What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It seems my modus operandi these days is to take my projects with deadlines down to the wire.  The quilt parade link up for the 2025 SAHRR kicks off today over at Quilting Gail.  I finished the last borders on my version yesterday just before lunch. 

This is my third year participating in the ...

It was a quiet weekend once we got past the high winds of Friday.  We have elevated fire danger for most of this week.  It was so bad Friday, I did take the time to gather all our important documents and pack them so I could grab them and go if we had to evacuate. We live at the edge of town with open fields to the south and west, so it's not improbable that we might need to evacuate. Thankfully the winds this week are our typical March "breezes", hopefully the infrastructure is built to tolerate those.  

Last week it seemed like we had more winter than spring. This week is looks like we'll have more spring than winter.  I'm ready for that, but not the severe weather part of spring. Cleaning out the tornado shelter is on my housekeeping list for this week. Hopefully we won't need it this season, but we usually use it at least once in the spring.  Just part of life when you live in Oklahoma.  

I spent a lot of time in the sewing room this weekend playing catch up with the 2025 Stay At Home Round Robin (Quilting Gail).

Last time I posted about this project only two sides of border #4 were finished and attached.  I did finish all the log cabin blocks for border #5.  

My stay in Texas ends today.  All my stuff is packed up and ready to load. I'm having my coffee while I put this post together. It's been a fun visit with Grad Girl.  We had a lazy weekend. I sewed at the dining room table, she played video games on the couch while we binge watched shows on Disney.  So pretty much a perfect weekend.  

I did get a lot of stitching done. My priority project for the week was to finish the blocks for the 2025 Guild BOM.  The guild meeting got canceled due to all ...

I noted in my Stitching Stuff post that not much got done this week.  That included any progress on the 2025 SAHRR,

I was able to finish off all the Friendship Star blocks from border 3 and worked out a plan for week 4.  

I wasn't ready for it to be February already.  We've already had a full weekend in this short month, so now it's almost over.  Well maybe not really, but it certainly feels that way.  It will certainly go fast that's for sure.  

The weather was nice this weekend, so I got out and enjoyed it.  So there wasn't as much time in my sewing room as typical. Still there was progress on a few things.  One of which is my version of Marble Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  

There's a lot of purple in this ...

Winter is wearing out it's welcome as far as I'm concerned. It was miserably cold all weekend.  I'm ready for a warm up and more color than the shades of brown that currently on display outside my window. The temperatures should start to moderate a bit in February and I'm ready. 

I'm not really ready for it to be Monday, even if it is a holiday.  Of course being retired, it's almost like another day, except I get to hang out with My Guy because he's off work.  I did spend a lot of time in the sewing room this weekend. I finished priority project #1 on Friday, my center block for the SAHRR. 

I've seen the prompt for the first round posted over at Kathleen McMusing's blog.  My plan is for 3" or  4" borders for each round so her first part of the prompt ...

With the cold I had last week, I didn't spend a lot of time in the sewing room.  Grad Girl and I did have one marathon sewing session Thursday evening.  She started some trivets at the retreat and she wanted to finish at least one of them before she went home.  So we cut the batting and backing for one of the mats. Since I've not done any quilting, I really couldn't teach her. So we played with the machine settings while I tried quilting the mat. She provided discussion and support.  Then I showed her how ...

The last week has been full of end of year summaries and plans for the new year.  I posted my share of both. Grad Girl and I sewed our selves to exhausted on Saturday, but we both got a lot done.  My big accomplishment was getting the 2024 Guild BOM assembled. I finished the first round of borders just before I headed to bed last night.  

I missed posting last Monday.  There really wasn't much to post and with Mom here, it was hard to get both the photos and the computer time to put something together.  So at least you know, I usually put my posts together in real time.  

One thing I did find time to do during Mom's visit, was finish the binding for String Lights (Meadow Mist Designs). 

Our Thanksgiving holiday ended yesterday morning about 9:30 AM when we hit the road to drive home.  It wasn't too bad till we had to exit 35W to 35 just north of Dallas. It was stop and go traffic a significant part the drive from Dallas to OKC.  What normally takes us about 8 hours to navigate took 11.  Other than the drive back, we had a wonderful holiday with Grad Girl.  We did small business Friday and shopped in Brenham for stocking stuffers.  Than on Saturday we went to The Texas Renaissance Festival.  

Something different for us ...

I'm slowly recovering from our yard work marathon on Saturday.  Thankfully my back and knees held up pretty well, it was the rest of me that hurt afterwards.  Even My Guy was feeling it on Sunday.  We definitely aren't as young as we used to be.  

Even with the Saturday yard work excursion, I had a good week in the sewing room, Squared Away is sashed and bordered. 

I'm pretty happy with how it came together.  This is upside down from how I've had it on the design wall during assembly, but it looks good from ...

It's been a pretty good year in the sewing room. All the stitching time has allowed me to make some progress on every project that was on my stitching plan (and a couple that weren't).  The focus on progress has meant I've gotten 5 finishes so far this year, but I'm set up for even more next year.  

The last project on the plan is Squared Away. This project was the 2018 Rainbow Scrap Project quilt along.  I finished all the blocks in 2018, but then they sat waiting for inspiration on how to set them ...

This time of year it seems the weeks just speed by.  We'll hit mid November by the weekend. I'm really not ready for the end of the year, which will be here before we know it.  So it's probably best to concentrate on the now and look at what's getting done.  

Have you adjusted to time change yet?  It's nice to have the sunlight in the morning, but it's not fun for it to be dark by the time My Guy gets home at night.  For some reason, it's harder for me to go back to the sewing room after dinner once the sun is down.  Not sure what is up with that, but that's been the case for a while.  I'll have to get myself going to the sewing room earlier in the afternoon for the next few months.    

Most of my focus this week ...

The 2 year anniversary of my retirement was last Friday.  Has it really been that long?  I've enjoyed most of it, I've had some health challenges over that time that made me very glad I wasn't working.  But some days I do miss the fun technical stuff from the job, but most definitely don't miss the politics.  Looking back, last year really was about getting my back issues under control and just figuring out how to navigate not going to an outside job every day. This year has really been about navigating my sewing room.  I ...

My sister and I left Oklahoma for Texas on Thursday and got back home Monday night.  That left us Friday, Saturday and Sunday for lots of crafty stuff.  I found a great rental to use for our retreat.  

The dining room table was big enough for 3 sewing machines. Just mine and my sister's are set up in the photo.  We were able to use the center island for cutting and pressing.  It was a very user friendly set up.  

Grad Girl had stuff going on for most of Friday, so she wasn't able to take off as ...

We celebrated my mom's and My Guy's birthdays yesterday.  Mom's birthday was this last week and My Guy's was earlier this month.  My mom is big on celebrating birthday's and realized that she'd never done anything special for My Guy on his.  So this year she wanted to be sure we celebrated both.  We had a fun time, but it's the 4th weekend in a row that we've not been home.