Christmas 2025: End-of-the-year Wrap Up

This news is the biggest!  What do you notice about the  picture? Yes - that is my right hand, and I am totally left handed.  But my left thumb has been very ouchy, arthritic and overused. This inflammation means no quilting.  But it’s what I do every night. So 8 weeks ago I started my journey to ambidexterity. The first few nights were awful - I couldn’t even hold the needle.  I kept referring to my left hand so that my right hand could see what it was supposed to be doing.  And , my right-hand quilting is now pretty good! The best bonus is that I can switch hands for a change of direction.  My thumb is still ouchy but can handle a wee bit of quilting, 

Both hands have matching protection!

And this has been my practice piece for right-handed quilting! 

This recent finish pleased me a lot.  It is my Summer 2025  project.  I cut 8.5” x WOF strips from various grunge fabrics and spent summer evenings holding just long thin batted and backed strips and quilting.  I thought I would  go for  a corner log cabin layout.  But it looked so plain.  So I cut the yellow quilted strip into 8.5” squares and began to fool around with this layout. I used what Sharon Peterson calls reversible quilting and what others call quit as you go QAYG.   You can see the grey connecting bits in the front.  The back I almost like even more - see picture below.  For backing I used any low-volume fabric, and I love the effect. 

This is nothing but a fabric I love.  Marcia Derse is the designer, and I have loved her work for over 10 years.  I don’t know what I am going to do with it.  But I love it and will figure something out.  

And look below.  Purses.  Always Sew Powerful purses. This was the December dozen, which means I sent off 144 purses this year.  And I already have the beginnings of January’s dozen on the design wall.

The good quilting fairy has been whipping up various pouches and zip clutches. And some have already been gifted.  It’s a luxury to just play in the studio with fabrics and zippers and create fun little things! 

Last year I did a big bed quilt for stepdaughter Jen.  These pillows are from her leftover fabrics 

This is my 100 Day project. Quilt Buddy Lauren suggested this project to our guild.  10 of us have responded, and each of us gets to determine what they want their project to be.  Some, in the true spirit of 100 Day Projects, are working on something daily.  But I have tailored these 100 days around a black and white scrap project with the outcome being a useable quilt.  Here it is in its pin-basted form.  And currently I am quilting it and figuring how to incorporate some hand quilting   See the picture below?  My eye needs help.  So I am experimenting with stitching around the nine big blocks in the center of the blocks. 

And here’s the end.  This picture above has three of my favorite things in it.  First, my grandson under the quilt.  Second, my grandson taking the picture - look in the mirror.  Third, this quilt.  I love it, I loved making it, and I love that Ryan wants it and how good it looks in his apartment.  I also love that Brandon is sleeping on the sofa bed we passed on to Ryan. The same sofa bed where the boys and I used to have sleepovers. 

This holiday season was good.  I prayed last year for one more winter.  And that will be my prayer again. The holidays are constantly changing and evolving.  While we may yearn for traditions  and faces of yore, we must constantly  adapt and look forward. Here’s to 2026. 

All Quilt Projects, Great and Small

 The end of the year means two things: wrapping up current projects and planning projects for 2024.  Sew Powerful purses are at the top of the 2024 list.  But I cannot stop myself from starting new quilts.  Look at this pattern by Robin Pickens.  The first real modern design I did was Double Plus Good by Rossi Hutchinson, back in 2009.  And look where I am today with Definite Plus, another plus quilt! Its hard to see the jelly roll next to a cream and grey, but these are the fabrics for this quilt.  It's snowy and a major football day.  I may go ahead and get started on this!

This scrap quilt is one I just finished quilting.  I started it as a kind of throw away project, just to use up scraps.  But as I began to needle it, I kind of fell in love with it.  Once it was completed and washed and the textured emerged, it is now one of those quilts that will need to find a very special home. so now I am moving on this this one using an off-center spiral.

 

One of my hand quilting tricks, and I know so many others do this, is to load several needles at once.  This little rug mug is my needle holder.  and if I'm working in multiple colors, this little basket made by quilt member Janette is perfect for keeping those various balls of Perle cotton.

But here's a quilt I would never attempt to hand quilt.  It is for my stepdaughter Jen and is a king - 116" x 116". The backing required 12 yards.  The pattern is Weighted by Alex Hoffman and called for 17 fabrics, not including the background.  The top starts with greens and folds into grays and develop into purples.  I love this pattern and am eager to have it long armed by Sarah Evans.  Below is my Christmas present from Jen who gave me a gift certificate to Quiltagious, a pretty neat little shop in Mukwanago, Wisconsin.  Three absolutely unique prints and a pattern that will show them off nicely without cutting them into bits. 

I'm looking forward to 2024.  2023 had a major sadness, the death of my little brother.  Even before Doug died, but especially afterwards, Ive been keenly aware of two things.  One is how good I have been feeling.  My health allows me to do everything I want to do, and I am able to do the things without pain or difficulty.  The second change is that my life rhythm is changing.  For a long time I have been a kind of maniacal sewer:  "get this one done and start another" was the unspoken mantra.  Now?  I'm finding pleasure in each step of the process:  the planning, the gathering, the preparation, the execution, the completion. I'm content to work on a new project without an old one being complete.  Yes, Red Door, I know you need to be finished. It's more than ever about enjoyment.  And I'm thankful for each day that I have and sad Doug didn't have the luxury of these kinds of days.

I'm a bit fearful of 2024 and what it holds.  What I want it to hold is another autumn and another winter.  I have always loved winter, but I especially love it here in this condo.  I hope for continued health for both of us.  And I do know that I will continue sewing.  As Doug was dying, my sister and I read "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End" by Atul Gawande.  It should be required reading for all of mankind.  Dr. Gawande asks the reader to identify what makes life worth living.  One guy in the book said as long as he could eat chocolate ice cream and watch baseball games, life was worth it.  For me it is the ability to sew and create.  That I can do this with the support of my life's partner?  I am content.  

Another Scrap Quilt

I am overwhelmed by my scraps.  No matter how many scrap quilts I make,  I still have more.  And more. I joke that my scrap baskets have scraps baskets.  But that's not far from the truth.  Fellow MQCG Jane Shapiro spearheaded a community quilt project using the above design. She supplied us with the background fabric and directions, and then several of us made 4 blocks.  Those 4 blocks?  I really enjoyed making!  So I enlarged her pattern from an 8" block to a 12" block.  Scraps?  No problem.  Background?  For some reason I have two hunks of grey that are very similar.  So I used those for the background.

And then I got to work. And I like how this is turning out.  This napping quilt will be 60" x 72"

And in keeping with this scrap theme, I went through my stash for big hunks of neutral fabrics.  So, voila! the backing.  For another day I will Frankenbatt my scraps and come up with a batting.  

While I've been working in the studio, I've been handqulting this cheater panel. My SIL needs a baby quilt, and this appealed to hear.  It really is lovely, and I need to discover who put this panel on the retreat scrap table!  

This is the eve of my 74th birthday.  How lucky and blessed am I?  John just turned 84, we are both feeling very good, and we love where we are living. I cannot think how happy I am without thinking of how sad I am at life's changes, the biggest one being Doug's death last March.  Why him?  why not me?  Ah, life's mysteries...

Scraps, Scraps, and More Scraps

I cannot stand my ever-growing stash of scraps.  Two baskets, a 7-drawer chest, and a plastic tub are all bursting at the seams. At the winter CMQG retreat I worked on the blocks from the quilt above. Scraps strips were cut into 2.5” x 10.5 strips.  So were all my low-volume neutrals.  I even joined up leftover bits of binding.  The batting?  Yep, Frankenbatted. Wait, it gets worse…
 

The backing is all scraps, too.  I had to use the leftover scraps strips and those odd bigger bits of low-volumes.  I like this quilt, and it needs an owner.  Someone will choose it. Maybe…

Reclaiming Normal

I often joke about how making purses for Sew Powerful help me get my head out of my ass.  But it is so true.  With my brother's last few weeks on earth, the calendar and days of the week just melded into one sad period of time.  But his wonderful funeral and knowing he is at peace have helped time resume its normal pace.  And yes, the making of purses are an integral part of how I grieve. 

But so is my hand-quilting.  In the previous post you see the quilt I was working on during the days leading to his death. Janie from Ride Janie Ride claimed that quilt for her solace.  So then I moved right onto the quilt below.

                                  Some of these are so low-volume the hexies seem to disappear.  

               Off-central spiral quilting suits my hand and my eye.  Every stitch was a soothing one.

This label is for the front

I've started hand quilting this one.  It's another "scrap" quilt.  Look at the purses at the beginning of this post.  They are make from scraps leftover from this scrappy quilt.  

The Beauty of a Scrap Quilt

 I love this quilt.  (Don't worry if you don't ...)  And I want to tell you why I love it so much.  A lot of it has to do with how it feels.  Trust me - it's going to be a great quilt for a chilly day.  This is 60" x 75" - perfect for napping or reading.

The big reason I love this quilt is that I have used some of my scraps.  I joke about my scraps having scraps, but it's true.  So to make something useful out of little bits is satisfying.

I love this quilt for the setting of what were originally 12" blocks.  To give the quilt unity and help the eye make sense, I used the Attic Windows settings.  The pane on the left side of each block is from a fabric I found in New Zealand.  There are little kiwis hidden amongst the leaves. With the addition of the attic windows side and bottom pane, each block became 15.25" by 15.25" 

Sew the two kiwis in the left panel above?

 Another reason I love this quilt is because of the hand-stitching and the sort-of vertical slash on each block.  Half of the blocks have a bit of red.  Although hard to see, both the side and bottom panes have some hand-stitching.  And that brings me to the key reason I love this quilt:  its construction.
I was able to work on each block individually and then join them together using a "quilt-as-you-go" technique that I learned from Sharon Pederson's Reversible Quilting. 

Here's the back of this quilt.  This is an Art Gallery fabric from April Rhodes's Bound collection.  It's not black and white - it's actually a dark dark blue.  Some of the fabrics on the front are that dark grey with blue undertones.  The backing fabric became my sashing for the front of the quilt.  For the back and binding I used Kona  snow. See below for a close-up of the back.  For quilters interested on this reversible technique, tomorrow I will do a process post and explain this technique, one that I have taught and used many times.  It's not easier or harder - it's just another way of approaching quilting.

Scrappy Batik - Finished!

This is my first completed quilt of 2012. Admitting that I work large and dark is the first step, isn't it? This is 91" by 73" and was quilted by T and F Studios using the Baptist Fan design. It's hard to see this design on these batiks, but see if you can spot it some of the pictures below. Washing the quilt helped the quilting pattern pop.  This quilt is for my living room, more specifically my reading corner, where I spend many early mornings.

The back of this quilt is darker than the front.  And my fabric cabinets are a bit more controlled, thanks to this project.

My Niece, Altruism, Scraps and a Reversible Quilt

When my brothers' daughters were little, they were part of Camp Quilt for three summers. My mother and their mothers would pitch in, as would Uncle John, and the result was that Laura, Candace, Leslie, and Ali all made quilts, pretty much by themselves. Of course the Good Quilting Fairy was a part of this process. The first summer each girl kept their quilts. The second and third summers I suggested that they make quilts for the church nursery or someone else. My recollection is that they didn't (maybe Candace gave one to her Grandma Miller and maybe Ali gave one to a friend) and that there was eye-rolling at the suggestion. The winter of my niece Leslie's senior year of high school, she asked if she could make a quilt for a friend of hers who was going away. Aha! She above all got it: that quilts were meant to be given away. (Leslie also enlisted my help in making her parents a Christmas photo quilt but that's a separate blog entry).

So when Leslie was her working on her 4th quilt, we decided it was time she learned how to use the rotary cutter. My teaching style is to give some basic directions and then try not to hover. Leslie had her fabrics, knew what to do, and was just cutting away. She asked at one part, pretty far into the process, "Should I be starting at the 0 instead of the 1?" She had cut quite a bit of fabric 1" short. I remember scooping up the miscut pieces and telling Les it was no big deal, and she continued her cutting, this time using the correct measurements by starting at 0.
I saved these scrap pieces, and they became part of a demonstration in foundation piecing for a reversible quilt class that I was teaching. The quilt pictured here has 48 blocks. One side's blocks are all half-square triangles using fabrics from Leslie's quilts. The other side are scrap strips from various projects. Look at the February 6, 2008 blog entry when the body of this quilt was originally done. It's just been sitting, waiting to be completed.

My friend Cathy is on the committee to find a suitable going-away present for her long-time minister Laura at the Downers Grove United Church of Christ and asked if I had any quilts just hanging around. Cathy spotted this scrap quilt. So I finished it, giving a bit of unity by using the same border on the front and the back. Even the binding uses scraps of bindings from various quilts. Reverend Laura is a wonderful woman who has a great ability to bring various personalities together into a unified whole. This quilt is symbolic in some ways of Laura's talent and ministry. That this quilt started with my niece Leslie's altruism makes it even more special. 58" x 74"

Roman Coins, Scrap Style

This scrap quilt, using the Roman Coins design, is terrific (she modestly says). I love each one of these scraps, and using browns as the sashing, outer border, and backing really makes a strong design statement. The result is dark and dramatic and rather masculine. Nephew Chris Thompson is the intended recipient of this, but only if he likes it. The last quilt I made him was 8 years ago when he graduated from high school and was on his way to the University of Michigan. If this quilt doesn't appeal to him, then I'll be happy to hold on to it!

Click on the picture to see the details of some of these wonderful scraps.70" x 92"
Note: September 29, 2009 - This quilt has actually gone to Michelle M, just because... Chris T is again on the back burner.

Inspiration and Projects

Inspiration has a multitude of sources. Sometimes a particular piece of fabric becomes the source of inspiration. And it could be a combination of fabrics or colors. Sometimes it's a design. I still have a landscape/sunset quilt trying to get out of my head from our trips to Alaska. The same is true of our drive along the Mississippi Valley on our way to Minneapolis. Sometimes a special occasion coincides with a technique I want to try. That's what happened with niece Leslie's high school graduation quilt. This quilt is from the leftovers of Leslie's quilt. And some quilts have no inspiration - they are just something that must be done.

John and I just returned from a fabulous and intense short week in Beijing. Our lovely guide Hua Jing showed us stuff until our brains were full. And I come home with Asian motifs running through my head. Kennedy teacher/friend Rachel is someone who has been on my quilt list. Rachel is dedicated and personable, and we spent much time together working on various projects. She bought her first place in Oak Park and has some dining room wall space that she's saving for me. I've been bouncing various ideas off of her, but when I got back from Beijing I knew what I wanted to do. The palette is a warm one - neutrals, browns, sage greens, true reds, some golds. There are 6 blocks, each with an "Asian" motif and simple lines.

Yesterday I was in a work groove when John reminded me that I'm making a Jazz T-Shirt Quilt for the Brookfield Jazz Society. And that reminded me that I'm taking the t-shirt John bought at The Great Wall and turning that into a wall hanging. There is also a pile of red/cranberries/burgundies in the studio for niece Ali's quilt - she graduated in December from Richards HS but I figure I still have until May for completion. I think I want to use the same technique for her quilt that I used for Leslie's, which involved making my own fabric from strips of fabrics.

So today I will head up and continue to work on Rachel's quilt. When I hit a rough patch, then I'll begin squaring up t-shirts. Then I'll think about John's Great Wall Wall Hanging and what fabrics to incorporate into that. And then I'll look at the some of the ethnic fabrics and dream about how I want to use them. I may even look at the pile of scraps I had my grandson sort - I want to try a weaving technique in an attempt to create a checkered fabric. The freedom to work on various projects simutaneously and to have the space to do this is fabulous.