Monday Meanderings 9 - 15 - 2025

Here we are in the middle of September. What? September? It's still in the 80s where I live. It's getting dark earlier and the humidity isn't as bad as it is in the middle of summer. I enjoy taking Sunny for walks in the evening but for the most part I hang out in my basement studio. This week I read or listened to 3 books.  Nothing spectacular but entertaining. Now, on the quilting side of things... not a lot of check marks. But that is fine with me because the main checkmark is a finish (of sorts) that has been waiting for a year to be worked on. See below. 

9/8/25

✅Load and ✅start quilting Ombré quilt - Whoopie!  Quilting is done! 

Make RSC blocks in light blue and light green and more 9 patch blocks — cut out a couple of 9 patches but nothing else. 

✅Cut out more Sept UFO challenge- Economy blocks — just need 5 more.

Continue cutting out the Magnificent Mystery quilt— nothing done. 

Bind baby quilt — trimmed quilt, cut out binding but nothing else done. 

I finished my super queen size Ombre top last year.  I love/d how it looks. I bought the backing for it in MI last July.  It sat in the laundry room waiting for me to wash it. Surprise, a few weeks ago I washed it. It sat in the studio waiting to be ironed for several weeks. I finally decided I really need to get it finished in September cause I need to be able to show more fabric usage. (I went wild buying fabric this quarter!) Happily enough, I did the ironing, I loaded the backing and the batting and the quilt top (which also needed ironing). Saturday I started quilting it. My thought was I'd get it done later this week. But, I was ready to get'er done. I got several rows done Saturday and the rest done on Sunday.  It is quilted! 

Darn, you can't see the quilting.  Here's the E2E I used so you can see it clearly.  I love how it turned out. It's called Briar Rose in Winter and is a computerized Edge-to-Edge pattern. The pattern is available at My Creative Stitches. And yes, I've used it a few times. Below you can read some of the statistics and why I really wasn't looking forward to doing this big quilt. 

So it took approximately 23 minutes for each of 9 rows. So total actual stitching time was 3 hours and 43 minutes. (Which doesn't count the bobbin winding time, the time to load this big quilt, time moving the quilt forward after each row, and the time I had to rip out one/tenth of the row.) There were 166,140 stitches in the quilt (including the small section I had to rip out.) That is equal to 459 yards of thread.  One of my jumbo bobbins could only do 2 rows before running too low to start another row.  

So, I now have 5 bobbins with just small amounts of thread on them. (And, no empty bobbins!) Hopefully the next quilt I do will be much smaller and use white thread! There is more than enough thread if I do, say, a 36" wide quilt.  These small amounts would probably last for the whole row.  I do have one bobbin with not very much thread on it so I could unwind it if my next quilt isn't with white thread! 

I realized last week I left off the picture of the Economy blocks that are ready to sew.  This is last week's photo. If I had taken a pic this week about 4 of the fabrics would be sets now. I'm definitely going for fall colors.

As you can see I got a little bit of one other project done. I prepped some blocks to sew and I got the binding cut and pinned together for the baby quilt. Now that I think on it a bit -- I also worked on another knit hat and spent one evening working on my cross stitch bag. (You can see it here although I've done more since this picture.)  I really have to concentrate to get this one done correctly.  (And honestly, I haven't been as accurate as I should be but I think in the end it will look fine.) 

Here's what I'll be working on this week. 

9/15/25 

Cut, prepare, and sew  binding on Ombre Log Cabin 

Sew binding on baby quilt 

Continue cutting out Magnificent Mystery Quilt 

Keep making 9 patch blocks and/or RSC blocks

Quilt two quilts (not mine… sigh.) 

Quilt  a little doll quilt on my domestic machine to give to the guild

That should keep me busy this week. And, all my choral groups have gone back so that is taking up some time too.  Maybe I'll get even more done this week but I'm not holding my breath. 

Here's my 15 Minutes of Stitching report.

W/ending 9/14/25. 257 days of 2025

• 15 minute days Sept = 7/7
• 15 minute days/2025 = 257/257 days
• Success rate = 100%

Not much more to report from here.  Sunny is thriving and stubborn.  She likes to play with her balls but also tends to put them under the couch which means she can't actually get to them without some help.  Sigh. 

Please spend some time checking out these Linky parties.  Hopefully it won't take me until the end of the week to link up to the bottom two parties.  

Stitching Stuff

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings 

Hope everyone is finding peace in their quilting this week.  I always appreciate it when the outside world has gotten intolerable.  It's cheaper than therapy...maybe! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie