Year End Recap and 2024 Plans

I can’t believe we’ve arrived at the last weekend of 2023. What a year of ups, downs and changes! And so much to look forward to in the new year! There’s a lot of stuff to cover in this post, so I’m going to just dig right in.

This year I was not as productive, quilt-wise, as I have been in the past. I finished 33 quilts, which is the least I’ve made since 2019. But I did work on a lot of “community” (several-person effort) quilts; basting, quilting and binding 11 of those. And that reminds me that I need to update my Quilts pages under the blog heading pictures. Of those quilts that I made, the following three are my favorites.

Frosted Windowpanes donation string quilt. 42x48”.

International Sisters, 56x70”

Christmas Stars, 88x98”

This past week I did finish up the two quilts I had basted earlier. These finished up just in time to be counted for 2023. Both were made from Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) blocks. 

Above we have the Thrifty Block quilt using navy blue as the constant. It finished at approximately 54x64”. I did some straight line and loopy quilting on it, but I didn’t take any closeups. The little Framed 4-Patch below is a donation quilt that finished at 40x48. 

I have lots more blocks and UFOs to carry over into 2024, but before I get to my plan, let me show you the string blocks I finished this week.  Two piles of fifteen each and then three extra blocks on the right. That was a total of 33 blocks.

When I added the 33 blocks to the pile I started on October 1, it came out to 418 blocks! My goal was to sew 400 string blocks in the fourth quarter of the year, and I did it! The string bag isn’t totally empty, but it is very low and anemic! YAY!!  So, wanna see what 400+ string blocks look like?

The stack is about 11” high, with the few odd blocks in the foreground. WHEW!!! Cool, huh? Except for some of the light neutral string blocks, they’re all going to Quilts for Kids for quilt kits.

My Bernina, “Nina”, is in the shop for her first annual Spa Treatment. I had intended to get all my batting scraps sewn into Frankenbatts, and that is well underway, but I didn’t finish them up. I still have five donated quilt tops that I need to sandwich up, so I’ve been sewing backings and making Frankenbatts specifically for each of them. I have 3 ½ done. Once they’re finished (later today), I’ll just sew the rest of the batting pieces into standard sizes I use a lot. I may get another three or four out of it all. That’s not as bad as last year, because I did occasionally made a Frankenbatt here and there during the year. 

After Thanksgiving, Cousin Kim and I took inventory of my scraps and “kits” that I had assembled into two cardboard boxes. Over the last couple years I would match up a kit or two with the RSC color of the month and make a donation quilt. Well, that had slacked off toward the end of the year, so I needed a new plan. Kim and I numbered each “kit”, which is just a large baggie-ful of scraps, chunks and small yardage cuts. Sometimes we combined two into one or just added more stuff. The result blew me away. There were   39 or 40 kits! I had planned to try to sew 2 kits into quilts per month, but I’m going to amp that up to 3 per month! I’ll write out the numbers on scraps of paper, put them in a jar, and randomly pick out three per month. That all starts next month. Um, I mean next week. I’ll take a picture of the whole mess (now very well organized). 

To squeeze the kit sewing in (to say nothing of the RSC finishes and personal quilts) it means I’ll be doing fewer new RSC blocks in the new year. But “fewer” means maybe 3-4 simple blocks instead of 6-8 more involved.  

And on top of all that, we’re continuing the purge and declutter process, even with the holidays in full swing. We didn’t have time to take a load of junk treasure to the thrift store last week because of the short week. It’ll be the same story in the coming week. But then we really get busy! We’re listing the house in less than 6 weeks!

Have a Happy and Safe New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! We’ll probably stay up until midnight and then crawl into beddie-bye. We’re such party animals. 

Kicking off the Finishing Frenzy

As the vegetable garden winds down and we tear most of it up (still getting lots of tomatoes), it seems I have more time to sew instead of processing veggies. Theoretically. Bruce and I spend some time every day cleaning out the basement and our respective playrooms (my studio and his workshop). We fill up our two large city garbage cans every week, although one has already been filled with garden debris this week. That means we will instead focus on gathering donations for the thrift store(s) and making a trip or two there. 

There is a lot of furniture and Stuff that neither of us want (or will have room for) that we are trying to pawn off give to family members. So far, one bicycle and some IKEA chairs have a home, but I think we’ll have to resort to the classified ads to sell a few furniture pieces, my treadle sewing machine, some outdoor furniture and Bruce’s workshop machinery. Oy. We need to move that stuff out sooner rather than later so we can straighten things up enough to have the house look uncluttered for staging/selling. And the weather is getting colder ... not the best timing. 

But let’s focus on why we’re here - the sewing part. Actually, there’s not much to see. But what I do have represents a lot of sewing this week. 

String blocks - 75. I sew these at 6.5” square, remove the papers and pin them in groups of 15 for use in Quilts for Kids kits. 

Has it made the slightest dent in that pile of strings I showed last week? Surely, you jest! I’m hoping that at the end of the YEAR we will see a dent! My dear Nina (my Bernina sewing machine) and I will be working diligently again this week on more strings. 

I also hope to pin baste (and possibly to quilt?) two quilt tops that are hanging on their hangers, patiently waiting for their turn to be finished. 

But my other primary goal this next week (in addition to continuing the string blocks) is to begin sewing the Christmas Stars Quilt together. I finished the last of the 4” (finished size) stars this week:

Here are the 73 stars and the 16  4.5” squares to total the 89 blocks I’ll need of that size. There are eight sections to assemble of the quilt top, and I want to get at least half of them done this week. The target date for me to finish the quilt is sometime in the middle week of October (15th-21st). I want to get it to the longarm quilter as early as possible so I can have it back before Thanksgiving weekend. Then I can bind and gift it to my son and daughter-in-law for them to use this year on their bed during the Christmas season. It will be so good to not have this hanging over my head!!

So, that’s all I have this week.  I hope your week was good and wish you the same for the coming week! Thanks for stopping by! Linking up to Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s Scrappy Saturday. 

First Week of Autumn

It was another busy week of “spinning plates”. Don’t you feel as though your life is sometimes a circus act? Please tell me I’m not alone in this, LOL.

The garden is waning and slowly coughing up the last of the cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. But last Tuesday, I still had two whole baskets-full of surplus produce to take to my Weight Watchers meeting. Going forward, it will now dwindle to one basketful per week, and then end when I pick all the green tomatoes before the frost, which will likely happen in the second half of October. 

A couple days ago I roasted/steamed all my poblano peppers from my single very prolific plant. They are now all skinned and sliced and waiting to go into a casserole I’m going to put together with the chiles, cheese, chicken, tortillas and eggs. I’ve got it narrowed down to a couple recipes, so wish me luck! 

We’ve pretty much ignored the grape arbor this year, although a couple neighbor kids have enjoyed some that we picked for them. The birds (and bees and wasps) are getting the rest. We’ll have it all trimmed down when our arborist comes to do his annual tree and bush pruning in a couple weeks. 

All this talk of food is making me hungry, so we better move on to the topic of sewing...

I finished my blocks in Aqua (plus teal, turquoise, etc), September’s color in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Three Split Nine blocks at 6.5”

Seven crumb blocks at 6.5” (pinned so close together that they may look like a single block!)

For the Christmas Stars quilt, I sewed 26, that’s TWENTY-SIX (yes, I’m excited!!) of the little stars this week. Here they are, combined with all their friends. My total is now 63, and with 16 red squares already cut to eliminate some sewing, I only need to sew 10 more to reach the total count of 89. Easy Peasy!! (Thanks for the encouragement, Chantal!)

So, once I finish the ten stars, I’m giving myself a couple weeks to assemble the top. I have the “road map” for assembly at the ready!

Another project I hope to begin in October and continue through the end of the year is a Finishing Frenzy! If that sounds familiar, it’s because I did it last year. As part of the Finishing Frenzy, I’m repeating a sub-goal of knocking back some of my multi-colored strips. These are the ones that didn’t make it into my scrap bins that are sorted by color. With copious donations from Kat (cuttings from quilt backs for Covered in Love) and donations from our local Quilts for Kids chapter, and my own scraps, the strings have outgrown their large beach/book bag (the green and pink flamingo bag). Time to do some string sewing!

That pile is seven inches deep! The bag and my Bernina give an idea of scale. I’m hoping to cull some wider scraps out of the mess, like that black and bright swirly print in front. I’m collecting a lot of those to cut into various sized “bricks” for some future (but as yet unplanned) project. 

Last October my goal was to sew 300 string blocks, but I was only (“only” - hah!) able to churn out 180, plus 45 blocks of green strings. This year, my personal String Challenge will run all quarter as part of my Finishing Frenzy. Target Number: 400 (go big or go home, eh?) Along with the strings, I hope to finish an ample list of Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts from the blocks of the last couple of years.  I want to clear the decks and start fresh in 2024!

Will you be finishing quilts for this last calendar quarter? Do you have strings laying around, yelling at you? You are most welcome to join in on the String Challenge and/or Finishing Frenzy if you are crazy enough!  Muahahahahahaha........

See you next week! xo