Best of Life in Piece's for 2023

This year has been one of transition.  I retired late in 2022, so 2023 was the first year since I was 16 without a work schedule.  At least a work schedule outside the house. So it's been a year of adjustments and discovery as to what one does when there is not a demanding job requiring daily attention.  Spending time in the sewing room has gone up, but not as much as I thought it would. There are still days I have to remind myself to get my 15 minutes of stitching time in. I've certainly posted more this year then in the recent past.  It's a good time to go back and look at what stands out for 2023.  Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs is helping us do that with her Best of 2023 Linky party. 

This is my 9th year linking up or the Best of party. Here's my top 5 "best of" for 2023

1.  Most views (357):  Week 58 Photo Challenge: Recreation of a Movie Scene

Our family photo challenge has been going on for about 2.5 years. We don't post every week, life sometimes gets to hectic for one or all of us.  But we try to keep up with it.  I can't say this is one of my favorite posts, because Grad Girl just didn't have time to get a shot.  But My Guy came through with a classic, which turned out to be a really cool photo for the prompt. 

My Guy: Homage

It's been a fun to see what we each come up with for each challenge card.  We have enough cards for all of next year, so there will be more family challenge photos posted in 2024. 

2. Most Comments (36):  Just Two Charm Pack Quilts Blog Hop: String Lights

Cheryl Brickey (Meadow Mist Designs) is one of my favorite quilt pattern designers.  She offers a mystery quilt almost every year, so when she asked for volunteers to participate in the blog hop for her newest book, I was more than happy to stitch a project from the book. 

 

String Lights is probably one of the easiest quilts in the book, but that meant I had a good chance of at least getting a finished quilt top done before the hop started.  The fabrics came from a kit that had been in the stash for a long time, so I was happy to finally find a home for them. Plans are to move this project to finished quilt in 2024. 

3.  Stitching Stuff: 15 Minutes to Stitch, most link ups (22, Week 1)

 

Not every one who links up is working on meeting a stitching time goal, but many of the long term participants link up each week to share how they did on getting in their stitching time each week. Thank you to everyone who links up regularly and shares that having to post how often they got to the sewing room is motivating for them too. 

4. Finish I'm most proud of: Unity (Helianthus)

Helianthus is far from being one of my favorite quilts.  It's not that I don't like it, it's that I made so many mistakes in putting this one together that it was a bear to finish.  I tried so many times to fix the issues, to the point I had to take out parts of the sashing and replace it with new fabric.  It was so tempting to just bypass this quilt. But I knew if I did that, it would remain a quilt top forever.   I owe a huge thanks to Trudy who agreed to quilt it. I told her if it puckered, it puckered, do what you can with it.  It didn't come out too badly.  It's become one of our trip quilts, it was loaded into the car and used over Christmas.  So I'm glad I pushed through and got if off the UFO list. 

5. Most fun project in 2023:  Stay at Home Round Robin 2023

I've watched this quilt along sponsored by Quilting Gail from the side line for the first 2 years, but last year decided I had the time to play along.  Well that went how I expected, I did well at first but got behind.  But I was really happy with my finished quilt top.

 

I used my blue, green and teal scraps for this quilt.  It came out so much better than I expected.  I enjoyed deciding on what my version of each prompt would look like.  The 2024 SAHRR kicks off in a couple of weeks and I'm on board for that one.  I just need to get my fabrics washed and make my center block. I have a plan this year!  Still probably means I'll get behind, but that's OK, it's all for fun. 

This year was a good year, definitely better than last year.  I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but there were still some fun accomplishments during the year.    

2023 Q3 Quilting Ambitions Check In and September PHD Progress

The end of September was hectic with vacation preparations, complicated by a three day migraine.  So blogging went out the window for several days.  Vacation preparations got done, but I didn't have the energy to get into the sewing room to get photos for my end of the month post.  Since I've not done anything stitching related for the last couple of weeks, all I have to post is progress on my quilting goals for the year and my PHD progress for September.  I'm linking up with Quilting Jetgirl's 2023 Q3 Check In.  

2023 Ambition #1: Finish some quilts, make progress on some quilts and start some quilts. 

There has been one finish and progress on all but one of the quilts on my 2023 plan since my 2nd quarter update.  A second quilt is out for quilting and three others are finished quilt tops.  I am hoping to finish another three quilts before the end of the year. Even if that doesn't happen, I've made good progress on the quilt plan.  That counts too.  

2023 Ambition #2: Acquire a new skill.

In my second quarter update I noted that my plan was to learn to quilt my own projects. I've not done anything on that front, but I'd forgotten that back in April I did take a class on editing quilt patterns.  I can't say I've mastered that skill, but I did learn something new.  I've played a little with creating a tool that can help me calculate the yardage from instructions, but it still needs a lot of work.  

2023 Ambition #3:  Stitch 15 minutes a day and post associated linky party. 

At the end of the quarter, there were 37 Stitching Stuff linky parties with an average participation of 11.7 bloggers.

 As of the end of September, I'd stitched for at least 15 minutes 86% of the days in 2023.  My goal was to exceed 75%, so I'm on track, at least for now. With last week's vacation and the upcoming holidays, finding stitching time will be harder.  

2023 Ambition #4: Sewing room clean up

• Press, cut and sort scraps: some progress
• Organize yardage: no progress

I've spent some time cleaning up my scraps, but I've not done much of anything with my yardage.  Though I have used up some older pieces of yardage as backings.  I've not had enough finishes for that to impact my yardage storage, but every little bit helps. 

I'm mostly happy with where I'm at with this year's ambitions. Just 2.5 months left in the year.  We are at the point what gets done, gets done and what doesn't will just have to be incorporated into next year's ambitions.  

As far as September progress, the PHD report finally shows a finish.

 

There was good progress on several projects in September. 

Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) was assembled, the first border has been added, attaching the second is in progress.  This should be a finished quilt top by the end of October. 

A few more teal blocks were added to Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter). 

Unity (Bonnie Hunter), aka Helianthus, became a finished quilt in September. 

 

The Macaron Mystery quilt (Meadow Mist Designs) went out for quilting last month.  

The stash yielded a reasonable backing fabric for Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs).  The plan is to get this project out for quilting before the end of October. 

 

Progress on Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) continues as my leaders and enders project. 

Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs) first piecing instructions came out in September.  I didn't quite get that clue done before October's clue came out last week. 

The project tracking chart is showing some longer bars this month.

 

Hopefully a couple more bars move closer to the left of the chart by the end of this month. 

One Off the UFO List

The first half of the year was all about new starts.  Two of the three 2023 projects have made it to the finished quilt top stage.  So for the last half of the year I'm prioritizing moving some quilts to the finished quilt stage.  The first big hurdle in that plan was getting Unity prepped to go out for quilting.  Unity was started in April of 2020 when Bonnie Hunter offered the Sew-In-Place quilt along to help all of us cope with the Covid pandemic. I made the last stitch to the binding on Tuesday, September 19th.  

Unity is far from perfect, but I learned a lot during the construction of this quilt. I perfected stitching an accurate quarter inch seam by the time it was fully constructed.  The quilt has a couple of puffy parts because I didn't have that down early on.  I'm eternally grateful to Trudy, she was still able to deal with those imperfections with the quilting.  My version is a bit different from Bonnie's.  I used a different block for the last full pieced border.  One because I didn't really like Bonnie's version and two, the Four X Star block has a lot fewer pieces. By the time I got to that point, I was ready to just be done. 

One of my "rules" for Bonnie's mystery quilts is that the fabric has to come from the stash.  The black with the colored flowers has been in the stash for years, so it was the first pull.  The other goal for Unity was to use a color palette that was new to me.  That's how the yellow and green were selected.  This quilt has always made me think of sun flowers, so that's what I stuck with as the name (the Latin version)

The green made such a good frame for the rest of the quilt that I stuck with that for the binding. 

The backing was purchased during one of Connecting Threads end of year sales. 

The photo doesn't convey the colors really well, but it does show off the quilting.  Since this quilt had so many piecing problems I told Trudy to keep it simple.  

Unity wasn't one of my better executed projects, but I learned a ton.  I will be rejecting any background fabrics that ravel very badly.  That's one reason why it took me forever to finish this project. I tried early on to fix some of my piecing problems, but the background fabric didn't take well to being unstitched and then restitched.  I had to replace a few pieces of background during that process.  Then clean up of the top was really a nightmare due to all the loose strings on the back.  Even with all the problems, I'm happy with the finished quilt and very glad to have it off the UFO list.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.  

To Do List for the Week of 9/19/2023

Hard to believe that more than half of September is in the books.  Looking at what's on my calendar, the end of the year will come really quickly.  Consequently my to do lists are getting longer.  Last week's list was up to six items, which makes it harder to check off the entire list.    

To Do List for 9/12/2023

1. Unity (Helianthus): Make label, binding, finish - progress

2. Macaron Mystery: Prep quilt top for quilting - no progress

3. Scrappy Butterflies: Finish top assembly ✔

4. Malted Mystery: Continue to work on clue 3 ✔

5. Wild and Goosey: Make 2 teal blocks - progress

6. Chilhowie: Continue as leader and ender ✔

Three check marks with progress on 2 others is really not a bad week at all. My goal is to just keep projects moving closer to finished.  With that in mind, this week's list is going to look pretty similar.  

To Do List for 9/19/2023

1. Unity/Helianthus (Bonnie Hunter): Finish quilt, photograph

 

Three corners of the quilt are stitched down. Just one more long side to that fourth corner.  I'm excited to finish Unity. It was one of those projects that I just struggled to get moving on. A lot of that was due to where I was mentally last year.  I'll be glad to mark this one off the to do list.  The plan is to get photographs over the weekend and give Unity it's own blog post on Monday.  

2. Macaron Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Prep top for quilting.

This was on last week's to do list, but I'd forgotten just how much effort goes into finishing off a quilt, so I choose to focus on Unity and Scrappy Butterflies to move those to finished quilt and finished top respectively.  Unity should be finished today, so I can concentrate on getting the next project out for quilting so there will be a finish for next month.  

3. Scrappy Butterflies (self designed): Finish adding border(s)

I'm still undecided on the border(s) for this quilt.  It's already larger than I wanted, but finishing out the Irish Chain pattern really makes the quilt.  My EQ file shows three borders, but that may become just one.  I'd really like to keep the size down on this one.  

4. Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Continue to work on clue 3

One set of HSTs have been finished and the second set of HSTs is in progress.  The Sister block is almost finished.  Next up is the Plus blocks.  I'm on track to be ready for clue 4 when it comes out next month.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make 2 teal blocks

I started one block last week, but didn't quite get it finished.  The goal is to make what I can each month to move this project along.  I've not decided yet if this project will become a focus for next year or if it will stay a make a few blocks a month project.  I have older rainbow scrap projects that are closer to finished then this one.  So those may be the focus for next year.  

6. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Continue as leader and ender project

Block 7 is still under construction, but it's coming along. Hopefully it's a finish by the end of the month.  That leaves just 2 more to finish. I doubt I have this quilt assembled before this year's mystery gets started, but having the blocks done means a quicker finish for next year.  

So another long to do list for this week.  Fingers crossed I can check off most of them before next week's post. Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for this week's To Do Tuesday.  

Moving Along

It's not quite autumn here, the highs have been in the high 80s, lower 90s. But it's amazing how much of a relief that is from the 99+ days we had for most of the summer.  Unfortunately our autumns, and springs too, seem to last for only a week or so before we go on to the next extreme.  I'm not ready for winter.  

The lower temps have made the sewing room much more bearable in the afternoons, I don't have to turn down the air conditioning to work now. Which means I have been spending a lot more time in the sewing room.  This week the focus was to get all the blocks for the Scrappy Butterflies project sewn together. 

 

I'm happy with how the final layout worked out.  Getting the borders added is the next step.  The goal is to have a finished quilt top by the end of the month. 

Once Scrappy Butterflies was assembled, the rest of last week was spent on moving Unity (Bonnie Hunter) closer to finished.  The label was printed, rinsed and framed with fabric.  The binding was assembled, pressed and sewn to the quilt.  Now comes the hand sewing. 

 

Unity is a larger quilt than I normally make, it's 108" long.  So there will be a lot of hand stitching on this one.  I managed to turn 2 corners yesterday.  Fingers crossed I can finish the hand stitching today. Unity will be my first finish since May of last year. 

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Patchwork & Quilts.  

To Do List for the week of 9/12/2023

Where did the last week go?  I worked in my stitching time each day, but it wasn't enough to check off all the items on my to do list. 

To Do List for 9/5/2023

1. Macaron Mystery: Prep back for quilting ✔

2. Scrappy Butterflies: Finish border blocks, finish assembly - progress

3. Wild and Goosey: Make 2 blocks - no progress

4. Malted Mystery: Start on clue 3 ✔

5. Chilhowie: Continue as leaders and enders ✔

Three out of 5, with progress on the 4th to do item isn't a bad week. I didn't get my typical nothing but stitching day on Sunday.  So that definitely played into how things worked out with last week's list.  

I'm signed up for a stained glass class tonight with some friends from work, so I probably won't get in much stitching time today, as it's gym and Walmart day as well.  I should be able to manage good sessions the rest of week. Well assuming I don't come down with the flu.  My niece was at my sister's birthday party on Sunday. She'd lost her voice, due to what she thought was allergies, but she tested positive for the flu yesterday.  She wasn't sneezing or coughing, so fingers crossed she didn't spread flu germs to the rest of us.  At any rate, here is the to do list for this week. 

To Do List for 9/12/2023

1. Unity (Bonnie Hunter): Print label, make binding, finish

The color palette used in Unity has always reminded me of sunflowers. So the Latin genus for sunflowers, Helianthus, seemed to be a good name for this quilt.  I need to decide which fabric I'm using for the binding, but that's probably going to be dictated by what fabrics are left over more than anything.  

2. Macaron Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Prep top for quilting

The back has been pressed and all the loose threads (which just seem to be everywhere in my sewing room) have been removed.  Fingers crossed I can get the top prepped so it can go out for quilting before the end of the month.  My goal is to finish at least one quilt a month for the rest of the year.  

3. Scrappy Butterflies (self designed): Finish top assembly

All the border blocks are finished. The top 4 rows and bottom 3 are all sewn together.  That just leaves rows 5 and 6 to finish up.  Unity and Macaron are my priorities this week, so if I get any work done on the borders that would be great, but I'll be happy to have all the rows assembled by the end of the week.  

4. Malted Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Continue to work on clue 3. 

Clue 3 has a lot of stitching, 2 sets of HSTs, plus 2 sets of blocks.  Hopefully I can get the two older projects off the list so I can concentrate on finishing the clue before the end of the month.  

5. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make 2 teal blocks

I may be reaching with this to do item, but I'll leave it on the list.  Any progress on this project this year is going to help move it along next year.  

6.  Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Continue as leader and ender project

Block 7 is coming together, slowly. 

That's a big list for this week and I doubt I get to all of it.  But any progress is good.  Linking up with The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric for this week's To Do Tuesday. 

August Wrap Up: PHD in 2023

I'm really not ready for it to be September.  The last four months of the year seem to speed by, I guess because we've got the holidays at the end of them.  Even though I'm not ready for the new month, I am happy with all the progress in August. So though I have no finishes to show off for the PHD in 2023 challenge, I can link up over at Quilting Gail's and not feel too badly this month.

 My PHD chart is unchanged. 

Still no new finishes, but also no new starts.  So there's that at least.  There will be a new start this month as the first piecing clue will be out for Malted Mystery next Thursday.  After getting almost all the new starts for 2023 to finished quilt tops in July, August turned out to be all about the older UFOs on this year's quilt plan. 

Scrappy Butterflies (self designed) came back into rotation as I wanted a project that still needed blocks pieced.  The last time this project saw any progress was back in 2021.  

I finished all the alternate blocks and made a good start on the border blocks that finish out the Irish Chain pattern.  Scrappy Butterflies was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project in 2013. This was my second ever RSC project. It's definitely time to move it along to finished.  If it makes it to finished quilt top by the end of the year, I'll be happy.  

The plan for Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter) was to make a few blocks each month and see how that goes. 

I only need 3 more yellow blocks to finish off that color.  I still have a long way to go with the other colors.  This was my RSC project for 2019.  Not sure yet what the plan will be for this quilt in 2024. For now I'm just happy to be making progress each month.  

Unity (Bonnie Hunter) is finally out for quilting. 

The back has been pieced and prepped since November of last year. I just couldn't face all the clean up the back of Unity needed.  Trudy emailed yesterday to say the quilting was all done.  My big goal for September will be to move this project to finished and move it off the UFO list.  

With Unity out of the sewing room, I was able to move along to getting the backing made for the Macaron Mystery Quilt (Meadow Mist Designs). 

Macaron is the 2021 Meadow Mist Designs Mystery.  This year's mystery has already kicked off. I probably won't get this one ready for quilting before I start this year's mystery, but hopefully it will go out for quilting by the end of the month.  

Last year's Meadow Mist Designs mystery, Melodic Mystery, became a quilt top. 

The plan for September is to get a backing made for this project with the hopes it will go out for quilting in October.  

Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter) has been my leaders and enders project for most of the year.  

There is an assembly problem with one of the blocks, probably block 6 from last month.  Thankfully that will be easy to fix.  The subunits for block 7 are almost finished.  Hopefully I'll have that block done before the end of the month.  It would be nice to get this project to a finished quilt top before Bonnie's 2023 mystery kicks off in November.  But that's a tall order, so we'll see.  

Even though I've no quilt finishes this year, there has been a lot of progress.

One project out for quilting and four others are at the finished quilt top stage.  Hopefully Macaron is out for quilting and Scrappy Butterflies is a finished quilt top by the end of the month.  I think the plan then is to move on to getting a back for the Melodic Mystery and finish the setting blocks for Rhododendron to move it to a finished quilt top.  It's OK if I don't get that far, I'm going to be happy with any progress.  

To Do List for the Week of 8/15/2023

I seem to have gotten my startitis under control. And I finally tackled the project that's been filling me with dread ever since it became a finished quilt top. So definitely a good week for the to do list. 

To Do List for 8/8/2023

1. Unity: Finish prep, send out for quilting - progress

2. Wild and Goosey: Make 2 yellow blocks ✔

3. Melodic Mystery: Continue assembly of quilt top ✔

4. Chilhowie: Continue as leader and enders ✔

5. Sewing room clean up: Reorganize project boxes ✔

I'm happy with the 4 check marks with progress on the 5th.  Hopefully I can do as well on this week's list. 

To Do list for 8/15/2023

1. Unity (Bonnie Hunter): Finish packaging, take to post office

Everything is boxed, I just need to write out the deposit check and then seal it all up, address it and get it to the post office. That should happen today.  Trudy is expecting it. I could have bypassed Unity and moved on to some other finishes, but if I did that, I wasn't sure I'd come back to it.  So it feels really good to get this one moving along again.  

2. Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make 2 yellow blocks

I only need 16 yellow blocks for the quilt as designed.  With the completion of these two there are 11 blocks.  If I stick to the plan of two a week, all the yellow blocks could be finished by the end of the month.  

3. Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Finish assembly, start borders

Just one seam left to attach the top to the bottom.  But then come the borders.  The pattern as written includes a final border of the green. But I'm thinking I may add a wider border of the dark burgundy.  That decision will be made after the green border is added.  I wasn't sure my fabrics were going to work, that green seemed like almost too much contrast. But I think it worked out well. 

4. Scrappy Butterflies (self designed): Continue making alternate blocks

 

This project was the first victim of my startitis early in the year.  The last time this project saw any progress was back in December of last year.  This is one of my older Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects (started in 2013).  The goal is just to make progress on it. If it makes it to finished quilt by the end of the year, that would be a bonus. 

5. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Continue as leaders and enders

I discovered that I added one of the strips to the block incorrectly, so I had to unsew that before I could finish block 6.  A stack of pinned HSTs are now by the sewing machine. Those are the start of block seven.  

That's my list for this week.  If I can make as much progress on it as I did on last week's list, it will have been a good week. Linking up with To Do Tuesday over at The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric.  Good luck with your to do list this week.  

Decisions

The Monday post is a bit late this week for the second time in less than a month.  Let's just say the morning didn't get off to the best start, but everything has lined out since then.  

I spent most of last week working on prepping Unity (Bonnie Hunter) to send out for quilting. 

 

I ended up with quite a nest of loose threads at the end. But the quilt is pressed and folded so it can be packaged up. 

So this afternoon I need to track down a box, pull some batting and finish getting it ready to take to the post office tomorrow.  

I didn't finish the prep work till late yesterday afternoon, so there wasn't much time to work on much else, but I did get the last row of blocks for the Melodic Mystery  (Meadow Mist Designs) quilt sewn together .

The top 4 rows are sewn together. I need to add row 5 to the bottom, then I can sew the 2 halves together. The next step is to finish the border.  This project will become my focus project till I get the quilt top assembled.  I usually try to keep 3 projects on the active works in progress list, so I need to find something else to add in.  Preferably something that still needs the blocks pieced.  

Linking up with the typical Monday Design Wall and Patchwork & Quilts Monday linky parties.  

To Do Tuesday for the Week of 8/8/2023

This week has gotten off to a much cooler start than last week.  We had a rainy weekend in the first time in a long while. It made for a very nice, cool walk yesterday.  I'm sure it will heat back up again, we don't really see fall temperatures here till late September or early October.  Which really isn't all that far off. The end of the year will be here before we know it.  I'm trying to make sure some of those things I want to get done by the end of the year show up on my to do list.  

To Do List for 8/1/2023

1. Unity: Prep for quilting - progress

2. Wild and Goosey: Make 1 red, 1 yellow block ✔

3. Melodic Mystery: Continue assembling quilt top ✔

4. Malted Mystery: start cutting fabrics - no progress

5. Chilhowie: Leaders and enders project ✔

Three out of five check marks and good progress on the fourth is not a bad week.  I wasn't able get to the Malted Mystery fabrics because Unity is spread over my pressing/cutting table. I knew that prepping that project was going to take some time, but it's taking longer than I expected.  This week's list will look pretty much like last week's list. 

To Do List for 8/8/2023

1. Unity (Bonnie Hunter): Finish prep, send out for quilting

I'm just over halfway finished with the clean up.  I've pressed and used the lint roller on this section, but still need to clip the loose threads.  I've probably got a couple more afternoons of clean up before it's ready to package up.  I'll be happy to get this one out the door.  

2.  Wild and Goosey (Bonnie Hunter): Make 2 yellow blocks

I finished one red block from last month along with two yellow blocks for this month. The goal for Wild and Goosey is to just increase the number of blocks completed.  With what's been finished this year, it's going to take another two or three years of block making to get enough blocks for the finished quilt, unless I make it a focus project for next year.  We'll see what I get finished this year.  

3. Melodic Mystery (Meadow Mist Designs): Continue assembly of quilt top.

There is still one row of blocks to assemble, but the top and bottom two rows have been stitched together.  The pattern has one narrow border of what in my version is the green. I may add another border of the dark maroon.  We'll see how it looks once it gets that far. 

4. Chilhowie (Bonnie Hunter): Continue as leaders and enders

Block 6 is almost finished. By the end of the week block 7 should be under construction.  

5. Sewing Room clean up: Reorganize project boxes

If you read yesterday's post, you know we had to move some stuff in the sewing room due to a cable box issue. I did some rearranging after that and realized I need to go through my project boxes and clear out a few and combine a few.  That will help get rid of some of the clutter.  

That's my list for this week.  You can find more to do's over at The Quilt Schmilt: For the Love of Fabric on this week's To Do Tuesday linky party.  

I promised to announce the winner of the digital copy of Just Two Charm Pack Quilts today.  The random number generator picked #4. So congratulations to Cindy Smith. I'll reach out to Cindy about the prize via email. Thank you to everyone that commented on the String Lights post.