Category: In-Progress Quilt Posts

A Woven Star quilt block made by That Crafty Cara (Cara Brooke) for her Star Climber Scrap Quilt.

Starry Stitches & Snowfall Wishes: A February Fresh Start

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Happy Monday! Happy February! I don’t know if you can wish anyone a happy Monday or a happy February, but here I am, trying to inject some semblance of cheer into the grayest part of the year! I found an image on the internet last week that I absolutely loved from Pippi Post, and I have been quoting it to myself over and over again ever since:

Credit: Pippi Post

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There’s a lot of stuff going on right now that is upsetting for people, it’s February and we haven’t seen the sun in months, and almost everyone I know is recovering from some bout of illness. We’re all tired and we’re all overwhelmed, so prioritizing joy is a good idea right now. I’ve been trying to avoid being a grump and it really is weird how you can just choose to be optimistic if you really put your mind to it.

Something that brings me joy is figuring out my week ahead, so here we are with a Crafting a Plan post! Enjoy!

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Monday: Tuscan Meatball Soup with gnocchi
  • Tuesday: Grilled Cheese & Lunchmeat sandwiches, Salad with creamy cider vinaigrette
  • Wednesday: Breakfast Soft Tacos
  • Thursday: Costco Lasagna, Caesar salad
  • Friday: Chicken-Tomatillo Soup with Chipotle Chiles
  • Saturday: TBD
  • Sunday: TBD

Clothing

I am so caught up with laundry! It is exhilarating! I actually have time to work on rotating our wardrobes at the moment, so there’s a big upheaval with the warm and cold weather clothing. I read a fantastic book about decluttering over Christmas Break and am applying the principles to my wardrobe as I work through the rotating.

Cleaning

I’m trying to do some decluttering and it’s going pretty good. The book I read is called Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff, by Dana K. White, and it’s got a completely sane approach to dealing with decluttering that does not involve dumping out an entire anything and spending hours at a time on the process à la Marie Kondo. I’ve gone through the front entrance of the house, the dining room, and I’m slowly working on the craft room. All the background thought that goes into the process makes the upkeep of the cleaned area much easier, so those areas of my house are looking really good, even weeks later. Very good book, highly recommended.

Caring

  • Haircuts for Michael & Nathaniel
  • I need to make a vet appointment for Quesnel. She’s not looking like she’s feeling very well.
  • I need to keep an eye on spring sports registration for Nathaniel.

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Creativity

  • King David’s Crown is assembled and awaiting basting. I decided that I wanted to quilt it nicely, so I’ve ordered some quilting stencils and the company has taken forever to ship them to me. They should arrive on Thursday, despite having ordered them last weekend. Hmph.
  • I started working on my scrappy Star Climber quilt last week and I am loving it! What a great pattern for using up scraps! Love, love, love. I’m planning on this one taking all year to complete so that I don’t have to rush it. I really enjoy working with the Woven Star foundation papers* and I think I’ve picked out a great color palette for this quilt that will use up a lot of scraps from particularly overflowing scrap bins. My schedule for this quilt calls for me to complete eight blocks in February, and I’ve finished four thus far. Another two are in-progress right now and I’m hoping to have them done by the end of this week.
  • It’s quite possible that I could finish the Christmas Stripey socks this week. I’ve made it to the toe decreases, so there’s not a lot of work left on them.

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Celebrating

  • Emily just celebrated her 21st birthday. I think you’re officially old when your kids start turning 21.
  • Next up is Rachel’s birthday. How in the world is she almost seventeen years old?!?! Nathaniel mentioned that her next birthday will allow her to vote. That was not on my radar. These kids just went and grew up on me when I wasn’t looking.
  • Michael and I aren’t up for a big night out on Valentine’s Day so we’re planning a family Mario Kart tournament for that evening. Depending on how into it the kids are, there could be some cute things happening. If the cute things don’t happen, whatever; we’ll still have fun and eat tasty treats.
  • Michael’s birthday is on the horizon, but I’m not quite into planning mode for that yet.
  • Same with Nathaniel.
  • Easter IS on my mind because I’m trying to get the Easter Program together for church. I’ve got my rough draft written up and submitted for approval, so we’ll see how much the bishopric likes it. I’d also like to do some planning in regards to Easter dinner; the kind of planning that will repeat itself every year and make my life easier.

Community

  • Ren and I will be performing the special musical number in church this week because I couldn’t find anyone else to do it. We are becoming very good at throwing pieces together at the last minute! So we’ll need to figure out some rehearsal time during the week.
  • Track down some flute music for Ren for the Easter Program.
  • Compose an ending/reprise for my arrangement of “As Bread is Broken” for the choir.
  • Pick up raffle tickets I had printed for band boosters.
  • Check in on the t-shirts we’re having printed for the band’s Disney trip

Top priorities this week:

  • Vet appointment for Quesnel
  • Rachel’s birthday
  • Valentine’s Day
  • Getting the quilting going on the King David’s Crown quilt

I wish you a happy first week of February! We’re getting some snow right now and I’m really hoping it translates into a legit snow day tomorrow so we can just bum around and drink cocoa all day. I’m reeeeeally hoping for that. May you get your snow wishes granted as well, if that’s your jam.

Crafting through the Cold

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We’ve hit the third Friday of 2025 and it’s starting to feel like we’ve truly left the holiday season behind us and that we’re heading into a new, fresh year. I am really looking forward to this three-day weekend ahead of us, and really, really looking forward to the end of the kids’ semester at the end of next week with its FOUR-DAY weekend. Yay for extra days off of school during the darkest days of the year!

Top priorities this past week:

  • Progress on the King David’s Crown quilt
  • Finish the Piscis Project
  • Progress on the Stripey Christmas Socks

King David’s Crown Quilt

It’s coming along. The pattern will be released to the public in mid-March*, so you would think I have lots of time to work on this, but photos need to be submitted to Fat Quarter Shop ahead of that release date, so I’m needing to work at a faster pace to meet that deadline. The requirement is only one block to show, but I never want to do just one block so I’m doing a legit quilt at breakneck speed. My goal was to be done with 75% of my blocks this Wednesday and I was very, very far behind on that goal on Tuesday, but somehow managed to bend the space-time continuum over the next two days and I’m actually caught up on my self-imposed schedule as of last night. Woo hoo!

It’s a cool-looking block so I wanted to make a full quilt from it because it’s a little off the beaten path for me. I’m really loving the Creative Grids Starburst 30-degree ruler* that goes along with the pattern, and I have plans to re-use this specialty ruler to make all sorts of projects in the future. I’m addicted to Creative Grids specialty rulers. It’s intense.

I figure I’ll be working on this quilt for at least another four weeks, so get comfortable with looking at these fabrics. At least they’re super pretty, right? They’re a handful of prints from the Cali & Co. fabric collection by Corey Yoder.* I really wanted to make the multicolored-on-white flower dot fabric work in some capacity in this quilt, but it just wasn’t mocking up well so I went with the cherries for my background print instead because they are stinkin’ adorable. I love, love, love the periwinkle/cornflower blue of the lighter blue print I’m using and decided to incorporate that and some navy to make a subtly patriotic quilt for the summer months. I’m loving how it’s turning out.

Helpful Hint with this one: Prioritize the skinny tip of the triangle fabric pieces when you’re cutting the fabric and piecing the foundational units of the blocks. Don’t worry about the wide part of the triangle fabric pieces because you’ll be trimming those off. It’s all about the skinny tips on this one.

Piscis Project

I can’t tell you much about this because it’s a gift for someone. It is completed and it’s cute and I’ll show it to you once it is given to the recipient. It’s a small thing, so don’t get too excited about it.

Stripey Christmas Socks

A lot of knitting happened on these this week due to Rachel having two home matches this week and that’s when I’ve been knitting on them. I also knit on them a bit before Nathaniel’s band concert this week as well. I am past the heel and firmly into the foot section! And it’d be a lot more fun for you to read about if I could remember to take a picture of them while I’m working on them…hee hee.

Highlights

  • I found out at our Band Boosters meeting that we raised an extra $2000 more than we originally thought because the Square app stopped logging donations and purchases at a certain time during the Evening of Jazz and it wasn’t deposited into our account until the next morning. Whew! I was seriously bummed at the end of EOJ because our profit seemed really low for the amount of donations we had this time.
  • Lunch with friends is always a nice thing
  • Getting caught up on the King David’s Crown quilt! Didn’t think that would happen!
  • A friend’s daughter started her mission on Monday! She’s doing at-home MTC right now and it’s fun to hear the updates on that situation each day. So excited for you, Abbie!
  • We hosted our Potluck Club this past week. I decided this month’s dinner would have a “Winter Wonderland” theme and it went really well! If you’ve been thinking about organizing your friends to have dinner together once a month, just ask! It’s been such a good thing in our lives these past few months!

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Lowlights

  • I am struggling with my points on the King David’s Crown blocks. I think I’ve figured it all out, but geez…

Enjoy your long weekend if you get to have it! I hope you find some time for some craftiness, warm socks, and hot beverages!

*Affiliate links: I receive a small commission at no cost to you should you purchase from these retailers after clicking through on the link

Trying to Work on the Sew Many Stars Quilt

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Life is absolutely crazy right now with the upcoming band fundraiser, the church Christmas program, and plain old Christmas. I sat down at the end of November and planned out my crafty schedule for December, but have been only been able to put a pittance of effort into my projects because all the Christmas music is getting in the way! Maybe I need to call December a wash every year because Christmas music will always be a huge part of my Decembers?

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I did get some time to work on the Sew Many Stars Quilt last week, which ultimately led to disappointment when I realized that the batting I had for it wasn’t large enough. So I’m waiting on a bigger batting to arrive in the mail, and it’s supposedly going to get here tomorrow. Fingers are crossed that there can be a couple of hours I can squeeze out of the remainder of this week to do a little bit of work.

Not enough batting border for quilting!

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My original schedule had me possibly finishing this quilt by Christmas Eve, but with no label, which I’d get to in the week after Christmas, but I do not know what to expect from this project at all anymore since losing out on the last week’s sewing time. We shall see…

Enjoying the End of Year Festivities

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This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance.  It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.

Top priorities this week:

  • Graduation & recital clothing
  • Graduation quilt progress
  • Party decorations & ordering progress
  • Planting last of plants in garden
  • June’s hymns

Celebrate

Graduation party preparations are going well.  My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment.  We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm.  Excellent party prepping.

I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders.  I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail.  I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have.  It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance.  She’s such a kind soul.

We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.

Gardening

I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil.  It’ll be fine.  Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries.  It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.

It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much.  From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend.  Fingers crossed!

Community

I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine.  I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.

Highlights

Nathaniel’s concert was so great.  I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district.  Proud to be a part of it all.  Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast.  So proud of him.

Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever.  Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway.  It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time.  Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment.  What a fun week for her.

At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society.  A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation!  Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school!  We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.

Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together.  I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness.  I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them.  We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.

Lowlights

I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long.  I look like I have some sort of communicable disease. 

Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.

The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors.  This is bad for three reasons:  1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes.  It’s been a moderate source of stress.  One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner.  I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future.  *silver linings*

Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.

The Beginning of Renaissance’s Graduation Signature Quilt

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I’m a huge believer in the power of a debriefing at the end of a project, event or era.  I think it’s monstrously constructive and therapeutic to take a minute to pause and reflect over the past [whatever] and feel all the feelings and think through the highlights, lowlights, and ways to improve in the future.  I love reading the wisdom of those who’ve been through it before me and I love celebrating the wins.

I also love the idea of heirlooms and traditions, and I’m hoping to solidly get some things established in that category with Renaissance’s graduation party.  I’ve been researching so many different ideas for her graduation party and one thing that popped up was having a signature quilt that people could sign for the graduate.  I had been thinking about a book of wisdom or index cards with words of wisdom or something like that, but the problem with those is that they get tucked away in a box and rarely seen ever again, and a signature quilt could be a tangible reminder of all the great things people have to say about you and what they hope for you, left out for memory jogging and having the potential to really become a part of your early adult years and memories.  And, really, HELLO—quilt.

So I started looking around for a possible pattern and stumbled across this post, which featured a quilt pattern that I’m mighty familiar with, seeing that I was one of the debut sewists for it when Fat Quarter Shop released the pattern back in 2020:  The Jelly Belly Bars quilt.  It’s an easy sew and it uses precuts, and that’s what I need right now.

I texted Ren and told her to choose a jelly roll from Fat Quarter Shop* and was not surprised at all when she decided to go with the Here Kitty, Kitty fabric collection by Stacey Iest Hsu*.  Renaissance and Quesnel have been joined at the armpit since Quesnel joined our family almost fourteen years ago, so cat fabric makes complete sense.  I’m pleased that she picked out something by Stacey Iest Hsu as well, as my kids’ childhoods have had many of her fabric collections and dolls hanging around in the background.  It’s a perfectly fitting choice for an end-of-childhood memory project for my girl.

My plan is to sew up the individual blocks and have a quilt block-signing table at her graduation party.  I’ve also extended the invitation to loved ones who will not be able to travel to her party to contribute a block to the quilt, whether I send them a Jolly Bar-sized (5×10-inches) piece of fabric or they cut fabric themselves.  It’s been a good reception thus far!

These next few weeks are going to be an absolute flurry of graduation activities and party preparation, but I’ll try to show updates on this quilt when I get the chance!

*Affiliate link: When you click an affiliate link in one of my posts and make a purchase from that vendor, I receive a small commission at no cost to you.

Layer Cake Latte Quilt, a new pattern from Fat Quarter Shop

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It’s the day, it’s the day! Time to show you the Layer Cake Latte quilt in all its mostly-finished glory.

Details:

Pattern: Layer Cake Latte Quilt, a FREE pattern by Fat Quarter Shop.

Fabric: A layer cake of “French Quarter,” by Maywood Studios, and a layer cake of White Bella Solids (98), plus a little extra yardage of the solid for the border.

Thread: Piecing: 50 weight Aurifil, Natural White #2021

This is another pattern in Fat Quarter Shop’s “Shortcut Quilt” series, which starts with some sort of precut and creates a quilt from there. I especially like these kinds of patterns because I really working with precuts.

The pattern uses two layer cakes–one of prints, one solid—and I ran into the problem of my whites not matching up well.  French Quarter’s white is more of an ivory/muslin/natural white, and stock was low of those whites in solid layer cakes when I was ordering my fabric, so I just went with a regular pure white and told myself it would be an experiment to find out if it really does matter as much as I think it does to match your whites perfectly. Result of experiment: Totally fine. I don’t mind the “mismatch” at all, and actually like that it makes it easier to see the difference between the two colors.

If you love half-square triangles, this pattern is full of them. If you can tap into a meditative flow state whilst trimming HSTs, prepare for some blissful sewing.

Fat Quarter Shop is releasing the free pattern today, and will be offering a full kit to purchase to make up your own pretty soon.

Thank you so much, Fat Quarter Shop, for the opportunity to sew this up! I enjoyed it immensely!

This post contains affiliate links

March(ing) Along

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Halfway through this banger of a month! This week technically has quite a few things going on, but as I look at the calendar I don’t feel overwhelmed by any of them.

Cooking

This week’s meal plan:

  • Saturday: Potstickers, stir fry veggies, rice
  • Sunday: Corned Beef, potatoes, cabbage
  • Monday: Tacos, taco veggies, rice, tortillas
  • Tuesday: Honey Garlic Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner, carrots & broccoli, rice
  • Wednesday: Taco Pasta, creamy green salad
  • Thursday: Thai Chicken Stiry Fry, stir fry veggies, rice
  • Friday: Irish Beef & Root Vegetable Stew, rolls

Clothing

  • It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Cleaning

  • I repeat: It’s all about the prom dresses, baby

Caring

  • Rachel needs help with rehearsing for her choir concert this week. She’s singing the mezzo line in a very difficult song and it’s hard to sing the middle part on anything, let alone this whopper. Time has been scheduled to work with her.
  • I feel like I need to find some time to spend with Nathaniel. But Cross Country starts up next week and I’ll be spending a lot of time at his meets for the next many weeks, so maybe I can just allow it to happen then?
  • A lot of office stuff needs to happen. We’ve just been really busy and it’s been hard to find the time to do that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: It’s called the “Layer Cake Latte” quilt, and it’s coming along. All the blocks are completed and I am in the midst of joining them. All that’s left is adding the skinny border around it and then the top will be done. I had hoped to get it completely quilted before the due date, but that’s not going to happen because I FORGOT ABOUT THE PROM DRESSES and need to sew like the wind on those.
    • Prom Dresses: Yeah, they’re all I can think about at the moment. Ren’s fabric is here and it’s gorgeous. The pattern for her dress was only available as a PDF (boo!) and it’s printed but not yet taped together. Not looking forward to the taping. Once the Layer Cake Latte quilt is assembled I’ll hop right on over to sewing up Ren’s muslin. Rachel has picked out a dress pattern that I crazy, crazy love and cannot wait to tell you about because it’s so cool—it almost shouldn’t even exist—but I have to focus on Ren’s dress first because she’s a senior and that’s how that works.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: I’ll keep chipping away at designing wedding shawls for my girls. A lot of the kids’ music lessons are cancelled this week, so I might not have a whole lot of van crafting time.

Gardening

  • Set up trellises for peas, reattach trellis netting on France for eventual sweet pea climbers
  • Something with the Delphiniums
  • Sow pansies, violas
  • Put plant markers in by sown seeds
  • Start marigold seeds

Celebrating

  • Easter’s on the horizon, but I don’t think we’re doing anything in particular for it.
  • Nathaniel’s birthday is next month, so I’ll start slowly getting organized for that. Time to pull up the “gift ideas” note to myself that I add to throughout the year and start watching for sales.

Community

  • Choir concert
  • Need to do things for Ward Music
  • Help Ren with her intention to volunteer for the craft show
  • Band is doing their monthly performance at the local assisted living home

Top priorities this week:

  1. Finish the Latte Layer Cake quilt, photograph it, and write up the various posts
  2. PROM DRESSES
  3. Rachel choir stuff
  4. Garden
  5. Office/Ward Music/Band Parents

Cake, Silks & Pi(es)

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I feel like it was a really productive week, which is always nice. My little routine of writing these goals vs. outcomes weekly posts is helping me stay on-track with what I want to accomplish each week. I’m really glad I’ve reinstituted these. Not only are they keeping me focused, but I really enjoy writing them and re-reading them, like a journal. I rarely re-read my handwritten journals, so I don’t learn as much from my writing in those. Blog posts can actually be searched by keyword, for cryin’ out loud. Wonderful.

Top priorities this last week:

  1. Michael’s birthday
  2. Garden
  3. WREF Scholarship application
  4. Prom dresses
  5. Resurrecting music practice time

Celebrating

  • Michael’s birthday went well, there was an adorable “Among Us wedding cake” made by Renaissance, and each of the kids remembered to get him a gift this year. We did not have steak and potatoes for dinner, as I predicted; he requested fajitas.
  • The potentially brewing project died a sure death this past week. I’m bummed because it would have been a cool thing to do, but I’m also relieved because it was going to take a lot of time and effort to pull off. Many lessons were learned from this experience that I can apply in the future when such a situation inevitably pops up again.

Gardening

  • Trellises are in my house, as are some other gardening items.
  • All seeds needed through the month of April have been secured.
  • Rhubarb is still small.
  • I did sow the cabbages, some alyssum, but nothing else.
  • My sweet peas are just barely starting to sprout! You really have to look for them, but tiny little tendrils are pushing out of the soil!

Community

  • Renaissance did indeed submit her application for the WREF scholarship! Oh gosh, the arrhythmias…she submitted it yesterday at 2:15pm or so, and the pop-up that came up to confirm submission stated that it was due by 4pm that day. We had planned to work on it that evening, but something came up and we moved the time to earlier, THANK GOODNESS.
  • Band Parent meeting went well and many things have been scheduled for this last push of the school year. I still have a few office-y things to do for that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: Sneak peek video was posted on Friday on Instagram and I’m aware that my videography skills/software need an upgrade. I had planned to finish piecing the top on Saturday and even cleared my whole schedule for it, but some of my children decided to mutiny against their Saturday chores and much time was lost on this quilt because it went towards dialoguing and disciplining. I’m still confused as to why that day went so sideways. As it stands, I’m about 2/3 of the way done with assembling the blocks.
    • Prom Dresses: The fabric for Ren’s dress has arrived and I am so in love with it. It’s GORGEOUS. The contrast fabric isn’t as flowy as I would have liked, but we’ll just have to make do because it was the only kind of silk they had that came in the color we wanted. FYI, Shantung silk is not flowy. Tell your friends.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: Designing wedding shawls: Newsflash: I’ve not done this before and I’m not good at it. Yet. (#growthmindset) Time was spent wrapping my head around how to actually do this.
  • Resurrecting music practice sessions: Did not happen because I’ve had them scheduled for the evenings, but now that it’s light outside again we’re actually outside during that time as a family. I’ll need to figure out a different time of day for this.

It was a really, really busy week with a concert on Thursday, which was also Pi Day, so Emily made three pies and because we had three pies chilling at our house I invited Ren’s band friends over after the concert and we all ate pie until 11:15pm. Ha ha. I’m generally an introvert who really appreciates a solid sleep schedule and bedtime, but sometimes you just gotta spend some time with friends. It was a good choice, despite how tired it made me the next day.

Baking Doodle Progress & Too Many Other Projects

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Happy Friday, everyone!  So many people joked throughout this week about how long it seemed, even after it was a shorter week with the holiday on Monday!  Our week was busy with lots of school and band things—I may have practically lived at my kids’ schools most evenings this week!

Baking Doodle Cowl Test Knit:  I’ve made a dedicated effort to put in some serious time on the Baking Doodle Cowl test knit because I was pretty far behind at the beginning of the week due to losing most of my regularly-scheduled knitting time (ie. Sitting in the van during kids’ music lessons and rehearsals) to my kids being sick the past couple weeks and not leaving the house.  I’m now about 25% done with it, which is great, except for the part where I was supposed to be 50% done with it by yesterday.  There will be much knitting over the weekend.

New FQS Pattern:  I put in an amazing day of work on Monday and I can now boast that all my half-square triangles are sewn and trimmed!  I have another big sewing day scheduled for this upcoming Monday, which I’m hoping boasts some reality-bending wormhole capabilities that will allow me to progress on this at a phenomenal rate, hitherto unknown to mankind.

I am using the “French Quarter” fabric collection from Maywood Studios, and it’s going to be a lovely blue-and-white quilt. I can’t wait for this to come together!

Super Secret Project:  I have another project on my plate that didn’t materialize until just this week, even though it’s genius and I’m really annoyed that it didn’t occur to me until one random day during a random conversation with a few of my children.  I don’t even want to commit to it because I know I don’t have the time AT ALL—but it’s too perfect an opportunity to pass up, so I’m launching myself into the future, laughing hysterically and hoping I can pull this off.

Spring Tea Party:  The girls want to throw one, so we’re talking about it in loose terms at this point.

Garden:  The seedlings are coming along.  I had five Delphinium sprouts at the beginning of the week, but now I think I only have two.  I’ve rarely been successful in nurturing Delphiniums to maturity, so it’s not surprising.  Annoying and frustrating, but not surprising.

My little countertop herb garden is out of control and the plants are cramming into the light source every other day, despite my dedicated efforts to pruning them back almost every day.  There has been a lot of dill in a lot of recipes lately.  Michael’s not the biggest fan of dill, but thankfully, it’s not terribly strong when it’s fresh.  Perhaps he’ll acquire a taste for it with the insane amount he’s eating now.  Also, this experience is helping me to lose my fear of over-harvesting herbs.  I cut these plants back to practical baldness and you cannot tell in two days’ time.  It’s good to gain firsthand experience with that because I’ve always been scared to use the herbs in my garden in truly meaningful ways because I’m afraid I’ll kill them with each reaping.  I’m learning that that is absolutely not true!

Renaissance College Plans: We’ve received notification from two of the schools she applied to that she’s been accepted! She goes in this weekend to audition for a music scholarship, so fingers crossed that it goes well! She’s torn between continuing her study of music or going to a technical college in pursuit of a degree in Culinary Arts/Pastry Baking. We’re pushing her to just prepare for both, see which one will be most financially viable, and then make a decision from there. (And seriously, I wish I had known about the pastry baking option when I was young! What a cool career idea!)

The Big Pie-in-the-Sky List of Projects for 2024

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It is mind boggling to me that I managed to abstain from most creative endeavors for eighteen months!  Of course, one way that I dealt with the inevitable withdrawal pangs was to promise myself that I’d be allowed to work on crafty things to my heart’s content once I was done with school, which has resulted in a HUGE “Want to Make” list.  Unfortunately, now that we’re to the point of being able to grapple with all the beautiful projects I earmarked, I’m overwhelmed by all of my choices!  What a fantastic problem to have!  Hee hee.  I work through decisions better with writing and visuals, so here’s what’s on my mind:

Quilts:

Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt:  (ASAP)  I am finally quilting this!  It’s horrible quilting because 1) I’m very out of practice, and 2) I wasn’t that great a quilter to begin with, but it’s in-progress!  I’ve realized that the quilting step is the huge bottleneck for my quilts; there was a time when I could just send them out to a long-arm quilter and wash my hands of the task, but prices and shipping have gotten so expensive in recent years that I can’t justify the cost anymore.  I invested in another sewing machine with a much larger throat space so I can quilt my own quilts, but they’re definitely not as pretty as the long-arm pantos that I love.  Sigh.  Done is better than perfect here.  And hey, maybe I’ll actually develop my quilting skills to a level that pleases me.  The Rainbow Coin Strip Quilt will not reflect that sort of level, but I’m telling myself it’s ok because it’s a scrap quilt that will get the snot kicked out of it anyway, so wonky quilting won’t be a tragedy.

Far Far Away Quilt:  (ASAP)  I started this one back in 2022 and even worked on it a little during a school break.  It’s sewn into its rows and is awaiting the rest of the top assembly, which will then require me to pull out all the foundation papers, which is causing me some task paralysis because papers removal just plain isn’t fun!  But, oh…it’s a pretty quilt!  Cara!  Just slog through the unpleasant part and get this finished so you can have this awesome quilt!  Geez!

Chatsworth Block of the Month:  (January-December)  This is a sew along hosted by Fat Quarter Shop this year and I really want to participate because I’ve been collecting some fabrics for a couple of years now that will work really, really well for it!  The first installment of blocks were due by the end of last month, but I haven’t started yet.

Piece & Quilt Sampler Sew Along:  (March 2024-February 2025)  Another sew along with the Fat Quarter Shop.  I bought the pattern book a while back because it looked awesome, and then I saw there was a sew along this year and I got really excited about it.  I’ve even stash-dived and decided on some great fabric to use.  The question is whether or not I have time for it? You can look at the general info and fabric requirements here if you’re also interested. It’s going to be a pretty quilt!

Birthday quilt for Nathaniel:  (April)  He at least has his own Christmas quilt, but alas, still no everyday quilt, and he rarely resists the opportunity to bring it up in conversation that I’ve deeply neglected him in failing to provide this necessity of life.  He’s given up on the Rocket Age quilt, and has been asking for a pig quilt for a couple of years. 

Reading Nook Quilt:  (May)  For the most part, I avoided even looking at fabric while I was working on my master’s degree; but, during a particularly stressful couple of weeks of student teaching, I indulged in a lot of online window shopping as I grappled with the challenges I was facing.  As luck would have it, Ruby Star Society’s “Reading Nook” collection was released that week and I was completely smitten with its adorableness and ordered a fat quarter bundle of it with the promise that I could make myself a reading quilt once student teaching was completed.  I’ve mocked up a pattern for it, it’s super simple and satisfying, but I’ve lacked time to start working on it.  I’d really like to finish this as a birthday gift to myself this year.

Fig Tree Strawberry Garden Block of the Month:  (May 2024-April 2025)  Another FQS sew along; I absolutely love it and hope I can make it happen!  I’ve placed a reservation order for the book and I’ve definitely got enough stashed Fig Tree fabrics to work with, so it wouldn’t even require purchasing fabrics.

Renaissance Graduation/College Quilt:  (June/August)  ‘Cuz I gotta. No idea what I’m going to make or what fabric/color palette I’ll use. I figure that will get worked out once we get her through the college application/acceptance process.

Penguin Christmas quilt for Renaissance:  (November)  Because she’s a senior in high school this year and she still doesn’t have her own Christmas quilt!  She’s been making do with the Hipster Christmas Tree quilt, but I’d really like to get her very own, made-specifically-for-her quilt done before Thanksgiving this year.  I have no idea where she’s heading after high school; she’s vacillating between studying music out of state or staying close to home and earning a technical certificate in pastry arts, so the quilt could be a “welcome home for the holidays” thing or it might not be.  It is nerve-wracking to watch your barely-adult children make these huge decisions.

Gingerbread Christmas quilt for Rachel:  (November)  Rachel also doesn’t have her very own made-for-her Christmas quilt.  She’s been making do with the Double-Nine Patch quilt I made for Fat Quarter Shop back in 2018, but has been wishing and wishing for a gingerbread quilt for years and years.  Due in large part to the euphoria of having submitted my last ever final paper right before Black Friday, I bought an embarrassing amount of fabric at various quilt shops’ Black Friday sales, and the majority of it was various precuts and yardages of the Holiday Cheer collection by My Mind’s Eye, solely for the purpose of finally sewing up a “just for Rachel” Christmas quilt.

English Paper Piecing quilts:  I have four in-progress and it would be nice to finish up some of them.  There’s the Star Spangled Diamonds quilt from forever ago that needs borders, the Smitten quilt that needs a few more filler pieces to assemble the top, a Christmas-themed jewel quilt I started this last Christmas because I wanted a Christmas project to work on in the car, and the Roses Hexagon quilt that I’ve slowly been working on for years whenever I need a break from current projects.

Knitting:

I don’t think I have any definitive knitting projects in mind, which makes me sad.  It’s just not that cold here in Washington, when compared to winter weather in Utah, so the need just isn’t that high anymore.  However, I just like the *feel* of knitting needles in my hands, so I’d like to do more knitting…I just don’t know what to work on.  I wonder if I equate knitting with babies and children for the most part, and because there’s really no little people in our families anymore, there’s not a lot of pressure to knit right now?

However, I do have a lot of stash.  Some things I’m inspired to make when I think about my stash are:

Lace shawls:  I have a lot of laceweight yarn in really beautiful colors.  Unfortunately, I don’t really lead a life that uses lace shawls, so creating them to then just let them sit is silly.  I could try to become a shawl-wearing person, though…or just enjoy the creative process and not worry so much about the end product.

Socks:  I also have a lot of fingering-weight yarn that would make good socks.  I think I just need to grant myself permission in this vein.  Socks are awesome mindless knitting that are oh-so-portable.  I should pause my EPP in the car and concentrate on knitting instead until the weather warms up. 

School mascot hat/beret:  I was exploring yarn shops in the area and bought some yarn in my kids’ high school colors because I had a vision of a cool beret knit in fair isle technique of the school mascot.  Should probably move along on this idea.

Brooklyn Tweed Shelter project:  I’ve been collecting random colorways for years, and decided, on a whim, to cast on a Baa-ble Hat last week. I’m enjoying knitting it up!

Clothing

I have so much apparel fabric and I literally have no plans to use any of it.  It’d be nice to get back into clothing sewing, but my focus may just be on quilts this year.  I don’t know even know where I’d start with clothes.  There is a lovely feeling of satisfaction when you sew your own clothes, though…I miss it.

Embroidery

Weird things happen when you put things on your Amazon wish list—sometimes your husband will actually buy you the things!  Michael generously gifted me an embroidery machine for this Christmas, and it’s on my radar to learn how to use the thing…at some point.  I didn’t think I’d ever receive it as a gift, so I have no plans in effect.  I put it on my wishlist while I was really leaning into tablescaping for the holidays and I think I’d enjoy creating specially embroidered table linens.  And monogrammed bridal handkerchiefs.  And I’ve always wanted embroidered pillowcases with matching embroidered flat sheets, and, and, and…hee hee hee.  It might take A WHILE to circle around to this, though; I really do have a lot of quilty plans to plough through first!

So that’s what I’ve got on my mind for 2024. I guess I should print out this list and hang it up somewhere to remind me that I’ve got some serious sewing to get to this year! I really got out of the habit of daily creativity during grad school, but I missed it dearly and am going to make an earnest effort to reintegrate creativity back into my daily life. Wish me luck! And I wish YOU luck with your project goals for 2024!