playing with fabric than with actually sewing it.  I need to get a start on next year's BOM.  There is no way I'm going to be able to make a block and write a pattern each month.  I'm going to start early on that.  Still it kept me spending time in the sewing room and playing with my stash. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/June = 14/14 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 157/165 days
• Success rate = 95.76%

It hasn't been a bad year on the stitching time front.  I may not be 100%, but 95% isn't a bad place to be approaching mid year.  

I didn't get any stash stuff done, other than sorting through what was in the fabric closet that could be used for next year's BOM.  I found some, but ended up buying a bit too. But that's OK, sometimes you have to buy to use.  

I shared one sign from our Texas trip last week. I have another for this week. 

This little carton was painted on the west side of an orthopedic surgeon' s office.  I bet that office is a fun place to work and the surgeon is probably pretty entertaining too.  

So how was your stitching week?  

1. Gretchen 2. maggie f 3. Julie in GA 4. Melissa G 5. Andrée

6. Karen 7. Stitching Loving Nana 8. Frédérique 9. DonnaleeQ 10. Meloney

11. Quilting Gail 12. Bonnie in Va 13. Carol @Quilt Schmilt

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Week 143 Photo Challenge: Old Book(s)

We've managed to keep up with the photo challenge for 3 weeks. It does make a huge difference that Grad Girl is mostly done with all her stuff for the master's degree and she has more time to contemplate photography.  Last week's challenge was one right up our alley. 

All three of us are bibliophiles, big time.  Grad Girl is at a disadvantage as most of her older books are here and not in Texas.  So she'll get a bit of grace with this week's post.  

I raided my professional library for my photo. 

Kate: Chemistry Tomes

These chemistry books were written in the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, These weren't purchased because I collect old books, no I collected these to use.  When I was a refinery chemist, we didn't have a lot of high tech equipment in the lab, but I did have access to a lot of chemicals.  These books included a lot information not only on how to test for certain chemicals, but the chemistry of some basic reactions that don't get included in modern text books.  When I had the refinery job, the Internet wasn't the World Wide Web just yet, so these old books were the quickest way for me find ways to answer questions about what was going on in operations.  

Similarly My Guy's photo comes from his professional library. 

My Guy: The Classics

These are his physics undergraduate and graduate text books for the most part.  There are a couple of older classics that he has added to his collection over the years.  So these are probably not what you'd consider classics, but they are the go to texts for physicists.  My Guy doesn't have much reason to consult them these days, he pretty much functions as a weird mix of chemist and engineer.  He has used my stack of chemistry books more than once over his working years.  

As I said Grad Girl's oldest books are still here in her bookcase.  So she improvised.  

Grad Girl: Old is Relative

Now that she's mostly finished with school, Grad Girl spends her days applying for jobs and occasionally treats herself to some time out of the apartment for coffee and a good book.  That book came out last year, so it's not a new release.  For the purposes of our challenge that counts as old.  

My Guy and I took pretty much the same range of photos.  But then again how many ways are there to photograph old books?  

This week's challenge card is the last one in the deck. 

We should have some colorful photos for next week.  

Photo Play 2025: May Summary

May turned out to be a reasonable month on the photography front.  I took the camera out early in the month and then we were on vacation at the end of the month.  Nothing from my early in the month photography efforts made the cut to my curated list.  At least I have a few photos for the end of the month.  

The following photos were taken with either a Canon 70D DLSR with a Tamron 14-400 mm telephoto lens or an I-Phone 12.  Some photos have been cropped.  

The following three photos were all taken in Norman, OK when we stopped for lunch on our way to Texas.  These were all taken with the I-Phone. 

The first two "chalk" paintings were taken from one of the buildings. It's hard to ignore the brilliant colors in those.  The fish in bottles (do you see them, took me a bit to figure out what all the white "dashes" were), was on the side walk in front of the building.  I don't do a lot of graffiti photographs, but these were too good to pass up.  

This last trip to College Station we were going to have a lot of time on our own early in week since Grad Girl was preparing for her thesis defense. My Guy dearly loves to walk and hike. So I asked Google to find walking/hiking trails close by.  It came back with Lick Creek Park, which was about 20 minutes from where we were staying.  It had wonderful walking trails with lots of wildflowers and birds.  My bird shots didn't come out so well, but I did get a lot of wildflowers photos.  

The following photos taken with the Canon 70D with a Tamron 18-400mm lens. 

Blanket flower

Horace's Dustywing

Rock Rose 

The following photos taken with an I-Phone 12.

Green Lynx Spider on a Black Eyed Susan

Partridge Pea Flower

American Beauty

Bee on a Blanket Flower

Buttonbush

It's obvious that I enjoy wildflower photography as I certainly have a lot of photos this month.  There are some just good luck shots with the insects, those can be hard to catch no matter the camera you have with you.  I used the I-Phone a lot on close ups. The Tamron telephoto is a wonderfully versatile lens, but it does struggle with the extreme close ups I love to take.  Thankfully the I-Phone does pretty well at close range.  

How's June looking on the photography front?  I've picked up on the photography study a bit, so the cameras been out a bit more.  There is still more than half the month left to see what I can come up with.