Stitching on the Road

This week I'm spending some time with My Girl in Texas.  It's still pretty warm here and projected to stay that way the whole time I'm here. At least the highs are in the low to mid 90's, versus the 100 plus we've had for weeks at home.  We spent Saturday shopping and but spent Sunday just hanging out.  Since we were visiting and such, I pulled out my embroidery to work on and didn't completely set up my sewing stuff.  

My sewing machine is at least out of the case and is setting on the table where I'll sew.  I'll finish setting up today and start pulling out my projects. 

The light blue bag has the bits and pieces of Celtic Solstice and Wild and Goosey.  Those are my two main projects. The Missouri Star Sweet 16 bag has 3 other quilt projects plus my embroidery project.  I hope to work on at least two of the other quilt projects, I doubt I get to the third. 

My Girl has a cutting/ironing table and a design wall we set up last time I visited. So definitely not a bad set up. Other than I'll have to be careful to get up and stretch frequently when sewing at the table, my shoulder suffers when I don't have an ergonomic set up. So significant sewing time may be an every other day thing while I'm here.  

I'm not completely on my own.  I'll have Queenie as a stitching buddy this week while My Girl is at work. 

I'll get this posted and linked up to Patchwork & Quilts, as well as, Sew & Tell Monday, then finish setting up and get some sewing in before lunch.    

 

Weekend Progress on UFOs

If you are in the US, hopefully you are enjoying your Labor Day holiday. Being retired, it's just another Monday in our schedule. Though we do usually skip our normal chores if it's a holiday, so we feel like we've celebrated. Which means I get a three day weekend in the sewing room.  

My priority this weekend was to get Squared Away (Soscrappy) ready to go to the long armer this next week. If I want it back before Christmas that needs to happen.  First job was to press and then cut the wide backing to size.  

That was an all day deal as I had to fold the fabric two different ways to get it cut to size.  But that's ready to go. Yesterday I started prepping the quilt top. 

The first four rows are pressed and de-threaded. That leaves just two rows and the bottom border to take care of today.  Unfortunately the black fabric that I used in the sashing unravels really easily, so there were a lot of black threads to remove. 

That's a pretty good pile and I'm not done yet.  But since most of the blocks have white/light backgrounds, getting those black threads off is important.  

There wasn't much progress on Celtic Solstice (Bonnie Hunter), but there had been good progress earlier in the week. All the 4-patch chain alternate blocks were finished at the end of last month.  The main block has lots of parts, 52 pieces per block. I had enough of the centers and corner units for 5 blocks, but needed to make the chevron units before starting to assemble the blocks. That meant I needed to cut fabric, so I cut all the parts needed to make the rest of the components. 

I had enough of the orange/teal HSTs to make the block centers, but I still need some for the corner units.  I've made a good start on the chevron units, had enough to finish up two more of the main blocks. So this is what was up on the design wall by the end of the weekend. 

 

One block is sitting at the sewing machine partially assembled.  Still lots of block components to make. I definitely won't finish all the main blocks this week, but I should make good progress. 

Sewing time can be dangerous because it gives your mind opportunities to wander while you are sitting at the machine. My version of Celtic Solstice has been 13 years in the making. I started wondering if anyone else had waited so long.  Looking that the Quiltville Open Studio page on Facebook, I found two quilters that just finished assembling their versions in February and August of this year.  So I'm not the only one that didn't get back to her version very quickly.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Something Old and Something Older

Last week it was something old and something new.  This week the old was finished and I restarted an even older UFO.  Is there some point where an old UFO becomes like a new project?  If there is, I haven't found it yet.  

Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter), the old project, is now a finished quilt top. I'm glad the pieced border got added, it does make a nice frame for the rest of the quilt.  Plus it used up all those already cut up fabric pieces and finished blocks.  

This joins the "to be quilted" pile.  There are 14 of those hanging in the closet. I'm not sure when this one will get quilted. There are 5 quilts that need to be quilted first as those are graduation gifts for next year.  My Girl did find out intended graduation dates.  May of next year is the earliest, but December of next year is the more likely date for all of them. So I have time.   

There are still a few left overs from Good Fortune.

The green/neutral HSTs will probably become windmill blocks. Not sure what I'm going to do with the neutral strips.  I'll have to play around with those at some point in the future. Maybe a baby quilt for donation via the guild?  We'll see.  

The something older is the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt I started back in 2013, Celtic Solstice. The last time I worked on it was in February of 2014.  It's aged for 12 years, it's definitely time to pull out all the pieces and move this along to finished quilt top.  

The 4-patch chain blocks were the easiest to tackle first.  I only needed to make 8 more for the layout I've decided on. The last 4-patch chain is almost finished.  The main blocks are going to be much more involved. Lots of piecing required for the component parts.  It will probably take me all month and then some to get those blocks all finished.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, along with Sew & Tell Monday. 

Something Old, Something New

We spent half the weekend in Tulsa. Saturday was a charity event for the Sutton Avian Research Center. That's the organization that runs the Bald Eagle survey teams in our area.  My Guy has been part of that team for at least 5 years.  We stayed in Tulsa for the night and spent Sunday morning hanging out at a coffee shop and then getting lunch before we headed home. Something different than our normal weekend.   

I did get some good sewing time in before we left and then after we got back.  The pieced borders for Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter) were finished and attached just before dinner was ready last night.  

The plan is to add one more narrow black border to frame the quilt. I'll call it good at that point. Good Fortune should reach finished quilt top stage sometime this week.  

So if Good Fortune is the old, what's the new?  The August blocks for the Meadow Mist Designs 2026 Marigold Mystery also got finished just before dinner on Sunday. 

 

I'm pretty happy with how they came together. Now I have to wait for the next clue to come out to see what's next.  

With the Marigold blocks done and Good Fortune just about a finished quilt, it's time to pull out another UFO to push to finished (or at least to finished quilt top).  Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Making Progress a Little at a Time

Staying in the sewing room has definitely been the way for me to beat the heat this summer.  Even though my sewing room is the warmest in the house, it's still cooler than going anyplace else. It's summers like this I really miss having a basement.  Our fist house here had one and it would have been an awesome sewing space had we not had to transfer to Texas all those years ago. At this point I'm hoping those long range forecasts that are predicting an early and cooler then normal fall are correct.  We could definitely use a cool down. 

Why does adding borders always seems to take longer than it should?  I made some progress with the borders for Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter). 

 

The narrow black border was always planned. The neutrals border was added when I decided to use the split HST blocks as a pieced border.  

I needed one more inch so those blocks would fit. The neutrals border is also pieced. When I opened the project box there was a pile of 1.5" x 8.5" neutral strips. Rather than cut new strips from the left over yardage, it just seemed prudent to use up what had already been cut.  So that border took a bit longer to assemble. That strategy was definitely wise, the border used up most of those left over strips.  The last neutrals border is pieced, but I didn't get it pinned and sewn on last night.  That should happen today.  Fingers crossed Good Fortune is a finished quilt top by the end of the week.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday. 

Time LIne of a UFO

Last week was appointment free and so is this week. So I'm looking forward to not only getting lots of stitching done, I'm hoping to make progress on a few household chores that I've let slip lately. But I won't get carried away on the chores front, those are amazingly easy to put off till another day.  

On the other hand, it's been so much easier to stick with my stitching plans, most weeks anyway.  My goal the last few years has been to clear out my UFOs.  I have a lot of them.  Good Fortune is the latest UFO to finally get it's turn to become a finished quilt top.  GF was the 2018 Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.  In 2018, My Girl was off at college, so we were past all the weekend high school activities, but I was still working full time.  Good Fortune was my 6th BH Mystery.  I had my fabrics picked early in November. 

We were actually home that year for Thanksgiving, family came to us, so I was able to start the mystery quilt that weekend after Black Friday, Bonnie's typical kick off day for the mystery.  The challenge of a BH mystery is there is one clue a week. I've always admired those quilters who finish the clues that week. I've never been one of them.  Based on my photos, I kept up till the third week.  Then the holiday or work, most likely both, got busy.  I played catch up the week after Christmas. 

 

By December 31st of that year, this is where I was on clues 1 to 6.  By the middle of February I had finished approximately 2/3 of the blocks I planned to make. 

Then for some reason Good Fortune went into a project box.  Which is pretty typical for most of the BH mysteries I've done.  Then they sit in that project box for a while. This one waited for 7 years before I pulled that project box, took stock and started piecing on it again in May.  Yesterday, I got all the blocks and sashings sewn together. 

When I pulled these blocks out of the project box and put them up on the wall, I wasn't sure I liked it.  Now that the blocks are all sewn together, I do like it.  The project still needs borders before it's a finished quilt top.  In an effort to use up the fabric that was already cut, two of the borders are going to be pieced.  One with short strips, the other with what I've been calling the split HST blocks. 

There are still a lot of these border blocks left to make, but I'm hoping most of them will be finished by the time I get the two narrow borders added.  The plan is to have this project to finished quilt top by the end of the month. That should be doable.  Then it goes onto the to be quilted list.  I have 4 graduation quilts that come first, plus a whole lot of other quilt tops.  Not sure when the time line on this particular UFO will actually end.  It probably won't be this year.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, along with Sew & Tell Monday.  

Another Finish!

It was a good week on the stitching front. It's always fun to have a finish.  My goal was to finish the 2025 Guild BOM quilt before the end of July.  I put the last stitches in the binding at about 5:10 PM last Friday, the 31st.  Not up to the wire, but close.  

I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out.  This is the second time I've made an Inverted Star quilt.  Here's the original started in  2014, finished in 2019.

The newer version is more scrappy, a consistent white one white background was used for the original version. I made the second version as the guild BOM because it was an good way to ease into being responsible for that program.  Just two block patterns and quilt assembly instructions to write.  Each month was a different color. Having to write instructions for someone else really helps you to simplify the construction process. I added the narrow blue borders as a stop between the scrappy whites in the sawtooth stars and the speckled background fabric in the new version. It just didn't look right without them.   

The first version was for one of My Girl's writing class buddies from middle school. The new version is for one of her college buddies. Ansley's Palette is the name My Girl chose for this quilt.  

The friend enjoys painting water colors and My Girl thought the quilt looked enough like a painter's palette to select that as the name. She wrote a personal message for the label that's on the quilt. My Girl has always told her friends that have quilts from us to think of them as a big hug from her whenever they curl up in one.   

This is the first quilt in 16 years that I've sent out for quilting that wasn't quilted by Trudy.  She's a hard act to follow, but the new long armer did a wonderful job. 

I picked Stars and Loops for the quilting and that worked out beautifully.  The background for each star is different, but I used a "paint spatter" print for the background for setting the quilt together. Something different than my typical white on white. But it definitely works with the quilt name My Girl picked.  

The backing is a Connecting Threads sale fabric, Mum's Garden.

The copyright says 2018, so this has been sitting in the stash for a bit.  It was picked because I wanted something light to go on the back and this was what worked best of my stash options.

I used all of the blue fabric in the narrow borders, there was none left for the binding.  I tried a few other colors, but My Girl and I decided a scrappy binding would work best. 

It's hard to see all the colors, a bit of green shows there in the middle. I managed to incorporate all the colors but black, brown and yellow.

My Girl has one more quilt picked out for me to finish for another of her college buddies. That will be my next project to send out for quilting. I have a potential backing selected, just need to see if there is enough or if it needs to be supplemented.    

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, plus Sew & Tell Monday. And with Favorite Quilt Finish for August.  

A Bit of This and That

We had a pretty quiet weekend. After all the running around last weekend, that was definitely on my agenda for the week.  We hit triple digits both days of the weekend, so hiding out in my sewing room was definitely my preferred retreat from the heat.  

In an effort to work down my UFO list, I finally found a local long arm quilter to try.  My Girl needs a few graduation quilts for school buddies, so I'm trying get those finished before everyone graduates this year or next.  Last year's guild BOM has been picked as one of those quilts to be gifted.  So I gave the new to me quilter a try. The quilting turned out beautifully.  Now it just needs to be bound. But before the binding it needs a label.  After a bit of back and forth with My Girl, this is what we came up with (minus the personal message). 

This friend enjoys painting as a hobby.  Since the quilt has all different colors in it, My Girl decided it was a good substitute palette.  So I went with it.  I'm hoping to have the quilt bound before the end of the month. Which means I need to do a lot of hand stitching this week.  

There was also good progress on assembling Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter).

The the sashing has been pinned to that third row, I just need to stitch that long seam. So I'm close to another finished quilt top. My 5th finished top for the year.  Which will bring the total of tops hanging in the closet to be quilted to 15.  The long arm quilter did a good job with the 2025 Guild BOM at a reasonable price, so I'll definitely be using her again.  I already have the next quilt top and a potential backing selected for the next quilt to be sent out. Hopefully I can finish 4 more quilts this year between the new long armer and my at home quilting efforts.  That would take the UFO list lower than it's been in a long time.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.   

Just Following the Strategy - Mostly

We had a busy, but fun weekend.  My Guy's niece got married in Dallas.  It was a beautiful wedding. And of course we got to see family, some we've not seen in more than 10 years.  My Girl was able to drive up from Houston. So we got to hang out with her and the cat for a couple of days.  

It was a good thing I got lots of sewing time during the week. There was enough time to finish all the blocks for Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter).  

Good Fortune was the 2018 BH mystery quilt along.  The blue and green were from her color palette, but the red was switched for purple and the orange for black.  I'm pretty happy with how it came together.  The instructions just sewed the blocks together, I've decided to add some narrow sashing and corner stones to keep the chain moving across the quilt.  I'll start up on that today now that I can get back to the sewing room. 

Linking up with my normal Monday linky parties, Patchwork & Quilts plus Sew & Tell Monday.   

A Finished Quilt Top

It was a nice weekend.  My Guy and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary on Saturday by going out for a fancy dinner followed by custard at our favorite spot for dessert. We are long past getting gifts for each other.  Neither of us need anything, we'd much rather go do something fun together.  

With us going out on Saturday, I didn't get much sewing time that day, but I'd already made up for that by sewing a lot earlier in the week.  The final border was added to Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter) on Tuesday.  

Another finished quilt top added to the growing collection in the closet.  But at least I finished the piecing well before this year's mystery comes out.  Very often I'm finishing up the last mystery while starting the new one. I'm happy with how it came out. The dark purple adds some spark to the pink and blue. Not sure yet where this one will go. It may well go to one of My Girl's grad school friends.  We'll see.   

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts along with Sew & Tell Monday. 

An Interrupted Stitching Week

Last week, especially last weekend, didn't go exactly to plan. It was a good thing I set yesterday's Stitching Stuff post to automatically upload before we went to dinner on Saturday.  We beat the storm home by less than an hour.  Radar clocked the straight line wind speed at 80+ mph just north of where we live. The force of those straight line winds across the windows on the north side of the house was pretty scary. We lost a few shingles from the roof, but it was already scheduled for a new roof this year, we'll just have to do it earlier than planned.  The worst of it for us was losing power for 15 hours.  Thankfully it cooled off markedly after the storm and we got power back just before noon when it really starts to heat up around here. The city did a good job getting the roads clear quickly, it was sobering to see the number of large trees that didn't survive the winds. Lots of fences down too.   

The power outage meant my nothing but sewing Sunday didn't happen till later. We went out to breakfast as we couldn't make coffee (both of us are worthless till we get coffee).  Then we came home to work on cleaning up the yard/patio and the freezer/refrigerator.  The power was off long enough for the ice in the freezer to melt, so that was a mess. I did get a couple of hours in the sewing room late in the afternoon.  

 

 

The second border for Lupine and Laughter  (Bonnie Hunter) got added.  Just one final border and this will be a finished quilt top.  

The other thing that slowed me down this week was learning a new to me sewing machine.  My Bernina 153 is 25 years old. It still sews really well, but maybe it's time for it to be a back up machine?  I purchased a Bernina 570 a while back, but had been dreading learning a new machine, so it stayed in the box for while.  I finally pulled it out, set it up and am in the process of remembering that you have to use a button not a lever to raise and lower the pressor feet. I'll get there, eventually. 

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Chilhowie: The Second Finish for 2026

I'm currently in Texas, hanging out with My Girl and Queenie.  I spent most of last week getting ready to travel and not as much time in the sewing room. But I did reach one big milestone. The quilting of Chilhowie was completed and I made getting it bound a priority so I had a second finish to add to my tally before we cross into the later half of the year. 

Chilhowie was the 2022 Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt.  I opted to make just 9 blocks, the quilt still turned out to be a good sized lap quilt at 61" x 62".  

The backing is pieced using the blocks from the pieced border that I decided not to add along with a couple of older pieces of yardage from the stash. 

The paisley print was used in a quilt started in 2010.  So it's close to 20 years old.  The dark brown was a Connecting Threads purchase that just hadn't found its way into a project yet. 

This is the second quilt I've quilted on my sewing machine. The first whole quilt that I've attempted. 

The quilting is pretty simple. Just diagonal lines across the center and a set of 3 straight lines in the borders. The stitching looks much more even and straight in the later quilting efforts. I've learned a large part of quilting on your sewing machine is figuring out how to manipulate the quilt so it doesn't drag when it's going under the walking foot. I'm not in love with the quilting part of the finishing process. But now that I'm retired, it just makes sense for me to tackle my smaller quilts.  So there will definitely be more walking foot quilting this year. I've already got my next project to be quilted picked out.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, Sew & Tell Monday, and I Quilted This. And linking up with Favorite Quilt Finish for June.  

Making Progress on the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Backlog

It was a pretty productive week, which resulted in a not so hot weekend.  One of our local quilt shops has a late night sew one night a week. This week the shop decided to host two late night sewing sessions. It's usually a pretty fun session with lots of stories, laughter and valuable quilt making feedback. The only problem is the sewing set up isn't the best from an ergonomic standpoint for me. One late night isn't an issue, but apparently that second 6 hour session wasn't such a good idea. I woke up early Friday with a shoulder that was absolutely on fire. Which meant limited sewing time for most of the weekend. 

Such is life these days. But moving on. With two late night sewing sessions, I finished all the blocks for Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter 2025 mystery), but completely forgot to take a picture of them while there were up on the shop's design wall.  

The first two rows are assembled and are pinned together for stitching  Assembling the third row is in progress. The Lupine blocks should be all sewn together this week.  Not sure all the borders will be done, but hopefully those will at least be started this week.  Lupine and Laughter should be a finished quilt top before the end of the month.

Since Lupine was progressing so well, I took a look at my UFO list to decide what set of blocks to finish up next. And decided next up was going to be Good Fortune, the 2018 Bonnie Hunter mystery. Last week I cut all the fabrics needed to finish up the blocks.  The alternate block is simpler, so I started with finishing up the 4 patches needed to make the remaining blocks. 

And made some progress on assembling a few of those alternate blocks. 

I need to check my block counts again, this may be all the alternate blocks I need.  If so, next comes finishing up the main blocks. 

Since my progress has been so good and I couldn't really sew this weekend, I was looking in my project boxes to decide what's next.  Of the 14 Bonnie Hunter mysteries I've started, 7 are completed quilts and 4 are quilt tops.  That leaves just 3 that need to be moved to quilt tops.  With Lupine and Good Fortune moving along, I decided to tackle the last unfinished mystery, Celtic Solstice (2013 mystery) next.  

I played around in Electric Quilt and decided how big to make the quilt top.  About the half blocks needed for the planned quilt top are  made.  Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'll start cutting pieces needed to finish these blocks.  

The 2022 Bonnie Hunter Mystery, Chilhowie, is my current home machine quilting project.  It should be a completed quilt by the end of the month.  Slowly but surely, my BH mystery backlog is getting closer to finished quilts. 

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.

Slow Going

Hard to believe it is June already. I'm hoping this month has much fewer health issues, May was rough on that front.  I've been reading more than I've been sewing the last couple of weeks, but I'm still making slow, but consistent progress on several projects.  My priority project has been Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter).  

I'm not a fan of sewing large quantities of HSTs at once, one of the reasons it's hard for me to keep up with Bonnie Hunter mysteries.  Plus, part of the block is paper pieced, which is a bit time consuming. So I've been making enough block components to make one block, while I'm sewing the parts together into blocks.  I spend a lot of time pinning, but it does move things along.  All the alternate blocks are done, but I've only managed to finish 2 of the main blocks. 

What looks black in the photo is actually a very deep purple.  There are 5 more main blocks under construction in that first photo.  It's slow going, but there has been more progress than shows on the design wall.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts plus Sew & Tell Monday.  

More Lupin and Laughter

Saturday was rainy, but the rest of the holiday weekend has been gorgeous. My Guy and I went for a walk last night after dinner.  My back seems to have recovered, but my right knee is still giving me fits, so it wasn't a long walk.  

The sewing room hasn't been as attractive the last couple of weekends.  I've been reading more than I typically do.  That's OK, sometimes you need to mix it up a bit. There was enough sewing time to finish up the "A" blocks. 

What looks black is actually a very, very dark purple. My version will be about half the size of Bonnie's.  I prefer throw sized quilts to bed sized.  

With the A blocks done, my attention moved to what Bonnie called the main block.  

Not a lot of progress there, but enough got pieced to make one block.  The plan today is get more of these blocks put together. It's a lot of stitching to get the parts for just one block!  

It's rare for me to work on just one quilt at a time.  It's probably time to decide on another UFO to make some progress on. That's my goal for 2nd and 3rd quarters, focus on moving the UFOs to finished quilts.  Do I pull my oldest UFO or the one that's closest to being finished?  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, plus Sew & Tell Monday.      

Back to the Lupine and Laughter Mystery

My sewing room mojo was a bit sparse this last weekend.   I ended up reading most of Sunday afternoon. But I did finally make it up to the sewing room for a couple of hours before dinner. 

Other than the 2025 Guild BOM, the Bonnie Hunter Lupine and Laughter Mystery  is the only quilt started last year or for that matter this year, that's not a finished quilt top.  I've been working on what Bonnie calls the alternate blocks.  

Six blocks finished over the last couple of weeks. What looks like black is actually a very dark purple.  I'm making my version half sized.  So I only need 6 more of these blocks.  So half way there. I have cut most of the pieces for the main block, but haven't started assembling those yet. I'll get these done, then start on those.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Tackling the Bonnie Hunter Unfinished Mystery Quilts

If you've followed me for any length of time you probably know I have a week spot for Cheryl Brickey's Meadow Mist Designs mystery quilts and Bonnie Hunter's annual mystery quilt alongs. I've been sewing with Bonnie's mysteries since 2013. That year was her Celtic Solstice mystery. It's still in pieces with a few blocks made. It's on my 2026 project list. Not sure I'm going to get that far. 

I've started 15 of Bonnie's mysteries and finished 7 of them.  Her 2024 mystery was Old Town.  It's one step closer to being finished. 

The borders were added over the weekend and it's now a finished quilt top. When I bought that teal fabric, I wasn't sure how to use it. It worked really well as the accent color in this quilt.  Rather than pink, I switched to gold, which was one of the accent colors in the teal print. Not my normal color palette, but I do really like how this one turned out. 

Old Town now joins the 14 other quilt tops waiting to be quilted in the spare closet.  

I do have a plan to tackle getting at least some of these tops to finished quilts this year. I'm working on quilting Chilhowie (the 2022 Bonnie Hunter mystery) with my walking foot. I've started but it's going to take a few weeks to finish.  Some of the quilts I am going to get professionally quilted.  Hopefully between the two efforts I can whittle down the to be quilted list a bit.  

Linking up with the usual Monday linky parties: Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.   

Sticking with the Strategy

It's been a quiet week on the weather front. That's been nice, no late night sessions watching the local weather to decide if we need to move ourselves to the tornado shelter.  My back is still a bit out of whack, I can walk and sit, but bending is completely out for now. Thankfully  I can still sew. 

I've been mostly sticking with my strategy for the year, but I'm not where I'd hoped to be at the end of first quarter.  So it was catch up time in April.  

The Magnificent Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) is finally a finished quilt top.  The final two border strips were added yesterday.  The pattern didn't call for a border, but I usually like to see a frame around the quilt, it looks uncomplete to me when there is not one.  I'm thrilled with how this one worked out.  It's hard to get the colors right for a mystery quilt, I have no regrets about what fabrics I picked and where they went.  It may be my most favorite Meadow Mist Mystery ever. 

It's been slow going, but there has been lots of progress so far this year.  Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts and Sew & Tell Monday.  

Do you Ever Catch Up in Quilting?

Last week's post was about catching up in the sewing room after being on vacation. I was going to call this post "More Catching Up Sewing", but then I got to thinking about all the quilts on my UFO list and all the other "oh I want to make that" future UFOs.  So I'm pretty sure you never catch up on the quilting front. 

I've been working on my priority sewing projects this week. The number one priority in the sewing room since we got back from vacation was to have the May block for the Guild BOM finished. 

The block was finished last Monday, so no last minute sewing right before the guild meeting this month.  Here's what the sampler looks like right now.

  

There are borders between the blocks and the Carpenter star part of the quilt, it will all fit together once those are added.  I like how it's coming together.  The June block is finished and the July block is under construction.  Once those are done, it's back to pattern writing for the August, September, October, November blocks.  The flying geese are December's block and I have those finished, but not sewn into borders yet.  So I'm staying caught up. Making 3 blocks at a time is definitely the way to proceed.  

The final assembly instructions also go out after the November meeting, so it's not too early to start writing those up and getting started on assembly with the blocks I have. Next year's BOM is introduced at the December meeting.  I don't know for sure if I'm doing the guild BOM for next year, but from the rumbles I'm hearing from the board, they are hoping I'll volunteer again. It's been fun, but it's a lot of work.  

Linking up with Patchwork & Quilts, plus Sew & Tell Monday.