Approaching Finishing

 Just a bit left to do on the "Our Mistake" quilt for Stretching Art and Tradition.

The newly-added lake waves are all done, so now it was time to break up the boat into dissolving-in-the acid lake pieces.

Very happy with how this turned out.

And there it is, now all that's left is to just add facings, a sleeve and a label.

And the Sister Artists quilt, "Structured Sky" has been trimmed down to size. This one will be getting binding, a sleeve and a label.

February To-Do

Here's how my design wall is looking at the beginning of February. Pretty different from the beginning of January which shows the bit of progress I made last month. The new configuration of the to-do list is below, it more closely follows the database categories that I use to keep track of all my work-in-progress. The number of projects in total on that list is truly out of hand, but more on that later, I have some ideas to deal with that issue.

QUILTS

Continue Assembly

Finish the quilt for the Sister Artists 3 embroideries  Photograph and send as it's - Due in the first week of February. 

Finish the quilt for the Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit. Photograph and send as it's also due in the first week of February.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - keep working on the rest of the clues.

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the cut-out stamp block borders and centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

🥏👽 Trim to size and then sew the 12 columns of the 2023 Temperature Quilt together.

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -finish assembling the quilt back, sandwich and make the binding

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

City Sampler- put together a backing, make binding, take to a long-armer to be quilted.

Quilting

🥏👽 Trinket

🥏👽 Metro Twist - sandwich and quilt.

🥏👽 Slopes - quilt and finish.

Final Steps

🥏👽 Running Out of Raincloud -  add facing, sleeve and label.

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Oxbow Tote - cut out and begin the assembly.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - 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

Kawandii - Finish hand stitching/assembly

That gives me plenty to work on this month, and lots of variety to choose from.

New Month, New Me

January is over and done and I've made some changes that have stuck. Thus the "new me" in the title. The monthly marker photo this month is a picture I took in Quail Hollow Ranch under the oaks up towards the sunny sky. I manipulated it in the app KaleidaCam, a very simple slice rotated. I was very excited to see the super interesting structures that were formed by the now connected tree limbs. Almost looks like gears or machinery.

This was the picture I started with, which has an already interesting composition with all of those interlacing and strangely shaped branches. 

Here's the one second every day video for January 2025. 

The monthly I-Did List for January is as follows:

1. I  worked on finishing clues for the Old Town Mystery quilt.
2. I prepared for more work on the Old Town Mystery quilt.
3. I photographed a little demo of easier paper piecing.
4. I made some Community Giving blocks for BAMQ.
5. I started assembling the quilt top for the Sister Artists exhibit.
6. I started assembling the quilt top for the Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit.
7. I started and finished free-motion quilting Our Mistake for the Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit.
8. I started and finished free-motion quilting Structured Sky for the Sister Artists exhibit.

That's a pretty good list I'd say. I tried my best to concentrate on first sewing some of the blocks for the Old Town mystery quilt and then clear the worktable so I could begin making the two quilts that I have due early this month. There were many times I wished I had three machines set up in my workroom so I could trade off easily on various projects. But that is not ever going to be my actual studio setup. I caught myself about to veer off to work on something else that was on my January to-do list, but I really wanted to get these two quilts done. *pats self on back*

I also posted blog posts on here 26/31 days, I posted on Instagram 6 times, on Threads 2 times, on Facebook 0 times, and on BlueSky 56 times. Blue Sky is really pretty good now, there's a lot of interesting folks on there, and the vibe is so much better than what's left of Twitter/X. I started an account over at PixelFed, which will hopefully become a replacement for Instagram. I also started an account at StoryGraph to track my reading. It was really easy to import my many years of data from GoodReads. 

Meanwhile, out in the real world, we hiked locally, we had dinner with my folks, and had a two-night getaway with friends to Lake Tahoe for NYE.

January Cornucopia

The first cornucopia post for the new year is here on this last day of January. One of the reasons that I like doing these cornucopia posts, they help me close tabs on my laptop as I'll put a link on these posts. The ones that are actually worth sharing with you that is.

The above picture is of the weak January raincloud filtered sunlight as seen through a piece of dried roasted seaweed in a moving car. I thought it ended up showing an interesting mix of color and texture. 

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This emoji that I'm using for a divider in this post is named "anger" but I don't think it looks like at all like that. It reminds me of embroidery stitches. So--to be clear--I'm not dividing this post with anger but with beautiful stitchery.

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JennB. has done the experiment (and the math) and proven how to successfully add borders to a quilt top without ending up with waviness. 

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I'm enjoying Nadia Embroidery's posts on Substack, a very interesting and beautiful follow if you like embroidery.

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I really like this Flower Breeze block, this video tutorial is a great explainer.

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A daily embroidery journal, over several years, very impressive and beautiful.

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I really like this free quilt pattern from Art Gallery Fabrics: Full Bloom 

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UC Berkeley's free earthquake app is pretty cool: My Shake

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I'm really enjoying the 30 Days of Drawing with WendyMac this month. I'm trying to do it on my iPad which has been a real challenge for me.

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The 2025 Declutter Challenge that Just Get It Done Quilts is hosting has been very useful. 

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I enjoyed listening to the first episode of The 100 Day Project podcast.

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This episode of The Smithsonian's podcast, There's More to That about How to Use Renaissance Paintings to Improve the Farming of Tomorrow was really worth a listen.

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I saw this great idea for doing a crocheted granny square for each book that one reads during the year based on the colors in the book cover. This would take a whole lot more colors of yarn than I have on hand (and I'm Not Buying Yarn). 

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A completely ridiculous game, "Click the Clicking Clicker." A fun and relaxing almost soothing relaxer.

Final-ish Form

 

It was all green stitching today. That and going slowly to avoid sewing over the pins.

The green acid lake is looking turbulent enough.

I did chicken scratch quilting on the edges of each raw-edge. Blends them together well enough.

It was hard to cut off this part at the end, but this quilt needs to be 24"w x 36"h.

There, the background is all stitched. I did do some extra around the sides and bottom for the trimming to size.

The boat is the last part to stitch on, and the look of it will be quite different when I'm done.

Blue Finish

 

The new blue worked out just fine. Thankfully I had a large selection of light blue thread to choose from.

Now that the blue is finished, so is the quilting on this one. Now for the trimming and all the rest.

And here's how the other quilt is looking now that the green acid lake has been re-pinned.

Mostly Blue

 
I carried on with stitching more blue in the Sister Artists quilt. 

But I lost at thread chicken! Instead of bobbin chicken for once.

Trying to give some sense of butterflies flying through the air with the quilting motifs.

Stitching around the embroidered butterflies I'm going slower not wanting to catch any of the embroidery threads. So far so good. I've got some more blue stitching left to do on this one.

I also finished off all the blue thread quilting on the Stretching Art & Tradition quilt. Yes the green section has been unpinned. It's getting a bit redesigned.

I like how the blue turned out on this one.

The clouds are floating by...

Sky Blue Wind Clouds

As I change thread colors, I'm bouncing between the two quilts that I'm simultaneously working on finishing up. Turns out that the piece of fabric I made in the Text on Sheers class in November was pretty easy to free motion quilt stitch through. I stitched a little slower than I usually do, I had no issues at all which was nice as it was rather glue-y.

This is the quilt I'm making for the Stretching Art and Tradition exhibit.

Here's how the window looks with the panes/writing stitched with the black/white twist thread, and the frame done in red.

And this is a close-up of how the free-motion "cloud/wind"quilting around the window looks.

That's maybe about 1/3rd of the quilting done on this one. The green section will take longer. So...back to doing the light blues on the other quilt.

Green FMQ

 

After all that piecing and regular sewing, it was time to switch over for FMQ (free motion quilting). I even swapped out the foot from the closed- ring to the clear plastic. Trying that out for the first time on this machine. It's a lot like the Big Foot that I like to use on my older Janome machine. I also realized that my newer machine has yet to have had a servicing and I got it in December 2020. Sooo....after these two quilts get done, I'm taking her in.

I took this picture so that I would remember that I swapped the foot on the convertible FMQ shank and which one it is in my machine feet case. There's one that's very similar and I remembered I'd need a photo assist to get the right one.

It took a bit to get going but I got the green part all finished off. Now onto the rest of the quilt which will be all blue.