2025 Planning Party

I've decided I should try and set some goals for 2025. I'm a little reluctant since I had so little desire to make anything last year, but I am hoping my recently acquired motivation will persist.

I'm going to come up with a pretty short list of goals. I think it's better to have a short list that I can finish, than a long list I don't finish.

First, I would like to finish the Chilhowie quilt. I've got the flimsy finished, I've received the backing fabric, and I've got the quilting plan figured out.

Second, I'd like to make two more quilts for the living room in the same fabrics. Not the same pattern, but the same fabrics. I think one of them will be Judy Martin's Fall Foliage Spectacular from her Cookies 'n' Quilts book.

The border on this isn't quite right, but it's close enough.

Third, I'd like to finish (or at least do a lot of work on) one of the three UFOs in my stash. I'm not sure which one, but at least one of them. My choices are: 

• the Stained Glass quilt (it takes so long to make the blocks),
• the Desert Sunset (I got stuck at a point where the some of the blocks were the wrong size and I didn't have enough fabric to make more), and 
• the Japanese Poppy EPP (I was dissatisfied with how the points were matching so I set it aside.)

Finally, I have some non-quilt projects I'd like to finish. My husband asked me to make him insulated shopping bags for buying cold items and I have tried, but I've struggled to find a pattern that doesn't end up with too many layers to fit under my sewing machine foot. So, I'm going to try again. And again, until I can get it. My husband doesn't ask for much, so I want to make these bags for him.

I struggled to finish much of anything in 2024, so I'll be delighted to get this much done in 2025.

Linking up with the 2025 Quilting Planning Party.

Easy Street Finished...and Gifted

In usual fashion, I was in such a rush to get the Easy Street quilt finished that I didn't get good photos. It was really big and my husband didn't have enough reach to hold it up for me.

It was gifted right after Christmas when my husband drove down to see his family.

My brother loved it and I'm happy to have finished a UFO.

I used the Quilter's Dream Green batting and lavender Glide thread. I quilted it with Anne Bright's Feather Garden. It's a beautiful pantograph, but it took so long to quilt. It was more than an hour for each row, plus the time to advance the quilt and fiddle with realigning the design.

Linking up with:

Brag About Your Beauties

Finished (or Not) Friday

Off the Wall Friday

TGIF Friday

Chilhowie Flimsy

My husband's mother is in her 90s, so he's made a point of visiting her every Fall to help her sift her belongings and spend some one-on-one time with her. This year, because he was busy working on election campaigning he didn't have time to go until December so I found myself alone on Christmas. 

Of course, that meant I didn't have to fuss with making food, or cleaning house for company. I just had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, a couple of cookies, and called it good. After about 12 hours sewing, I finished the Chilhowie Flimsy. Yay!

Last week, I ran across a batik fabric at Hancock's Paducah that appeared to have the same color palette as this quilt. I've been burned by batiks before, but it was on clearance, so I decided to go ahead and order some, even though there's a high risk the picture is a poor representation of the actual colors. I won't be receiving the fabric until after the first of the new year.

While waiting, I've been playing with my long-arm computer program to create a quilting plan. I spent an entire day trying to create a fall-themed design, but I couldn't come up with anything I liked. So, I'll probably compromise and use a nice set of pantographs from Christy Dillon with flowers. This is my tentative plan at the moment.

Customer Quilt

Yesterday was my last chance to use the car before Jeff took it for two weeks to visit his family. I was hoping to find some more rust-colored fabric. It was slim pickings. Apparently rust is not in style right now. I went to three stores and I only found one decent match. That beige also isn't in style either. 

I had enough fabric to finish Chilhowie, but I'm hoping to make a second lap quilt from the same color fabrics (in a different pattern) and it would be nice to have some overlap.

Today, I worked on a paid quilting gig. It's a pretty scrappy baby quilt. I quilted it with Wholehearted by Christy Dillon. I used a bright fuschia Maxi-Lock thread and it turned out well.

Now that I have finished all the projects with a deadline, I can get back to finishing the Chilhowie lap quilt. I've prewashed the new fabrics so I'll try to finish cutting out all the pieces tomorrow.

Chilhowie Sashed

Jeff and I have been pretty busy during the days so I mostly only take time to sew at night after he goes to bed. Of course, that means I often end up staying up pretty late. Oh well. Jeff will be leaving on a trip in a couple of days to visit his family so I'll have plenty of time to finish then.

I've started cutting out the border pieces, but that will take a while because I'm not using the Cricut. The Cricut is very fast, but it does waste a bit of fabric and I'm short on the rust fabrics so I need to conserve them. 

Someone dropped off a paid quilting gig so first I need to finish that before I get back to this project. I'm eager to finish this flimsy.

Linking up with

Put Your Foot Down

Chilhowie Progress

I sewed up a storm this past weekend. I've finished all the Chilhowie blocks. 

Now I still need to make the sashing and add a fairly detailed border. I'm happy to finally be in the mood to sew again.

But first, I actually need to turn my attention back to the Easy Street quilt on my long arm. I've received the extra piece of fabric and it's time to get it going again. I need to finish it before my husband goes to visit his family next week.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday, Monday Show & Tell, and Monday Musings.

Chilhowie Started

I am finally making progress on my Chilhowie throw quilt. One drawback of buying fabric online is sometimes it can take a very long time to receive it. I decided I didn't want to wait for the brown fabric, so I went ahead and cut the burgundy fabric I had on-hand. 

I finished sewing Clue 1: The 9-patches and 4-patches. 

I'm using a new-to-me sewing machine and I've been having a bit of an issue with sizing my 1/4-inch seam allowance correctly. I think I've finally gotten it dialed in, but some of these nine patches are about 1/8-inch too small. I'm not quite obsessive enough to rip them apart and make them right. I'll fiddle with the seam allowance when I sew the quilt together.

I'm going to skip to Clue 3 next and work on the Hourglasses. I'm trying to make the block components first so I can start assembling the blocks, then I'll worry about cutting out the sashing and border.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday.

Maybe Chilhowie Next

I really meant to make Bonnie Hunter's Chilhowie Mystery Quilt when it first came out, but at the time I was working on several Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. But I've had it in my project queue since then.

I'm finally in the mood to make another quilt, so I'm thinking about making a throw-size Chilhowie in colors that coordinate with our living room. I dug through my stash and found these fabrics that match pretty well. I may replace that dark rust with a brown, as I ordered a brown batik when I ordered more of that quilt backing.

Now I'm trying to figure out the arrangement of colors in the quilt. It seems like it would be a straight-forward substitution, but when I put these fabric colors into Electric Quilt I worry the colors are too dark.

Then I started substituting some lighter fabrics. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but here are some of the other options I've come up with.

I'll probably make my final decision when my brown fabric arrives. When you order online, you can never be sure what the color actually is until you get the fabric.