October Quilts 2025

October is one of my favorite quilt months!  This is the month that I attend the Wichita Falls American Sewing Guild retreat.  It is hosted at a church camp.  They provide all the meals except on the bonus day.  Usually people bring their lunch and then there is meal sharing or pizza in the evening.  I have a friend that I actually met at this retreat invite me to room with her.  I invited my friend to come along as well as she has attended these retreats in the past and also enjoys them.

My friend and I drive up the day before and stop at favorite quilt spots and eateries.  We stayed at a hotel that had a personal assistant/concierge robot.  The lady at the desk explained how it worked and I was eager to give it a test!  Once we were settled I called down for some more coffee and creamer.  I sat perched at the door, phone in hand ready to take a video.  Not long after I heard a knock at the door and was surprised.  It was the lady from the front desk.  She handed me what I asked for and explained that the robot broke down in the elevator.  She had to pry the supplies from the robot and hand deliver.  I was disappointed.  The next morning I spied the little robot waiting for her repairman.  Boohoo!  Next year!

Here is my October Running doe top Flutterby.  It makes me think of gift boxes with a gold bow.

This is a top designed by Mark Lipinski that he called Idol Results.  It’s a double nine patch.  I plowed through a lot of scraps then FQs and then dipped into yardage.  I added borders while at retreat.  They have lots of space to spread out.  I made the blocks throughout the year.

This is my Carolina Chain courtesy of Bonnie Hunter.  Again a fun trip through the scrap bins.  I think my scraps provided for all the blocks.  I was at another friends house.  I have been helping her declutter her home and get her sewing room arranged.  I spotted this huge print that was sort of a floral is fruit print.  It was almost ugly but all the colors were in my top.  It was a strange cut.  I asked her if I could please have it!  She agreed and said if I didn’t use it to please give it back.  I think there’s a 5ish inch square left!  This is another one where the top was done and I just needed to add borders.

At retreat I brought all the bonus triangles from the Running Doe top-a-long and sewed them together.  There are quite a few.  I brought a kit that is an advent calendar.  I put the base together and have the pockets started.  The instructions say to assemble the whole thing then quilt but I think quilting the vase will be the wiser thing to do.  I also brought all the fabric to cut a Showering Stars quilt.  I think that was it.  A very productive retreat!

I’m leaning toward not joining the Running Doe top-a-long.  I can still sew along if I like the pattern and share my pictures to the group.  I don’t need prizes, although I do love winning them.

June through September Quilts 2025

I’ve decided to speed things up a bit.  It looks like I was only completing my Running Doe tops for the top-a-long.

This is the June top.  Gator Party.  See the little yellow teeth?  

This is the July Running Doe top Jasper.  Catherine designed this one especially for the top-a-long.

Runny Doe for August is Amelia.

I threw a wrench in the works and made this top.  This is a kit I bought a long time ago.  This is called Daisy Star.  It used panels that have flowers on them cut apart and reassembled.  It was fun to play with the colors.  I made it for a coworker who had a baby after several losses. What’s funny is that person has stopped communicating with me so I may have a bonus baby quilt.  People are odd aren’t they?  This was completed in August.

Septembers top!  Stargazer. I wanted to try to get away from the white backgrounds.  What do y’all think?  It’s definitely different for me.

Almost caught up.  As you can see the organizer loves stars and flippy corners.  I have done the top-a-long for a year now.  I’m not really a fan of star quilts and don’t like flippy corners.  This is making me really wonder about signing up for the next 6 months.  For $10 you get 6 patterns and are entered into a drawing each month if you complete the top.  There’s a grand prize drawing after the 6 months as well.  I’ve been talking to my friends who are doing it trying to get them to sway me one way or another!

May Quilts 2025

I can’t believe I forgot my April Running Doe quilt top.  My favorite of all so far!  I plan to make another.  This is called Sky Diamonds and is a Villa Rosa pattern.

This is my May Running Doe pattern also by Villa Rosa.  It’s called Kaleidoscope.  I used a technique from Maryquilts.com to make the butterflies “flutter”.  See https://maryquilts.com/twisted-9-patch/

This quilt was inspired by a Fabric Cafe 3 yard quilt.  My friend needed a quilt made in an odd size.  I grabbed pen and paper and did some math.  I told her how many yards of each fabric she would need.  She brought her choices to one of our Saturday sews.  I asked her if she wanted me to help her get started.  Within a few hours I completely cut it out and had it mostly sewn together.  She said I should finish it so I did.  This one is languishing on my quilt machine now.

If I could flex my quilting muscle as much as my piecing muscle I’d be in great shape!

April Quilts 2025

Two more tops for April,

The first is this pineapple quilt and where a lot of my energy was going.  I found a brown plaid that had fallen next to lavender.  I knew I wanted to make a quilt from this color combo.  A friend sent me a whack of chocolate browns to go with what I already had.  I purchased a lavender that has sort of a watercolor look to it.  While I was working on it another friend gifted me with a piece of yardage that was brown and lavender.  I was awestruck by her generosity.

This is from a Fabric Cafe 3 yard quilt book.  I don’t recall the name but will search for it.  My daughter is a Hello Kitty fanatic.  I saw fabrics and sent her pictures.  After several text sessions fabrics and pattern were chosen.  I also made two matching pillowcases for her.  I mostly sewed this in a weekend while away at retreat.  When I finished it only lacked borders.  Those were added shortly after.

More to come!

February and March Quilts 2025

When I looked through photos I was surprised to see only two tops.  These are both from my Running Doe top-a-long with Villa Rosa patterns.

February’s entry is Lanterns

March’s entry was Transport.

I really thought back and wondered why I hadn’t produced more.  But when you see the upcoming finishes know that I was probably piecing those a good bit in these months!

i hope everyone that celebrates had a good thanksgiving holiday.  No one went away hungry!

Quilts from January 2025

I haven’t gotten any further on my quilting other than figuring out what not to do.  So I e decided to share what I HAVE been doing.

Here are my quilts from January.

This quilt is called Amelia and is a Running Doe pattern for Villa Rosa.  Catherine, the owner of the shop, hosts a top-a-long for 6 months.  This was the first for the first half of the year.

An io group that I’m on had a sew a long of half log cabin blocks.  This was one of the tops I made.  I love the secondary pattern and my quilt model Chip.

This is my second top for the HLC sew a long.  I wanted to use up that cow print and had the denim blue.  I got the red bandana fabric from my friend.  This one is smaller than the first but still a good throw size.

This is a flannel quilt kit I was gifted in September but intended as my Christmas Gift,  I was in town and it was easier for her to hand me the kit to carry home.  The pattern is Ride ‘‘em Cowboy by Marti Mitchell.

For the Running Doe top-a-long I decided to make them red, white and blue and bring them as close to 60x80 so they could be donated as a QOV.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  We have lost two good friends this week.  Mend any broken fences.  Hold your loved ones close.

The Big Sort and Quilting

Part of my big sort was purging.  Those things that I could not throw away, give away or return to their owner are things that I deemed as a keeper, a project (it needs deeper attention.  Think photos) or things that I made a commitment to do something with before returning it.  The one item I have a lot of are charity tops.  There are those that I accepted to complete and those that others accepted but asked me to finish.  I also have lots of tops intended as gifts for family and friends.

This bounty has led me back to using my longarm.  It frustrates me because I tend to have tension issues.  I do silly things like trying different types and weights of threads.  I recently tried a bigger needle in anticipation of quilting through some heavy stabilizer.  I even lost my mind and over adjusted my upper tension after knowing my tension was near perfect.  I got halfway through quilting a quilt to find I had thread nests all across the back.  I realize that I need to not change so many factors with each quilt and just find what works and stick with it.  The other thing is to resist the urge to try a new design on every quilt.  Just get it done!  I went to a quilt show recently and guess what quilt design they used.  Wavy lines!

Here are some charity quilts I’ve done recently.