December (and 2023) Wrap Up: PHD in 2023

We are already a couple of days into 2024, so it's definitely time to review my progress on my PHD projects this year and link one more time with Quilting Gail's PHD in 2023.  It definitely wasn't one of my more successful years in terms of finishes and my report shows that. 

  

I was able to add one more finish before the year ended.  That brings my total for the year to 3.  Not stellar, but it's one more than I finished last year.  I'll take an incremental increase. I finished three of the small projects I started, but none of my new quilt starts in 2023.  Malted Mystery and Indigo Way don't count as clues are continuing into 2024.   

However if you look at my year in terms of progress, I did pretty well on that front. 

There'd been no progress on this embroidered panel since 2021.  It only saw progress in November and December. But now it's more than half way finished. It's not on my official UFO list this year, but it is my travel project. I'm going to try to do more on it when I'm on the road this year. 

My oldest unfinished Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt, Scrappy Butterflies, saw a lot of progress this year. 

Another project that hadn't seen any progress since 2021.  All the alternate blocks were finished in 2023, set together with borders added.  The last step was to finish the backing.  That's done, so the plan for January will be to get this project prepped so it can go out for quilting.  Fingers crossed this is my first finish for 2024. 

I also struggle to finish the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts.  But the 2021 version, Rhododendron, is getting close to being a finished top. 

It's took most of the year to finish the last block, cut the setting triangles and assemble the top.  Only two more borders are needed and then this project will be a finished quilt top.  With all the new stuff in the works, I may not get back to this project till March or April.  

The last finish of 2023 was Melodic Mystery.  

All the clues for the 2022 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery hadn't come out for this mystery as of the end of last year, so it was still in bits and pieces last January.  The quilt top was finished in August, but it took me a couple of months to get it sent out for quilting.  I'm happy with how it turned out.  The pink and green color palette is a new one for me.  This quilt will be donated to one of the family support charities in our area.

There was good progress this year on the 2022 Bonnie Hunter mystery, Chilhowie.  We didn't have all the clues by the end of of 2022, so it's not surprising that it wasn't finished by the end last year. 

Chilhowie has been my leaders and enders project for most of 2023.  The component parts are under construction, I'm still short one block before assembly of the quilt top can happen.  I'll just keep plugging and hopefully this one will be completed before the 2024 BH mystery starts up.

Malted Mystery is the 2023 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery.  It started in July with fabric selection. 

I'm still working on the December clue. The January clue comes out tomorrow. So I'm just slightly behind on this one.  

The 2023 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Indigo Way, kicked off at the end of November.  This one is a lot harder to keep up with.  

Bonnie had released clues 1 to 6 by the end of December. My version of clues 1 and 2 are finished.  Clues 3, 4 and 5 have pieces sewn, but I was still cutting out the pieces for clue 6 on New Year's Eve.  Bonnie released clue 7 on New Year's Day.  I can't tell if I'm in any better shape this year versus previous years. We'll see where I'm at on this on at the end of next year. It would be nice to have this one as a finished quilt top before the next mystery comes out.

I didn't set up a progress bar chart till May of this year. 

 

There was much more color in the December version.

Definity no PHD this year, but I'll take all the progress. I learned a lot in 2023 about how to manage my projects. How to make progress on the ones that are closer to finished, while still working on newer projects.  I'm hoping that will translate into more finishes this year.  

Thanks to Gail for sponsoring the PHD challenge for so many years.  I've played along for the last 5 years and it's been a lot of fun and a great source of motivation. Now that Gail has her UFOs under control, she's passed the torch off to Ms. P Designs USA.  As my UFOs are definitely not under control, I'll be playing along again in 2024.  

November Wrap Up: PHD in 2023

Hard to believe it's December.  Just one month left to reach all those goals we crafted so carefully last December. One of my goals was to play along with Quilting Gail's PHD in 2023 and do better than I did in 2022.  I'm linking up to the November PHD Update with a report that looks better then last month's. 

  

I finished a second quilt in November, which puts my PHD performance on par with last year's in terms of overall finishes.  In addition to the finish, there was good progress on several other projects. 

I've been working on this emboridered panel since 2012. It's been my traveling project for most of that time.  I have to admit it travels a lot more then it gets worked on, but Grad Girl likes to sit, stitch and talk, so I did make some good progress on it over the holiday weekend. 

The panel is over half way done. Let's hope it doesn't take me another ten years to finish it!  

The backing for Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) is in progress. 

The next step is to prep both quilt top and backing for quilting.  The person who quilts for me has some significant family stuff this month, so we agreed that it was best to wait to send this quilt till after the holiday.  I may or may not try to get this prepped before the end of the month. It may wait till January.  

A few orange blocks were finished for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter).

There ares still 2 partially completed orange blocks at the sewing machine. Once those are finisehd, Wild and Goosey is going back into the project box till January.  I'll pull it out again to use as my RSC project for 2024.  

Macaron Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) was my one finish for the month, the second for the year. 

I always enjoy Cheryl's mystery quilts, though this one isn't exactly her final layout.  This quilt is going to be a graduation present next May, well unless I finish something that Grad Girl thinks is a better fit for her mentor between now and then.  

The plan was to finish getting the borders on Rhododendron, Bonnie Hunters 2021 mystery quilt, before this year's mystery took off. 

There was progress on the pieced border, but the quilt top is still a ways off of being finished. I'm not doing full borders of the flying geese. Fingers crossed my plan for the unpieced part of the border works out.  

Melodic Mystery, the 2022 Meadow Mist Designs quilt along, is back from being quilted. 

The quilt was delivered yesterday. So I've not done much more than unbox it and admire the quilting.  Trudy did a wonderful job on this one.  Now the plan is to get the label and binding made so this qult becomes my third finish of the year.  

Last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery, Chilhowie, is still in the works.  The last few blocks haven't gone as quickly as I thought they would.  

It's hard to see the progress since last month, but there was some.  

Clue 5 is still in the works for this year's Meadow Mist Designs' Mystery, the Malted Mystery.  I've till next Thursday to catch up. 

I'm happy with my colors this year. Looking forward to seeing how all these Bits and pieces go together.  

Bonnie Hunter's 2023 Mystery, Indigo Way, kicked off last Friday.  Since we weren't home for Thanksgiving, I didn't get started till Tuesday on clue 1.  Thankfully, I'm only making half the blocks. 

I'm going to need to step up the pace if I'm going to catch up.  My Guy is leaving on a business trip Sunday, so I should have lots of sewing time next week.  

If you stuck with me this long, thank you.  There are way too many projects in the works.  I definitely need to trim the active list down some.  That should happen this week.  

I had hoped to have more complete bars in my progress chart.  

  

Hopefully, by the end of the month there will be more colored in spaces.  

Happy stitching this month.  Enjoy the holiday season, whichever one you celebrate.  

October Wrap Up: PDH in 2023

Another month gone, just two months left in the year.  It's time to review how well I'm doing on moving a few UFOs to finished and link up with Quilting Gail for the October PHD update.  At this point,  my PHD report isn't very impressive.    

There are no changes in my PHD report, but I have made good progress on several projects in October, even with a week and half vacation thrown in there. 

The oldest UFO on my quilt plan, Scrappy Butterflies (self designed), is now a finished quilt top. 

The plan for November is to find backing fabric and hopefully have this one ready to send out for quilting before Thanksgiving.  We'll see if that happens.  

All the yellow blocks have been finished for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter). 

November is typically quilt construction time during the Rainbow Scrap Challenge year.  With all the yellow blocks finished, I'm going to move onto orange and see how many of those I can make in November.  

Macaron Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) is moving towards a finish. 

Trudy finished the quilting and sent the quilt back last week.  I finished the label and the binding earlier this week.  The binding was sewn to the front last night. The plan for this week is to finish hand stitching down the binding the quilt this week. So there should be an updated PHD report for November.  

Bonnie Hunter's 2021 mystery quilt, Rhododendron, came back on the active list in October. The last time there was any progress on this project was in January of this year.  

It's probably optimistic that this will be a finished quilt top by the end of the month as it will have one pieced border, so it will take longer to finish up.  But I'm happy to at least have the blocks out of the project box and mostly assembled.   

Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) should be a finished quilt by the end of the year. It was sent out for quilting on Tuesday.  

Hopefully Trudy can work her magic and have it back to me before Thanksgiving. Then I can get it prepped and work on the binding during the holiday while we are visiting with family.   

Chilhowie, last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery, is still my leaders and enders projects.  

The subunits for block 8 were finished, but no assembly happened this month.  Block 8 should be done before the end of the month.  Then it will be on to block 9.  I had hoped Chihowie would be to the  finished quilt top stage before this year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery comes out, but obviously that's not happening. I'll keep working on this one for now and just see where it ends up. 

Malted Mystery is this year's Meadow Mist Designs quilt along.  

Clue 3 is finished.  All but the last 2 sets of flying geese blocks are finished on clue 4.  I'm probably going to be a bit behind when clue 5 comes out on Thursday.  Fingers crossed I can get caught up before clue 6 comes out in December.  

Looking at the accumulated progress across projects for the year, it doesn't look too bad.  

My goal for the year has been progress and as much as I might wish for more, it really has been a good year on that front.  Over the course of this year I seem to have found a project mix that works for me. Fingers crossed it keeps working as we move into the holiday season when most of us have lots of other distractions.  

2023 Q3 Quilting Ambitions Check In and September PHD Progress

The end of September was hectic with vacation preparations, complicated by a three day migraine.  So blogging went out the window for several days.  Vacation preparations got done, but I didn't have the energy to get into the sewing room to get photos for my end of the month post.  Since I've not done anything stitching related for the last couple of weeks, all I have to post is progress on my quilting goals for the year and my PHD progress for September.  I'm linking up with Quilting Jetgirl's 2023 Q3 Check In.  

2023 Ambition #1: Finish some quilts, make progress on some quilts and start some quilts. 

There has been one finish and progress on all but one of the quilts on my 2023 plan since my 2nd quarter update.  A second quilt is out for quilting and three others are finished quilt tops.  I am hoping to finish another three quilts before the end of the year. Even if that doesn't happen, I've made good progress on the quilt plan.  That counts too.  

2023 Ambition #2: Acquire a new skill.

In my second quarter update I noted that my plan was to learn to quilt my own projects. I've not done anything on that front, but I'd forgotten that back in April I did take a class on editing quilt patterns.  I can't say I've mastered that skill, but I did learn something new.  I've played a little with creating a tool that can help me calculate the yardage from instructions, but it still needs a lot of work.  

2023 Ambition #3:  Stitch 15 minutes a day and post associated linky party. 

At the end of the quarter, there were 37 Stitching Stuff linky parties with an average participation of 11.7 bloggers.

 As of the end of September, I'd stitched for at least 15 minutes 86% of the days in 2023.  My goal was to exceed 75%, so I'm on track, at least for now. With last week's vacation and the upcoming holidays, finding stitching time will be harder.  

2023 Ambition #4: Sewing room clean up

• Press, cut and sort scraps: some progress
• Organize yardage: no progress

I've spent some time cleaning up my scraps, but I've not done much of anything with my yardage.  Though I have used up some older pieces of yardage as backings.  I've not had enough finishes for that to impact my yardage storage, but every little bit helps. 

I'm mostly happy with where I'm at with this year's ambitions. Just 2.5 months left in the year.  We are at the point what gets done, gets done and what doesn't will just have to be incorporated into next year's ambitions.  

As far as September progress, the PHD report finally shows a finish.

 

There was good progress on several projects in September. 

Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) was assembled, the first border has been added, attaching the second is in progress.  This should be a finished quilt top by the end of October. 

A few more teal blocks were added to Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter). 

Unity (Bonnie Hunter), aka Helianthus, became a finished quilt in September. 

 

The Macaron Mystery quilt (Meadow Mist Designs) went out for quilting last month.  

The stash yielded a reasonable backing fabric for Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  The plan is to get this project out for quilting before the end of October. 

 

Progress on Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) continues as my leaders and enders project. 

Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) first piecing instructions came out in September.  I didn't quite get that clue done before October's clue came out last week. 

The project tracking chart is showing some longer bars this month.

 

Hopefully a couple more bars move closer to the left of the chart by the end of this month. 

August Wrap Up: PHD in 2023

I'm really not ready for it to be September.  The last four months of the year seem to speed by, I guess because we've got the holidays at the end of them.  Even though I'm not ready for the new month, I am happy with all the progress in August. So though I have no finishes to show off for the PHD in 2023 challenge, I can link up over at Quilting Gail's and not feel too badly this month.

 My PHD chart is unchanged. 

Still no new finishes, but also no new starts.  So there's that at least.  There will be a new start this month as the first piecing clue will be out for Malted Mystery next Thursday.  After getting almost all the new starts for 2023 to finished quilt tops in July, August turned out to be all about the older UFOs on this year's quilt plan. 

Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) came back into rotation as I wanted a project that still needed blocks pieced.  The last time this project saw any progress was back in 2021.  

I finished all the alternate blocks and made a good start on the border blocks that finish out the Irish Chain pattern.  Scrappy Butterflies was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project in 2013. This was my second ever RSC project. It's definitely time to move it along to finished.  If it makes it to finished quilt top by the end of the year, I'll be happy.  

The plan for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) was to make a few blocks each month and see how that goes. 

I only need 3 more yellow blocks to finish off that color.  I still have a long way to go with the other colors.  This was my RSC project for 2019.  Not sure yet what the plan will be for this quilt in 2024. For now I'm just happy to be making progress each month.  

Unity (Bonnie Hunter) is finally out for quilting. 

The back has been pieced and prepped since November of last year. I just couldn't face all the clean up the back of Unity needed.  Trudy emailed yesterday to say the quilting was all done.  My big goal for September will be to move this project to finished and move it off the UFO list.  

With Unity out of the sewing room, I was able to move along to getting the backing made for the Macaron Mystery Quilt (Meadow Mist Designs). 

Macaron is the 2021 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery.  This year's mystery has already kicked off. I probably won't get this one ready for quilting before I start this year's mystery, but hopefully it will go out for quilting by the end of the month.  

Last year's Meadow Mist Designs mystery, Melodic Mystery, became a quilt top. 

The plan for September is to get a backing made for this project with the hopes it will go out for quilting in October.  

Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) has been my leaders and enders project for most of the year.  

There is an assembly problem with one of the blocks, probably block 6 from last month.  Thankfully that will be easy to fix.  The subunits for block 7 are almost finished.  Hopefully I'll have that block done before the end of the month.  It would be nice to get this project to a finished quilt top before Bonnie's 2023 mystery kicks off in November.  But that's a tall order, so we'll see.  

Even though I've no quilt finishes this year, there has been a lot of progress.

One project out for quilting and four others are at the finished quilt top stage.  Hopefully Macaron is out for quilting and Scrappy Butterflies is a finished quilt top by the end of the month.  I think the plan then is to move on to getting a back for the Melodic Mystery and finish the setting blocks for Rhododendron to move it to a finished quilt top.  It's OK if I don't get that far, I'm going to be happy with any progress.  

July Wrap Up: PHD in 2023

 On the one hand, I'm really ready for some cooler weather and August gets us closer to that. On the other hand, August is the 8th month, so we'll be three quarters through the year at the end of it. That I'm not ready for.  I've been participating in Quilting Gail's PHD in 2023 program again this year.  There has been some good progress on my UFOs, but as yet there still aren't any finishes for 2023, so my chart is unchanged from June.  

On the positive side of things, at least there have been no new projects started in the last couple of months.  That will change with the start of Meadow Mist Design's Malted Mystery this month.  But other than that start, my plan for the rest of August is to get some projects moved to finished.  

Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) is one of my older UFOs.  The plan for this year was to just finish one block a week following along with the colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  A few blue, green and red blocks were added to the design wall this month. 

 

Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) continues to be my leaders and enders project.  Block 6 is almost assembled.  It's slow progress, but at least there is progress. 

All the Diatom blocks (Quilting Jetgirl) were finished this month.  Now to decide if I'm sticking with the suggested layout in the pattern, or if I'm going to do my own thing there. The link up for the Diatom Quilt parade closed the last day of July. There were some gorgeous color combinations in the parade including versions in all greens and all purples.  

 

My project for the Just Two Charm Pack Quilts blog hop made it to the finished flimsy stage just in time for me to take photos and create my post.  Cheryl's (Meadow Mist Designs) mysteries are some of my most favorite projects each year.  My choice of String Lights from her book was no different.  It was fun to make and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Even better I used some kit fabrics purchased in 2013 that I didn't know what to do with. 

Since  String Lights was finished before the end of the month, that opened up a space on my WIPs list to bring an older project back into rotation.  I'd started assembling the rows for the 2022 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery, Melodic Mystery, earlier in the year.  But then my startitis kicked in and it ended up getting kicked out of the line up in favor of some new projects.  I'm still short on getting the blocks sewn into rows, but there is more up on the design wall than before.  

At the end of July, I had four finished quilt tops. One those has the back pieced.  All that's left is to prep the quilt for quilting.  My plan for the rest of the year is to move at least those 4 to finished.  Wish me luck on that.