January Apricity

 The first month of our new year has blitzed past, and I've just learned a new word seen above in the title. Apricity - the warmth of the sun in Winter. 

I started with this picture I took of a Western Jack O'Lantern mushroom on a hike at Quail Hollow Ranch.

I used the app, Percolator.

Then in the app, SnapSeed I added this picture in and added the title.

Here's my One Second Every Day video for January, all 31 seconds of it!

Monthly I-Did List for January

1. I did the BAM BOM Friendship Star blocks at Sew Day.
2. I made most of the purplel Flying Geese blocks for the second clue of the Lupine Mystery Quilt.
3. I stitched a lot of sky on Snake in The Garden.
4. I did Project Quilting 17.1 and made Clean Cloud for my first finish of the year.
5. I started and finished  making my Stretching Art & Tradition 26 quilt, Cumulative Spiral.
6. I found, found the notes for, and began working on May You Ever Return for the BAM UFO challenge.

Well, that's actually quite a lot! January was a month with mostly local traveling happening, except for going up and back to Spokane once again for the medical study. I went hiking with family four times, wow! I  attended both Sew Day and the monthly meeting for BAMQ and took a great 2-day online class from SDA called Soft Circuits. I kept on being pretty active on social media, posted here on le blogue 27 times,...overon BlueSky 40 times, on Flashes 7 times, on Instagram 8 times. Will February be even more active and productive? It could happen...

January Cornucopia

 

That was such a great January (right? I hope it was!) again it has passed us by in a post-holiday whirl. But along the way I added to my cornucopia of links for the month. All the things I've enjoyed online, reading, seeing, listening, etc.

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How about using EQ8 to draft your own Snowflake design, kind of like the paper folding and cutting idea that we've all done. This is a great video illustrating how to do it.

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In case you're missing seeing music videos on MTV (honestly when's the last time any of us turned on MTV?), here's an interesting site, that is always running all those music videos, interspersed with ads from back in the day for Blockbuster, etc. The first video I caught was Depeche Mode so I was happy.

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Really interesting essay about Arizona that coins the term "thermochauvinism" which makes thinking about heating Minneapolis vs. cooling Phoenix so much clearer.

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On the one year anniversary of the horrific firestorm in LA, this article by David Wallace-Wells is worth a read, Which City Burns Next?

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I continue to enjoy Christa Quilts free-motion quilting design videos, they're short, well-filmed, and have very clear instructions. Super useful and inspiring.

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I like the Etsy color of the year, and the newly introduced, texture of the year. Both are 👍👍👍

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Great article about Craftivism in the US from The Guardian. Yarn-bombing, knit-in's, hat designs, etc.

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American Patchwork & Quilting magazine has a really interesting block-of-the-month  going on with a free quilt design which is available in an EQ8 format so you can re-color it before you start sewing. This started in October 2025 and is running through June 2026 so there are 6 blocks available for downloading.

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I found this photo illustrated tutorial on a disappearing 4-Patch from Boersma's to likely be very useful

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I was really pleased to see Transmissions Quilts mentioned in the Oliso newsletter. This looks like such a great collaborative and supportive project to get involved with and support.

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This interview with Isabel Allende is so wonderful, and not just because it was at UC Berkeley (Go Bears!) She's one of my favorite authors and it was great to hear from her about creating art in authoritarian times.

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The annual list of transgender Girl Scouts to support is up, go pick one (or more) to buy your cookies from this year.

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Listening to: 

• Burn Order - Rachel Maddow's newest story/6 episode podcast about Japanese Internment camps in the 1940's  
•  What's The Plan? a podcast from the founders of Indivisible.

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Returning to Choices

 

Today I worked on finishing up the free motion quilting on May You Ever Return. Almost there, but I had to make some thread choices.

The different blues and greens in this fabric was hard to match.

As usual one of my Studio Assistants made sure I was "Making Good Choices."

Getting there.

This is my favorite X so far.

I was tired of free motion quilting, so switched over to get to some zig-zagging on the shapes who's edges hadn't been stitched down.

The words are supposed to be not really legible at a glance.

Almost done with the quilting and zig-zagging. (Just the lower left) and I'm really pleased with how it's looking so far.

Lots of Quilting Lines

 

A lot more free motion quilting got done on May You Ever Return yesterday. I'm very focused in on it, but I'll admit that I keep struggling to stop myself from switching over to work on other things like the Patchwork Palooza on my design wall or the Lupine Mystery.

After an initial alarmed response at all the noise near her napping spot, one of my studio assistants kept an eagle eye on my process.

The quilting is getting pretty dense in some spots. While I was quilting, I pinned back some of the un-anchored shapes in order to just have the lines go under where they'll end up being zig-zagged down. This will help with "floating" the shapes above the densely quilted surface in a consistent way across the whole surface.

No decision made on the number of X's, and I see some hand-embroidery/stitching in my future. Also, this quilt is getting the facing treatment as opposed to a binding. Countdown to the UFO Challenge due date of 2/7. That's just ten days, two of which will be traveling to Spokane and back again. Maybe if I get it to the finishing point of sewing the facings down it will come along with me, but I'm not counting on that.

How Many X's

 

Doing a lot of blue on blue free motion quilting. Still deciding on whether to add more X's or not. As there are already three orange ones, that likely means adding two more. On re-reading, my notes are a little unclear, so I'm going with what I see in front of me right now.

I've gotten all of the smaller pieces sewn down in their centers, so the majority of straight pins are now gone. I'm using safety pins to hold down most of the rest. That makes the quilt sandwich so much nicer to handle while free motion quilting.

Time for a thread color change.

Eleven days to go until the UFO Challenge deadline at Sew Day. Will I make it? 

Almost Out of Words

 

I concentrated on getting the words left to be stitched done yesterday on May You Ever Return. This is the before picture, mostly for my reference so that I can put it back in the correct position after I did the stitching. I switched over to a free motion foot and dropped the feed dogs so I could do the smaller cursive writing.

Here's the after stitching picture. I used a small width zig zag stitch. The smaller shapes have single words, intentionally written small and hidden. See the picture below for a before picture. So, I've stitched the words in a blue that camouflages them pretty well. And it's also done in a straight stitch, no more zig zag. I stitched them in place instead of taking each off and then repositioning.

There's going to be several more thread color changes needed.

And then...a mini disaster! A broken needle! That big pin was caught underneath in a folded-over seam. I thought I'd uncovered all of those, but apparently not. All the parts of the needle were found, and it was definitely  time for a needle change anyways.

Here's how it's looking so far. Looking more finished day by day.

And only one more section with words left to do. Then it's mostly free-motion quilting left to do which is a lot easier.

Stitching the Words

 

The UFO challenge deadline approach-eth, (in 13 days). so I'm working on finishing this quilt. There are a lot of words written in pen on the pieces that still need to be appliquéd. So I'm just stitching over the writing in a zig-zag before I'll be attaching them to the quilt.

I really like the look of this after being zig-zag stitched. This was two passes of stitching. It takes a lot of extra time, but I think it is worth to do it separately from the quilting. Was it a bit weird stitching out the word, "Me"? Honestly, yes, a little strange, but I reminded myself that it's just part of the song lyric that I'm working with. And this quilt is my reaction to both the music and those words in the lyric.

A lot of actual quilting has gotten done now. 

Using some decorative stitches on the not-so-skinny-strips.

Still a long way to go to finish, but I have a plan that will hopefully work out. At the very least, I'm feeling this quilt again, now that I've been working with it. And that's a Good Thing™👸