First, the really fun (but challenging) quilt: I’m making Cassandra Beaver’s 2026 Block of the Month (BOM). I don’t usually do BOMs because I prefer not to put things away every month, then get them all out again, etc. However, when she offered mid-year sign-ups I decided the design was just too good to pass up. You can see it here. Be sure to scroll down and see the picture of her whole quilt. It’s gorgeous. I emailed for permission to copy her picture here but haven’t heard back, so you’ll have to use the link to see it.

The advantage of signing up mid-year is that I got all of the first six months at once, so I didn’t have to fiddle with it so much. Her instructions are excellent. Here are my blocks for the first six months.

One pundit commented that “the little white squares” are a nice design element, but of course they’re the block numbers!

This is not the final arrangement. The quilt will be queen size, so I’ll have to put it on the design wall in sections when it comes to final assembly.

I absolutely loved doing those blocks, but they were challenging. So as a little easy project afterward, I made this quilt.

The feature fabric was one of those “must have” things discovered on a visit to distant shops and it’s been waiting for about 18 months for inspiration to strike. This picture shows only the quilt top. It will be passed on (with batting, backing, and binding all ready) to the friend who quilts our donations for Ronald McDonald House.

What’s your favorite quick-and-easy quilt design? I’m always looking for ideas.

This was one of the UFOs earlier this year, and here it is finally with the binding on it. These were triangles I cut just for fun and then set aside because there weren’t enough of them for a quilt. Finishing just involved finding some coordinating fabrics and making an arrangement for the blocks.

Quilt Stats

Name: Cat Triangles

Finished size: 50″ x 55″

Pattern: Improvised and pieced by me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

Now it’s off to Ronald McDonald House, hopefully for some kid who loves cats.

I have an exciting project coming up, so I wanted to get this month’s UFO out of the way. Here’s the “before” picture of a partially done quilt for Ronald McDonald House. It started with the central embroidery done by a friend.

And here it is with a couple more borders added, which finished the top.

This will now go to the friend who quilts our Ronald McDonald House donations. She’s the one who did the embroidery, so it will come full circle! And since this finished my part of the project, I’m counting the July UFO as done!

After finishing this year’s UFOs, I decided I need another 6 for the last 6 months of the year. This time, however, I’m showing the “before” pictures!

UFO #1: This is the remnants of one of Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr’s mystery quilts. I do like their quilts, but I wasn’t enjoying this one, so I stopped. Here are the blocks I made before quitting:

I did make a top using some of them earlier this year, but don’t have a picture of it. Here are the remaining blocks, which are now designated UFO #1.

UFO #2: I started this Laura Heine design with the help of a friend, and just need to get it done. The best part is: those larger flowers are scraps from a dress I made for myself in the 1990s!   

UFO #3: This was a perfectly good block until it became the center of my attempt at the Stay At Home Round Robin. I think I ruined it, so it became a UFO and I need to figure out what to do with it. Stay tuned.

UFO #4: Yikes! I think this was part of a Moda “skill builder” started YEARS ago! I’ve made a couple of quilts with parts of it; here is the top of one of them. And now here’s what’s left! As you can see, I made some modifications in the original pattern… It’s now UFO #4.

UFO #5: A friend gave me this embroidered center block, and I have waaaay too much 30s fabric, so this will be a donation quilt using both. The plan is to add more borders until I think it’s done.

UFO #6: This started out as leaders-and-enders to use scraps, and I have about 100 of these 4″ blocks. The trouble is that there aren’t enough to make a quilt but I am not making leaders and enders as part of current projects. Here are a few blocks of what is now UFO #6.

Of course the best laid plans, etc, but I intend to do one a month for the rest of the year. To be continued!

I’m as guilty as anyone of wandering the internet, though I do limit the number of social media outlets I visit. I find more inspiration per minute on the internet than I used to find from books and magazines, so I guess it’s an upgrade despite my love of books. Anyway, I recently came across the work of Rob Appell, whose website is here.

Here’s the cover of the pattern that caught my eye.

I was quite impressed with his work and promptly ordered one of his patterns and the templates to make it.

And the templates.

Both pattern and templates are good quality, with the templates being sturdy and the pattern printed in excellent color on heavy paper.

One of my favorite features of this template set is that Rob has named the templates rather than giving them letters or numbers! The names are Jerry (the big triangle), Phil (the half circle that is inset into the triangle–yes, you read that right), and Bobby for the flattened isosceles triangle that makes up 1/3 of a 3-dimensional 60 degree triangle. I chuckle every time I see the names in his instructions.

Even better, the templates have holes for hanging and the points are nipped so that all pieces fit together smoothly.

However, this pattern is not for the faint of heart or even the advanced beginner. Instructions are perfectly good for the experienced quilter, but I think anybody else would want a good bit more hand-holding. And of course you can see from the picture above that these are complex blocks. That said, he’s broken them down so they aren’t as complicated as they look. And they’re easy enough to sew if you have some experience with circles and triangles.

I made a little sample to try out the templates and his techniques, and it went together quite well.I doubt I’ll make the sampler quilt the way he designed it, but I can see lots of uses for these templates in my own designs. More fun ahead!

Some friends were taking this class last year, so I signed up too.

I love the look, but the strip pieced blocks were thick and heavy, in part because of so many seams and in part because they were constructed on interfacing.

In any case, the quilt was too bulky for the friend who usually does our donation quilts. So I got it back from her 6 months later and sent it to Nancy, who definitely had done this type of quilt before.

It’s quilted with gold thread and one of my favorite pantos, Bauhaus. I’m happy with it and will be happy to get it donated!

Here it is folded so that some of everything shows

Quilt Stats

Name: Strip Diamonds

Pattern: Proprietary to the woman who taught the class, though I’m sure you can find something similar.

Finished size: 60″ x 70″

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Nancy Nelson

And in the meantime, my friend Michele needed her pants mended so we used some scraps from a quilt she’s making!

Visible mending is currently fashionable, fortunately for us!

Do you mend clothing, or leave that chore for someone else?

Yes! I have gotten rid of 12 UFOs this year, and the year isn’t even half over!

Several of these UFOs were actually just groups of experimental blocks I hadn’t done anything with.

Some of those went into the orphan block box, some were made into quilt tops.

Quilt made from leftover blocks

This group of orphan blocks were an experiment cut from a previous experiment!I finally arranged them in to this little quilt:

“U”, 24.5″ x 24.5″

Other UFOs were actual projects that needed a “time out” before they could be made into something. Here are some of those finishes.

Balz, 70″ x 58″

Finished top, about 62″ x 72″

Finished top is about 61″ x 71″

And finally, there were the UFOs I intended to do “some day”.

This feature fabric had been “waiting” to be made into a quilt for Ronald McDonald House, finished top is 49″ x 53″

Now, I’m off to experiment more, which will result in more UFOs. And of course I had more than 12 UFOs to start with, so there are still plenty of challenges ahead!

How are your UFOs coming along? (I have one friend who doesn’t create UFOs, but I like her anyway.)

At the beginning of the year I chose 12 of my UFOs (yes, there were more than that!), and labelled them A through L. Then I put little paper slips in a basket with the corresponding letters on them. At the beginning of each month I draw a letter from the basket and finish that UFO during the month. Here are a couple of them.

This first UFO started a year or two ago when I made this hexagon in a class with Tara Faughnan. It was cut without rulers and was 45-50 inches across.

It was an accomplishment to get all those triangles to fit together smoothly without rulers, but then what? So I put it away for a while. Several months later I took it out and added triangles at the sides to make it into a usable shape.

But I didn’t like it, so I took those fabrics off (yes, it was a lot of un-sewing). I tried several other options.

I didn’t like those either, so I put it away again. And that’s how it became a UFO. THIS time when I got it out, I decided to cut it up! The result is titled Balz and now I like it.

Balz, 70″ x 58″

The second UFO wasn’t that much work!

I got these out, arranged them various ways on the design wall, and decided I was over it. As you can see, I was just experimenting with various quarter circles, and I decided the experiment was its own reward. These blocks went into the orphan block box, and that UFO is done!

This post starts my 14th year of blogging! My goals for the blog have changed over that time, but I’m still having fun so I’m going to continue. The best part of it has turned out to be meeting other quilters from all over the world. Thank you for reading and commenting!

I’ve been working for over a year on preparing for an eventual move to a retirement community, and that involves lightening the load of culch most of us accumulate. (Culch/cultch, the Maine word for the pile of stuff that accumulates on any non-rolling household. Learned from Louise Dickinson Rich’s books when we first moved to Maine.)

I inherited big piles of household linens, both commercial and handmade, mostly from my grandmother.

My grandmother, wedding photo from 1907

Here is some of her needlework:

One end of a dresser scarf. She made a number of dresser scarves.

This is the cover for a large pincushion, intended for hat pins. It matched the bedspread in the next picture.

This is the center medallion on the matching bedspread.

Another dresser scarf

I’ve had these linens for years without doing anything with them, and they aren’t my style. Finally I found a solution! I sent them all to a friend who loves vintage linens and knows a lot about them. It’s a win-win. The items have found an appreciative home and I don’t have to worry about them any more!

I had a few fat quarters of Lotta Jansdotter fabric left from many years ago and thought I would make a “Turning Twenty Again” quilt from them. Although that pattern almost always produces something nice, the proportion of the various prints didn’t work out well this time. The quilt looks like it has measles.

On the theory of “if it doesn’t work, cut it up” I did cut it up and added some bright green. I like this a lot better.

The binding will be bright green to hold all the craziness in, and I trust some kid at Ronald McDonald House will enjoy it.

Do you cut up things that aren’t working? Or give them a time out? Or give them away?