To Do List for the Week of 04/08/2025

I saw a meme on Instagram stating that someone should pour out Mother Nature's beer while she's doing all 4 seasons in 24 hours cause she's drunk enough.  I'm sure there are a lot in the US that agree with that sentiment.  Hopefully we'll actually see some spring weather this week (without tornadoes  and floods would be nice). 

It was a good week to hang out in the sewing room and work on last week's to do list.  

To Do List for 04/01/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR: Trim backing, start quilt top prep - progress

2.  On Ringo Lake: Finish assembly, start borders ✔ 

3.  Kate's Choice: Lean to use walking foot, practice - progress

4.  2025 Guild BOM: Cut fabrics for June blocks - progress

5.  Wild and Goosey: Finish blue, start red blocks - progress

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

Only two check marks, but there was progress on the other items.  That counts as a good week.  The plan this week is more of the same. 

To Do List for 04/08/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Prep quilt for quilting

The quilt back is trimmed and prepped.  The quilt top will take longer, but I'll hopefully get to that this weekend. 

2.  On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter): Finish borders

The plan is to add one more narrow yellow border and finish the top with a wider red border.  That should happen this week.  

3. Kate's Choice: Learn to use the walking foot on my machine.

 

Last week I pulled out my machine manual and actually found my walking foot. I've also been reviewing some of the quilting books I have.  Several blog buddies have mentioned the book "Walk" by Jacquie Gering.  It's one of the books I've been studying.  Once Ringo Lake is a finished quilt top, the plan is to get the walking foot on and make some progress on this project. 

4. 2025 Guild BOM: Cut pieces for June blocks

Last week I managed to pull all the fabrics for June.  I need 17 fabrics for the Inverted Star block and another 6 for the sawtooth star border blocks.  Last month I remembered to check my 1.5" strip scrap bin for any white on whites that I could use for the Sawtooth Stars. This week I checked my 2.5" and 3" strip bins for greens.  I'm getting better about checking the scrap bins before I start pulling fat quarters.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Finish up blue and continue making red blocks.

I've gotten started on the red blocks, I just need 8 of the 3.5" blocks to have enough for the planned layout.  That should be doable this month. 

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

Pretty much the same projects from last week.  I'm hoping for a few more check marks this week.  We'll see.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

Closing in on Finishes

We didn't see any snow yesterday, even though radar said it was snowing at our location.  We did see the cool temps which normally mean a whole Sunday of stitching for me, but after lunch a 2 hour nap under a warm quilt seemed necessary.  Once I worked through the groggy feeling, there was still time for a few hours of sewing. I finished another border for On Ringo Lake.

On Ringo Lake is my version of the Bonnie Hunter 2017 Mystery.  I have two more borders to add. A another thin yellow border and a final red border.  Yes it's a lot of borders, but I really like how the final version looks in EQ. Hopefully it will look equally good when those are finished.  

I also finished cutting and prepping the backing for the 2025 SAHRR.  Next is prepping the quilt to go out.  That will probably be on next weekend's to do list.  It's not one of my favorite tasks.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts. 

Stitching Stuff: Week 14 of 2025

 

It's been a productive week.  I've gotten lots done in the sewing room and went on my first shop hop.  Even being on the road most of the day on Wednesday, I still managed to get my sewing time in.  

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/March = 31/31 days
• 15 minute days/April = 5/5 days
• 15 minute days/2025 = 90/95 days
• Success Rate = 94.74%

March was the first month this year that I managed to sew every day of the month.  After last year's 100% success rate, I needed to break the momentum so I didn't feel compelled to keep it at 100% for this year.  It takes a lot of prep to be able to sew everyday and I didn't want that burden this year.  

Now that the Bonnie Hunter and SAHRR quilt alongs are done, yesterday morning I took some time to address my working scrap bin.  

Best I can tell from my photo records, I've not cut scraps since last July.  I've actually emptied this working bin a couple of times into my one remaining scrap bag and its full to overflowing. So it's definitely time to deal with a few scraps.  What's in the bin became these piles sorted by size.

These have all been put away in the scrap bins.  Not a lot of progress, but you have to start somewhere.  

How did your stitching week work out?  

Week 136 Photo Challenge: Fairy Tale

It took all of us a month to come up with photos for the Week 135 photo challenge.  At that end of that post back on March 1st, I wrote that it might take us another month to pull together photos for the week 136 challenge.  

Looks like I wasn't wrong, it's been just over a month since that last photo challenge post. Grad Girl is still pretty swamped with trying to finish up grad school and I just couldn't come up with any ideas for how to approach this challenge.  Only My Guy had any photos. He wanted to move on, so I promised to figure something out and post whatever we had today.  These aren't the best photos we've taken, but they work.  

I finally took a few photos, but absolutely nothing was working for me.  So I got creative. 

Kate: Sleeping Beauty (and her cat)

This is not AI created. Wish I could blame it on that, but I did this with one of my photos and My Memory Suites. It's far from perfect, but it strangely works. At least I think it does. As My Guy said last night, we set the rules. I'm just glad to be done with this challenge. 

My Guy made a special trip out last night to get a toy for his photos. I think it paid off.  

My Guy: Classic Tale

That's one large frog and one small princess (Also known for her sleep habits, sense a theme?).  I don't know where he got the doll, but he improvised really well.  

Grad Girl has been insanely busy and stressed.  She really hasn't had much creativity to spare since she's trying to write her thesis.  So I went through the photos she's texted over the last month and picked one that worked if you had the right point of view. 

Grad Girl:  Rosina Leckermaul's Pantry

If you don't know who Rosina Leckermaul is, that's the name given to the witch from Hansel and Greta in an opera from 1892. The German translation of the name is Raisin Sweet-Tooth. The witch is given no name in the original story, but is also known as the Gingerbread Hag (thank you Google).  Grad Girl sent me this picture with the question, "Am I getting an Easter basket this year?". She dearly loves Peeps.  

So that's our efforts for this challenge. Did we do it justice?  I'm hoping it at least gave you a smile.  Sometimes that's the best kind of picture.  My Guy drew the next challenge card.

When I told Grad Girl what the next challenge was she texted "Oh good, an easy one". My sentiments exactly!  

2025 Quilting Ambitions: 1st Quarter Check In

The beginning of April is also the end of the first quarter of 2025. The year is already one third over. At the beginning of the year I wrote up my ambitions for the year. It's easy to get caught up in the every day and completely forget what you actually intended to do with your year. So it's definitely time to look back and see if I'm on track and following the plan. To do that I'm linking up with Quilting Jetgirl for her 2025 Quilting Q1 Check In.  

The first few months of 2025 went by quickly. Most of that time was focused on finishing up quilt alongs that started either last year or early this year.  So some of my goals didn't get much attention during first quarter, but that seems to be my normal.  I'm slower out of the gate on some.  Here's where things stood at the end of March. 

Ambition 1:  Make quilts.  The goal is to actually make as much progress as I can on my quilt plan for 2025.  Here's the plan for 2025. 

Here's how it looked at the end of March. 

Three quilts have moved to finished quilt tops and a fourth is at the assembly stage. Not bad progress for the first quarter.  If I can move every bar even a little this year, it will have been a good year.  

Ambition 2: Learn to quilt. I've been challenging myself with this goal for the last 2 years. I'm going to get serious about that this month since I have a break in quilt alongs. My fingers first typed that there was no progress on this goal yet, but then I remembered Grad Girl's second "learning to sewing" project. 

 

Back at the guild retreat in January, Grad Girl used this cute little kitty pattern to make a trivet.  I layered it with backing and batting and tried quilting it just using my normal machine set up.  It ended up being a bit wonky and we had to trim a bit off. Still it doesn't look horrible.  I did learn why a walking foot is recommended for quilting.  She made two of these, the second one still needs to be quilted. That will likely be my first practice project with the walking foot once I finish practicing a bit.  (By the way, she loves this trivet and uses it all the time in her kitchen. She wants to make some for her dad for next Christmas. Hopefully, I'll be up to speed by then).  

Ambition 3: Fabric Organization. I've been so busy with quilt alongs during the first quarter that I've done nothing on this goal. Last year I didn't make good progress on this goal till second quarter.  Looks like that will be the case this year too.  

Though I didn't have any official ambitions around new experiences, I do have two for the quarter.  One is learning how to write quilt patterns.  I started that process back in December with doing a simple block pattern. A whole quilt pattern is more of the same, but has some unique challenges. The second new experience is going on a shop hop. It was interesting, but it was a lot of driving!  

This year is off to a good start on the goal front. Hopefully I can keep it up.  Second quarter will be over before we know it.