PHD Report for 2025

Now that 2025 is over, it's time to review the progress on my PHD plan and link up with Ms. P Designs for the PHD Wrap Up report.   Looking back, my 2025 PHD report is probably my worst in the seven years I've participated.  

Lots more starts than finishes this year.  At least I finished one of those new starts this year.  One finish is better than none.  That gives me lots of incentive to get more finished in 2026.  But finishes aren't the whole story, there was a lot of progress on other projects this year. (This is a picture heavy post. I didn't realize just how many projects I had worked on in 2025).  

The Rose Throw is a counted cross stitch project started sometime in the mid to late eighties. I came across this project during a sewing room clean up and reorg.  I'd forgotten how long it takes to make progress on counted cross stitch.  I made a bit of progress this year, but not much.  This one will probably sit in time out all year while I focus my hand stitching efforts on the butterfly embroidery project.  

The blocks for Kate's Choice were finished last year.  All the blocks were quilted this year and I started assembling the quilt as a quilt as you go. The first row is finished.  I'm not a fan of this assembly method, so the project got put in time out. It will get finished in 2026.  That's my first goal for the year.  

 

Normally there's more progress on this project during November and December, but the last time I worked on the Butterfly panel was Thanksgiving.  The embroidery in the third corner is all done and I've started stitching on the 7th butterfly.  This is my travel project.  It will probably see some progress this year, but won't be finished. 

 

On Ringo Lake was the 2017 Bonnie Hunter Mystery.  After 8 years it's finally a finished quilt top.  I've been trying to finish up all my BH mystery quilts. Out of 14, 7 are uncompleted.  Which isn't awful, but still not stellar.  This is one I'm hoping to finish quilting this year.  

It's been slow going on Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter).  This project started in 2019.  I've been making the blocks as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I'm almost done with the green blocks, but still need lots of blue, purple and teal.  But the quilt is over halfway now. I'd like to finish it this year, we'll see how it's looking by 4th quarter.   

The Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter) is also a project from 2019.  It came out of time out when I was looking for something to use up a few scraps as my bins were getting full.  It was my leaders and enders project for the first half of the year.  I needed the design wall for something else, so this project got put away.  Not sure when I'll get this one out again.  Hopefully I won't wait another 5 years!   

I joined the local quilting guild in 2023, about midyear if I remember correctly.  A bit late to start the BOM that year, but I did start the 2024 one.  For once, I stayed on track and actually finished the quilt top in time to show at the January meeting.  It's still waiting to be quilted.  I haven't decided to quilt it myself or send it out.  We'll see how some of my smaller and simpler projects work out.  

The Marble Mystery was the 2024 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery.  It's been a finished quilt top for most of the year. This is another project I hope to quilt with the walking foot sometime this year.  

The 2024 Bonnie Hunter mystery was Old Town.  One of my 7 unfinished BH mystery projects. All the blocks are done, I just to need to figure out the borders.  Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later.  

Leading the guild BOM for 2025 was a learning experience.  I've seen several finished quilt tops and it's been such fun to see how everyone has made them their own.  My version still needs to be quilted. One thing about being the lead, you have to keep up!  

The 2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail) was my only finish for 2025.  This quilt was gifted to My Girl's grad school roommate as a thank you for being such a good one.  The roommate's favorite color is green, so that was picked as the predominant color. I've finished all of the SAHRR quilts that I've started. Fingers crossed that stays true for this year!  

MMM Quilts offers a quilt along in the spring.  I've admired from afar, but decided if I could pull all my fabrics from the stash I'd participate in her Glowing Hearts quilt along.  The background fabric had been in my stash forever without finding a home till this project.  Another quilt top I'm hoping to quilt myself this year.  

I got a late start on the 2025 Meadow Mist Designs Magnificent Mystery.  The September clue is the only one completed, but I do have a good start on the next three. The January clue came out yesterday, so I need to get a start on that. Assembly happens next month.  It would be nice if I had all the component parts done by then.  

Apparently, I'm a glutton for punishment as I agreed to lead the guild's 2026 BOM.  I am finding that the sampler blocks I picked for this year are much easier to cut and assemble. Fingers crossed I can keep up better this year.  

And lastly, Lupine and Laughter was started during the local quilt shops late night sew on New Year's Eve.  I wondered if we'd get the reveal this week. I just checked this week's clue is more pieces. I'm going to make the blocks that use the hourglass pieces and hold off on any of the other clues till I see the reveal. Then I'll figure out what's next. I'm behind, but that seems to be par for the course with a BH mystery.  

One finish and progress on 14 other projects.  That's a lot for one year.  So maybe not as lame a year as I was thinking?  

March 2025 PHD report

We are a few days into April so it's time to look back at what got done last month and post a March PHD report and join the linky party over at Ms P Designs USA.  I appreciate these monthly look backs, especially when I have no finishes.  It helps me remember that I did actually do stuff even though there are no updates to my PHD tracking sheet.

No new starts either, so I'm at least not adding to my UFO list yet. There was some good progress on several projects this month.  

An oldie, but goodie made it back to my active project list in March. On Ringo Lake was the Bonnie Hunter mystery back in 2017. When I last worked on in January of 2019, 28 of the 30 blocks were finished.  The last two blocks were assembled pretty quickly and assembly was started. In an effort to just get this project to finished quilt top, simple sashing rather than Bonnie's pieced sashing is the plan.    

Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) has been my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for several years now.  Last year all the yellow and orange blocks were finished. The red blocks are almost done, but I still need a lot of the blue, purple, teal and green.  Since yellow was the color for March, I combined the yellow blocks into bigger blocks for assembly into the quilt. I also continued making more blue blocks.  

My long term leaders and enders project, the Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter) continued in March, but it switched from making 4 patches to actually starting to assemble the quilt.  I'm not sticking strictly to Kevin's layout, so I wanted to get that going and adjust the total of 4 patches needed as I go along.  There's been good progress on the center of the quilt so far.  

Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) became a finished quilt top early in the month.  

The April and May blocks were actually finished for the Guild BOM, but I can't show May's blocks till I reveal that color to the guild later this month. April's blocks were pink, it adds a nice spark to all the cool colors already finished.  I'm trying to work ahead a bit just in case life happens and I have trouble getting a given month's block finished.  

After finishing off the May block for the Guild BOM, I wanted to add back a project that needed the blocks pieced. The 2024 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Old Town, was put aside to keep up with the SAHRR.  It's the one project I had a lot of the pieces cut for, so I pulled out the pieces for step 2 and step 5 to work on the last day of March. I'm almost halfway done with step 5.

Most of my sewing time in the first quarter of 2025 was focused on this year's Stay at Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail). I got the quilt top finished before the quilt parade.  The backing is purchased and washed, but it still needs to be trimmed to size. Fingers crossed this will be my first finish for the year before the end of this month.  

As of the end of March, my progress tracker show four quilts with progress for 2025.  Two projects became quilt tops last month and one more shows good progress.  

So it was a good month on the progress front.  April's focus in the sewing room is to work on moving a couple of quilts towards finished. We'll see how that works out.  

The Marble Mystery

I truly detest sewing to deadlines, but I really wanted to finish the Marble Mystery Quilt top in time to post it at the Meadow Mist Designs Marble Mystery quilt parade.  The linky party closes at midnight and I didn't finish the quilt top till 3:30 this afternoon.  That's cutting it a bit close for comfort. 

The mystery started back in July of last year.  One of my rules for mystery quilts is that the fabrics have to come from my stash (well at least most of the fabrics from the stash).  The yardage requirements were pretty small for this mystery so I was able to pull out a bunch of leftovers. 

The plan was to stay mostly monochromatic except for the butterfly print.  Fabric placement was dictated by how much I had of each.  But overall I'm pretty happy with how these all played together in the final quilt top. 

Thank you Cheryl for another fun mystery.  I'm hoping there's a new mystery this summer.  I have lots of stash that needs to find just the right quilt.  

February 2025 PHD Report

No surprise that February went fast.  I just wasn't ready for how fast it went.  Now that we've moved into March, it's time to post a February PHD report and join the linky party over at P Designs USA.  

There's been no change in my PHD tracking sheet. 

No finishes, but no new starts either.  So not good, but not bad either.  Though I've not had any finishes, there has been progress on several projects.  

To get finishes, backings are needed. I didn't get very far with my plan to move Chocolate Marshmallows (Seabreeze Quilts) closer to finished, but I did at least find the fabrics and figured out how to piece the back. Moving this project closer to finished was my Chookshed Challenge for February.   

Progress on Wild and Goosy (Bonnie Hunter) was limited. I didn't get many blue blocks finished.  The March RSC color is yellow and all those blocks are finished.  I'll keep working on the blue blocks this month along with sashing the finished yellow blocks.  

Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter) blocks continue to be my leaders and enders project this year.  I'm more than half way on each color. 

I had hoped to get farther along with the Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) project during February.  I've made a lot of progress the last few days in prep for meeting the deadline for the quilt parade from this mystery.  All that progress will show up on the March report.  

The March block for the 2025 Guild BOM was finished. One quarter done with this project. 

Most of the month was spent working on the Stay at Home Round Robin project (Quilting Gail). I managed to finish border 5 by the end of February. There was a lot of progress on border 6 in March, but this is where the project was at the end of last month.   

Even with all the focus on one project, there was no change in my project tracking spreadsheet.  

Maybe not my best month for the PHD challenge. At least there was good progress on one project this month. The plan is to do better in March.  

To Do List for The Week of 03/04/2025

In spite of a weekend of pretty much nothing but stitching time, I still didn't do so well on my to do list for last week.

 

To Do List for 2/25/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR: Finish borders, 4, 5 and 6 - progress

2.  2025 Guild BOM: Start on April Blocks - no progress

3.  Chocolate Marshmallow: Assemble backing - no progress

4.  Marble Mystery: Finish assembling quilt - progress

5.  Wild and Goosey: Make blue blocks, start sashing yellow ✔

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

It wasn't a bad week, I just had way too much on my list.  The Stay At Home Round Robin is pretty intense, with a new prompt each week.  If I concentrate on it, it's hard to get much else done. So a to do list of 6 was probably not wise. There are a couple of deadlines that drove the longer list.  It's the same for this week. But I'm hoping after this week, I can back off and slow down a bit and concentrate on some longer range goals for 2025.  

To Do List for 3/04/2025

1.  Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish quilt assembly

The deadline for submission for this mystery quilt parade is tomorrow.  I've got all but 2 rows pieced, I just need to finish those, assemble and add the borders.  Doable if I make this my priority for today. 

2. 2025 Guild BOM: Start April Blocks

I only have two weeks till the next meeting and these blocks need to be finished.  

3.  2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail):  Finish 6th border and add final borders. 

All the blocks for the 6th border are finished. I have till the 26th to get all the borders added.  That's doable.  

4. On Ringo Lake (Bonnie Hunter):  Find project box, determine next steps. 

On Ringo Lake is my pick for #2 for the Chookshed Challenge.  Grad Girl asked for a quilt for one of the guys graduating from her group and she picked out this one as one he might like. I've not done any work on this quilt since 2019. First step is to find the project box and figure out how many more blocks I need to make and if I'm sticking with Bonnie's setting plan or not.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Assemble yellow blocks into 9-patches. 

The RSC color for March is yellow, but I've finished all the yellow paper pieced blocks for this project.  I've also finished all the orange and almost all the red. So the best plan to move this quilt forward seemed to be getting the blocks assembled into 9 patches prior to actually assembling the quilt.  I'm also continuing to assemble the blue paper pieced blocks. That's the color I have the least of and need the most of in the quilt.   

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

Both my blue and yellow piles have exceeded 100 blocks. This has been a really good leaders and enders project.   

That's my list for this week.  If I can make progress on each, even they aren't completely checked off, I'll be happy.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday. 

To Do List for the Week of 02/25/2025

The drive home from Texas was mostly uneventful.  But it's a long time to be in the car, it's a 9 hour drive.  The worst part was the heavy fog from College Station to Waco, thankfully there wasn't much traffic. But I was pretty tired when I pulled into the driveway. I ended up in bed a good hour before my normal bedtime last night, but feel much better this morning.  

I got in several solid days of stitching time last week, but because I was so behind on my priority projects (projects with deadlines), I didn't do so well with my to do list last week. 

To Do List for 2/18/2025

1. Guild BOM: Write instructions and finish March blocks ✔  

2. 2025 SAHRR: Finish borders 3 and 4 - progress

3.  Marble Mystery: Assemble quilt top - no progress

4.  Old Town: Continue working on clues - no progress

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

At least my highest priority project got finished. There was good progress on the SAHRR, but I didn't get caught up. At least there was progress. I'm hoping for better progress this week.   

To Do List for 2/25/2025

1.  2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Finish borders 4, 5 and 6

I changed my mind on border #4.  My split blocks are just really long.  The top and bottom borders are assembled, I just didn't get them attached to the quilt.  I'm hoping to make quick work of borders 5 and 6, but I always seem to bite off more than I can do in one week.  

2. 2025 Guild BOM: Start on April blocks

I was a little late finishing off the March blocks, so I'm just going to start on the April blocks now so I ensure they are done well in advance of the guild meeting.  

3.  Chocolate Marshmallow (Seabreeze Quilts): Assemble backing

If I want to get more finishes this year, I need to start working on getting those quilts out the door for quilting.  

4. Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish assembling quilt

The parade of quilts is sometime next month and I'd like to have a finished quilt top to show.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make blue blocks, start sashing the yellow blocks.

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

I finished a few 4-patches while I was in Texas.  Still lots of these needed for the final setting.  

That's my list for this week. I'm hoping that more checkmarks appear in next week's post.  Linking up with the Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

To Do List for the Week of 02/18/2025

I'm finally feeling better. Which is good as this week I'm in Texas visiting Grad Girl. The timing was dictated by a concert we both wanted to attend. It's been a girls "week" as several of Grad Girl's college friends also came down for the concert.  I feel very fortunate to be included. The concert was last night and we didn't get back till almost 1 AM. Definitely not my normal hours.  The friends left after lunch, but I'm staying through the weekend to have some hang out time with my girl.  

The early part of last week, I was still feeling out of sorts.  So I didn't make a lot of progress on my to do list. 

To Do List for 2/11/2025

1.  Guild BOM: Finish March Blocks - progress

2.  SAHRR: Finish 3rd border, start on 4th border ✔

3.  Wild and Goosey:  Continue making blue blocks - no progress

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

I made progress on the projects with deadlines. So maybe not the best week, but not the worst either. Due to the snow storm at home, the guild meeting was canceled, so I didn't have to have something ready to send to the guild president. I just have to have all the files ready to go by the end of the month.  So that helped.  

What's the plan for this week? Since Grad Girl still has to work the rest of the week, I brough my sewing machine and a few projects to work on.  She's got a full schedule today and tomorrow, so I'll just sit and sew. But I should see a lot of her over the weekend.  This week's to do list consists of what I was able to cobble together as projects that could be bagged up for travel. 

To Do List for 2/18/2025

1.  Guild BOM: Write instructions and finish March blocks. 

All the HSTs are made, I just need to sew the subunits together. I need to cut the pieces for two more of the sawtooth stars, but I've started assembly on what I have already cut.  

2. 2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail): Finish borders 4 and 5.  

I have a plan for both borders. I just need to assemble the blocks.  

3.  Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Assemble blocks into rows and add horizontal sashing.  

 When I last worked on this, there was just one row left to assemble.  The plan is to finish the rows and then get those sewn together. 

4. Old Town (Bonnie Hunter): Continue working on clues

All the pieces are bagged up and ready for more work.  I won't finish all the clues, but any progress would be good. 

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

I need to cut some additional squares before I can make more 4-patches.  

Since I'll have at least one nothing but sewing day, I'm hoping to get a lot done this week. Not sure what Grad Girl and I will decide to do over the weekend, but hopefully I'll still have some time to get in a good deal of stitching time.  

Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday.  

January 2025 PHD Report

Usually January feels so slothful, the days drag and the month feels like it goes on forever. Not this year.  I'm amazed to find we've reached the end of the first month of the year.  It will speed up from here, so 2025 is set to move fast it seems.  

With the end of the month, it's time report on my UFO progress and link up at P Designs USA for the January PHD Report.  First off, my report.  

One new start and no finishes. That's a pretty typical start to my year. At least the new start was planned for.  If I can keep it to the three that were planned and finish at least 4, my UFO list should go down.  I'm hoping to do much better than that, but I'm going to need to start focusing on finishing to make that happen.  

The new start is the 2025 SAHRR (Quilting Gail). 

Round two is finished. So far I've kept up with the prompts.  Hopefully that continues.  This quilt is for Grad Girl's roommate so I need to finish it before May. 

There has been progress on several of my other projects this month. 

 

Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) is my Rainbow Scrap Project for 2025.  This month's color was pink. I'm not using pink, so the plan was to finish all the red blocks needed for the layout and then start on some purple blocks. I miscounted how many reds were needed, I still need 8 of the 3.5" squares. By the time I realized that, I'd moved on to purple.   I'm sure red will come up again later this year and I can finish those up.  I've wrapped up the purple blocks for now and moved on to blue which is this month's RSC color.  

My leaders and enders project for 2025 is the same as I was using for the last half of 2024, the Simply Sensational Summer Scrap Quilt (Kevin the Quilter).  I added 10 of the blue 4 patches and another 10 of the yellow.  I checked my counts, there are still lots of 4 patches to make.  

The 2024 Guild BOM is now a finished quilt top.  I wasn't so sure about the dark gray, but it works.  There is no plan for this quilt, hopefully it will get finished this year.  But I have six other quilt tops in the closet to finish first.  

Most of January has been spent on block assembly for the Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  Attaching the sashing is ongoing..  Hopefully this will be a finished quilt top by the end of February.  

Not as much progress on Old Town (Bonnie Hunter) as I would have hoped for.  Clues 1 and 3 are finished.  Clue 4 was finished after the end of the month and I'm more than half way done with clue 2.  I'm slowly but surely working through all the clues.  Hopefully I can finish clues 5 and 6 before the end of February.    

The 2025 Guild BOM is on track. Since I'm the owner of the program this year, I have to be a month ahead, I've not started on March yet, but January and February are completed.  

My project tracking sheet doesn't show much progress. 

But a finished quilt top and progress on five other projects isn't a bad start to 2025. February is a short month, but hopefully I can keep up the momentum.