Quilting is in my Blood

My favorite February finish is my Starry Signs quilt. I got it back from Cara at Sew Colorado Quilting earlier this month after it decided to go on an unauthorized trip to Indiana and then after it arrived in Albuquerque, it took another side trip to San Antonio, Texas! Thankfully, problems with the USPS transporting my quilts are few and far between. I’m thrilled with the finished quilt and will be putting it on the twin bed in the back room.

I also made some pillows to go with this quilt. Below is a quick pic I took of them earlier this week:

I did finish up my Luminary quilt top and sent it off to Cara. I plan to share the finished quilt next month after I get it back from her.

Finally, I made a quilt block that I will use in a Favorite Things table runner. In the block’s center, there are two hockey sticks with a puck to commemorate the gold medal accomplishment of the USA Women’s Hockey team as well as my obsession with Heated Rivalry. I purchased the pattern on Etsy and down-sized it 50%.

Like many women, I enjoy a good romance story, including queer romance. You’d practically have to have lived under a rock not to have heard about the overwhelming popular show, Heated Rivalry, on HBO Max. I watched it in January and was so impressed with the story line, acting, directing, lighting and music that I started listening to a variety of podcasts about the show. I particularly enjoyed the Empty Netters hockey podcast, hosted by two straight brothers, Dan and Chris Powers. They both loved the show along with a guest host, Shaun, whose Irish accent was a delight. For people who might prefer a less spicy queer romance, I totally recommend Heartstopper on Netflix. I’ve also listened to my fair share of Heartstopper podcasts 😁.

Coincidentally, Kim Lapacek with Project Quilting made a I’m Coming to the Cottage quilt using the same pattern. I love her free-motion quilted words on this quilt highlighting some of the show’s most memorable quotes.

That’s it for February. Next month I hope to share about a quilt I’m making for the son of my friend, Kristen, who will be graduating from high school in May.

Linking up to Quilting Jetgirl: Favorite Finish February 2026.

I can’t believe that we are 1/12 of the way through 2026! Life just zooms by these days. I worked on a few different projects this past month. My favorite finish is a puffin pillow that I made for my friend, Laura. We’ve talked about going on a trip to see puffins one day, so when I saw This pattern for a puffin block, I knew that I wanted to make a puffin pillow for her for her birthday. Laura took a pic of it with the January issue of Audubon featuring an article on puffins.

I participated in the Project Quilting’s Clean Slate challenge earlier this month. Read about it Here.

I made some donation blocks for the current block drive by Cynthia with Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.

I finally started working on my Luminary quilt. Below are the diamonds for the project (minus one that I didn’t notice had fallen on the floor):

Linking up to Quilting Jetgirl: Favorite Finish January 2026.

Over the past few years, I have come to really look forward to seeing the new quilting challenges dreamt up by Project Quilting starting in January of each year. Last year I participated in two of their challenges, and the Birthstone Challenge inspired me to create one of my favorite 2025 projects. Last Sunday when the first challenge of the 17th Season of Project Quilting was made public, I was immediately intrigued by the Clean Slate prompt. Though I shy away from New Year’s resolutions, I always love the opportunity to refocus at the start of each year. The deal clincher for me were two questions posed by Trish:

“When everything’s not yelling, what do you notice has been whispering for you to listen? How about you make that?”

Since I was between projects, I had the opportunity to think about the prompt for awhile, not feeling obligated to participate but instead during my favorite quiet morning hours on Monday, I thought about a theme for 2026 and came up with the word, Explore. I will be literally exploring a new part of the world to me in August when I take a Quilting Cruise to Alaska. I also appreciate internal exploration through journaling. And of course I want to continue to expand my creativity with color.

I had FPP templates on my computer purchased From Blank Pages for 3” letters and numbers. I decided to create a mini banner to hang above the doorway into the back room. I used a grey cross-weave fabric for background and colorful scraps for the letters and numbers. The mini quilt finishes at 3.5” x 22”.

Linking up to PQ 17.1 Clean Slate.

Yvonne with Quilting Jetgirl has hosted quarterly/yearly quilting goal-related linky parties for many years, and I have participated in many of them. It’s been so useful to me to reflect back on the quarter/year and see what I had hoped to accomplish. I don’t think I have ever checked every single goal off my list (certainly this is true of my 2025 Goals). I have often switched priorities midway through especially if some new project caught my eye. I have also enjoyed the thinking/planning/dreaming about future quilting projects and setting some specific goals for the coming year. This will be the last check-in linky party that Yvonne is planning to host as interest has waned in last few years. I suspect that is primarily due to most quilters posting on Instagram rather than on blog posts. While I do have an Instagram account, it’s never been a good fit for me. I prefer blogging on an occasional basis. So I will probably continue to do monthly or semi-monthly recaps along with a yearly review. My thanks goes out to Yvonne for all the work she has put into hosting numerous linky parties as well as her being a quilting mentor to me since 2015.

On January 1, 2026, Jamie Bright who is the pattern designer for the Luminary Quilt, sent out an email entitled, 5 Questions Every Quilter Should Ask Themselves in the New Year. They are copied and pasted below with my responses:

1. Looking back at last year, what parts of quilting brought you the most joy? 

I absolutely loved being part of Alison Glass’ Color Camp, and I’ve also enjoyed being part of her AG Bee. She is exceptionally talented, and she has been my guru as far as working with full and partial spectrums of the color wheel. I designed this 24” square mini quilt using a favorite analogous color scheme contrasted with a complimentary indigo background fabric. It was so much fun making the scrappy half-rectangles using Leila Gardunia’s Templates. I haven’t quilted it yet but hope to do so in the coming year.

 2. What unfinished projects/works-in-progress no longer bring you joy that you need to leave in the past and release? 

I think I’ve already released the projects that no longer bring me joy. The biggest one in 2025 was the murder mystery block-of-the-month program that ended up not being a good fit for me. But I did make two blocks from this BOM that I hope to turn into mini quilts this year:

 3. What new quilts or fabrics have been speaking to you lately that you want to do this year? 

The top two projects that I want to make are a Luminary quilt to go above my bed oriented like a sunrise and a Cozy quilt. I have plenty other projects on my 2026 list that will be satisfying to make including a high school graduation quilt for my friend, Kristen’s son, Aidan. I’ll be using this Raven, Skull, and Roses FPP pattern for the center of the quilt with more background fabric added to make the quilt approximately 60” square. I also want to appliqué the beautiful Cheetah scarf made for me by my longtime friend, Kelly, (see image at the top of this post) onto a plain grey background and turn it into a wall hanging that I can enjoy looking at every day.

4. How do you want to grow as a quilter this year? 

I want to increase my paper piecing design skills by making more progress with the Quilt All the Things Foundation Paper Piecing Design Class. I also hope to increase my free motion quilting and ruler quilting skills.

5. Imagine you are your wisest, kindest, and truest self and are nearing the end of your life. What would you say to your current self about your quilting and about your current life situation?

I would say, “Continue to enjoy quilting, but remember to also make exercise, healthy cooking/eating, traveling, and spending time with quality people priorities in my life as well.”

Linking up to Quilting Jetgirls’ #2025 Quilting CheckIn Linky Party.

During the last two months I worked on some Christmas ornaments, three Christmas pillows, six FPP trees for a swap, and on my Starry Signs quilt top. I also made a couple blocks for my Alison Glass monthly color challenges.

I used a paper pieced pattern by Easy Piece Patterns to make Tiny pine and fir Christmas ornaments.

I made an 8” FPP Standing Deer with Kristy Lea’s free pattern from the Winter Wonderland FPP QAL and added borders to make it a 16” pillow. Honestly I like Kristy’s Version much better!

Also from the Wonderland FPP QAL, I made two snowflake pillows. Read more information about these pillows Here.

For a quick December swap, we were provided patterns for six different sizes of FPP trees with the instruction to send one to five assigned members and to keep one for ourselves. I kept the smallest tree.

For the Alison Glass bee November monthly color challenge, we were supposed to pick three analogous colors from the color wheel. I chose pink, orange, and yellow and make a gem block from Alison’s Trinket pattern.

And for the December monthly challenge we were encouraged to take inspiration from another Alison Glass bee member. I really liked the diagonal rainbow striped journal cover made by one of the members, so I was inspired to make a diagonal striped rainbow tree.

I finished my Starry Signs quilt top today, December 31st. Overall, I’m happy with it. I will be sending it out to Cara with Sew Colorado Quilting. It’s a twin size quilt, measuring at 68.5” x 88.5” Below are a couple pics I snapped earlier today. I will take a decent photo of it when it is finished.

That’s it for now. In the next week or so, I will be writing a post that recaps my quilting projects in 2025 and shares some 2026 goals. I will be linking up to Quilting Jetgirl’s #2025 Quilting Check In.

Happy New Year!

When I signed up for the free Wonderland FPP QAL hosted by Kristy Lea earlier this month, I fell in love with the snowflake block by Ingrid Alteneder with Joe, June, and Mae. She offered the block in several sizes, and I opted to make the largest size at 12.5” square unfinished. I first made the snowflake with red background and then decided to make another with turquoise background. I added borders to make them 16” square. And I loved how clean and uncluttered they looked, so I decided not to quilt them and just add envelope backings.

I think they look pretty cute behind the North Stars Christmas quilt on my bed (pattern by Elizabeth Hartman).

Linking up with Quilting Jetgirl Favorite Finish December 2025.

I am joining the quarterly check-in hosted by Quilting JetGirl. See my second quarter check-in Here.

I had hoped to experiment with some ruler quilting this past quarter but didn’t progress beyond a bit of practice. My quilting go-to is definitely walking foot quilting, and to be honest, switching my sewing machine feet is generally a pain in the butt. Taking the walking foot off is easy and attaching the ruler (or FMQ) foot isn’t too bad, but putting the walking foot back on can make me cra-cra! So if I know I need to get some binding done in the near future, that walking foot is staying firmly attached!

I should make clear that I am using my new Janome for quilting and binding, and I’m still using my old Brother machine for piecing.

In September I used my walking foot to quilt some potholders made with 2.5” squares using a tutorial by Sherri at A Quilting Life. She has a You Tube video on Bias Binding which I found really useful to bind my potholders with rounded corners which finished at 8.5” and shrank about a half inch after washing and drying. Here’s a photo of one:

Also in September, I finished my Frightful Fun quilt. Read the details Here.

Here is the Virgo block I sewed for my Starry Signs BOM:

For the September monthly color challenge for the Alison Glass Bee, we were asked to sew a block with a light, medium, and dark value of the same color. I made a simple Economy block.

To see what I accomplished in July and August, please read the recaps below:

July 2025 Recap

August 2025 Recap

Fourth Quarter Plans

The focus is to finish up some small Halloween projects and hopefully get my Starry Signs quilt top sewn together. I have a couple other small projects in mind as well, but the last two and a half months of the year promises to be busy, so we’ll see what I get accomplished.

Linking up to #2025QuiltingQ3CheckIn Linky Party.

I have quite the history of signing up for sew-alongs and Block-of-the-Month (BOM) programs and either losing interest or wanting to spend my time on projects that are more joy-producing for me. But I never lost interest in the Halloween BOM designed by Sam Hunter, Leila Gardunia, and Kristy Lea. See the post announcing the BOM Here. The blocks were all well-designed using my favorite piecing method: Foundation Paper Piecing also known as FPP. I was able to personally drop the quilt top and backing off to Cara at Sew Colorado Quilting in Denver as I took a quick trip to Colorado with a friend in early September. It was so wonderful to finally meet Cara in person. Here is a photo she took of Frightful Fun after quilting but before she returned it to me for trimming and binding. The Haunted House was the final block of the BOM, and I had fun fussy cutting small Halloween images to fit in the windows.

The photo below shows the quilt top before I delivered it to Cara. I added two extra blocks not included in the BOM (to be made into pillows) and some Halloween fabric for a runner to also have quilted with the cobweb motif. I cut those extras off before binding it with a favorite Halloween print, Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, available at this Etsy shop.

The finished quilt is good size—68” x 79”. My bestie, Mary, is going to put it on her bed in early October. Below are a couple close-ups that show the cobweb quilting done with medium grey thread.

I will be linking up YvonneQuilting Jetgirl when she opens the linky party for Favorite Finish September 2025.