What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

If you are in the US, hopefully you are enjoying your Labor Day holiday. Being retired, it's just another Monday in our schedule. Though we do usually skip our normal chores if it's a holiday, so we feel like we've celebrated. Which means I get a three day weekend in the sewing room.  

My priority this weekend was to get Squared Away (Soscrappy) ready to go to the long armer this next week. If I want it back before Christmas that needs to happen.  First job was to press and then cut the wide backing to size ...

Last week it was something old and something new.  This week the old was finished and I restarted an even older UFO.  Is there some point where an old UFO becomes like a new project?  If there is, I haven't found it yet.  

Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter), the old project, is now a finished quilt top. I'm glad the pieced border got added, it does make a nice frame for the rest of the quilt.  Plus it used up all those already cut up fabric pieces and finished blocks.  

This joins the "to be quilted" pile.  There are ...

We spent half the weekend in Tulsa. Saturday was a charity event for the Sutton Avian Research Center. That's the organization that runs the Bald Eagle survey teams in our area.  My Guy has been part of that team for at least 5 years.  We stayed in Tulsa for the night and spent Sunday morning hanging out at a coffee shop and then getting lunch before we headed home. Something different than our normal weekend.   

Staying in the sewing room has definitely been the way for me to beat the heat this summer.  Even though my sewing room is the warmest in the house, it's still cooler than going anyplace else. It's summers like this I really miss having a basement.  Our fist house here had one and it would have been an awesome sewing space had we not had to transfer to Texas all those years ago. At this point I'm hoping those long range forecasts that are predicting an early and cooler then normal fall are correct.  We could definitely ...

Last week was appointment free and so is this week. So I'm looking forward to not only getting lots of stitching done, I'm hoping to make progress on a few household chores that I've let slip lately. But I won't get carried away on the chores front, those are amazingly easy to put off till another day.  

It was a good week on the stitching front. It's always fun to have a finish.  My goal was to finish the 2025 Guild BOM quilt before the end of July.  I put the last stitches in the binding at about 5:10 PM last Friday, the 31st.  Not up to the wire, but close.  

I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out.  This is the second time I've made an Inverted Star quilt.  Here's the original started in  2014, finished in 2019.

The newer version is more scrappy, a consistent white one white background ...

We had a pretty quiet weekend. After all the running around last weekend, that was definitely on my agenda for the week.  We hit triple digits both days of the weekend, so hiding out in my sewing room was definitely my preferred retreat from the heat.  

We had a busy, but fun weekend.  My Guy's niece got married in Dallas.  It was a beautiful wedding. And of course we got to see family, some we've not seen in more than 10 years.  My Girl was able to drive up from Houston. So we got to hang out with her and the cat for a couple of days.  

It was a good thing I got lots of sewing time during the week. There was enough time to finish all the blocks for Good Fortune (Bonnie Hunter).  

Good Fortune was the 2018 BH mystery quilt along ...

It was a nice weekend.  My Guy and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary on Saturday by going out for a fancy dinner followed by custard at our favorite spot for dessert. We are long past getting gifts for each other.  Neither of us need anything, we'd much rather go do something fun together.  

Last week, especially last weekend, didn't go exactly to plan. It was a good thing I set yesterday's Stitching Stuff post to automatically upload before we went to dinner on Saturday.  We beat the storm home by less than an hour.  Radar clocked the straight line wind speed at 80+ mph just north of where we live. The force of those straight line winds across the windows on the north side of the house was pretty scary. We lost a few shingles from the roof, but it was already scheduled for a new roof this year, we'll ...

I'm currently in Texas, hanging out with My Girl and Queenie.  I spent most of last week getting ready to travel and not as much time in the sewing room. But I did reach one big milestone. The quilting of Chilhowie was completed and I made getting it bound a priority so I had a second finish to add to my tally before we cross into the later half of the year. 

Chilhowie was the 2022 Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt.  I opted to make just 9 blocks, the quilt still turned out to be a good sized lap quilt ...

It was a pretty productive week, which resulted in a not so hot weekend.  One of our local quilt shops has a late night sew one night a week. This week the shop decided to host two late night sewing sessions. It's usually a pretty fun session with lots of stories, laughter and valuable quilt making feedback. The only problem is the sewing set up isn't the best from an ergonomic standpoint for me. One late night isn't an issue, but apparently that second 6 hour session wasn't such a good idea. I woke up early ...

Hard to believe it is June already. I'm hoping this month has much fewer health issues, May was rough on that front.  I've been reading more than I've been sewing the last couple of weeks, but I'm still making slow, but consistent progress on several projects.  My priority project has been Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter).  

Saturday was rainy, but the rest of the holiday weekend has been gorgeous. My Guy and I went for a walk last night after dinner.  My back seems to have recovered, but my right knee is still giving me fits, so it wasn't a long walk.  

The sewing room hasn't been as attractive the last couple of weekends.  I've been reading more than I typically do.  That's OK, sometimes you need to mix it up a bit. There was enough sewing time to finish up the "A" blocks. 

What looks black is actually a very, very ...

My sewing room mojo was a bit sparse this last weekend.   I ended up reading most of Sunday afternoon. But I did finally make it up to the sewing room for a couple of hours before dinner. 

Other than the 2025 Guild BOM, the Bonnie Hunter Lupine and Laughter Mystery  is the only quilt started last year or for that matter this year, that's not a finished quilt top.  I've been working on what Bonnie calls the alternate blocks.  

Six blocks finished over the last couple of weeks. What looks like black is actually a very dark purple ...

If you've followed me for any length of time you probably know I have a week spot for Cheryl Brickey's Meadow Mist Designs mystery quilts and Bonnie Hunter's annual mystery quilt alongs. I've been sewing with Bonnie's mysteries since 2013. That year was her Celtic Solstice mystery. It's still in pieces with a few blocks made. It's on my 2026 project list. Not sure I'm going to get that far. 

It's been a quiet week on the weather front. That's been nice, no late night sessions watching the local weather to decide if we need to move ourselves to the tornado shelter.  My back is still a bit out of whack, I can walk and sit, but bending is completely out for now. Thankfully  I can still sew. 

Last week's post was about catching up in the sewing room after being on vacation. I was going to call this post "More Catching Up Sewing", but then I got to thinking about all the quilts on my UFO list and all the other "oh I want to make that" future UFOs.  So I'm pretty sure you never catch up on the quilting front. 

We've been home a little over a week from our vacation. I can claim that laundry is all caught up. Still a few chores to do before I'm caught up there.  Catching up in the sewing room has been a bit harder.  My biggest focus has been on getting the Guild BOM block done for May. There has been good progress on that front, it should get finished today.