Monday Meanderings 5 - 12 - 2025

This week was suppose to be an easy week -- a little quilting, a little reading, and taking it easy. I did do a bit of all three things but we also took in a play this week -- more about that at the end of my post. Let's look at my goals for this past week. Yep, it looks great! 

5/5/25

✅Work on 3 yard quilt project — top done!

✅Layout May’s UFO blocks — laid out ready to sew together. 

✅Keep making 9 patches — a few more were done.

✅Keep knitting on yellow hat — started the decreases. 

✅Quilt a top — a happy quilt is ready for binding. 

Here is photo proof of some of those goals! 

These are my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks from 2023.  I put them on my UFO list this year and their number came up in May.  Surprisingly enough I laid these out almost exactly as shown.  My friend Sharon suggested 1 switch which lightened the first row. She was right. Looking at it as I write this, I realize I need to move the dark red in the bottom row up one row and move the orange one down.  It should lighten up the bottom row nicely.  I've been trying to decide on a border but so far I'm not that enthused with what I have in my stash.  I'm going to let that go for the time being and at least get these blocks sewn together. 

Here's the top I got quilted today.  I bought an orange cotton for the backing.  And, I used orange thread. Wild, right? There's a little bit of the backing showing at the bottom right. 

Here's one of my favorite blocks in this quilt. Yep, when pigs fly.

For this week I've given myself an extra goal.  Hopefully I'll get them all done as well as finish at least one book this week. 

5/12/25

Quilt 3 yard project

Sew May’s UFO blocks together

Keep making 9 patches 

Finish knitting yellow hat 

Bind Happy Quilt 

Iron backings 

And, I've maintained my 100% stitching every day.  

W/ending 5/11/25. 131 days of 2025

• 15 minute days/May = 11/31
• 15 minute days/2024 = 131/131 days
• Success rate = 100%

Among the sewing and reading we went to our grand's play "Princess and the Pea." It was a shortened version (1 hour.) But was really fun. Our grand was the minstrel and did a great job singing and acting. Her middle school does a musical every year so I'm looking forward to seeing what our grand might do next year. 

The only drawback of the play was getting to our daughter's house. It generally takes an hour and a half to get from our home to hers. Three and half hours later we were there. UGH Another cool part of attending the play is we were able to see the results of major home improvements they recently had done. They have a new kitchen and dining room.  It looks wonderful. And adds a lot of space to their small house. 

I washed some more fabric this weekend. And boy, was I surprised. Look at these Color Catchers and Color Grabbers. The two navy blue ones and the top right were Color Grabbers. The other three were Color Catchers.  I will admit that the 3 Grabbers had been used before as well as the middle two Catchers. I've used a piece of the same fabric last year.  I don't remember any color sheets turning navy blue.  I originally said I like Catchers better. I think I'll like the Grabbers better from now on! 

The other fun thing that happened this weekend was Sunny had a grooming date. We figured it was time to lighten up her fur coat.  Here she is before her "spa" day...

And her after picture...

Wow! It's hard to believe she's the same dog.  The only thing I'll change for her next appointment is what is done to her tail.  Her tail was broken before we got her so with her tail shaved down shows where it was broken. It looks like _|. Yep it is a definite turn in her tail.  Recently her tail was very fluffy and curly.  You can see her fluffy tail on this pic. You'll need to scroll down to Sunny on the beach. Hopefully we'll have a fluffy tail showing up in the next month or so. We're so happy that she is doing so well. 

I'm linking with the normal parties: 

Stitching Stuff

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 11 -- 11 -- 2024

It's been a week! Just as I wrote the first paragraph of my blog the power went off.  We gave up and went to bed to read on our Kindles.  And, almost fell asleep but the power went back on -- maybe 10?  I got up to turn off all the lights and tv and then crashed.  Monday I was busy most of the day so, nope, no blog writing until Tuesday. 

We've had a lot going on.  I've decided I'm cutting back on my news reading.  I am happier and less stressed if I read or listen to audio books.  In fact, 4 ebooks and 1 audio book were read in the last week.  I was actually reading several books at the same time so three of them were finished the same day! Weird -- I know.  But all that reading did not stop me from getting a lot of green check marks. Yea! Here are the details. 

11/4/24

✅Attend machine mastery class — done. Boy there is a lot to learn!

✅Work on Christmas ornaments -- 3rd one is started.

✅Buy border fab for Frolicking Frogs — done.

✅Quilt a quilt on Ruthie — Malted Mystery is now waiting for binding.

✅Work on one of the unfinished UFOs from this year’s list — Fall Appliqué blocks. Mostly figured out what fabric I'd use, and what I needed to buy to finish it.

✅Finish some more Christmas tree blocks — 5 done, 1 waiting and I think I’ll make two more for a total of 8. I have lots of green scraps. 

Here's a peak at Malted Mystery at the beginning of the quilting process. 

I did spend some time finding binding for this quilt.  I would have liked the green or the orange fabric but I didn't have enough. However, I had a bunch of the dark purple. (Yes, it is purple but it often looks black in pictures.) You can see the whole top here. Doesn't the dark purple look black? 

The UFO pick was 12 which I listed as "Pick something to work on in Dec." Except I should have said something like pick something to work on -- cause, yep, Dec wasn't pulled in December.  Not to worry. I decided to revisit 6" Fall Appliquéd blocks.  I listed them twice over the year. The 1st time I turned the blocks on point and added fabric to make them 8.5" blocks. When they came up in September . . .  nope, didn't do anything with them.  Fast forward to November and I'm planning to put this top together.  

I know, this pic looks weird.  I was trying to figure out which color would be the best background.  The orange won out over the light mauve mainly because you can't really see that color in the black that surrounds the blocks. Plus none of the blocks have that mauve in them.  Good reason.  Sharon asked me if I really wanted the sunflower's leaves pointing up and down. Um, no -- but I did want the directional black fabric to be going the same way as all the others. Yep, I took off the triangles and turned it so the leaves would be going right to left rather than top to bottom. 

While at the quilt shop yesterday I purchased an orange gold fabric to do a small inner border. I'd tried every thing close to orange or gold to use but nothing struck my fancy. So I picked up something that should work well.  I hope to have this a top without the final border by next week so I can buy the final border for it when I go for my last mastery class. I'm ready to finish this one off. 

Here are goals for this week. 

11/11/24

Bind Malted Mystery quilt

Attend 3rd machine mastery class

✅Buy binding and bind Lone Star -- weird that I've already done half of this goal! 

Put border on Frolicking Frogs

Put Fall Appliqué together including inner border 

Quilt a quilt on Ruthie 

I've been really good about getting my time in the studio.  Here's my current info: 

W/ending 11/10  — 315 days in to 2024. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7
• 15 minute days/Nov = 10/10
• 15 minute days/2024 = 306/315 days
• Success rate = 97.%

I'm happy with my continued success. I've actually done a little of cleaning up of the sewing space some days. (Note - very little but I can tell I've put stuff away!) 

Have you bought any Color Catchers lately?  I used up one box and started another a couple of weeks ago.  Um, here are the two (from different boxes). I used these in the load with the blue wide back fabric I bought on quilt retreat.  

Can you guess which one was the old box and which was the new box?  Yep, the smaller one is the new.  But what has me wondering is how different the two sheets are regarding color.  As I have no other of the old ones left I'm concerned the new one aren't working as well as the old ones do. Here's what the 10/22 looked like along with two brand new ones I used today.  There wasn't a lot of fabric in the washer: 1.5 yards of a very dark navy blue, less than a yard of a green, and a fat quarter of dark blue with different colored words on it.  Um -- so why did the two new Color Catchers not attract any colors -- maybe a muddy blue? The 10/22 was the lighter colored one from above.  Very weird! Let me know if you're using the new version of Color Catchers and whether you've seen a difference.

And, FYI, I do wash all fabric that comes into my house.  I didn't at one time but after piecing and hand quilting a Christmas quilt that bled like crazy I always wash new fabric unless it's strips, charm squares, or layer cakes. How about you?  Are you a fabric washer before sewing? 

I'm linking with these parties: Stitching Stuff, Oh Scrap!, Design Wall Monday, Monday Musings,  and To-Do Tuesday Linky Party.

It's time for a Sunny update.  Since the last time I wrote about her she has been having lots of scratching issues.  She seemed peppy and happy. Although she had scratched off a lot of her fur on her muzzle and above her eyes. She'd been chewing and scratching at her legs.  Last Monday we took her back to the vet and her yeast infection was back. So she got a couple of new medicines. They are Apoquel for itch, Ketoconazole for fungal infection, and Simplecef, an antibiotic to treat strains of bacteria. Yikes! She is still getting baths 3x a week. And a monthly Cytopoint shot.  We've changed her to a food specifically for better skin and cut out other food. (She likes Salmon and every once in a while we'd give her some of that.) 

Fast forward a week and we have a new dog.  She's been playful, doing zoomies, and she's started to play with a squeak toy. She has a new pep to her step.  Here's a pic I just took of her.  You can see she's just beginning to grow her muzzle hair. But her tail and back hair has grown in thickly.  We're hoping she'll actually look like a West Highland Terrier by Christmas.  

 It's time I get on with the day.  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 1 - 8 - 2024

 

 Happy New Year

2024

Now we are a week into 2024 I'm back at my blog.  I decided to take a one week blogging break.  It turned out that I got a bunch of things done in the studio. I cleaned up some of the horizontal surfaces. A new Accucut Big came into the studio and some sewing was completed.  

Here's the results of my goals dated January 1, 2024.

1/1/24

✅Bind small quilt or 2 — 1 quilt bound.

✅Wash, dry and fold some fabric — one load done.

✅Finalize UFO list & quilts I’d like to make in 2024 — still need quilts-to-make list.

✅✅✅Make 3 or 4 walker bag kits — made many kits to take to guild. 

Here's what I hope to do this week.  I can't figure out if these are enough items or whether more should be added.  I generally try to pick goals that I can actually complete during the week. Hopefully all of these will get done.  

1/8/24

Finish 3 yard quilt top

Make backing for and quilt small strippy quilt

Start on UFO appliqué block 

Bind 30 Something quilt and strippy

Iron one or two backing fabrics

Wash, dry and fold the last of the red fabrics

The washing, drying, and folding of fabric took a hiatus for most of this past week. I think all I have left can be washed in one load. One of things I've been doing with each load is throwing in some Color Catchers™ and Color Grabbers™. I've used Color Catchers™ for years and find they do absorb color from the wash water.  For these loads I've been throwing in lots of them.  

Here are the results from my last fabric load that was reds and one piece of purple. I tend to reuse the sheets but most of these were new for this wash.  The small ones are Color Grabbers™ and the larger ones are Color Catchers™. From what I remember the prices are similar.  I prefer the Color Catchers as they are bigger and I assume they will absorb more color.   Do you use any form of color controller when you wash your fabrics or your quilts?  I've gotten in the habit of washing all fabrics when they come into the house.  That way I don't worry about shrinkage nor bleeding. 

I've been using Shout Color Catcher™ for years. I tried Carbona Color Grabber ™ when I saw it recently at my local grocery store. 

This is the little strippy quilt I made. The dark strip is actually a teal that blends with the cat and dog fabrics. Whoops! Just noticed the cats are smaller than the dogs. Except for the teal strip the rest of the fabrics came from fabrics I've been washing for my local quilt guild.  Hopefully I'll have it quilted and bound by the next meeting. If you'd like some basic instructions for a strippy quilt check out Mary Quilts.  Here's a direct link to her Quick Strippie pattern.  I've made several over the years but generally divvy up my fabric based on how much I have of each.  You might guess that I had very little of the teal for the above top! I actually like how Mary's examples have the cute print fabric do the majority of the work. Unfortunately I had very little of the dog and the cat fabric so I used the bright yellow to make it big enough to give to one of the charities.

And, for my last photo of this post -- here's a pic of all the spools I emptied in 2023. Honestly, this was a pretty sparse year for me. Lowest year: 7.  Highest year: 30.  This year's 12 isn't great.  I do know I have at least 3 almost empty long arm cones.  Hopefully 2024 will see more spools used up. The average since I started keeping track (2012) is 19.25. Do you keep count of the cones and spools you use? 

I'm  joining in with Kate's 15 Minutes to Stitch for 2024.  Visit her blog Life in Pieces to see how she did and other folks also trying for at least 15 minutes a day. Here are my first week results. 

• 15 minute days/week = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/Jan = 7/7 days
• 15 minute days/2024 = 7/7 days
• Success rate = 100%

Boy that makes me look so successful!  And, considering I did sew every day I guess I was successful!  Since I try to blog on Sunday evening I'm showing my week from Mondays to Sundays.  My goal is to be successful 80% of the time.  We'll see how I do on this new endeavor. 

I'm linking up with my regular Linky Parties.  I hope to do a bit of internet surfing this week.  I've been so focused on my sewing I just haven't been reading other blogs for the last week or two.  Join me surfing the internet with these Linky parties. 

Oh Scrap

Stitching Stuff at Life in Pieces

Design Wall Monday

Sew and Tell 

 

Here's hoping we all have a great 2024.  Think of all the quilts we can make this year.  And for those of us working on UFOs -- won't it be fabulous to move some along and maybe finish some?  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

A Finish -- A Long Time Coming

 First the personal good news! 

Wow!  Mary Washington Hospital Center was so very well organized!  I was really early for my appointment because I thought it was an hour earlier than it was.  No problem. They moved me in from car check in to being texted to come on in.  Yes there was a small line but it moved so quickly.  Next thing I know I was chatting pleasantly with the gal getting ready to give me the shot.  No, she didn't know how many shots she had given but I sensed it was a whole bunch. What? You're done already?  I don't think I even felt it go in -- amazing.  Then on to set my follow up appointment which is 4 weeks away.  I was done before my actual appointment time.  

Backing up a bit  -- it started with the Rappahannock Area Health District being on top of their game.  I filled out an on line survey saying I wanted to get a vaccine several weeks ago. On 1/22 I received an acknowledgement and was told to expect a text when I could sign up for an appointment.  The email to sign up came in Wednesday morning. It probably sat in my in box for 15 minutes but once I saw it I immediately scheduled my appointment -- for the very next day!  Pat got his announcement within the hour but I had left for a hair cut so he didn't know exactly when my appt was so  he goes first thing tomorrow morning.  We were euphoric!  Kudos to the state of Virginia and RAHD for keeping us well informed and Mary Washington Hospital for being so organized.  

So on to my quilty news.  Today I share a great quilt.  I really love it but man, it has been very problematic.  First off an overall picture of the quilt.  I started this sometime in the late 1990s or possibly early 2002 or so.  I went to a mystery retreat in Lancaster, PA with several gals from my quilt guild.  We had a great time. I didn't get the quilt finished there so it got shunted aside.  Every once and a while it would come out and I'd get some of it done.  I can't say when I got the top completely together.  I decided to hand quilt it as it was before I had my long arm.  I batted it up and basted it and added some pin basting too.  I drug this thing around for YEARS! I'd mark a bit and hoop it up and stitch until my fingers were sore and I was bored.  

Sometime in 2019 I finished the inside of the quilt and started in on the borders.  I don't know why I chose a braid that had 8 rows in it. (Yes, equivalent to going around the border 8 times.)  Near the end of last year I decided to get serious and get this thing done!  So mid January all the quilting was done.  It was time to bind it.  In my infinite wisdom I did put some of the backing fabric in the bag I toted around for years.  It had a note that said 6/2004.  I suspect that was when I started the hand quilting. I stitched the first side of the binding by machine and finished with hand stitching.  DONE!  Since I had been dragging it around so long I knew it had to be washed.  I think I've already mentioned that the backing fabric bled when some water for my iron splashed on it.  But, let's move to a picture or two before I finish this tale. 

Hum, the bushes have gotten bigger since I last took quilt pictures on the rail.

A close up with the quilting, border and the beautiful backing.

Another close up of the quilting.

And, so it's time to continue my tale. Since I knew it was going to bleed I loaded the quilt in the washer with bunches of Color Catchers.  I mean A LOT.  Most were new, a few were slightly used and were very pale blue.  Shock number #1. 

YIKES! Every single one came out a very deep red. Well, except that one with the fold marks.  Some how it had gotten folded and the color didn't penetrate the entire color catcher. (What does it say about my darn washer that it didn't agitate enough to open the darn catcher? Yes, it's a blasted front loader.) 

Here's what the pathetic quilt looked like when I took it out of the washer the first time. 

So, this is may be after the 2nd wash.  I wasn't thinking particularly well the day I washed this as I didn't put a towel or something else in to balance it in the washer.  It was dripping wet when done. I had to wring the thing out to get it so it wasn't dripping all over the place before it went in the dryer. Sigh.

And, Color Catchers #2.  Seven new ones. So why the one in the middle didn't turn pink is a mystery. 

It dried fine but it no longer looks the same. 

So, it isn't horrible but it definitely turned some parts of the quilt pink.The green isn't as vibrant either.  The squares of now pink, were a light cream with little gold specks in them.  I loved it.  But, I still like this.  It just isn't what it was.  Should I have washed the backing fabric before I used it? You bet!  I have been washing every piece of fabric (except precuts) for years.  Truth be told I don't know when I became so fanatical about pre washing everything. Probably when another red fabric bled like crazy.  Maybe that happened after I had already started quilting this one.  It will still look beautiful during Christmas and will evoke memories of the fun my friends and I had at the mystery retreat. But, boo for the bleeding red! Let this be a lesson to everyone who loves to use a strong red!  On the other hand, I'm so glad I dropped water on it and learned it was going to bleed.  I might have put a lot less Color Catchers in and had an even pinker quilt. And, no I don't blame the Color Catchers.  They did the best job they could have -- I should have put the whole box in! 

I'm happy to link up with Midweek Makers, Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?,  Finished or Not Friday, and Beauties Pageant. Ok, I'm way ahead of where I usually am for a second posting of the week. I'll be back tomorrow to link to the last two parties. You know the drill -- go visit some of these linky parties... you will enjoy seeing and reading about what's going on in quilting rooms across the country! 

This has been a great week.  I'm one seam away from finishing the commissioned T Shirt quilt top.  I've been shot. And, I shared a quilt that was a long time in the making. It's all good.  Hope you are having an excellent week too.  I've got a busy day tomorrow so I should be finishing this up and heading to bed!  

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie