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.)

Finishes

Completing the WELCA (Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church) raffle quilt was one of the goals I wanted to get done in the first quarter of this year. Here it is — quilted and bound, and finished!

I’m super happy with it, and more importantly, I’m super be happy to get it finished early. I don’t know if you remember, but I started with a donated top and took most of it apart. What remained was the center section including the piano key border. I added the rest of the borders until it was 96” x 96”. We typically do better on the raffles when the quilt is fairly large. We have a Deborah Circle meeting next week, so I will take this and drop it off. I’m going to check it off my goal list!

I also quilted a customer quilt. It will be a gift for her grandson who is turning 18.

It had a few challenges, but I got it done! It is made of really heavy fabric—think upholstery and drapery fabric. She also wanted a fluffier batting than I typically use, so I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some poly Mountain Mist batting.

I play Bunco today, but we don’t play until 11, so I will go by the shop and load another quilt. I need to keep things moving as much as possible since I’m still a little behind from the holidays. I have been sewing a little in the evenings on RSC blocks and some other scrap blocks, but I’ll leave that for another post. Have a good Thursday everyone!

Tuesday Newsday

I’ve been working on lots of things, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing very many things. There were a lot of interruptions last week and several meetings. Two were board meetings to strategize for the new year. It seems like everyone starts the year wanting to accomplish all the things we should have done last year (and maybe the year before). It’s pretty much the same as setting my personal goals here on my blog. Haha! How many things didn’t get done last year, and I put them on the list for this year? 

I was able to get a Day One quilt on the frame.

I’m trying out a new quilting design, Birds of a Feather. It’s quilting out really well.

I brought a kit home from church and got it sewn.

These quilts are for Lutheran World Relief. We work with donated fabric, and we work really hard to make attractive quilts with what we are given. It didn’t take very long to get this one pieced, and I’ll take it back to the church today.

I got the borders sewn on the two potato chip baby quilts I did a week ago. 

I like the teeth on the red dinosaurs

I smile every time I look at it. I will be anxious to get them quilted and donated.

Would you believe my Christmas cactus just started blooming? They are really late this year! The white one is still small. I will probably repot it this spring.

The pink bloomed first.

I think they were first last year also.

The red is the last bloomer. Lots of buds.

I brought it inside and finally had one bloom open. 

Today is my volunteer day at church where we work in making lap covers. We also have Tuesday Friends where we get together at an area restaurant for lunch. In other news, I got to watch the Texans game last night, and it was pretty exciting. 

Quilting Work

I admit it! I am having a hard time getting back on task after the holidays. I have managed to get a few customer quilts done, and I have another one loaded on the frame right now waiting its turn. This is a funny one:

It’s Bigfoot! The middle is a panel, and the rest is borders from various Bigfoot fabrics. The one with the little photos is really funny.

He is riding a four wheeler, playing a guitar, paddling a canoe, etc. she made it for her son, and it’s pretty large.

Besides being funny, I mostly think he’s pretty ugly, but guess what? My son-in-law wants one, so I went and bought enough fabric to make him his own Bigfoot quilt.

These two are cute. One for a new baby and one for the older sibling!

The astronomy-type quilts seem to be really popular right now. I quilted some in 2025, and now two more. 

Another thing: I have been doing pretty well on tracking my goals. Oh I’m not patting myself on the back; I know we’re only on the second week of January. I’m trying to make a strong start though. I walked about 5,000 steps on the 1st, but all the other days have been over 6,000. I’m using the weight watcher app to track what I eat, and I’m doing well with that, except for Tuesday, when Betty and I went to Cuero and ate Mexican food. I split my meal into lunch and supper, but according to the app, I still exceeded my points for that day. I’m not doing as well with drinking water, at least I don’t feel like I am. I’m not really tracking it so I don’t know for sure. In general though, I don’t do as well on things I don’t track. My sewing/quilting goals are off to a good start, I have started back on the RSC blocks, and I will get the TLC raffle quilt done soon. I have some tops finished to quilt for charity donations too, it’s just a matter of getting the quilt machine freed up long enough to get them done. I did pick another BOM to work on, but I haven’t had time to start it yet. Anyway, have a good day wherever you are reading this!

Still Playing with Scraps

It was a scrappy weekend! I had some things to do in the house, but I admit I didn't get it all done. In fact, I still need to get the laundry done and get the bathrooms cleaned. I will need to start a load of clothes tonight so I have clean clothes to wear this week! 

I spent a lot of time sewing and got a few things finished or close to finished. I got the other baby quilt pieced from the 2" x 3.5" rectangles.

I actually had to cut some more rectangles to finish it. That wasn't what I wanted to do, but I was motivated to use up what I had. Unfortunately, I cut too many and have some leftovers.

Not too many, but I probably won’t throw them away, so I will have to think of a way to get them used up. Still, it’s two tops from some random scraps. Here's the first one I did between Christmas and New Year's:

I think the one I sewed first has a bigger variety of fabric, but they are both okay. I thought I might have some fabric I could use for borders, but nothing struck my fancy.  I went to Hobby Lobby and found two prints I plan to use. I hope to get the borders on soon. 

I had a bag of scraps I bought at one of the quilt shops that had 64 charm squares of a juvenile print in it, and I decided to see how many baby quilts I could get out of those. Here's what I ended up with:

I didn't have enough of the squares to do the extra border around the second one, but I found something that would work for a wide outer border to make it big enough to be useable. I like the cute little sea creatures in the charm squares, and I'm glad to use it up. There was a lot of light coming through the windows when I took the pictures. The one I took the night before shows up the colors better.

It was taken before I added the outside border. 

I’m linking to Quilting is More Fun than Housework. The link is is my sidebar!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

A New Start for the New Year

I’m happy to say I was able to start my RSC 2026 blocks. I have two or three different blocks in mind, but I made a start on one of them. I have been making 16-patch blocks for a few weeks with the 2.5” scraps Betty gave me.

They are fun and don’t require much thought, and I managed to get 15 of them pieced in pretty short order.

My plan is to use the RSC color of the month to add the star points to these 16-patches. The January color is blue, and I got one done.

I really like this big block. And, most importantly, I think the plan is sustainable. I put the box of 2.5” squares by the machine to use as leaders/enders, so I can get them made without a lot of effort. I bought two yards (I hope it’s enough!) of the white on white, and I can get those pieces precut, and I will only need to cut the colored star points each month. My biggest issue is fizzling out mid-year, so sustainable is necessary for me. 

I got enough blue and white cut to make another block, and I hope to get that done today. I have church this morning and the Texans play at noon, so we’ll see if I have time. 

I’m still thinking about what other RSC blocks I can work on. I’ve done string blocks before, and that’s a good choice, but I don’t know. The 16-patch stars use 4.5” strips for the monthly colors, and I need something to use the leftovers from cutting the 4.5” strips. Maybe nine patches, maybe string blocks, we’ll see how it works out. 

Happy New Year

To all of my blog readers and followers:

I haven’t been too excited about this new year….but I will get there. I have spent a little time thinking about what I want to accomplish this year. I didn’t do too well with last year’s list; I think I didn’t stay as focused as I should have. It’s very easy to get caught up in “busyness”, which generates a lot of activity, but none of it is very intentional. In fact, I felt like I was sort of jumping from one thing to another—“putting out fires”. My general lack of self discipline doesn’t help either. I’m really good at putting off the things I don’t want to do. I’m not sure how to overcome all of that, but I want to work on it. At my age, I am not going to change much, but there is always room for improvement.

One area that needs to improve is all the health-related things. I spent November and December eating whatever I wanted and packed on six pounds in just two months. My pants are tight! Starting today, the unhealthy foods are not an option. I eat lunch out a lot, and it’s frequently Mexican food, but I can find healthier options for that too. I use a smart watch that tracks my daily steps, and I typically average 6000-7000 steps a day. For the past few months, I’m lucky to reach 3000 steps. That can definitely be corrected. My blood pressure has started to creep up, and the cardiologist asked me if I was getting enough physical activity. It will be interesting to see if it goes down when my step increase.

My quilt related goals were the hardest to figure out. There are just so many choices! There are a couple of “have to do” things.

1) Raffle quilt for Trinity Lutheran Church (my church).

2) Raffle quilt for Christ the Victor Lutheran Church.

3) Raffle quilt for the Refugio church (I don’t know the name or the denomination—they just show up every year and buy a quilt from me).

4) Quilt for the Trinity auction.

I started two BOM’s last year that didn’t get completed. I think I would like to get those finished and maybe start one or two more.

I also started the Barn Star Sampler quilt and got stalled out on the first block! I want to get that out and start working on it. I just hope I can find all the pieces!

About this time last year, I started the Women of the Bible quilt. When I put section A together I found a mistake, and then I lost the desire to work on it. Again, I’m good at putting off the things I don’t want to do. I could pass it on to someone else who might finish it, but after thinking about it, I really do want to finish it myself. I just need to get past the reluctance to fix the mistake. 

I wanted to make a goal about using up my scraps, but I don’t think I will ever use all of them. My longarm quilting continually generates more plus I have friends who gift me their scraps. One thing I want to do is to get back to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I sat last year out, but I found I missed it, so I will start again this year. 

One more goal: I want to make at least six charity quilts. I need to do two more for Day One Graduation Project, and I have some baby panels to finish for Gabriel Project. Oh course, more is better, but I would be happy with six. 

I hope it will be a successful year for all of us. I am anxious to get started on these goals and maybe see some progress each month.