October To-Do

 

Here's how my design wall is looking on the first day of October. Patchwork Palooza (still awaiting border decisions) and my finished Kawandii are still pinned up on the left. The finished Lupine Stars are arranged, the rest are next to my sewing machine ready to be sewn together. On the right is a Community Giving quilt that I'm working on getting a binding done so I can turn it in on Sew Day tomorrow.

 Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐  

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making blocks following the clue instructions, assemble into a top

BAMQ BOM - assemble finished blocks into a quilt top.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023  Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🌀🌐 David Owen Hastings class piece, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish🥏👽 

                                      

Quilting

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife - Finish quilting it🌀🌐 

Final Steps 

🥏👽 Bending the Calendar - Cut up? Re-arrange? Embellish?🌀🌐 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching -  🌀🌐

Body Pillow-knit cotton pillowcase - 🌀🌐 

Hey! This Is All Finished!

Quilted Dog Jacket for Meg - 🌀🌐  

Continuing on with the sixth month in a row with some actual finishing happening. 

Yes, this was a teeny tiny project, relative to the others, but that it actually got done is the main thing. 

Taking the finishing energy on into October.

Ornery October

I'm feeling sort of ornery, so I'm declaring this new month to be: Ornery October. To me, ornery is the sort of nagging displeasure with *gestures Very Broadly* all this. That is the kind of mood I need to be in for just getting on with it. Maybe it's the usual extremely Hot-tober week that's forecast ahead for us (in the 100's) or the unsettled pre-election prickles. All of that means I need to keep sewing as much as possible. Will I be ornery enough to decorate the house for The Month of Spooky? It's very likely, yes.

The monthly marker started with this picture of the first Lupine Star that I finished.

I put that through the app, Percolator and came up with this.

I overlaid this picture I took of a Dahlia at Filoli Gardens with my mom in the app, SnapSeed and added the October label.

The monthly 30 seconds of life, or the one second every day video, including one beautiful second of DH wearing a hotdog costume in Target. Youtube picks a random frame for the title card, it knew!

 Monthly I-Did List for September

1. I made two Sawtooth Star blocks for a quilt for a friend's Veteran step-father.
2. I got started on quilting the Bohemian Wife quilt.
3. I began making kitty ears for the Lupine Mystery quilt.
4. At Sew Day, I helped assemble the quilt top from #1.
5. I made two Birds In the Air blocks for the BAMQ BOM.
6. I started assembling the Lupine Stars for the Lupine Mystery quilt.
7. I cut out the cornerstones and sashing for the Lupine Stars.
8. I found the Dog Coat pattern, found fabric, cut it out, quilted it, and finished the coat.
9. I un-quilted some of the free-motion quilting on the Bohemian Wife quilt.
10. I finished making five Lupine Stars.

I'd say, that was a pretty good showing for September. I got a lot of small stuff done, a lot of process work, which added up to a lot of progress, and one whole entire UFO Challenge finish. Heading into October with my ornery energy, ready to write lots of postcards to voters, decorate for Spooky Month, and keep sewing.

September Cornucopia

 

September closes, the first month of Fall is now over, the heater is going on occasionally, socks are being worn again, etc. This is my monthly cornucopia post, a listing of links to things I've enjoyed, discovered, consumed, eyeballed, or listened to this past month.

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Latifah Saafir has a great video about making quarter rectangles with her very useful HURTY ruler.

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A big square of black light-absorbing fabric on the ultra-white Bonneville Salt Flats, land art installation by Gregory Orekhov. So fascinating!

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Melissa Joseph's large scale felted wool illustrations are really intriguing, there's an exhibit of them called Casserole Culture which looks like it would be very fun to see in person. 

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I've been thoroughly enjoying Tal Lavin's long-running series of sandwich essays, but this one about the famous Vegemite Sandwich is tip top.

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Just in time for Halloween sewing projects, a sweet little paper-pieced ghostie block from Quiet Play.

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Five Lupine Stars

 

I started putting together the Lupine stars for the Lupine Mystery quilt. So far so good.

I got five of them done, they went together very easily. As per usual the pressing directions in the pattern is very helpful for block construction. I like the look of them with the cornerstone and sashing splitting up the star.

Now that I know what I'm doing, twenty more to go doesn't seem quite as daunting.

A Halt to the Un-Quilting

 After a lot of stops and starts and frustrations, the un-sewing or un-quilting has been completed on the Bohemian Wife quilt. 

I made myself stop and not take out the parts that don't really show that are really not my best free-motion quilting ever when you look at them closely.

This Kaffe Fasset fabric is not very robust shall we say? I didn't want to "age" it too much with all the ripping out of the teeny tiny free-motion quilting stitches I had ended up doing in some sections I was honestly struggling with while quilting.

There, it's good enough, I'm not putting it in a competition and it's going to be displayed up on my wall, not really in a close-up situation. Perfectionism is a terrible trial to get through and let go of, isn't it? I really was pushing myself to get this quilted when I was still in recovery mode for the August BAMQ UFO Challenge deadline. If I had just stuck with the walking foot and not tried to do the free-motion with the same dark purple thread, it wouldn't have turned into such a work stoppage. Now that I'm feeling much better, more myself, whatever, and I'll make better thread color choices I'll go back in with free motion quilting again
Okay, back to quilting this again!

Doggo Coat Finished

 

There were only two steps left to finish to complete the dog coat, adding the Velcro and the binding. This was very small binding, so it was a bit fiddly to get it on, but I went slowly and it worked out very well.

Before sewing on the "belt" and the velcro, I put it on Meg one more tine to make sure my triple try at measurements had been correct. It fit everywhere except the belt. I think the smaller measurement I got she was worried and so had sucked in her stomach with tension. So I had sew a little extension on the end on of the belt before adding the Velcro. Glad that I checked a fourth time.

The pictures of it without a dog inside are rather strange, what is this thing anyways? A quilt with a belt?

I used the new soft and thin Velcro as it was the only one in my stash. I had no idea I was mostly out of velcro.

She was snoozing with DH on the couch, but I woke her up and put it on her. It fits perfectly! And it looks so cute on her.

She looks rather unsure here, but she perked right up and went outside and then happily kept it on for the rest of the evening. She's got it back on this morning, I think she likes it! One of our cats freaked out about  it thought this morning, got all puffed up and stalker-y, he thought she was an intruder dog. Nope, just a cozy Meg, that's all.

Okay one more item off of the UFO list, hooray! This was much easier than I thought, there was no 3-D construction or fitting together of pieces. The hardest part was A) Finding the Pattern and B) Measuring the Dog in Question.

A Dog Coat Begins

Switching over to working on my BAMQ UFO challenge for this month, the Dog Coat I've said I'm going to make for many years. The hardest part so far was finding the pattern. I had put it somewhere it was supposedly going to be easier to find than where I usually keep patterns. Oh well, outfoxed myself again. I started out wit selecting fabrics and layering them quilt style and getting some basic quilting done before cutting the pattern pieces out. I'm using a Tula Pink print on one side, and one of my husband's pink Oxford shirts on the other. The fabric is perfectly good, just the cuffs and collars wore out,  but Meg doesn't need those. (or does she?hmmmm?)

Instead of making bias binding myself, I'm hoosing to try the vintage Bias seam tape from my Grandma's stash. New York Fabrics, remember those? Back in the day they had way better stuff than Joanne's ever did. This pink will be perfect1

The pink reversible with print piece is the "belt" that goes around the dog's belly and velcroes underneath.

I think all the Tula prints work together well as per usual.

So far so good, I think this is going to work well for Meg.