I am joining the weekly To-Do Tuesday Weekly Progress Update Linky Party hosted by my friend, Roseanne, at Home Sewn By Us.

To-Do for the week of Jan 12th- Jan 18th

1. Make some Shoal tail pieces. √ Done
2. Make 12th Rainbow Sashiko square. √ Done
3. Work on another project using a quilt kit that has long been in my stash.√ Done

To-Do #1

I got a few triangle units done that will be used for the tail units for the shoal fish I’m making using indigo prints from my mom’s fabric stash from the 1990s. I’m drawing inspiration from Nicholas Ball’s Shoal Sew Along (#shoalsewalong) that started 1/4/21, but am not worrying about keeping up with the SAL. I want to take my time and really enjoy making these shoal fish. I’m liking how my mom’s fabrics look in contrast with the more modern but also subdued Kaleidoscope fabrics.

To-Do #2

I stitched two more rainbow Sashiko squares pictured below (grid marks not removed yet). I modified one out of The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook that is reminiscent of the quilt block, Card Trick. The second is Circular Seven Treasures. I have enough rainbow Sashiko squares to make a table topper (with nine squares) and four coasters, so I will be starting another small Sashiko project this coming week.

To-Do #3

I’ve had a quilt kit in my stash for over six years that I bought at Thread Bear (which used to be my local quilt store, but this past year it moved to Las Cruces, NM). I had just started quilting, and I was like a kid in a candy store, and when I saw the gorgeous Magic Carpet quilt hanging on their wall, I knew I wanted to make it someday. So I purchased the quilt kit (pattern by Vanilla Latte Quilts) and then scoured the internet to try find more of the gorgeous border fabric, Water Garden, by Andover, not knowing what I was going to use it for but I knew I really needed it! Fast forward six years, and I pulled out the quilt kit earlier in the month and decided I wanted to make the Magic Carpet quilt for my friend, Kathy, in California. I’ve been friends with Kathy for 40 plus years. I’ll share more about her down the road, but the first thing you need to know about Kathy is that she has a thing for frogs. When my bestie, Mary, and I were looking at the fabric in the quilt kit, she told me she thought it was perfect for Kathy, but it needed a frog fabric, and she was totally right. I found a cute Heather Ross frog fabric at the Etsy shop, Cluttered Cupboard, who really deserves a shout-out because I received the fabric I ordered in four days from Wisconsin to New Mexico. What I really like about this pattern is that it shows off larger prints and provides an opportunity to fussy cut numerous smaller squares. And this 54” X 64” quilt top sewed up fast especially with using a strip-sewing shortcut for the sashing/corner stones. I started it this past Monday and finished it on Sunday. The border fabric is cut on the bias with opposite diagonals. I ended up cutting the top and bottom borders from the fabric in the quilt kit, and after a brilliant suggestion by Mary, I cut the side borders using the opposite diagonal from the extra two-yards I tracked down after purchasing the quilt kit. I told Mary this violates a cardinal rule for quilters which is that we try never to cut into a treasured piece of fabric unless absolutely necessary. But in this case, I only had to piece together the long right border, and I have extra fabric to make gorgeous bias-cut borders on another quilt, possibly even using this pattern again.

Here’s a close-up of the cute frogs and the gorgeous border fabric:

To-Do for the week of Jan 19th-Jan 25th:

1. Work on my Shoal Sew-Along project.
2. Start another small Sashiko project featuring a beautiful Caribbean perle floss.
3. Start cutting squares for the Meadowland quilt top I’m making for my nephew’s birthday this summer.

Linking up to Home Sewn By Us: To-Do Tuesday Weekly List Update Linky #76.