To Do List for 7/29/2025

I'm a day late posting this week's to do list. We are still working with uncertain scheduling since Grad Girl and Queenie moved home.  Grad Girl left yesterday morning for Houston. She has two job interviews this week.  Which means I'm on kitty babysitting duty, that includes at least 30 minutes to an hour of outside time in the morning.  She's used to having access to a third floor balcony to observe life from.  We have a fenced backyard, but Queenie is far from an outside cat and we're not sure she'd stay in the yard if she didn't have company.  So it's put a bit of a wrinkle in my morning routine of coffee and computer time.   

It's hard to say no to that face.  So she gets her outside time and I didn't make it to the computer yesterday.  Which isn't too much of a loss.  I did OK on my to do list for last week, but it wasn't one of my best weeks. 

To Do List for 07/22/2025

1. Guild BOM: Finish August blocks, start September ✔

2. Kate's Choice: Continue Quilting blocks ✔

3. Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Work on either one day - no progress

4. Old Town: Continue assembly at late night sew ✔

5. Wild and Goosey:  Make purple blocks, sash red blocks ✔

6. Summer Scrap Quilt: Continue as leaders and enders - no progress

Four out of six isn't a bad week, especially since I finally made some progress on the quilting for Kate's Choice.  This week's list looks pretty much the same. 

To Do List for 07/29/2025

1. Guild BOM: Cut pieces for September block

All the brown sawtooth stars for August are finally done. I have started cutting the pieces for the September blocks.  That guild meeting will be here before I know it. 

2. Kate's Choice: Continue Quilting blocks

Row 5 is now quilted.  Just one more row and then I have to figure out assembly.  

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

 

 

I've gotten a couple of blocks assembled. They take longer than you think to put together. It would help if I could keep the pressing instructions straight. I've had to repress seams more than once!  

4.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter):  Work on purple blocks, start teal blocks. 

The last set of red blocks is sashed into a 7.5" unfinished block.  Blue, green, purple and teal blocks still need to be finished.  But at least I'm starting to see how these are going together. I'm excited to see how all the cool colors come together.  

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

This one is hard to take to late night sew at the moment, so I've not made a lot of progress with it over the last week because I worked mainly on quilting Kate's Choice.  

That's my list for this week.  We'll see how much stitching time I manage to get in. A lot depends on what Grad Girl's schedule looks like this next week.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.

Finding a New Rhythm

We all expected an adjustment with Grad Girl moving home till she finds a job.  It's not so much having Grad Girl home, she's pretty self sufficient. But her cat, Queenie, has had a harder time adjusting.  I think she's finally getting over the stress of moving. But probably, it's that she's gotten us through the initial training of having a cat running the home.  

I finally got back to my quilt as you go project this weekend.  

Three blocks in row 5 of Kate's Choice are completely quilted and a fourth is almost done.  I'm hoping to get row 5 finished up today and make a start on row 6. Having this done by the end of next month is doable it I keep on it.  

Queenie hasn't been hanging out in the sewing room much. When they first got back, she went back to her old favorite hang out, the landing at the top of the stairs.  

She has recently discovered the end table next to the couch and the old recliner in the living room are also comfortable nap locations.  

Stay cool and stitch on, that's my plan at least.  Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.  

Stitching Stuff: Week 30 0f 2025

 

Hard to believe that it was just a week ago that we finished Grad Girl's move home.  I'm still dealing with sore knees after all the steps, but other than that I'm mostly recovered.  Consequently this week was much better than last week on the stitching time front.  

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/July = 16/26 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 187/207
• Success rate = 90.34%

We took Grad Girl's car in for service on Thursday and ended up spending the whole day in Tulsa (which wasn't the plan).  I came home that day with what was probably a dehydration headache as we were out running around to a few places since we had to stay in town most of the day.  So nothing got done when I got home. So it wasn't a 7 out of 7 day stitching week.  But I still made progress with a few things this week.   

I haven't done much with the stash organization lately.  I'm hoping to do more with it next month.  

How was your week. Did you hide from the heat in your sewing room or has it been just too hot to do much of anything?  

1. Julie in GA 2. maggie f 3. Linda at Texas Quilt Gal 4. Gretchen 5. Karen

6. DonnaleeQ 7. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 8. Quilting Gail 9. Bonnie in Va 10. Frédérique

11. Deb in Canada 12. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 13. Marsha's Spot

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Week 145 Photo Challenge: Any Reflection You Like

It's been over a month since our last photo challenge post.  I was the problem this time.  With family stuff going on for the 4th of July weekend, then Grad Girl's move, I really wasn't concentrating on my photography.  I only got my photo taken yesterday, both My Guy and Grad Girl have had photos for weeks and were pushing for us to move on.  The prompt for week 145 was: 

After weeks of procrastinating, I finally pulled out the camera and looked for a reflection I liked.  In the end, my photo was staged. 

Kate: Mirrored

Our roses are blooming again and any one who has followed me for a bit knows flowers are one of my favorite photo options.  So I grabbed a mirror from our dresser, picked a rose and spent a good hour trying to eliminate other reflections and get just the rose.  It mostly worked.  

My Guy took advantage of our conference trip to Kansas City back in June to get his photo.  

My Guy: Kansas City Western Auto Building

This is the reflection of the Western Auto building in downtown Kansas City.  The distorted view is really interesting.  My Guy had lots of fun reflections from this trip, we weren't that far from Union Station and he had some wonderful reflection photos from there as well.  

Grad Girl was paying attention and caught one of of those fleeting moments that one often misses.  

Grad Girl: Side View

The dragon fly is unexpected.  If you look closely, she's also captured the reflection of the sky on the side of her car.  A very cool photo, one that really meets the challenge. This was taken before she moved. 

My Guy and Grad Girl nailed this last challenge. I feel like I cheated since my photo was staged.  But all of us my have to stage photos for the next photo challenge. 

My Guy pulled this card from the deck. I suggested that we could put it back and pull another. We've never done that before, we've always worked with the card that was pulled.  He didn't want to change that rule. It should be interesting what we all come up with.  This challenge may take a couple of weeks, but hopefully we'll wrap it up before winter actually sets in this year!  

To Do List for 07/22/2025

It's been two weeks since my last to do list post.  Between being way to busy packing and moving Grad Girl, plus the lack of Internet, putting a list together last week just didn't happen. So here's the progress on my last to do list. 

To Do List for 07/08/2025

1. Guild BOM: Finish August blocks - progress

2. Old Town: Continue assembly at late night sew ✔

3.  Wild and Goosey: Make purple, sash red blocks ✔

4.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Work on one night ✔

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

There was a good bit of progress before I left for Texas and I'll take that. I'm hoping to make a good bit of progress this week.  It's too hot to do much else but hang out in the sewing room.  

To Do List for 07/22/2025

1. Guild BOM: Finish August blocks, start September

All but two of the sawtooth stars for the border were finished before I left for Texas.  It shouldn't take long to finish those off and then get started on the September blocks.  The fabrics for the next month's blocks have been pulled, so cutting those pieces should be doable this week.  

2.  Kate's Choice: Continue quilting blocks

July is almost over and there's only been one finish so far this year.  This is the project closest to being finished, so I should really put some effort into getting it all the way there. 

3.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Work on either one day

I did get one evening of cross stitching when we were in Texas; before our days got longer and we used the evenings to move packed stuff into the storage unit. It was too hot to do that during the day.  

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

All the components parts are finished, now block assembly can start.  I'm looking forward to seeing this quilt top come together.

5.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make purple blocks, sash red blocks

Just one red block left to sash.  I still need lots more purple blocks. I won't get all of those made this month. This is my RSC project for the year, but I probably won't be following along with the colors from here on out. Blue, green, purple and teal are the only colors left to finish, so I'll be concentrating on those the next few months. 

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

I'm still working on the yellow borders for the center of the quilt.  Hopefully I'll be doing enough stitching this week to get those done and I can move on to the rest of the assembly process.  

Grad Girl is back home till she finds a job, but she's pretty busy this week. She's got a couple of jobs to apply for and the finial edits on her thesis to finish. We are taking her car in for service sometime this week. She's going to take a mini trip to go see some of her college buddies this weekend, so we'll be cat sitting.  But other than that, I'm hoping for a mostly only stitching week. Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday. 

Getting Back to the Sewing Room

We finally made it home early yesterday afternoon.  All of us were hot and tired.  Queenie, Grad Girl's cat, isn't a fan of hotel rooms. So none of us got a lot of sleep the previous 4 nights.  Needless to say after we unloaded and got lunch, everyone of us, including the cat, took naps yesterday afternoon. It was early evening before I made it up to the sewing room and took stock.  

The last sewing I did was to finish the August Inverted Star block for the Guild BOM. 

The color for August is brown. I only finished 3 of the 5 sawtooth stars needed for the sawtooth border. But at least I had enough to post on the Guild Facebook page what the color was for August.  I missed the guild meeting due to the move preparations. 

That's about all the action in my sewing room over the last couple of weeks. I figured out where I was with Old Town, Wild and Goosey, and my leaders and enders project. I've got all the pieces pinned for the next bit of sewing, but ran out of steam at that point and went to bed. 

We didn't have Internet at the apartment for most of the week and we were so tired each night we were staying in the hotel, that I'm way behind on emails and blog reading. So I'll be playing catch up on that front this week.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.     

Stitching Stuff Week 29 of 2025

 

It's been one of those weeks where the stitching plan just didn't work out with the rest of the to do list.  

• 15 minute days/week = 1/7 days
• 15 minute days/July = 10/19 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 181/200 days
• Success rate = 90. 50%

Definitely not a good week on the stitching front.  This was move out week for Grad Girl and her roommate. Grad Girl is moving home while looking for a job.  We spent the Saturday before moving out the roommate. Yesterday we finished moving out all of Grad Girl's stuff. But it took us a week to pack and clean before heading for home yesterday. We were so tired from all the efforts that stitching just didn't happen, it was bed time as soon as we'd showered off the grime of the day.  I'm looking forward to spending a solid week in my sewing room. No moving stuff, I'm sore in places I didn't know I had.  

How was your stitching week?  

1. Frédérique 2. Gretchen 3. Julie in GA 4. Melissa G

5. Deb in Canada 6. Karen 7. DonnaleeQ 8. Andrée at Quilting & Learning

9. Bonnie in Va 10. Quilting Gail 11. Carol Andrews 12. Marsha's Spot

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Stitching Stuff: Week 28 of 2025

 

It's been a busy week.  Grad Girl has been home this week, so we've had a chance to hang out. We finally started decluttering her room on Wednesday. It was fun to laugh over the memories and the inevitable, "Why did I keep this?".    My Guy and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary this week. We went out for a very nice dinner. I've also developed a summer cold, the last couple of days a tissue box has pretty much gone everywhere I have.  All of that to say, it wasn't the best week on the stitching front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 5/7 days
• 15 minute days/July = 9/12 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 180/193 days
• Success Rate = 93.26%

 

I'm still over 90% on the accumulated stitching time, so I'm not too unhappy.  This week will probably be just as bad on the stitching front.  I'll be helping Grad Girl move, so we'll be busy packing, loading and unloading in the Texas heat.  I have some handwork with me, I'm hoping I'm not too tired each evening to spend some time with needle and thread. We'll see how that goes.  

I won't have Internet for several days, Grad Girl's roommate carries the Internet and that goes away when she finishes her move out later today.  So I probably won't be on line much till the end of the this week. I'll have to play catch up then. 

How is your summer in the sewing room going? 

 

 

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

6. Karen 7. DonnaleeQ 8. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 9. Julie in GA 10. Quilting Gail

11. Bonnie in Va 12. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 13. Marsha's Spot

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To Do List for the Week of 07/08/2025

It was a busy weekend and though I got my stitching time in most days, I was still busy enough that it was hard to get to everything on last week's to do list.  

To Do List for 07/01/2025

1.  Guild BOM: Finish August blocks, start Sept - progress

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

3.  Embroidery or cross stitch: Stitch one night ✔

4.  Wild and Goosey: Finish green, start purple, sash red ✔

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

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

Grad Girl is here this week and we have a few things planned, so I won't have as much sewing room time as I usually do. That will necessitate a pared back to do list for the week. 

To Do List for 07/08/2025

1.  Guild BOM: Finish August blocks

All the pieces are cut, they just need to be assembled. The guild meeting is next week so I need to get the August blocks finished up pretty quickly.  

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

I still have a few flying geese to finish up before I can start assembling the blocks. If that doesn't happen this week. It will definitely happen next week.  

3.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make purple, sash red blocks

I've gotten a good start on the purple blocks and just have a few red blocks left to sash.  Still a long way to go on this project, but getting to the point I can sash some of the blocks has been motivating.  Probably another year left to finish this project. Unless I decided to make it a priority.  

4.  Embroidery or Cross Stitch: Fit in at least one evening of stitching time. 

I forget just how slow going the counted cross stitch is, but I'm making a bit of progress here and there.  

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

Two of the yellow borders have been added to the center. The top border is in progress.  

That's my list for this week.  With Grad Girl home, I'm just looking for progress on my current projects.  I'll be able to get serious again later this summer.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

What to Post When You Can't Show What You Are Working On?

Secret projects didn't used to be very common in my sewing room.  But with taking on the block of the month program for the guild, I don't feel like I can share much of that sewing till I've showed it at the guild meeting.  Getting a bit ahead has been my focus for the last month, so there's not much else going on in the sewing room.  If I take off all the bits and pieces of the BOM off my sewing table, here's what's left. 

Wild and Goosey along with Old Town are most of what I've been stitching on as I've been assembling the guild BOM blocks.  So not much exciting. Though I am hoping to finish off those red and beige flying geese so I can start assembling the Old Town blocks at late night sew.  

Meadow Mist Designs published the fabric requirements for this year's Magnificent Mystery last Thursday.  I did take some time to look in the stash closet to see if I could pull a palette together from what I already had (my goal with these mysteries is to use older stash, maybe with with an new addition or two). This was my first pass. 

I've wanted to make a teal and brown quilt. Not sure why, it's just a color palette I haven't tried before.  The two teals have been in the stash for years.  The beige toile at the top is the proposed background.  It's the only beige I have that has enough yardage.  Not all the fabrics touch each other (Cheryl is always really good about giving you info on which fabrics touch which).  I'm pretty firm on the teals and the dark brown.  The print, the tan and the beige toile, I'm not sure of.  There is lots of  time to decide if those work.  

Linking up with Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts. 

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? 

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

5. Karen 6. DonnaleeQ 7. Jennifer in Indy 8. Bonnie in Va

9. Quilting Gail 10. Carol @Quilt Schmilt 11. Andrée 12. Marsha's Spot

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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.