City Sampler Final Photo

Tah-dah, here it is, my now-completed City Sampler. It was much too big for my design wall and my work room as you can see. Get ready for a whole lot of pictures so you can see some of the details.

I made the 100 blocks in Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book way back in 2016 out of Tula Pink fabrics and my own hand-dyed cotton fabrics. 

I designed the outer border and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

It took a lot of figuring, and sketching, but it was worth it to make the quilt big enough for our bed.

The rest is all gray(s) but of course not just one because of...reasons. 

Turns out keeping track of solids is Very Hard because there's no printed selvedge. 

We live--we learn, right? 

And here's what the back looks like. I love love love that snake.

The blocks sat around finished for quite a while, and then I went to a CQFA retreat in January 2020  (four years!) where I sewed the grey sashing to one side of a lot of the blocks but not all of them. 

Then they sat around a little longer (four years!) before I went to a BAMQ retreat in 2024 and I sewed the rest of the sashing onto the blocks, and then sewed most of the blocks into rows. 

The rest of the assembly and then the making of the backing took a while too. The backing got started in  July 2025. 

Then later that month, I finished the backing, the binding and eventually I turned it over for the fabulous quilting is by the wonderful long-armer Colleen Granger. 

Then this week, I finally sewed down the binding and today was the pinning up and photographing. What a long, drawn-out process this was! In the end, this might be the quilt I'm most pleased with that I've ever made. Don't tell my DH, but it's going to be the anniversary gift this year. And as I said yesterday, a project to take off of my 2026 UFO Finishes Challenge list.

City Sampler Done

 

Back at the machine for binding sewing on the last three sides of City Sampler.

I pinned and then sewed pretty slowly and it turned out very well. For bed quilts, I like to do a machine stitched binding for extra security. I guess I just don't trust my hand-sewing skills to stick around through many machine washes.

Approaching the final corner! Woohoo! I am so excited to have this quilt done after so many years. I made the blocks back in 2016, so I suppose this is "right on schedule," ten years later. As City Sampler is the Biggest Quilt that I've ever made, I am definitely not giving myself a hard time about how long this took me to complete. 

And even better, this is another one of my UFO Finishing Challenge projects that I get to cross off this month.

Now to take a final picture, which will be quite an undertaking, as this quilt is almost exactly the size of my Entire Design Wall. Not today though, which is the day after Arm-Day at the gym. If you know, you know, it's better to put it off a day.

City Sampler Binding 1/4

 

Had to clear the decks for the enormous City Sampler quilt. I'm stitching down the binding.

This is a big quilt!

Down to the last of the first side.

And done with one out of four sides!

UFO Finishes Challenge 2026

Here's a post I should have made last month! The UFO Challenge from last year was a really big success for me, so I put together another list for 2026. All of those are crammed together into the above image. They pretty much all look like they're made by the same person, so I guess that's good. Or maybe I'm just used to them because they've been hanging around for so long...being UFO's and all.

Here's the very cute image for the challenge. Great color combo and I'm into the slogan "A Year of Finishes".

An illustrated list:

Bohemian Wife - starting point: the top and back are done, binding is made. (Also on my BAMQ UFO list)

Temperature Quilt - starting point: the columns are done, the top is 2/3 put together.

Bending the Calendar- starting point: the quilt is assembled and mostly quilted. (Also on my BAMQ UFO list)

City Sampler- the starting point: the quilt is quilted and the binding is halfway sewn on

 David Owen Hastings class piece. (It's really in pieces!) I left myself notes though. And I really still quite like it a lot. Starting point: three pieces or "blocks" out of six are done, drawing are made for the other three. (Also on my BAMQ UFO list)

'

May You Ever Return - This one is very recently done! And that's mainly because it's also on the UFO Challenge list for BAMQ, See...overlapping UFO Challenges is an extra boost for me.  That one has 12 items on it, one for each month. I actually have four overlapping ones! So we'll see if that works for me with the other three.

Rainbow, Rare and Knotty

After a visit the other day with friend Jaye to the long arm artist, Colleen Granger to drop off quilts (City Sampler is now approaching the finish line), we made a stop at Bay Quilts just before they closed.

I managed to find some good stuff in a short amount of time, a few fabrics to add to the Medallion Quilt box, as well as this FQ rainbow pack of collage images. Now I need to find a good fat quarter chunky sort of pattern as I don't want to cut these up into too small of pieces.

In the fat quarter bins, this Tula Pink neon lion caught my eye, the store clerk was very excited for me as she said it was a rare one now. I also got two more colors of Spagetti embroidery thread. I also couldn't resist the small retablo, especially once I read the back of it.

Here's the back of the Our Lady Undoer of Knots retablo from Lynn Garlick Retablos, cool huh? I might have to do an Undoer of Knots quilt.

Now to go update my fabric tracker for the year.

City Sampler Back Done

 

I finally had a chance to sit down and get the City Sampler quilt back in process. First I trimmed down the central snake image and added a grey border with cornerstones of the same fabric I used on the front for the cornerstone. Yet a different gray from the two on the front.

It got bigger and bigger, too big to pin up properly and get a final picture. The section added to the left of the snake to finish it off was mostly grey with some strips of color added in. I think this is the biggest backing I've made, measuring in at 114" square (roughly). This is off to the long armer today, I'm so excited!

City Sampler Back Started

I worked on the beginnings of the backing for my City Sampler quilt at bamq Sew Day yesterday. There will be a solid grey border put between the central snake piece and the rest of the fabrics.

Seen here is the studio assistant checking out my work.

This is my "plan", so far so good. There's going to be a lot of long seams to sew.

There was a lot of great fabric on the free table, mostly from the stash of one of our members who recently passed away. She's greatly missed and I think we all felt lucky to get to take home some of her fabrics to work with and remember her by.

 

Many Bindings Day

 

Today at Sew Day, I spent my time making binding, lots and lots of binding. For the City Sampler and the Bohemian Wife quilts. Both soon to be going to a long-armer for quilting.

And then the binding for Metro Twist.

I only did the first step of sewing the binding on as I didn't have the matching blue thread to final stitch it down. So close to done with this one.  That was a lot of binding for one day's work, phew, glad it's made.

City Sampler Quilt Top

The last two sides of the City Sampler got their borders. So now it is an official Quilt Top, instead of a Quilt Top In Progress. Woot!

It took quite a bit of pinning along those long sides, but it was worth it and I got it done.

This may be the biggest quilt I've ever made! It measures: 110" x  110"!  I hope that the long-armer will be up for it and it'll fit on their machine.

Now I really have to think about how I want this quilted...Oh, and I have to make a back and binding for it too.
 

City Borders

The City Sampler was hanging up on the design wall and I decided it was time to actually put on the borders. All the grey pieces were cut out and the print rectangle borders were ready too.

It is a really huge quilt, a bit hard to manage. It made me clean up the sewing table area so I had enough space and wasn't knocking everything onto the floor.

I really like how this is looking! 

Each corner is going to have one of these long rectangles of the black and white polka dot fabric going out to the edge of the quilt top.

I think it looks good, and it's making the quilt into a size big enough to work well on our bed.

So that's the top and left side border done, now to get the other two on to complete the quilt top.