A BOM

In 2025, I didn’t do the BOM from A Quilting Life, but Betty did. She printed out all the clues and saved them for me in case I get a sudden need to make it! She is an enabler! Here’s a picture of her finished top: 

I probably should have ironed it before I took the picture! She is busy stashbusting and used all scraps. The border fabric doesn’t show up well in my pic, but it’s a print we both fell in love with when we were out shopping one day. We each bought 2 yards so we could use it for borders. I haven’t used mine yet. 

I was able to get the borders on my 8 happy blocks.

I will try to get them in the mail as soon as this weather breaks. The deadline on these is the end of February, so I finished with time to spare. Here’s a link to the post if you want to participate. They are fun to make. 

Did I mention it’s cold here? Thirty degrees as I’m typing this. I stayed home most of the day yesterday and got a lot of sewing done. I thought about making some cookies, but I managed to talk myself out of it. Being cooped up indoors is not good for my diet, and if I had homemade cookies here, I wouldn’t have any restraint! 

I’ll see if I can get some projects completed this afternoon. Round 1 of my Stay at Home round Robin is closed to finished, and I have a scrappy charm pack quilt I want to work on. 

More Scrappy Blues

Good morning friends. I’m still playing with scraps. I hade made four blue nine patches last week,

and I was undecided about what to do with them. I had some leftover blue strips, and I played around and came up with this. 

I like them, but I still don’t know what I will do with them. I’m thinking I can use the neutral as a sashing assuming I have enough left.

I got another 16-patch star made with light blue this time. 

It’s pretty cute, but I think it will be the last blue one. I’ll wait for the February color before I make more. 

I was hoping to cut some blue batiks with my new Accuquilt dies, but I can’t seem to find any extra time right now. All the batiks are put away in a tote, and it’s just more effort than I want to got through right now to get the totes out and dig through them. If I get time later in the year, I can always catch up with any missed colors. 

Have a good weekend. I’m going tonight to see the Eagles Ultimate Experience. It’s an Eagles cover band, and I’m hoping it will be good. Hotel California has been playing in my head for a few days now, and I can’t get it out! 

Linking to RSC.

Manx Quilting

I spent yesterday at quilt guild making ONE BLOCK! And, I didn’t even finish it! In my defense, it was all hand sewing, and it was a new to me technique. We learned about the history of Manx quilting, and then Beth showed us how to make our own. Here’s one Beth made as a demo:

I copied this from AI:

Manx quilting is a resourceful, traditional patchwork technique from the Isle of Mann, characterized by using fabric scraps, hand measurements (thumb, middle finger), and a unique "folded log cabin" method where fabric strips are folded and sewn onto a foundation square, often without batting, creating thick, durable blocks for warm bedding. It's known for its practicality, minimal tools (needle, thread, knife/tearing), and distinct layered, textured look, perfect for summer quilts due to the lack of batting. 

Basically you use your hand for the measurements of the foundation, center, and 

strips. The strips are all hand sewn onto a foundation.

Here’s mine:

It’s not very good, and I don’t know if I’ll continue making blocks or not. I kind of doubt it. I didn’t get very far, but anytime I sew with a group, I spend more time chatting and looking at everyone else’s work than I do sewing. 

Edit: Here’s a full quilt made by Beth. She said she hand sewed 83 blocks and set them on point. 

In the meantime we are forecasted to have a freeze this weekend. 

I have plenty of tortillas, but I need to get a loaf of bread and some milk. It will be good weather for staying home and sewing. I’m going to move the outside plants into the garage and cover the ones that are planted in the ground. I have already drained the sprinkler system, but I still need to cover some outdoor faucets. 

Lots of Finishes

I got the binding finished on my Day One Graduation Quilt. 

I like the way I turned out! I used solid gray for the binding and for the back.  

Edit: I forgot to add the picture of the back! Here it is:

This quilt pattern (Birds of a Feather) looks great on the solid-colored fabric. Our guild pledged 25 graduation hilts for 2026, and they are due in March. I think we have 11 so far. I am going to ask at our meeting if all interested parties can get a few more done so we can meet our goal. I quilted one for another guild member. 

She cut those print squares from a plaid fabric. Those wonky squares kind of make me crazy, but I need to get over it! We all have different ideas I guess. 

I got two customer quilts finished for Janice. 

Both are pretty. I’m hoping she’ll donate one or both of them to our Day One drive, but that’s just me hoping! 

I will deliver the quilts today at our guild meeting. Our scheduled workshop is “Manx” quilting. I had to google it—it’s not something I’ve done before—but I have some squares and strips precut so I can try it. One of my favorite things about quilt guild is the workshops. I learn a lot of new things from them. 

FOMO or Squirrels or……

I have no resistance when it comes to taking on new projects! I was catching up Saturday on blog reading, and I saw several people’s posts about their center block for the Stay At Home Round Robin. There were some really cool centers! I went to the main site, and there was still time to join in. I got busy, and this is what I came up with:

I seem to be stuck on stars lately. I’ve had a picture of this pinned to my Pinterest board for a while, but it doesn’t have any measurements or instructions. That’s okay, I did my own thing. The centers are from a chunk of fabric that was in my scrap box. I have some yardage also, so it seemed like a good choice. I pulled some random colored scraps to make the star points. Would you believe it turned out to be 24”? I like it, and we’ll see what I can do with it. Here’s the link to the main page. 

Well, I didn’t stop there. Betty sent me a picture of her January block for the 2026 BOM from A Quilting Life. 

I had been thinking of starting a new BOM but couldn’t make up my mind. Oh gee. I had a few yards of a border print Betty had given me. Her sister bought it at a garage sale. 

It’s really old, but I do love any and all border prints, so that was my incentive to make a block.

I dug out some older fat quarters that would work with the border print. I like Betty’s block better, but I was limited to what works with my focus fabric.

I’m not sure I will love it, but I’ll try to keep an open mind until I get a little farther along. 

It’s been cold—good weather for soup!

Ground beef with potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. It’s so good on a cold night! I was wishing I had some homemade bread to eat with it, but I settled for saltines. Have a good week, and stay warm wherever you are!

RSC Update

I am continuing to work on my blue blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time thinking about what I want to work on than actually working on them. Does anyone else feel that way? I’m also surprised at how many blue scraps I keep coming up with. Blue is not my favorite color, but I sure seem to have a lot of it. I’m hoping this challenge will help me use up some of it! It probably won’t make any noticeable impact! 

I made another one of the big stars with the 16-patch center.

I still really like this block, and I’m wondering how many I should make of each color. They are 16”, so it wouldn’t take that many to make a quilt……maybe 20 total, and we have 12 months. Of course, we’re still in the January honeymoon period when I think I will go all year, and I usually don’t make it past the summer when I get busy with yard work and canning, so we’ll see. Maybe I should shoot for 3-4 per month. I’m continuing to work on the 16-patch centers as leaders and enders, and I got another done this week. 

I also sewed some nine patch blocks 

No plans on these, other than I really like nine patches and they are fun to sew. When I was busy pulling out the blue scraps, there were some smaller strips, and these blocks are 6” so that works out for using up some 2.5” strips. My plan is to keep the background consistent. I bought a few yards of the background fabric when I was doing collage quilts, and it’s time to use it for something. 

My goal for now is to get a few more blocks made this month, and to stick with it through the end of the year. (Linking to SoScrappy.)

Scrappy Dilemma

There is a new block drive for Hands to Help.  I am happy to send some blocks. I wasn’t able to participate in the last block drive, but I have time to make a few right now, and I do like making “happy blocks”. My problem is reading directions! Seriously. I made some four patches, and I was so happy with them. I lined them up and took a picture.

Then I re-read the directions, and it said not to mix red, pink, yellow color families with blue, green, purple color families. Okay. The block on the top right is pink and purple. The middle right has a green block with orange and yellow blocks. <sigh> I redid the pink and purple and made two blocks from the original one.

I really liked the orange, yellow, green one, so I’ll just keep it. 

I made a couple more red, yellow, pink, and came up with this:

Once I finish putting borders on, there should be eight blocks to mail. It’s not a whole lot but postage costs are so high these days! (Linking to Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.)