I Like Thursday #464

 Happy New Year and Cheers!

This photo brings back good memories of our visit to the Korbel Winery 

in 2024 where we did a very fun champagne tasting.  

I ended 2025 having read 56 books.  The last two I finished were some of my favorites of the whole year.

Thank you to Carole of From My Carolina Home for recommending this first one.  I really enjoyed this story of two people who meet in the early 1950s because they work for Queen Elizabeth at her Christmas residence, the Sandringham Estate.

This one is my book club's selection for January.

It's also historical fiction, but takes place in 1963 - 

four women become friends through a book club that they start.

My mom joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority in 1950 when she was a freshman at the University of Iowa.  Recently they sent her a 75 year pin!  We had my niece (also Mom's granddaughter), Maya, who is also a Theta, pin it on her and sent the national council this photo.  

Aren't they a sweet pair?  

Today is my day to take down the Christmas tree and put away all the decorations.  I'll miss the beautiful lights of the season, but am ready to have everything all clean and neat for the new year.   Have a happy New Year's Day!

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

Planning Ahead for 2026

It's the last day of 2025, so hard to believe we are there again!  I've been thinking through what I'm going to focus on in the sewing room in 2026, and I realized I usually have three categories of projects to sort through. 

1. Works in Progress:  (when do these become UFOs?  I don't know!)

I ended 2024 with two quilts waiting to be quilted - one was finished up (Masala Box) and an older one is still hanging in the closet!  Plus I added another quilt top to that to-be-quilted list.  The Blueberry Taffy blocks were sewn into a top in August, and have been waiting for quilting ever since!

I've been ignoring this quilt top because 

I got frustrated with how much the blue sashing/border fabric was fraying!

Maybe I will be brave and get it ready for quilting sometime in the new year.

But first...

A WiP that's really been nagging at me is Patchwork Hearts.  Here's its current status - partially quilted!  The first two rows are quilted, third is in progress, fourth and fifth haven't been touched except to cut the backing.  I have plenty of batting now, so there's no excuse to not get back to it!

2.  Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects for 2026:  

I'm working on two to start the year.  Jacob's Ladder blocks - 

Blue is the January color for the RSC, 

so I'm pulling out the blue stash this week!

And the house quilt project.  I'm going to call this "A Year in the Neighborhood," with each house going with a season or holiday.  The first one is in progress - there are snowflakes in it for January!

3.  The "To-be-Determined" category!  These are usually projects that involve participating in a quilt-along like the Stay at Home Round Robin (hosted by Quilting Gail) which starts in a couple weeks.  I have my center block ready to go - it's a fall embroidery which will turn into a wall-hanging to go with the other seasons that I've made the last three years.

Another QAL I have enjoyed participating in for several years in a row is Sandra's Spring QAL at mmmquilts.  I've participated in this one for 5 or 6 years now, and I always love the process and the finished quilt!

I'm sure other quilt-alongs will present themselves as the year goes on, and I'll keep them in mind, too.  I enjoy the feeling of community that comes from connecting with other quilters who are working on a similar project.

4.  I said there were three categories of quilt projects on my mind for the coming year, but I just realized there's actually a fourth, and that is charity/donation quilts or block drives.  Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework runs a quilt charity called Many Hands and Many Hearts and I have sent her both finished quilts and quilt blocks in previous years, and I plan to do so again this coming year.  I've been using the current blocks she is asking for as leader/enders this week.  

I will never run out of projects to work on - 

and I'm really glad about that!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Santa and the Snowman

Santa's mini sampler has the alphabet stitched, and most of Santa, too.  Santa just needs a little more beard and a little more coat.  

Along the way, I also started a new embroidery project out of my newest Gail Pan book, Changing Seasons.  My new project is a seasonal one, with an embroidery design for each season.  At some point I'll need to make the background quilt to hang the seasonal designs on, too.

The Winter design with the snowman is the one I started stitching this week.  I'm not sure I chose the right background fabric for this snowman - it has little red and blue stars on it that might distract from the embroidery design.  I'm going to think about this before I go any farther with it!

I'll be working on finishing up Santa for my Slow Sunday Stitching today!  

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

Best of 2025

Here we are at the end of the year - always so hard to believe that another year has passed!  I always enjoy joining in with Meadow Mist Designs' end of the year link ups, and have again had a good time looking through this year's photos and posts to decide what are my entries for the Best of 2025.  

In my last post of 2024, as I was looking ahead to this year, I wrote about my plan to finish up "Pieces of My Life," a quilt I made to celebrate my 70th birthday, and early in 2025 I did finish it!  This was made as quilt-along with Melva Loves Scraps, and it was a delightful QAL.  With each block, Melva included questions and journaling ideas to inspire us to think about different meaningful events of our lives.  You can read my finished post here.   

Earlier in the year I finally finished a UFO from several years ago.  This is Masala Box, a Sew Preeti Quilts design.  I enjoyed making the blocks as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project in 2022, sewed the top together in 2023, and then it just sat.  It feels good to have it finished!

Another QAL I participated in this past year was mmmquilts' "Glowing Hearts," and it is also a favorite finish.   I made this with an Island Batik jelly roll, and had fun figuring out how to use as many strips as possible to create the look that Sandra designed.

I've continued to participate in the Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge throughout the year.  This involves creating a monthly mini quilt project that goes along with Joy's special challenge and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.  I enjoy that satisfying finish each month, and put them here and there around the house.  The one below is a favorite because I purchased the fabric at a quilt shop I visited while on our trip to the Oregon Coast in September.

Film Strip

And, last, but very definitely not least, one of my all-time favorite finishes - Starburst!  About 40 inches square - small but mighty, with 96 different scrappy fabrics making the 100 blocks (the four quarter stars that make up the center are all the same)!   This was a very fun Rainbow Scrap Challenge project for 2025.

Thanks for visiting and reading along with my year-end rambling! 

Sharing at:

Meadow Mist Designs Best of 2025

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!

The tree is decorated...

All the little penguins have come home to roost...

And the angel is there to watch over us all.

This angel came from my dad's growing up years, so it's very special to me for so many reasons.  I'm thankful to have saved it when my mom no longer needed it.

The Joyful Quilter's challenge to us for our Table Scraps project this month was to make something that shares the message of peace.  Peace to me is being home.  The busy activities of life are fun and fill you up, but then I always long to come home!  To add this to my little quilt, I fussy cut the word Peace for part of the heart.  

The Penguin house is going to live here in my sewing nook where I will see it every day!

Whether busy or quiet, I hope your Christmas is wonderful!

I will be enjoying a peaceful day at home.

Linking up with all my favorite places:

The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss 

Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday 

The Joyful Quilter for the December Table Scraps Challenge.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday. 

Happy Winter Solstice!

I finished this stitching this Winter project just before the first day of Spring last March, so it seemed important to fully finish it just before the first day of Winter!  

I had been struggling with just exactly how to finish it, and finally decided to treat it like a little mini quilt with backing and batting, flipped it right sides out and machine stitched all the way around the edge to hold everything together.  I don't know if you can tell, but I put a few ties in the corners between the "blocks," too.  I happened to have a bit of that striped ribbon for a bow, and it goes well with the hat, mitten, and bowl.  Kind of a fun finish for a cold, gray day!

If you missed it earlier this week, I did finish the embroidered hexie tabletopper, too.  

So, then - what to stitch on during this Christmas week while waiting for Santa to come?  My favorite source of stitching designs and inspiration - Melisa at PinkernPunkin - just happened to share a Santa mini sampler, so I had to start it.  You can see a b c d and the top of Santa's hat there.  Plenty more to work on for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #463

I like my quilt group!  We have all been friends for more than 25 years - that adds up to lots of quilty inspiration.  We had a fun Christmas party last week, and here is one of my friends looking at her gift, the pillow I made for the gift exchange.

Besides the cute sewing machine ornament I got, I also brought home a neat knitted bag with a book about Christmas songs.  I think that will be some fun reading, and the knitted bag could carry a stitching project in it.

Speaking of stitching project, my hexie tabletopper is finished!  Except, oops...

I sewed one in going the wrong way!  

Of course, I had to fix it, which didn't take too long.  And now it looks just right!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about Christmas colors that we like - just red and green, or are there others.  You can probably tell from projects I've shared recently that I like to sew with the traditional colors of red and green, but I have made things that included other colors.  Here's a table runner from a few years ago - I think 2019.  It was also a gift for my quilt group's Christmas party!  I love the addition of the turquoise.

Our older son is coming for our traditional pre-Christmas weekend tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to enjoying having him home for a bit.  So I probably won't be posting over the weekend, but will link up both yesterday's and today's posts in the usual places.  I'll be back next week!

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

Midweek Update - Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks

This adorable little sewing machine was in the gift I received last week at our quilt group Christmas party.  We each brought a gift and then played a game where the gifts were passed around.  I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a Christmas tree ornament, but I'm keeping it in the sewing room!

After spending the first half of December sewing with traditional Christmas greens and reds, I decided I was ready to get back to a rainbow project.  So I got out my collection of Gameboard blocks, made this year as mostly leaders and enders.  These start out as four patches, then become 16 patches, and finally are framed with 2.5 inch squares and 2.5 x 4.5 inch rectangles.  

These are 8 inches finished, so I'm shooting for 30 of them eventually.

It looked like the next step was to finish off those three 16 patches in the bottom right corner, and that is what I did!

Now there are 14 of these - almost halfway there.  

Simple four patches are the perfect block to play with at this busy time of year!  But what colors to make next?   Looking at the photo of all the Gameboard blocks together,  it looked like I could use more yellow and orange.  I dug into my stash and got busy!  These are made from strip sets which are quick and easy to work with when you need small blocks.

Update since Wednesday - I've been making more four patches in lemons, limes, and oranges!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Redwork and hexies...

The redwork hexies I've been working on recently are all stitched up.  

They're kind of cute as separate little pieces - except that you can't see all of them at the same time!  

So now I am sewing them together into a little tabletopper like the plan was all along.

Still a few more seams to stitch which I will do for my 

Slow Sunday Stitching!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Thinking ahead...

Cathy at Crazy by Design and Kat at Scrapbox Quilts are hosting a QAL in the new year that involves making a whole neighborhood of houses, and I'm planning to join in.

Over the years, I've made several quilts that involved houses, and here are a few.  This first one is from the mmmquilts QAL in 2023 - Rainbow Neighborhood - and it's really a favorite quilt of mine.

The houses in this wall-hanging were all made improv style.  

And this mini quilt below was from another QAL back in 2017. 

  Jen and Jan's Mini QAL and blog hop.

And, finally,  these little house blocks are from Twiggy and Opal.  I don't think her blog is active anymore, but you can still see the patterns in her Etsy shop.  These are paper-pieced.  I enjoyed making this little piece in 2020 when Covid was going on and we couldn't get together with our kids at Christmas.

I decided to test an 8 inch size block of one of these to see if a paper-pieced block would work for the QAL in the new year.  Since I purchased the pattern back in 2020, I have it downloaded and can print out the pages whenever I need them.

I haven't done any foundation paper piecing in quite awhile, so I am a bit rusty.  I only needed to rip out the first two seams, lol!  But I eventually got the hang of it - here is the center heart section for the house.  I fussy cut some words out of my Christmas text fabric since it was out for some previous projects.

Fussy cutting for this kind of piecing can be tricky, but I managed it for these particular words.  Maybe I can use up a few scraps in these blocks.  We'll see!

On to the next sections!  I'll share my result later in the month.

Linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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