I'm Going In!

 Overall, my quilting supplies are pretty organized. Even the part I'm getting ready to show you is mostly organized, it's just too much overflow. The stuff that isn't easily stored in my sewing or fabric rooms is put into time out "under the stairs" (cue spooky music). 

I've been putting off dealing with this area, but I need to cut my denim scraps up for luggage tags. For a while it seems like everyone was giving me jeans to use for quilting projects, but now no one is. I have three totes with denim in them, and of course they are at the very back. By the end of this year, I expect all three totes to be empty. I decided to make 400 luggage tags, instead of the 200 I originally planned. They will be giveaways at DH's business events. The luggage tags will take up a lot of the denim, and I have a big project planned for Christmas 2025 that should use the remaining denim. When I looked at this area, it looked pretty overwhelming, but at a glance I could tell there was actually several things that had a place to live, I had just been too lazy to put them away. Let's start there.

Just putting away what belonged elsewhere helped quite a bit, but that denim I need is still in the very back. 

Three totes of denim scraps just like I thought. I have more patterned denim than I remember, but I'll either use it in projects this year, or it will be donated for someone else to use. These totes will not be going back under the stairs. 

After taking everything out from under the stairs, I had to look at how to put things back under the stairs. I have several totes with men shirts to use for quilting, divided by color. I don't have any shirt projects planned right now, so those can definitely go in the back for now. All my flannel is in totes, because it's too bulky for me to want to store it one shelves. I will probably need to get into the flannel this year, but I still have room in the back, so I stack it in the back as well, but I'm very mindful what I put in front of that.   

I found one tote less than half full, with a few pieces of fabric from which I had meant to make DH scrub tops. Well, now that he's retired, that's not a thing (talk about procrastination!) so I left that tote out. The fabrics can either be put onto my fabric shelves, or be cut up for my donation pillowcases, since they are all novelty prints. Whatever I use them for, they aren't going back under the stairs. I found another tote that had yardgage in it that didn't fit on my shelves at the time. I do have some space on my shelves, but not enough for that whole tote. Again, I'm planning to make and donate 100 pillowcases this year, so I think I will have room for all of that fabric on the shelves soon. I decided to keep that tote out too. 

With three totes of denim staying out, and two totes with fabric staying out, putting things back under the stairs was easier than taking it all out. Especially since I had taken the time to put so much away that actually had a spot and just wasn't put it belonged.

It's still a lot, but not quite as overwhelming. Unless I stop using flannel and mens shirts, I'll always have a few totes. I do have a lot fewer totes that I used to, and I actually emptied two totes today. Not all the totes are full, so when I realized how little was in some of them, I did some rearranging. Come to think of it, one of the ones I emptied would be great to store the finished luggage tags in! It's a shallower tote, and should fit them quite well. 

Do I have some totes that are currently in my way? Yes, but they won't be in my way for that long. Once I get all the luggage tags prepped, I'll start sewing them up, and I'll start prepping the pillowcase project. As I empty totes I'll just store the empty ones in the storage room, in case we ever move, I could use them then. 

I've got about 250 scooter silhouettes cut out now. I told DH if he ever wants me to make a bunch of these again, I'm having a custom die made to cut out both the scooter and the luggage tags themselves. If he were paying me an hourly wage to do this, the custom die would pay for itself in no time at all. At least the denim and the interfacing for the luggage tags can be rotary cut! I rotary cut the clear vinyl too, but it can be tricky since it can stick to the ruler. Even with sewing around the appliques, sewing the luggage tags takes a fraction of the time prepping them does. 

The only sewing I've done this week is working on assembling some quilts, but none of those are finished. I haven't done any FMQ yet this year! We've still got out of town visitors in town, so we've been having fun with them. DH is getting his Retirement in Real Time YouTube channel channel going. He's learning a lot, and once that channel is going he's hoping to start a scooter channel as well, to go along with his scooter magazine. He's only really retired from nursing, not from working! 

My routine is all thrown off with him not having a schedule, so we'll both have to make adjustments, which we expected. We'll get it figured out!

The Christmas of Denim Jackets

I made a lot of stuff for Christmas 2024. One of the things I did was upcycle denim jackets to customized one of a kind jackets that reflected the recipients interests. I already showed my sisters jacket a couple posts ago, but here are pics of the ones I did for my grandkids.

 The Dragon Jacket

Star Wars #1

Star Wars #2

Horse Fan

Kitties All Around

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

Video Games

When Bowser is your favorite Mario Character

Paw Patrol

For the denim jackets I bought as many as I could second hand. I started shopping for them in June. I did have to buy a couple of them new, but my goal was to upcycle when I could. The amount of clothes going to landfills is insane, and if I can give old wearable jackets a new life, I wanted to go that route. 

Two of my other grandkids got Minecraft quilts, and I've already shown those. All the grandkids got two pillowcases for Christmas, one holiday pillowcase, and one that went with their interests. 

 I also took some extra units and made big hot pads. I used one layer of cotton batting and a layer of insulbrite so hot pans and casseroles could be placed directly on top.

DD#1 even sent me a photo of her hot pad in action! She has the largest family, so she got a larger hot pad. 

I felt really good about turning finds from second hand shops and misc units hanging around the sewing studio into useful gifts. I'm hoping to be able to upcycle a few things for Christmas 2026 too! The grandkids liked their jackets a lot more than I expected! A lot of kids are disappointed when they get clothes instead of a shiny new toy, but the jackets went over really well. I've been trying to think outside the box on gifts, I like giving useful things or experiences much more than stuff that ends up as clutter. 

If any of you have some outside the box gift ideas, please share them with me! I'm trying to keep the gift budget well in hand, but also give nice gifts too. 

Year End Reckoning and 2025 Goals

New Year's Eve and/or Day is a great time to go over my goals, whether I met them or not. 

These are my empty thread spools for the year. They represent 30,002 yards or just over 17 miles of thread! I finished 40 quilts in 2024, 30 of which were UFO's. That is a personal record for me, one I do not plan to break in 2025.

So how did I do on my 2024 goals?

1) Make bed quilts for four of my grandsons ☑️

2) Two baby quilts ☑️

3) 40 finishes ☑️

4) Make quilts for my nieces and nephews that don't have one from me- Not finished, but I have one done, one ready to quilt, and several ready to assemble, so well on my way. 

5) One empty hanger in the quilt closet 🤣 Not even close! The problem is I'm making quilts faster than I finish them! I know at this rate I'll never catch up, which is why for 2025, I'm making several non-quilty sewing goals. 

So what are my 2025 goals?

1) I'd like to finish all the niece and nephew quilts.

2) I'd like to finish all the queen/king sized quilts that are started.

3) I have at least one scooter quilt that will be a new start, and I'd like to make DH a quilt from his scrub tops to celebrate his retirement. 

4) I'd like to make 100 pillowcases to donate. I certainly have enough fabric to do that easily, and once the pillowcases are cut out, they don't take long to sew up. I made about 36 this year, in about three weeks from start to finish, so I don't find this an unreasonable goal. 

5) I have a goal to make at least 200 scooter themed luggage tags for DH to use as giveaways at Scooter Zine events we have planned. 

Besides the big quilts in progress I want to get finished, I have no goals for UFO's next year. Will I work on them? Absolutely, but I don't care how many I get done. I think there is 0% chance I'll end 2025 with an empty hanger in the quilt closet. I started 2024 with all the hangers full, plus a huge laundry basket filled with quilt tops. Even with 30 UFO finishes, I have five quilt tops not on hangers, plus some hangers have 2 quilt tops on them. I finished three quilt tops in the last couple weeks, I have another on the design wall, and I have piles of quilt blocks everywhere waiting to be assembled. While the weather is cool, I hope to assemble as many of those quilts as I can. I hate assembling quilts in the summer, since those long rows are always piled up on my lap. I don't mind quilting during the summer, partly because the quilt is only on my lap for a day or two while I'm working on the center, and probably mostly because I quilt by timer and limit FMQ to an hour per day. I can handle it for an hour. 

I'm hoping that by working on pillowcases and luggage tags for a bit of next year, while still doing my hour of FMQ per day, I'll slow down on the piecing, and possibly start catching up on the quilting. I did stock up on quilting thread, but I've been avoiding buying fabric, so maybe I'll see some overall progress. I think 2025 will be quite a ride, so besides finishing things already started, I'm opting for quicker goals. Granted, I'm making a lot of pillowcases, and a lot of luggage tags, but those all take a much shorter time than a quilt. 

All the Christmas gifts have been given now, but I think I'll share pics of those next week! 

Mystery Quilt Surprise and Finish #40

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! Yesterday was a low key day for us, my sister came over for lunch, and we opened the things in our stockings.

DH put some fun fat quarters in my stocking! We're actually waiting until Sunday to open the bigger gifts, that's when we'll have family Christmas with the local kids and grandkids. My sister couldn't wait anymore for one of her gifts. She knew I was customizing a denim jacket for her, but she had no idea what I was doing on it. 

My sister is very creative, and unlike me with my quilting obsession, she does all kinds of crafts. Besides a brief interlude with ceramics back in the 80's, all of my craft endeavors have been sewing related, but my sister does it all. She can draw, paint, make anything out of paper or cardboard (She's made baskets and flowers out of toilet paper tubes!), and she can also sew. I decided to celebrate her creativity on her jacket. Most of my grandkids are also getting customized denim jackets, but not all of them have received them yet, so I won't show them yet. 

Last week I was talking about how to me, the Greek mystery quilt didn't seem cohesive. On Christmas Day, I found out the reasoning behind the designer's thoughts. The entire quilt is actually a game board and she gave us printables for the cards and pieces should we want to play! That was quite a surprise, and a fun idea for a quilt. I'm not a big board game person, so I don't plan on doing that, but it was a good surprise. 

This is finish number 40 for 2024, so I met my goal! It is a king sized quilt, 108" x 108", and will be my last finish for the year. The only other quilt I have basted is also a king, and I'm not even sure I'll have time to start it before the new year starts, never mind finish it! I do not have a longarm, and I need a lot more days off when I'm quilting the huge quilts so my RSI in my arm doesn't get too angry. With twin sized quilts and smaller, I can keep my RSI under control with setting a timer and only FMQ one hour per day. With the bigger quilts, there is so much pushing and pulling the bulk, that even a timer can't completely keep the pain away. Why don't I just pay for longarm quilting? For a quilt that size, it would cost me $350 to get it quilted, and that's just a pantograph, no custom quilting. That's just not an amount I'm willing to pay.

I have several more queen/king quilts I want to make, and those will be my focus for next year. Most of them are already started, in fact, most are ready for assembly or waiting for borders. I'm perfectly OK with getting a only a few finishes next year, if I can knock the largest quilts off my list. I know I only have so many queen/king sized quilts left in me, before I will have to switch to having them longarm quilted, or only make smaller quilts. I figure if I concentrate on the largest quilts next year, I can get those crossed off my list, and take my time quilting them, giving my arm as much rest time as needed. 

I've got a busy schedule for a while. Right now I'm dogsitting, I'm hosting the Family Christmas on Sunday, I've got grandkids spending a couple nights next week, and a bunch of us are going to the zoo to see the Christmas lights there. The first weekend in January, we are cohosting a party for my MIL, and the second weekend in January, I'm hosting a birthday party for the grandtwins. I'll be dogsitting my sister's dog somewhere in there too. I won't get much time in the sewing for a while, so instead, I'm working on some project prep. 

We have several events in the works for DH's scooter magazine next year, and I want to make at least 200 scooter themed luggage tags. I finished tracing the scooters for applique this week, so now it's a matter of getting them all cut out. I've been hunting for a scooter silhouette die in the correct size, but I've had no luck with that. This template will fit on a 2.5" square, and that's about perfect for the size luggage tag I make. If we keep doing events, I may eventually have a custom die made which would save me many hours of work. 

I may not be sewing much right now, but I'm always busy!

Murder Mystery Reveal

 Doing quilt mysteries is a risk. Sometimes I love the results, sometimes I don't. Sometimes, if I had seen the quilt ahead of time, I never would have made it, and THAT'S OK! By my thinking, every quilt you make teaches you something. 

Sometimes you are forced to do techniques you don't know how to do, you may like it, or you may hate it, but it still teaches you that about yourself. When I do Bonnie Hunter Mysteries, I usually change the colors, but I am very familiar with her quilts, and I've mostly liked my changes. I can only think of one time I wish I hadn't changed the colors. Even on her quilts, I've changed the layout several times. 

This is my second year of doing the Murder Mystery Quilt. Last year I had a lot of fun, and although I wasn't thrilled with the final layout, I modified it to be a quilt I like quite a lot. I enjoyed the story and knew who the killer was. 

This year I was doubting the quilt less than halfway through the year, I still have no idea who the killer is, and I wasn't thrilled with the layout as I expected. Whether I am buying a pattern, or doing a mystery quilt, I know the final quilt is my own, and I don't see anything wrong with changing a pattern to better suit my taste. Sometimes what I like changes quite a lot based on what is going on in my life. Right now, there is a lot on my mind, a LOT of changes are coming, and I've been attracted to simpler quilts. This year's murder mystery quilt is not simple, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not my thing right now. When I saw the layout reveal, I actually debated on splitting the blocks into two quilts, and actually tossing a few blocks, but then I realized I didn't want to do that much extra work on this quilt right now, and if I abandon it, to work on "later" I know I'd never go back to it. 

I decided the most efficient way to deal with this, was to finish the quilt center mostly as the designer intended, then change the borders. I felt like there were just too many colors in the quilt, which is weird since I love scrap quilts so much, but with a very scrappy quilt, the colors are distributed all over the quilt, or they are done in gradient or colorwash fashion, something that makes sense to my mind. In this quilt the colors are concentrated in specific areas, and to me, it seems pretty random. I did change the center block, but I used the designers colors, I just used a different block. 

I looked through my stash to see if I had any fabrics that had a good number of the colors in it, because to me, the quilt was not cohesive. I found one fabric that had most of the colors in it, but not all of them. It was a busier print than I would have preferred to use, but since it was my only option without shopping, and I'm not shopping for this, it will have to do. 

Do I like it? No, I don't. Now that it's together I like it better than when I first saw the reveal, but would I have made the quilt if I had known what it would look like? No. Do I feel like it was a waste of my time? Not really. 

The best thing about doing a mystery quilt, especially one that takes place over a full year, is it reminds you to think about the process. I am a prolific quilter, and I can get overly distracted by the finishing, and forget to enjoy the process. 

Want to know what I learned while making this quilt? The center block was supposed to be paper pieced, and it was the only block I didn't finish on time. I was going to do the paper pieced block, but I don't enjoy paper piecing, and I couldn't make myself do it. When I totally double downed on NOT doing the paper piecing, I realized that it's not something I'm even remotely interested in getting better at. I CAN paper piece, and if I really loved something I might do it again, but if I never do it again, that's OK with me. I can make a lot of quilts with traditional piecing. 

I learned that I am picky about how color is used. I've already mentioned how I almost divided the blocks into two quilts, and tossed a couple blocks. I would have used all the blue blocks in a blue quilt. Sure, I would have added stuff to those blocks to make a whole quilt with them, but it bothers me that the only place blue is used is in the blue blocks. 

If I had used the blue blocks in a blue quilt, I would have used most of the other blocks in a green and pink quilt. Sure the center block is only green with white, and the horizontal blocks with concentric squares are only pinks and reds, but with the center border having both pink and green, and the pinwheel blocks and corner blocks having pink and green, they all could work in a cohesive quilt. 

So what would I have tossed? I would have eliminated the yellow, and tossed the orange and brown border. Those colors don't integrate into the rest of the quilt.

Do I think the designer did a poor job? NO! The designer was not just designing a quilt, she was telling a story. I know from her explanation of last year's quilt, that every single thing she puts in the quilt means something, from the colors to the block design to the final layout. What seems random to me, was very intentional on her part. 

I'm taking a break from mystery quilts for a while, I've just got too much on my plate to keep trying to work them in. At least with the quilt top done this quilt will eventually work its way to the top of the quilting queue, and it won't be a UFO forever.