First Finish of 2025!

Last year at this time I had 12 finishes under my belt. I knew this was not going to be a productive year for quilting, but only one finish is kind of sad. That said, I'm pretty happy with the finish.

I think the attic window with a panel turned out pretty well. It's funny how your brain can make things line up even when they really don't. This quilt is for a rally in Oregon.

I've also been appliqueing lots of little scooters onto what will eventually become luggage tags. All of these have the applique sewing done, but I have quite a few left to do.

The piles are loosely organized by color. Some you can see which color thread I'll be using on them because the thread is right on top of the pile. Some of the larger piles will be further subdivided when I get to that color family. I think I've probably got over half the appliques sewn at this point. I'm going to be working on cutting out the vinyl and more interfacing this weekend. 

I did start FMQ a king sized quilt this week. I've just passed the halfway point. Hopefully I'll finish quilting it next week, and then I'll need to baste something else, because I don't have anything else basted right now. I have a closet full of quilt tops, so it's just a matter of finding a backing to go with a top, and then I'll be ready to baste. 

DH is finally having some extra time, so he's started tackling his to do list. I asked for new lighting for the walk in pantry, and I'm loving it! There are two lights in there, but one had a short in it, so it rarely worked, and neither lights were very bright. I asked for LED lights instead, and it's like a whole new space! Now I can actually read the expiration dates without hauling packages into the kitchen. 

DD#1 sent me a pic of one of the new additions on the homestead. I knew they wanted to restart their chicken and duck flocks after the move, but this didn't look like either one to me. They had told me they weren't sure they would be able to get chickens this year due to the avian flu causing shortages, so they might start with ducks instead. I'm a city girl, so when she made me guess, I just thought, not a duck, not a chicken, maybe a goose? Turns out they got a couple baby turkeys (called poults, look at me learning stuff!) but they also scored some baby chickens as well! I am excited for them to see their new homestead working out so well. 

Baby Shower

DD#2 and I hosted a baby shower at my house on Saturday. It was a Disney Princess/tea party themed shower. The expectant mother is one of my "adopted" kids, not really adopted, but one of the family nevertheless. 

There was savory food.

And lots of sweets.

Cold drinks here, and hot drinks elsewhere because of course there were multiple types of tea! 

Here's a close of of the diaper cake my sister made! Isn't that awesome?

We had an area with baby safe paints and blocks for people to decorate, we played a couple games outside as well. 

We even had a photo booth for the social media posts. 

It was getting warm outside so we had planned to open gifts inside. Here's the guest of honor opening a teddy bear made by my mother for the baby.

And here she is opening up the baby quilt I made from leftovers of her wedding quilt. It made her cry, which wasn't my intention, but this baby was a long time coming and I think seeing parts of her wedding quilt in there, really made the long journey hit home. 

Don't forget to grab a shower favor on the way out! 

Now that the shower is over, Easter is coming right up, but DD#2 is hosting that! 

I have gotten some sewing in. I'm about 3/4 of the way done quilting that scooter quilt. I've also started sewing around the scooter appliques for the 400 luggage tags I'm making. I'm not sure how long it's going to take to get that many luggage tags done. Quilting the scooter quilt is the first FMQ I've done in months, and applique isn't something I do often, so I'm not particularly quick at it. Now that I can start getting into a routine again, I'm planning to FMQ an hour each day on my Janome, then work on luggage tags on the Bernina, and if I get to where I really need some piecing time, I'll switch to my Singer 201 and piece on it. It may sound crazy to have three machines set up to sew at all times, but for me, it works. 

Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder?

 I know I've been MIA for a couple months, my last blog post was the end of January, and now it's April. In case you've been wondering, DH and I are fine, but there's a lot going on with other members of the family, so I really haven't been sewing at all. We ended up taking a lengthy, unplanned trip to see my parents, but a little bit of quilty stuff snuck in. 

I saw the world's largest quilting needle in Paducah, Kentucky. I went to Hanock's of Paducah also. I actually didn't buy anything there, which even surprised me! I've ordered from them lots of times. DH offered to take me to the National Quilting Museum, but I just wasn't into spending the time or the money that day to do it.

Not that I didn't spend any money on quilting on the trip. 

We went to Marshall Dry Goods in Batesville, Arkansas, and I bought a couple bundles of fabric at wholesale prices. I actually was waited on by Marshall himself, and he showed me the new battings they've just developed. I've been buying from Marshall Dry Goods for years, and this was the second time I've gotten to go in person. If we are anywhere near there, we detour so I can save the shipping fees.

DH took me to Paris two days in a row.

Paris, Arkansas

And Paris, Texas. Technically I have been to Paris, France, but only the airport, and it was so foggy we couldn't see any of the city. 

We saw a couple of our kids and several grandkids on the trip. We managed to miss the worst of the weather issues, but unfortunately DS the Elder and family didn't. Shortly after we left seeing him, they were hit by a tornado. They are fine, but their apartment building is not, so now they are picking up the pieces of their lives and in temporary housing. We saw a LOT of tornado damage on the trip, and it's looking like a bad year for weather. 

This tornado went over DD#1's house the same day, but thankfully, it didn't touch down. It was weird to have two of my kids in tornado's paths within an hour of each other, and they don't even live in the same state. 

We've actually been home for a bit, but I still wasn't sewing, so I didn't have much to blog about. I'm throwing a baby shower on Saturday, so I've been working on stuff for that. I did make a stack of burp rags for the baby, but funnily enough, I did not need to make a quilt. I had made a quilt from leftovers of their wedding quilt, and kept it in case they ever had a girl. Guess, what? The baby is a girl, so quilt was already done. One of my nieces is also pregnant, and I'm using a quilt I had already made for her baby too. 

DH wants another scooter quilt to raffle off, so I got to work and just sewed the borders on a few minutes ago. I started out with a panel and no plan. I've been wanting to try the Attic Windows illusion with a panel, so I started with that.

This is wider than tall, so I needed to add something to the top and bottom.

I auditioned several options on EQ, and decided on this. It was a lot of HST's to cut, so I decided to die cut them.

Is there waste with die cutting? Well, here's the waste from almost 400 HST's next to my 60mm rotary cutter. Perfectly cut HST's with no dog ears to trim? I'll take the waste. Sometimes I use my EZ Angle ruler to cut HST's, and I like doing that just fine, but this was faster, and in this case, speed matters.

Here's the quilt top, made in under a week. The baby shower is Saturday, and all my free time between now and them will be either house cleaning or other shower preparations. I'm hoping to baste this quilt on Sunday, and if I can, I should be able to finish it by next weekend. 

This year is shaping up to be a lot different than we had planned. I knew it wasn't going to be great year for quilting, but now it's looking like it will be a worse year for quilting than I knew. That's OK, life happens and sometimes things get put on the back burner. When I have something to show, I'll blog, if I haven't done any sewing, I won't. This year the blog will be sporadic, so please hang in there, I haven't lost my love of blogging, just lost the time to sew.