2025 Quilting Ambitions: Year End Check In

Happy New Year!  Ready or not, it's 2026.  I'm definitely not ready. The first step in deciding my ambitions for 2026 is to look at how 2025 went.  Since 2018, I've played along with Quilting Jetgirl's Planning Party.  Yvonne has announced that 2025 is the last year she's going to host the party and the quarterly link ups.  Her quarterly check ups have been really helpful at making me look at my goals each year, which usually means I do something on them.  I'm not sure that worked so well for 2025.  At any rate, here's my year end ambition review. Definitely go over and check out Quilting Jetgirl's last 2025 Quilting Check In.  

Ambition 1: Make quilts. My goal was to make progress on all the projects that were on my quilt plan.  

I'm most disappointed in my lack of progress on the projects that need backings and quilting.  Looking back, having to find a new person to quilt my projects was probably my biggest road block to finishing more projects. So that's something to address early in 2026. 

But there was progress during the year. The quilting was started on Kate's choice.  A total of 5 projects became finished quilt tops this year.  Old Town is now an assembled top, just needs borders.  I added 5 new projects this year.  Consequently, my project list is bigger than it's ever been.    

Ambition 2: Learn to quilt. The walking foot isn't quite my friend yet, but I'm comfortable enough to tackle quilting a smaller quilt top.

The quilt as you go project didn't see any additional progress in 4th quarter.  It's still in time out. But I did get some additional practice on My Girl's trivets.  

The kitty face isn't perfect, but it is much better than the first set I quilted.  So I'm going to claim success on this goal. The plan is to build on this skill next year and get some of my quilts finished.  

3.  Fabric Organization: There was no progress on processing scraps or organizing my fabric closets in the 4th quarter.  

If anything, I went backwards.  My working scrap bin is overflowing and I've not done anything with my fabric closet in months. But I have done a pretty good job of pulling from my stash for new projects this year.  Charming Hearts, Magnificent Mystery, Lupine and Laughter, and the 2026 SAHRR all use fabrics from my stash. Though I did have to buy background fabric for the Magnificent Mystery, all the other fabrics came from stash. At least I reduced what was in the fabric closet the last few months!   

Not my best year ever, so I have lots of room for improvement in 2026.  My goals for 2026 aren't completely formed yet. The plan is to take some time today to decide how to define what looks like a good sewing year to me.  

Wishing you lots of fun adventures in the sewing room for 2026, with a few finishes in there to keep the UFO list in check.