Looking ahead for 2025

Happy New Year!

Although I don't generally make a formal list of goals for my new year in quilting, I do like to take a look at what's carrying over from the previous year and what I might like to start new on in the coming year.   I have one big 2024 project that I'm right in the midst of trying to finish up - Pieces of My Life - a QAL hosted by Melva of Melva Loves Scraps.  I joined in on this one because 2024 was my 70th birthday year, and making a quilt was a fun way to celebrate!  It has been constructed and now quilted in sections, and I'm quilting section 4 right now!  Whoop whoop!

Sometimes projects are still on the list from a year ago (or longer!) and that is the case this year.  I have two unfinished quilt tops still hanging in the to-be-quilted closet that have been around for multiple years!   I have batting and wide backing fabric ready to go, just have to do that (least favorite) step of basting the layers together.

Masala Box and Rainbow Jungle

I'm carrying two sets of blocks over into the new year - one is the Patchwork Hearts, a 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  These blocks are ready to sew into a top.  I'm sure there will be blocks for a new RSC project under construction this year as well.  I can't seem to go into the new year without a new project!

The other set of blocks started as a challenge to myself to see how many crumb blocks I could make out of my blue scrap bin during the RSC blue month back in 2022.  I ended up with twenty of them, which I then made into "wrapped candy" blocks - something I had seen on another blog.  Here's how how they look at this point - just sewn together as is, they would make a small top measuring 40 x 50.  I'm wondering if this needs some sashing and cornerstones in between the blocks - a blue sashing might be pretty.  

There are at least two QALs that I leave room in my sewing schedule for - the Stay at Home Round Robin which is starting soon, and Sandra's (mmmquilts) QAL that usually begins in April.   I've enjoyed both of those the last few years, so there's no reason not to join in again, right?!

And I know there will be small projects that I work on throughout the year, too.  I'll participate in Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge each month, plus I am planning to make mini quilts out of the Year of Hearts embroidery designs from PinkernPunkin that I stitched up last year.  Here's the January heart under construction right now!

I think it will be a busy new year in my sewing room!

What kind of plans do you have? 

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Quilting Jet Girl's 2025 Planning Party

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday. 

More with blue...

I was a good girl this week and stuck with the two slow stitching projects I shared last week.  That means there was some good progress on each one!

First, the salt box house from last Sunday:

And this - showing my progress as of today:

It's looking like a house!

And a few more sections quilted on the Woven Wreaths piece, too.  I started by quilting around the four center designs (and the little gridded squares next to them) and now I'm moving to the outside ones.  

There's plenty more to do on both projects - plenty for some slow Sunday stitching and more.  Sharing at Kathy's Quilts.

Best of 2024

As so often is the case, it's hard to believe that we are just about to the end of 2024!  I always enjoy taking a look back at my favorite finishes, and joining in with Meadow Mist Designs for the "Best of 2024" link-up.  

Quilts made in a rainbow of colorful scraps have been a favorite in my sewing room for a long time now, and 2024 saw plenty of that kind of project.  I love participating in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, hosted by Angela at SoScrappy, and usually have several quilt projects on the go throughout the year for the purpose of sewing with scraps.  

One of my favorite finishes of the year was Rainbow Bowties.  I worked on the blocks throughout 2023, but finished the quilt in 2024.  This quilt was hand-pieced and hand quilted!

I've also been participating in Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge for several years, and finished something every month of the year for it.  I think my favorite was also a February project.  I just kept sewing together strips of red until I ended up with this fun placemat!

February Table Scraps

Sandra at mmmquilts has a quilt along each year beginning in April which is fun to join in with.  I have always loved her designs, so the finished quilts are on my favorites list every year.  This year's quilt is particularly special because I bought the fabric for it at Hancock's of Paducah while on a trip there in early April.  Sandra calls this design Luminous Layers, but I called it Paducah Stars.

Another blogging friend, Carole at From My Carolina Home, frequently has quilt alongs that I've participated in, and this year she called it Fall Fortnite.  The theme was autumn and Thanksgiving designs, but I made mine as an ode to sunflowers!  It's definitely a favorite finish of the year.  This combined a little sunflower embroidery design from Melisa at PinkernPunkin with a sunflower print I had bought some yardage of on a trip in August.

Sunflowers

When I retired from teaching ten(!) years ago now, I made it a goal to try to contribute to more charities with my quilting.  I've sent lots of quilt blocks to various drives over the years, but I'm now trying to send finished quilts.  Scrappy rainbow quilts are good for this purpose!  This year I managed one donation finish which will go to Many Hands and Many Hearts, started by Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.  

All Zipped Up!  

It's fun to go back through my posts from throughout the year and choose some favorites.  Thanks for coming along for this trip down Quilt Memory Lane!

Sharing at Meadow Mist Designs for the Best of 2024 link-up 

and at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Merry Christmas!

from the Little Penguin house to yours!

Wishing you a day that you get to spend in your favorite way, 

whether busy or quiet!

Younger son and I baked some cut out sugar cookies over the weekend.  They're our favorite for this time of year.  So much so that I had put a few in the freezer to save them for Christmas Day dessert!

I made us some new cloth napkins for our Christmas dinner.  These are made from my favorite napkin tutorial, found here.  Over the years I've made many of these - two fat quarters make two napkins and they are reversible.   I really wanted to make four this time, though, so I bought a half yard of each print.  (Joann's was having a really good sale on the holiday prints - I think I paid $4 total!)

I love the cardinal print!

I enjoyed this book this week.  It takes place on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, with lots of interesting characters.

LeeAnna's question of the week is about a favorite Christmas gift we were given as a child.   One year my sister and I each wanted a Tressy doll.  Do you remember those?  Their hair grew, and you could play with it and make different hairdos.   My memory is fuzzy on this, but I think at some point I decided to take Tressy off my list because I didn't think our parents would get her for us.   Somehow I still got one, though - lucky me!

Merry Christmas!  Hope you got everything on your list!

Linking up at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers and at

The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss, and

Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Slow stitching in blue...

I'm still working on the Ole Crow Saltbox stitch from PinkernPunkin Quilting.  A little more of the blue house keeps emerging each week as I get farther on it!

Meanwhile I also got started on quilting the Kathy Schmitz Woven Wreaths panel.  I decided to hand quilt it with a backing, but may still turn it into a pillow cover.  The embroidery was done in DMC floss color 930, which is dark antique blue.  Since there are both medium and darker blues in the fabric surrounding the enbroidery designs, I'm quilting with DMC perle cotton in color 931, medium antique blue - a little bit lighter.  

Plenty more to do for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

December Table Scraps

December's Table Scraps project was inspired by the leftover bonus triangles from my Christmas gift exchange tabletopper made earlier in the month - 

and by something I saw on Melisa's post a couple weeks ago.  So I quickly stitched up this sweet design - a freebie from Lizzie Kate.  Who knew that there are all kinds of seasonal freebies at that site?!  I even used a scrap of Aida cloth for this one.

Then I put everything together like this!  Just a sweet little mug rug size piece - about 9 x 7.  And the perfect message for the season, too.

The backing comes from my favorite print out of the bundle that I got for the tabletopper gift.  

It has a fun selvage - "Naughty and Nice!)

And the other end of the selvage strip I cut looks like this - Santa hats!

Joy's challenge for us this month included using plus signs - ✔️ and rainbow for the color.  My little quilt has red and green, plus gray, cream, and white - it's a partial rainbow at least! 

🎄 Peace, Joy, and Love are wished for you this Christmas! 🎄

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

And at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

and at The Joyful Quilter for the December Table Scraps link-up.

I Like Thursday #417

Good morning, and happy Thursday, friends!  Thank you so much for all of your kind notes about my mom.  Friends are sure good therapy.   So is a Christmas tree - light in this dark time of year really helps me.

Laughter is good medicine, too.  We watched a fun Christmas movie over the weekend - "Red One" on Prime Video.  It is not your typical Christmas movie, pretty wild and crazy, but fun.  I especially loved Dwayne Johnson (the Rock!) as Santa's Head of Security!  

Image Source

I've been enjoying this book this week.  I haven't read a WWII historical fiction book in a long time, but glad I read this one.  It has some interesting twists and turns!  And I do love a coffee date with a good book, too!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our Christmases growing up - what were they like?  That is a fun time to think about!  My dad was a mechanical engineer and he liked everything just so.  That means that on Christmas morning, we had to stay in our bedrooms until 7 am.  When we came downstairs, we first had to eat some breakfast, and then finally got to open our presents.  Oh, wait, there would be the picture in our jammies first!

With all of that, I'm sure you know, too, that we opened our presents one at a time.  I don't remember what order we did it in - knowing my dad there was a plan for that.  Youngest to oldest, maybe?    Good memories!

Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

Midweek Update

It's one of those weeks where I'll feel lucky if I get 15 minutes of sewing time each day.  I wish I could say this has to do with holiday busy-ness, but it doesn't.  My sister and I had to take a deep breath yesterday, and have Mom admitted to hospice care.  It doesn't mean that anything is imminent, but it does mean that they will provide comfort care for her at this stage of life.  But it is a big step to take.  I hope I'll get to some sewing - it sure helps me to have something else to concentrate on, even if just for a little while.

What I really want to work on are the next steps on Pieces of My Life, and I am making slow progress on that.  First, I finished the quilting on section two, and then I started in on the steps to attach the top two sections of the quilt together.  Here's how it looks on the back.  The two sections are connected with a two inch strip of sashing.

Because I'm using leftover strips of the backing for this process, 

you would hardly know it's there!

Flipping the quilt over to the front, you see this - a strip of batting in that space between the two sections, and the blue sashing sewed to the left top section of the quilt.

The next step is to do some pressing and get this sashing strip sewn over the batting section and top-stitched down to the other side.  Here it's just finger pressed over, but you get the idea!

The blue sashing is going to make an interesting design through the quilt - I'm hoping it will look like a big bow tying up a patchwork package!  

As time allows during the second half of this week, I'm planning to get this step finished and then move on to layering up the third and fourth sections of the project so they can be quilted.  I also want to spend some time on my Table Scraps project for December.   

Fingers crossed that there will be some time to get to those tasks!

Linking up with Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.

I bought myself a Christmas present...

 and it's one of these - a tabletop mini quilt hangar.  

I've wanted one for a long time, and especially this year, since I've been working on the Year of Hearts embroidery project.  Yesterday I finished the December heart, so I've ended up with thirteen of them, because I stitched one of the bonus blocks that Melisa shared last summer.

All along I have been pretty sure that I didn't want to sew these into a larger quilt because that type of quilt wouldn't get used around here.  But a monthly mini would be a lot of fun to display and change out frequently.  So here's how it would look:

Each heart would get a two inch border and 

then finished with quilting and binding and a sleeve on the back for hanging.  

I thought this Fair Isle sweater print would be fun for the December mittens!

I should get started finishing the January heart so it's ready to hang when we get there - we're halfway through December already!  But meanwhile for today's slow stitching, I'll be back to the Ole Crow Saltbox house that I started a few weeks ago.  There are plenty of stitches left for this one!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Progress

Although it didn't start out to be a scrappy rainbow quilt, my version of the Pieces of My Life quilt-along at Melva Loves Scraps turned into one as the year went on!  I began with a consistent background - Grunge in Cream - and a floral print - which is where I got the rainbow inspiration from.  

Each time Melva posted a block for the QAL, I used some background, some of the floral, and one or two other colors (sometimes more than that if the block called for it).  Some examples:

Rough Road

                                                                                        Ohio Star

Now that all the blocks are made, I've decided that for the month of December I would really focus on making progress on this quilt.  One of the things I've been most excited about from this QAL is learning a method for Quilt As You Go, and that's what I'm working on right now.  The quilt is made and quilted in four sections - all of the sections are pieced together now, and I'm quilting on section two.

And here you can see all four sections - section one is quilted and trimmed, quilting on  section two is in progress, and sections three and four are ready to layer and baste for quilting.

After quilting, the sections are joined together with sashing - I'm hoping to get to that step for sections one and two this weekend!  I just have to decide what color the sashing will be - maybe more of the dark blue?

What are you working on this month?

Linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #416

Good morning!  It's the time of year for pretty sunrises as seen out our front window.  This one was prettier just before I went to get my phone to take the picture, but I appreciated it anyway.

Honest neighborhood view - it was trash day!

The sort-of-secret Christmas project is all finished and ready to be gifted at this afternoon's get together.  We do one of those crazy gift exchanges where there is stealing allowed, and it's always hilarious!  Plus you never quite know what you will end up coming home with.

This is the Cookie Plate Crumb Catcher from The Crafty Quilter.

I decided it needed a cookie plate to go with!

It's a bonus week for my group get togethers because my book club met, too.  We always try to choose a book for December that is an easy read because we just need peace and love this time of year, if you know what I mean!  This year's book fit that desire perfectly.

Goodreads

Younger son wanted to try making crepes over the weekend, and he did a great job with them!  

We made one dinner with them - inspired by a meal we had at a restaurant in California called the Crepevine.  Then we also had them for dessert one night with bananas, Nutella, and whipped cream.  Yum!

Speaking of dessert, LeeAnna's question of the week is about our favorite Christmas cookie - and mine always is the traditional cut-out sugar cookies, decorated with frosting and sprinkles.  I haven't made any yet this year, but probably will the week of Christmas.  This picture is from a few years ago.  Sometimes I get lazy and just do drop cookies instead of rolling them out and using the cookie cutters.  But they're still tasty!

Hope you're having a great week!

Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

Pieces of My Life: Home, Family, Friends

I've made the final two blocks for my Pieces of My Life quilt project, hosted by Melva at Melva Loves Scraps.  Making these blocks has been a very special part of my year- a project I chose to celebrate my 70th birthday!    With these last two blocks it's time to tie everything all together and finish the quilt.

Nine Patch and Log Cabin

6 inch blocks

The log cabin represents our home and family life of today.  I've written before that we bought the home in which we still live in 1977.  At the time it was a brand new build in a new neighborhood here in Loveland, Colorado.  In fact, at that time we were the farthest north neighborhood in the city.  A lot more city has built up around us since then!  And the house isn't the same, either.   The first thing we did was finish a family room and guest bedroom in the basement.  A few years later, after the kids were born and we needed more space, we built on an addition off the back of the house which included a master bedroom and dining room/sitting room area.

Spring in the backyard - those windows are where the addition is.

We love our back porch, too.

The Christmas look!

Downstairs family room - it became my sewing room when the kids left home.

Now one of them is back, so he's using that space and I moved my sewing up into a corner of the master bedroom.

Melva asks is this our dream home?  I'm really not sure about that, but it is HOME, and that's what's most important to me!

Do I have grandchildren?  No - not yet.  Our sons are both still single guys, and if that's the path life takes them on I'm okay with that.   When we are together for family time, it's a table of four, but we have a good time with games and activities, and conversation.

Here are the final six blocks which I'm working on sewing together, and then they will join their friends in the other three sections.

I am blessed to have a group of friends here in town that I enjoy spending time with in a variety of ways.  We all taught together and are now retired, but shared enough similar interests that we do many things together still.  Quilt group, book club, golf in the Spring, Summer, and Fall, movies - those are my interests and hobbies, too!

There are a couple people missing from this photo, but you get the idea.

Happy, smiling people!

Melva's final question for these blocks is - do you want to add any other information?  And for me, that is -  not sure yet.  There'll be lots of thinking time as I finish the four sections I've made into the final quilt.  So, I'll get back to you on that!

Linking up with Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

And at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.