General

It turns out that green-centric WIPs are thin on the ground in my studio. So I pulled out an old group quilt project. I hated every minute of these birds & when my partners went ahead & finished on their own, I left it in the box. I don’t know how long ago we did this but it was long before COVID, so…..years.

One of my quilting partners gave me a gift for Christmas of free quilting, so I told her I would get the birds done & have her quilt it. She LOVES the birds, so that will be fun for her. These are the last two birds I needed to do before sashing & border.

I’ve since done a couple other quilts by The Pattern Basket & understand her method of pattern writing, plus I have more experience & all the things that frustrated me back then seemed no big deal now. So these went together quickly. I also got the first two rows sashed this week, but with two funerals this week, one of which included an overnight trip, I didn’t have much sewing time. But I’m thinking that even with the short month, I should stay on track with green blocks & maybe start the houses??

Rocky Road to Grayson is a blue WIP January finish! First goal accomplished. I started in January 2022, so it’s been around the studio for an age. It took much longer than I anticipated to finish, so I did not get any blue houses made for the Quilter’s Cove QAL.

I got seven full & one half block made for Starlets by Modernly Morgan & 14 string blocks for Stardust. The previously posted Nine-Patch & Snowball blocks round out my goals for the month. So I feel pretty dang good about things, even without the houses.

I got blue binding made & attached to County Fair from last year’s RSC & evening binding has begun.

Since it’s blue this month, I thought I’d report on my orange peels. I’m appliqueing these by hand each Monday morning in my handwork group. I got them all out this month to check on progress. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, so I should finish these up this year!

These charity baby quilts got bound this week & are ready to be donated. The left was made from orphan pieces leftover from the quilt I just finished, & the right was made from a friend’s unwanted charm pack.

I like to do a new challenge every so often, so here’s my fun change-up for 2026, which is to match up the books that you’ve read with the pictures on the bingo card.

#1-Scraptastic Stars by Melissa Corry made it to flimsy stage & is waiting to be quilted

#2-County Fair by Amy Smart is currently at the quilter

#3-2.5″ Rail Fence blocks were begun in 2024 & continued this year; it’s a flimsy ready to be donated to Many Hands Many Hearts with my February box

I finished these County Fair blocks in August. The pattern is by Amy Smart, found in the book, “Scrap School” by Lissa Alexander. Last week I cut sashing strips, cornerstones, & setting triangles. This week I got it up on the wall & the photo is cracking me up. I put the blocks up with my head to the side in order to see the rows come together & the result is a diagonal slog to the right. Hilarious! But if you look in the upper left, I have the first two rows together, plus the next two rows sewed with a sashing strip made. So a nice start. The sashing all came from backing trimmings. I backed two quilts recently in the new Hush Hush wide back that has all the prints from the line included in small repeating chunks. So it cuts up into lovely low volume pieces that compliment the LV squares. I had the pink cornerstone fabric in my stash. I will have to shop the stash for a colored stop border, then more of the backing trimmings. Looking ahead at a busy week, maybe two weeks to get this together??