What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Good morning, my friends. Well, I'm back after my "pilot episode" of this year's flu. Interestingly (to me, at least), I looked back at several years of posts to see how I'd reacted to these vaccines in the past. In 2025, we got both flu and COVID on the same day…no reaction…not even a sore arm. Then, I looked up my post about our vaccines from 2024, and I had a similar reaction to this year’s vaccine...fever, chills, and feeling generally ill. In 2023, just general malaise. I know the vaccines are ...

Good morning, my friends. Well, I'm back after my "pilot episode" of this year's flu. Interestingly (to me, at least), I looked back at several years of posts to see how I'd reacted to these vaccines in the past. In 2025, we got both flu and COVID on the same day…no reaction…not even a sore arm. Then, I looked up my post about our vaccines from 2024, and I had a similar reaction to this year’s vaccine...fever, chills, and feeling generally ill. In 2023, just general malaise. I know the vaccines are ...

 I'm still working away on machine quilting my RSC bordered four patch quilt, I had hoped to get it finished this week, but no.  If I'm honest, I've been out every day this last week, so not much time at all sitting in front of the sewing machine.  Never mind, perhaps I'll get this project finished next week.

Not finished yet

Gemma still seems to find any quilt in progress I've left on the sewing machine cabinet at the end of the day.  It's so thoughtful of me to leave the quilts out for ...

Good morning, my friends. I'll just start right out by saying there's nothing to worry about with Smitty. I'll say more about that in a minute. With a vet visit in our immediate future, it seemed appropriate that I took the first stitches on the Pieces of the Heart stitchery yesterday morning. I’m just getting started on the body of the cat.

Good morning, my friends. I'll just start right out by saying there's nothing to worry about with Smitty. I'll say more about that in a minute. With a vet visit in our immediate future, it seemed appropriate that I took the first stitches on the Pieces of the Heart stitchery yesterday morning. I’m just getting started on the body of the cat.

Good morning, my friends. The camper is unpacked. The bedding, towels, rugs, and quilts are washed. The birds have been fed, and what else is there? Oh yes...I needed to find room for five more refrigerator magnets. Standing in front of the refrigerator is discouraged at this point. Hard hats are required.

Matthew suggested we might need a new refrigerator if we are to do more traveling. 

Probably I've forgotten something I still need to do, but I spent a good part of the day sewing yesterday. My first task was to reorganize and figure out where I ...

Good morning, my friends. The camper is unpacked. The bedding, towels, rugs, and quilts are washed. The birds have been fed, and what else is there? Oh yes...I needed to find room for five more refrigerator magnets. Standing in front of the refrigerator is discouraged at this point. Hard hats are required.

Matthew suggested we might need a new refrigerator if we are to do more traveling. 

Probably I've forgotten something I still need to do, but I spent a good part of the day sewing yesterday. My first task was to reorganize and figure out where I ...

 I've had another busy week, and got several more black drawstring bags completed, using donated fabric.  Plenty for the  boys this time, featuring ghostly heads, aeroplanes, and baseball.

Then several more were completed, an arty one, funky cars and two musical bags, from donated fabric again.  I'm pleased with them, being a good assortment for boys to choose from.

Four more black bags

Then with the black bags completed, I turned my attention to a RSC quilt top I had put together in 2025.  The blocks came about when I found a bag of 2.5in squares, and ...

 It's black and neutral sewing month, or catching up with projects,  for Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I'm delighted that I finally found the missing bag containing everything I need for my final selvedge double handed oven mitts.  I stitched a whole lot of these last year, using up all my selvedges in the recommended colours most months, except for the few last remaining black ones.  And I hunted high and low and just couldn't find them anywhere.  Does that happen to you, as well, put something away safely then have no idea where it is?  I eventually ...

Meet Newington.

A New Finish!

Designed in EQ8 and made with fabrics from Island Batik collections, Newington is a Christmas quilt finishing at 76" by 100" published in "Let's Make it Merry" (A Quilter's World publication). 

Published

On News Stands

I used the Greens from the Everlasting collection and the Reds/Pinks from Everlasting and Hello Sunshine collections. 

Everlasting

Hello Sunshine

EQ8 Original Mock-up

It was a joy to play with these beautiful pinks and greens. While the red/green color palette is definitely evocative of Christmas, the softening of the reds into pinks makes Newington a fitting ...

 I've been working away on my yellow string baby quilt.  The blocks started like this, a bag of yellow strings of various widths sewn onto a backing of tracing vilene.  The blocks always look much more presentable when they are trimmed.

 I had a rummage through my "bag of bag bits" to see what I had tucked away in purple, I was sure there were a couple of suitable pieces of fabric just waiting to be found.  What's this, two orphan blocks in shades of purple, a small piece of alien fabric and a stripey floral.  So I gathered toning fabric for the backs plus some lining fabric and started cutting and pinning.  The bags turn out to be different sizes, depending on how big the piece of focus fabric is.  The orphan blocks were stitched first.  One was a ...

Good morning, my friends. Okay, September 1st is over, and on we go with what remains of summer. It was a good day for sewing here. There was enough progress made on the Plaid Cat that I decided to move my hoop. The green stripes on the cat need to be stitched first because the purple stripes are stitched over the top where they intersect. I'd taken the green stripes about as far as I could go without moving to a different position.

Smitty helped ...

Good morning, my friends. Okay, September 1st is over, and on we go with what remains of summer. It was a good day for sewing here. There was enough progress made on the Plaid Cat that I decided to move my hoop. The green stripes on the cat need to be stitched first because the purple stripes are stitched over the top where they intersect. I'd taken the green stripes about as far as I could go without moving to a different position.

Smitty helped ...

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to September. It’s been feeling pretty fall-like here. Gazing out the window this morning, the sky is overcast…or maybe it’s smoke. Skies were smoky yesterday evening from a fire across the valley from us. We’re in no danger where we are, but the smoke was a little eerie when you consider there isn’t a breath of wind.

It was a pretty easy-going day yesterday. There was a quick trip to the grocery store, but I was home by lunchtime. After that, I had the afternoon to sew. The first ...

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to September. It’s been feeling pretty fall-like here. Gazing out the window this morning, the sky is overcast…or maybe it’s smoke. Skies were smoky yesterday evening from a fire across the valley from us. We’re in no danger where we are, but the smoke was a little eerie when you consider there isn’t a breath of wind.

It was a pretty easy-going day yesterday. There was a quick trip to the grocery store, but I was home by lunchtime. After that, I had the afternoon to sew. The first ...

I've been busy stitching yellow.  These  little drawstring  bags for foster kids were completed last week, but then I had to go and purchase some suitable coloured cords.  All done now.  The top two have motifs declaring "winner",  with a gold cup and laurel wreath, that's certainly different, and I received this fabric together with a whole heap more from my former neighbour Dorothy.    Then I stitched two bags for boys featuring trucks, tractors and diggers, and the last one with cute farm animals - these fabrics were donated to me recently.

Five yellow draw string bags

String blocks ...

 We just got home from two weeks in Calgary, Alberta where we were visiting family.  We had lots of fun and went to lots of interesting places. This post has lots of pictures of our trip as well as the sewing I have done in the last three weeks.  I will start with some progress on my hand quilting of the round robin quilt.  I'm just figuring it out as I go along and will go back to quilt the blue border as well as the outer green border when I feel inspired. 

 My second funky dinosaur quilt is finished, this one has touches of yellow, the RSC colour chosen for the month.  I'm quite pleased how it turned out, and used up the last remaining pieces of dinosaur fabric.  I pinned it all together for quilting using some grey fleece for the backing.  Although the sandwhich was quite thick, I just took my time and didn't have and trouble with the stitching.

Machine quilting

 Fleur, the Co-ordinator of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren was the guest speaker at my Quilt Club meeting the other evening.  It was interesting to hear about her role in this group, which she took on after she started raising her own grandchildren.  Fleur does a wonderful job and spoke about the challenges grandparents face, as they navigate the changes in their households when they take on their own grandchildren to live with them.  And supporting them through the legal and benefit issues too, which can be daunting when you don't know what to do, or what government department to go ...