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Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Photo Play: March 2026
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
To Do List for the Week of 4/28/2026
Monday, April 27, 2026
Do you Ever Catch Up in Quilting?
Sunday, April 26, 2026
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%
How are you doing at getting in your stitching time?
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Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Photo Play: January and February 2026
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
To Do List for the Week of 4/21/2026
Monday, April 20, 2026
Catching up in the Sewing Room
Sunday, April 19, 2026
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%
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.
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Saturday, April 18, 2026
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.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
2026 Quilt Making Strategies: Second Quarter Plan
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
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.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
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.
Monday, April 13, 2026
Catching Up: The March 2026 PHD Report
Sunday, April 12, 2026
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%
| 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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