First Quilt Finish Of 2025

I dug around in my bin of 2 1/2" strips and pulled out all the blue ones. This is what I came up with. A 5" spacer strip was added between the units. For the quilting, I tried "Borders on a Roll". They were sitting in a cupboard for more than 20 years, so I though I should finally use them. They are long paper strips with a design printed on them. The back has some glue to stick them to the quilt. Stitching is done through the paper, following the design, then the paper is torn off. It wasn't the easiest thing to do on Matilda the longarm. There are wobbles here and there. At one point, a pleat was stitched into a row because the fabric stretched but the paper didn't. Jack the Seam Ripper had to come out and undo that blunder. The rest of the quilt was done with freeform wavy lines.

Throwback Thursday; Bug Village

I designed and made this silly little wall quilt back in the late 90s. Linda H came to visit and we had fun making wonky houses. There was never a place to hang it up so it was in storage for all those years. We got a new outside door in the kitchen that doesn't have a window. I bought a magnetic curtain rod so I can things on it. I'll have to make some seasonal wall quilts now.

Cross Stitch Pillows

My friend, Helga asked if I would make some pillows from a cross stitch blanket that she couldn't complete. She offered to pay me but I refuse to take payment from a lifelong friend! I ordered some pillow forms from Amazon and dug through my stash to find fabric for the borders. The zipper drawer produced some suitable ones but they had to be shortened. As soon as I cut the cross stitch panels from the blanket, they had to be serged to seal in the edges. My serger is from about 1990 and has turned a deep yellow with age. I keep it covered with a pillowcase to protect it from light but that didn't make any difference. There were seven completed cross stitch pictures. I made three pillows with a picture on each side. One pillow has plain cloth on the back. Helga had a great idea to repurpose her UFO. She did a wonderful job of her stitching. Look how cute the anaimals are!

Christmas Placemats By Linda H.

Linda is ahead of the game for next Christmas, she just finished making a set of placemats. The idea came from the book, Block Magic Too by Nancy Johnson-Srebro.. The block is called "Twin Pines". With nice fabric on the back, these placemats are reversible. There is also a plain runner to match for the centre of the table.

2025 Stash Buster Challenge

This will be the third year in a row that I'm doing a Facebook group stash buster challenge. The block pattern is given on January 1st. A quilt has to be made with those blocks. There are three sizes given, I chose the 12" block. The pattern for 2025 is "Blackford's Beauty". I made one block today to try it out.

Last Finish Of 2024

For the past twenty years I've been trying to use up Christmas fabric, so this time I made another quilt. I need another Christmas quilt like I need a new hole in my head. The bin doesn't look like it has any less fabric in it. How can that be? Although, last year I was able to consolidate it all into one large Rubbermaid bin instead of two. The idea for the pattern came from the YouTube channel, "Inspired Quilting by Lea Louise" It starts with ten inch squares that are stacked, cut, shuffled and sewn back together in two steps. People usually use layer cake sets for this kind of thing but I don't buy those, I cut my own squares. The quilting is done with an all-over feather design. I looked back over the year to see how many quilts I finished in 2024. The number is 23. Two table runners are included in that number. They are quilts but just a lot smaller. Of course, that number doesn't count the projects that were started and not finished, haha! Let's see what 2025 brings, hopefully more UFOs will be completed.

Crazy Christmas Trees Table Runner

The pattern for this runner came from Cut Loose Press. I didn't have the Spiderweb ruler that was recommended so I made a template from construction paper. My template wasn't accurate for the white parts of the tree unit, the trees are chopped too narrow at the base. Oh well, as a wise person once said, "Quilters don't make mistakes, only variations". I better stop making table runners, every surface in the house is covered with one. :)