Stitching Stuff: Week 17 of 2026

 

Spring storm season continues. We were lucky Thursday night, all we got from the storms that spawned the tornadoes out west was heavy rain and a lot of lightening. We had some rain and a bit of thunder from the storms last night. All the tornado warnings were south of us.  I will be glad when storm season dies down a bit. 

The stormy weather hasn't affected my stitching time. 

 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 24/25 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 114/115 days
• Success rate = 99.13%

I've only missed one stitching day this year. Not bad for being almost a third through the year.  Time does seem to be flying.  I'm not ready for it to be May already.  

How are you doing at getting in your stitching time?  

 

Photo Play: January and February 2026

My quilting efforts this year have been pretty good. Not so my photography efforts.  One of my goals for 2026 was to take at least one photo per week.  Hasn't happened.  So there aren't a lot of photos from the first couple of months in the year. Though looking back, I did try more in January than I did in February.  But in the end, only 2 photos from each month made the cut for this post.  

All photos taken with a Canon 70D DSLR with a Tamron18-400 mm telephoto lens.  

It was incredibly cold in January, so being outside was just not fun. Both January photos show something warm. 

My Guy likes to bake when it's too cold to be out and about outside. These were a new recipe, brown butter cookies.  They were very yummy and didn't last very long as they were wonderful with coffee or hot tea. I thought this photo would look just right in a cookbook. 

I was reading a photography book in January, "Extraordinary Everyday Photography" by Jed Manwaring. The book is about capturing the details of everyday life, the stuff you see all the time. I snapped this shot at lunch one day. 

 

My Guy spends most of the winter in very lived in flannel shirts.  You can just barely see his glasses peaking out of the top of that pocket. I'm not sure it's a great shot technically, but it makes me smile.  It's so easy to take those weekend lunch times, with him in his slightly frayed flannel shirts sitting across from me for granted. So maybe there something to capturing those every day details we just don't consciously think of?    

February was more cold, cloudy days. Everything was still mostly brown. I did brave a walk one day early in the month and took some interesting shots. 

Any guesses?  Both photos are of a frozen lake.  The first one reminds me of sand, rather than ice.  

That's it for the first two months of the year. With spring making an appearance about mid March, I did get out with the camera a bit more that month. We were on vacation in April and the camera was out when we were hiking. I've not taken much since.  I haven't finished reading the photography book either. I'm going to need to change my game a bit if I want to do more on the photography front.  

To Do List for the Week of 4/21/2026

The storms put a hitch in my stitching time last week.  I still got a lot done, but didn't complete all of my to dos from last week. 

To Do List for 4/14/2026

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

2. SAHRR: Add final border ✔

3. Magnificent Mystery: Finish half blocks, start quilt assembly ✔

4. Chilhowie: Piece backing, start prepping for quilting - progress

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

It was a good week even though I didn't get as much done on Chilhowie as I wanted.  There's always this week.  

To Do List for 4/21/2026

1. Guild BOM: Finish June and July blocks

All the flying geese for December are finished. The May block is ready for guild meeting tonight.  The pieces for the June and July blocks are cut, they just need to be assembled. So I'm on track with this project.  

2. Magnificent Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish assembly, decide on borders.

I've made enough progress on assembly that I should be able to finish that this week.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to add a simple border, but just not sure which fabric to use.  

3. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Make backing

I work on quilting projects on Wednesday and Thursday.  I didn't get much sewing time last Wednesday because of the storms. The blocks for the borders didn't get used on the quilt top, so I decided to use those on the back.  The plan is to get all this blocks sewn into one strip that will separate one backing fabric from the other.  I'm trying hard to use left over stash or older fabrics that haven't made their way into projects yet for my backings.  

4. Lupine and Laugher (Bonnie Hunter): Work on A blocks

I've not touched this project since January. It's going to take a bit to get back into a groove on what I was doing.  

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

Just a few left to make. Hopefully those get finished before the end of the month.  

I'm hoping for a productive week. It would be nice to get back to some of the older projects on my UFO list.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Catching up in the Sewing Room

We've been home a little over a week from our vacation. I can claim that laundry is all caught up. Still a few chores to do before I'm caught up there.  Catching up in the sewing room has been a bit harder.  My biggest focus has been on getting the Guild BOM block done for May. There has been good progress on that front, it should get finished today.  

The other focus has been trying to move projects from first quarter to finished quilt tops.  The final borders finally made it on to the 2026 SAHRR (Quilting Gail).

The border photographed darker then it actually is. It looks solid black, it's not. It looks much better in person. My SAHRR quilt for this year is definitely different from my previous three finishes.   

I was going to skip the quilt along this year, but then decided if I could do a sampler, that would be manageable. The fabrics for this year's project are left over from another project (there is enough left over for a third project).  I really like the big center star and the pieced border.  I don't do small projects as you can tell from my previous quilts. It was nice to just make one block each week. Now the quilt top goes into the "to be quilted' closet.  Hopefully it will get quilted before the end of the year.  

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

Stitching Stuff: Week 16 of 2026

It was a busy week. Taxes took up a good part of Monday.  By Wednesday, I was mostly caught up on laundry. Still a bit behind on my monthly chores, but a few of those were knocked out. We had nasty storms on Wednesday and Friday.  The storms meant I had to shut down my stitching a bit early so I could unplug my machine.  These storms had a lot of lighting. I got caught in nickel/quarter sized hail on my way home from a doctor's appointment Wednesday afternoon. We spent a good 20 minutes in the storm shelter Friday night due to tornado warnings.  Thankfully, it looks like our next round of storms isn't till next weekend.  

Even with all the disruptions, it was a good week on the stitching front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 17/18 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 107/108 days
• Success rate = 99.07%

Fingers crossed it's mostly a calm week. It would be nice to have a week with no drama. Well, that's not happening this week. I have to finish the May block for the Guild BOM.  It's in progress. Hopefully I won't be madly stitching on it at 4 PM the day of the meeting!

Here's what the hail looked like on Wednesday (photo curtesy of My Guy).

I drove about 5 miles in that hail.  It sounds so much worse when you are in the car.  I kept repeating, "don't get any bigger, don't get any bigger" (they had forecast golf ball sized).  Then it was, "please stop, please stop".  I sat in the car for probably 5 minutes waiting for it to end before I made the mad dash into the house in the pouring rain.  

Hope your week has been much more boring than mine was, but with lots of time to play with needle and thread.  

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

6. Frédérique 7. Karen 8. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 9. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 10. Linda at Texas Quilt Gal

11. Quilting Gail 12. Bonnie in Va 13. Shelina at Quilt and Color 14. Deb in Canada 15. Marsha's Spot

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Week 153 Photo Challenge: Skate Park

It's been almost a month since the last post on our photo challenge. This new deck of cards we started late last year has some challenging subjects, such as this one:

My Guy and I were going to go photograph at our local skate park.  He got there first and took this photo. 

All that remains of the skate park is the sign and a slab.  The skate park was opened in 2020 and was really nice.  I've searched our local news sources, but don't find any info on why it was removed.  

We decided to end the challenge with just My Guy's photo.  One of the problems with trying to photograph a skate park, is having a camera around kids when you don't have a kid there. That can be  unsettling to a lot of people and none of us wanted to have a run in with an upset parent or the local police.  

I'm not sure the next challenge card is any easier.  

It will be interesting to see what we all come up with. I have a couple of ideas.  Fingers crossed they aren't the same ones My Guy has.  

2026 Quilt Making Strategies: Second Quarter Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chilhowie and Glowing Hearts

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

2025 Guild BOM and Chocolate Marshmallows

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

First Quarter Review: 2026 Quilt Making Progress

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

First Quarter Strategy

1. Guild BOM

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

2. Wild and Goosey leaders

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

3. 2025/2026 Quilt Alongs and Mysteries

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

To Do List for 3/24/26

1. SAHRR: Finish quilt top - progress

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

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

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

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

To Do List for 4/14/2026

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

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

2. SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Add final border

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catching Up: The March 2026 PHD Report

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stitching Stuff: Week 15 of 2026

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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Stitching Stuff: Week 14 of 2026

 

Happy Easter!  

It's been one of those weeks.  I'm still dealing with memory problems on the computer.  I may have found a work around that prevents the memory from completely filling up. It's not a fix, but it does prevent the computer from crashing. Fingers crossed it continues to keep the computer mostly operational. I'm hoping to get caught up with email and blog reading over the next week.  

On the stitching front, it wasn't a bad week, but I certainly didn't get the sewing time I'd hoped to. 

• 15 minute days/week = 6/7 days
• 15 minute days/Mar = 31/31 days
• 15 minute days/Apr = 3/4 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 93/94 days
• Success rate = 98.94%

April Fools Day messed me up.  We were out and about all day and most of the evening too. By the time we got home, I was just too tired to contemplate doing anything on the stitching front. At least I managed to keep my 100% sewing time metric through first quarter. My goal is to stitch at least 75% of the days in 2026, so I'm still on track with that.  

Hope you've been able to spend some time with family this weekend and still keep your hands busy with a bit of needle and thread. 

  

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

5. Karen 6. Patricia in New Mexico 7. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 8. Quilting Gail

9. Bonnie Stapleton 10. Jennifer in Indy 11. Shelina at Quilt and Color

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Stitching Stuff: Week 13 of 2026

My computer is having memory problems again. The last update apparently did something to how things are running.  So I've had some issues getting and staying on line.  If I disappear for a bit you'll know why.  

Having computer problems does lead one to spend a lot more time in the sewing room. So it was another pretty good week on that front. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Mar = 28/28 days
• 15 minute days/2026 = 87/97 days
• Sucess rate = 100%

Most of focus in the sewing room has been on my SAHRR and Magnificent Mystery projects. Both are moving along, but not as fast as I'd like.  I'm hoping for a pretty productive day in the sewing room today. 

Are you spending lots of time with needle and thread? 

1. Linda at Texas Quilt Gal 2. maggie f 3. Melissa G 4. Gretchen 5. Frédérique

6. Andrée at Quilting & Learning 7. Julie in GA 8. Karen 9. Melisa- Pinker n' Punkin Quilting 10. Quilting Gail

11. Bonnie Stapleton 12. Deb in Canada 13. Shelina at Quilt and Color 14. Marsha's Spot

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To Do List for the Week of 3/24/2026

Hard to believe there is just a little over a week left in March.  It's been a good month for me on the productivity front. Even with my allergies and my back issues, I've been doing pretty well at getting my to do lists mostly checked off.  

To Do List for 3/17/2026

1. SAHRR: Work on borders ✔

2. Magnificent Mystery: Work on block assembly ✔

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

Three for three is a good week.  I didn't get as far with the SAHRR as I would have liked. Hopefully it's far enough along that I can get remaining borders on before the linky party ends. That will be to do #1 for this week. 

To Do List for 3/24/2026

1. SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Finish quilt top

 

I'm adding a partially pieced border to the completed sampler part of the quilt.  Then adding two additional strip borders to get the size up a bit.  I'm probably half way done with the square in a square blocks.  

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

These are the pieces left to sew into blocks. I did a count last night of the number of blocks completed.  There are 3 more block A's and 3 more block B's, plus the fill in half blocks left to complete. So its getting there. I've been working on stitching one block as work has been proceeding on my priority projects each week.  I'll be glad to get this one to finished quilt top. That will be the end of my deadline sewing for first quarter. 

4. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Piece backing, start quilt prep

Chilhowie is the 2022 Bonnie Hunter mystery.  The quilt top was finished in September of 2024.  It's the smallest of my quilts to be quilted.  It will be the first quilt I try to quilt with my walking foot as a whole project.  It's small enough that it shouldn't be too hard to wrestle it on my home machine.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm hoping the quilting on this one goes faster than Kate's Choice went.  

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

So many different blues in these blocks. This week a few more scrap strips were cut into triangles to increase the amount of lighter fabrics going into these blocks.  I counted how many sets of 4 there were in this stack.  I need 4 more sets of 4 to be finished with the blue blocks.  The purple and teal block sets still need to be finished, but I'm getting closer to quilt assembly time.  Fingers crossed that happens before the end of the year.  

So that's my list for the week.  Hopefully, the allergies will stay managed and I'll figure out my fitness stuff so there are no back issues this week.  It would be nice to be back to a 3 item to do list next week.  Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

First Finish of 2026

Last week was very productive, but the weekend was a bit rough since my back decided it needed to let me know I'd over done it.  We had to switch fitness centers (it's a long sordid tale that I don't want to dwell on).  The new fitness center equipment is the same, but different.  Different enough that my "normal" fitness routine is using muscles and putting me in positions different from before.  My back finally cried "Stop!" late Friday night.  So I have some rethinking to do when we go work out tomorrow.  Thankfully, I felt much better yesterday.  

I finished sewing the binding on Kate's Choice.  I'm going to share a lot about how this project evolved, mainly for myself as my blog is how I keep track of both my quilting and major life stuff.  If you want to see the finished quilt and not read the whole sorry tale, just scroll to the end.   

Kate's Choice actually started off as Grandmother's Choice, a quilt along sponsored by Barbara Brackman back in 2012.  

This sounded like such a fun quilt along.  I had the perfect fabric in my stash, Decadent Victorian from Moda fabrics.  

This line came out in 2007, so it was already 5 years old when I started the quilt along.  The bright pink is Bella Rosa from RJR fabrics, also from 2007.  The dark green used in some of the blocks and the border wasn't in the original fabric pull. 

I kept up with the first few weeks of the quilt along.

 

I made the first 5 blocks and then got completely stumped on the 6th block.  Barbara was using a lot of template patterns in these blocks and that was a skill set I hadn't mastered yet (still haven't).  Plus I was working full time, a supervisory position with 11 direct reports and a 13 year old at home. It's hard to tell from the photos, but the only block that was anywhere close to 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 was the Monkey Wrench block on the top right.  I was so frustrated with this project it was sent to time out in October of 2012. 

In late 2023, I was looking over my unfinished project list trying to decide what UFOs were going to go on my PHD list for 2024.  I was retired by then and a lot more experienced with piecing (by this point I'd been through the Bonnie Hunter school of piecing via her mystery quilts). Barbara had very thoughtfully left the quilt along posts up here.  After looking over at the number of template pieced blocks, I decided to just do my own sampler pulling blocks out of the Quilt Block Bible by Rosemary Youngs. 

Since I was picking my own block, the project name was changed from Grandmother's Choice to Kate's Choice.  My plan was to use these blocks as a quilt as you go project so I'd finally learn how to use my walking foot. I finished all the blocks in August of 2024, but didn't start quilting them until April of 2025. 

A very simple square in a square quilting pattern was quilted on each block. By the end of April 2025, one row was completely quilted and I'd made a start on the second row.  I marked my quilting lines with a hera marker. That worked out pretty well. All the blocks were quilted by August of last year and the first row was assembled by the end of that month.  

Assembling that first row was not fun at all.  So the whole thing went back into time out till January of this year.  After finishing only one quilt in 2025, but with 11 quilt tops needing to be quilted, I needed to get with the program on "how to quilt stuff".  So I made getting this project done a priority. I set up my sewing week such that Wednesday and Thursday were walking foot days. It was slow, but steady progress. All the rows were assembled by mid February.  

Once the top was all assembled, I realized it really needed a border. None of the reference books I had were helpful on that front. So I made up my own process and thankfully it worked. 

The borders were quilted with a "keyboard". That seemed to be the simplest option and it worked with the square in a square quilting in the blocks. The quilt was bound in the same dark green used on the front border.  I put the last stitches into attaching the binding last Monday, March 16th.  

I'm pretty happy with how it worked out. It's a small quilt, just lap sized. But I'm Ok with that, it will be a nice quilt to use in the office to cover up my legs when I'm working on the computer during the winter.  My Guy likes the back better than the front. 

I quilted the blocks with the backs attached. If you are careful with the layout, you end up with a two sided quilt. 

This was my next to oldest UFO.  I'm thrilled to have it finished and off the UFO list. It's not perfect by any means, but I learned so much by doing the quilt as you go method. I'm no longer scared of my walking foot.  I feel more confident to quilt some of my other finished quilt tops. 

Linking up with my typical Monday linky parties; Patchwork & Quilts plus Sew & Tell Monday.  Also linking up with Favorite Finish for March and I Quilted This.