Sue

This week was the Utah Shop Hop. I went with my long-time quilting partners to the southern half, then my hubby drove me the next day to the northern shops. It was super fun & I came away with this haul. It includes a Utah kit I’ll be getting for Christmas, a store kit I couldn’t resist, a new wool project, sale strips to do one of my classes at Garden of Quilts in Sept, fabric for this year’s Breast Cancer Awareness quilt, a small witch hanging, & various FQ’s plus prizes. Super fun! The theme was The Silver Screen so each store decorated for a different movie.

Since my pink was over & it wasn’t time for a new color, I decided to sneak in some work on a WIP. It’s a rainbow effort, so doesn’t go with my theme of doing one with lots of the color of the month. It’s Spare Squares by Lori Holt & feels very Rainbow Scrap Challenge since I’m using rainbow scraps!

Fabric ordered from Spoonflower for the 2026 Festival of Trees auction quilt & sashing bought at the Shop Hop. I’m using the pattern on the left from the book “Beyond Neutral”. I’ve had this book forever & never made a quilt from it, although I love them all, so this is the time. It’s a great pattern to show off the popcorn fabric. Now to start cutting & fitting work on this around my monthly goals.

It’s been a great week for pink. I made 6 pink blocks for my Nine Patch & Snowball, plus 5 snowballs. I decided I’d better stop sewing them together so I can have layout options. The borders are alternating LV squares & 1/2 snowballs so I made 6 of them. I figured I could make a few each month & then I’ll have everything ready to put it together when the colors run out this year.

If you’ve been following my 2026 goal of FINISH, then you know that one of my monthly projects for RSC2026 is to finish a WIP with lots of the monthly color. Yippee, because this is my second WIP finish for the month & it’s pink! My first was a second red that fell into April. This is Hope #4 & was begun as my 2024 Breast Cancer Awareness quilt, then got set aside when life happened. I make one each fall in honor of my friend who battled 3 rounds & finally succumbed. I give them to friends & family who face their own battle. I started #5 as a teaching project with a friend & then her life happened, so that’s a WIP. But this is ready for quilting!

What is this you ask? Well, the above quilt was made from a Moda kit I purchased on sale & after finishing, I assessed the giant pile of leftover fabric & said, “No, I will not put this pile into my stash.” I cut it all into 4.5″ squares & sewed up a donation top inspired by Nancy@GraceandPeaceQuilting, who makes 99 Charms quilts for donations. I had a mess of layer cake pieces left, plus “halves” of layer cakes that were 4.5″ wide because I had to cut 5.5″ squares for the quilt. So “slightly shrunk charms” made up this quilt. It goes into the box for Many Hands Many Hearts & that kit is gone!

Our internet equipment failed & even though the HOA escalated our ticket, the company took 9 days to get out & replace it. That was trying, as so much of life depends on the internet. We did some things on our phones, but it was difficult, plus our cell coverage wasn’t powerful enough to hot spot our computers, so I did my service mission hours at the local FamilySearch center. As far as sewing, I got the RWB pinwheels all together & started a pile for Many Hands Many Hearts. That makes 3 red WIPs finished up.

Since this is the year for finishing, I’ve been working on my really old hexie project in the evenings, rather than binding quilts. Here’s my Easter morning: Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square with a pink hexie finished up for April.

Now, on to April’s pink projects. On the right are my pink houses for On the Town, so one of three monthly RSC2026 projects checked off. On the left is my 2024 Breast Cancer Awareness quilt that never got finished that year. It was a kit that I got on sale, made 11 star blocks, then set it aside & forgot it. This week, I finished the stars, made the strip sets & subcut for the chain blocks, assembled some of those & added sashing to the first two rows. Yay for pink!

With all my March blocks done, I looked at red in the studio. I found these leftover block parts from Cherry Crunch & found that if I made a few more white string blocks & then snowballed the others, I could have a baby donation with some borders. So this is ready for my quilting partner to do her magic & then get it donated to Joyful Welcome.

These MSQC pinwheels were begun as an L&E project a couple of years ago. I pulled out the box & found that I had sewed some of the layer cake sections ready to cut into 8-at-a-time HSTs & finished 3 blocks. Many 5″ squares were cut to add to the HSTs, although as I’m working, I see that I will need to dig into my RWB drawer & cut more. But I spent quite a while this week churning out pinwheels & throwing them on the wall. The process makes mirror wheels so each row will spin in opposite directions, which is why I have 2 columns to keep things separate. I may keep working on these or jump into the new color. Who knows?

For those of you who read last week my moaning about no bright reds, guess what? I remembered that I had pulled a ton of reds into a box to make “Winter Cardinal” by Bonnie Hunter last year. But I never got around to starting it & there they sat. So some of these Nine-Patches got brights! See why I need to get projects done? And in some cases, started & done? Yes, that’s why this is the year of the finishes.