Summed-Up 2025

 The year 2025 is completed and "in the books", and before I shelve mine completely away on the very long bookshelf that is this blog, it's time for another yearly summing up. Fair Warning: this is quite a long post.

The 1SE video for 2025, all six minutes or so of it, shows a lot about how I spent my time all year. One second per day. Looking back on last year, it's pretty representative, showing the daily studio work, all the family/pets, gardening, and so very very much traveling. Not that I'm complaining about getting to travel of course! It's just been a year of being out and about and away from my workroom, more than is usual.

I published 17 Wandering Wednesday posts about all these travels. Non-local travel locations included  Tahoe, Chemainus Canada, San Juan Bautista, San Francisco 2x, Spokane 5x,Copenhagen, London England, Ashland, Portland.

I'm going to use the same format as I did last year to look at what all got accomplished in my studio.

Finishes

Sky Structure for the Sister Artists exhibit.

Our Mistake for the Stretching Art & Tradition 25 exhibit.

Spring Speaking to Summer for the BAMQG exhibit at the SMCF.

Slopes

Metro Twist

Running Out of Raincloud

Trinket

Another year of participating in Index Card A Day

Made napkins out of toweling fabric.

Big Steps Completed

Pieced the blocks and assembled the top of the Old Town Mystery Quilt

City Sampler Backing and binding done and the quilt is at the long-armer being quilted.

Almost to the center of my Kawandii

Finally found the right background so I can start my Circle Sampler

Made the Bohemian Wife Backing and binding.

Pieced many more blocks for the Y.E.S. coat.

Made 11 more Stamp Quilt blocks and cut out 11 more.

Made several parts of the paper-pieced Candy quilt.

Made blocks for the new BAMQG BOM 

Actually started working on the Oxbow Tote!

Pieced the blocks and sashing for Patchwork Palooza

Pieced the first clue for the new mystery quilt Lupine & Laughter.

Community Giving

7 Blocks

Made and added the binding.

Made and added the binding.

Made the Postage Stamp and HST blocks from the pre-packs and sewed into a top.

Sew Day group project blocks

Seven Postage Stamp blocks

Oh my goodness, that's quite a lot really! I was feeling a little poky and a bit down about my production for the year given all that went on in my non-creative life this year. As per usual my productivity continues to come on in fits and starts throughout the whole twelve months. Not a surprise as a lot of this is still very dependent on how I'm physically doing which changes a lot from month to month (and day to day!). And with all of that traveling, and helping my mom through her move it feels like it's been a decade in a year. Thus, this has been a very good exercise for me to go through every year here on ye olde blougue as I also discovered over the last two years. I think I'll continue this going forward.

June To-Do

 

Here's the beginning of the new month design wall picture. It shows that I'm indeed working on one of my UFO projects, making the backing for the City Sampler, the big print of the snake in the garden will be the main part of the backing and I've done the math for augmenting it to be the right size. You can see the City Sampler top folded up in front of it, along with the fabrics I'll be using for the backing and the binding. You can also see that I am still not working at all on Sour Grace. That one is still pinned up on the right hand side just as it was at the end of the Jane Sassaman class in February. 

I'm continuing to use the not-so-new configuration of my to-do list below, as it more closely follows the database categories that I use to keep track of all my work-in-progress. I've added a Design section this month. Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2025 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to at the beginning of the year.

QUILTS

Design

Complete EQ8 design of Selvedges Showing.

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

Continue Assembly

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - assemble blocks.

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 - make the binding. Decide on whether I'm quilting this myself or not.

🥏👽City Sampler- finish putting together a backing, make the binding, take to a long-armer to be quilted.

Quilting

🥏👽 Trinket it's already sandwiched and ready for quilting.

Final Steps

🥏👽 Metro Twist - finish last bit of quilting and add binding, sleeve and label.

🥏👽 Running Out of Raincloud -  hand-sew down the facings, 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 - source correct size of 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

Kawandii - Finish hand stitching/assembly

Hey! All Finished!

🥏👽Slopes is all done.

Spring Talking to Summer is all done.

Two quilts were moved to the finished section, hooray. And one was moved to the final steps section too. Progress is continuing to be slow but steady. 🐌🐌🐌 Forward!

June Swooning

 

It's either June swoon or gloom, this year it's swooning as the heat is high and the flowers are a'bloom. See the recent Flower Friday post. This month's monthly marker is made from the Metro Twist quilt that is in the process of being fully quilted.

The monthly marker was made with the apps, Kaleida Cam and SnapSeed.

Here's the 1SE video, one second every day of my May 2025. 

Monthly I-Did List

1. I finished quilting,, made the binding, bound and finished the Slopes quilt.
2. I posted about my garden a few times.
3. I bound the BAMQ challenge quilt, Spring Speaking to Summer just in time to turn it in.
4. I made binding and bound a Community Giving quilt.
5. I made postage stamp blocks for a Community Giving quilt and assembled the top.
6. I sandwiched the Metro Twist quilt, and began quilting it
7. I started designing a quilt in EQ8 for the MQG 2026 challenge.

That's a lot! I'm feeling pretty good about the amount of work I've been getting done through the tumult of family stuff. I wasn't as active on social media, posted on BlueSky 21 times, on Flashes 7 times, on Instagram 5 times.  I attended the BAMQ meeting in person which was super fun. 

Metro Sandwich

Time for some sandwiching. Metro Twist has been up on the design wall waiting for the quilt sandwich treatment for many months (since November last year).

After stretching the fusible batting and doing a bit of ironing on the front, I turned it all over and tacked down the back.

Definitely a good arm workout. I tried to switch off hands so both arms got the benefit.

Flipped back over and re-ironed the front to really make sure it's held together. Now it's ready to be quilted.

Slowly but surely working through my 2025 UFO challenge list. Yes that is a Color Coded Spread Sheet. I figured I was hanging it up above my worktable so it might as well be colorful and pretty. I'm happy that progress has been made on all but the Temperature Quilt, and one out of seven UFO's is now finished (Slopes). It was good to only pick seven projects to help narrow down the universe of things to work on getting finished.