Design Wall Monday 3 - 23 - 2026

Well, the awful weather we were suppose to have last Monday wasn't awful. It was a dull, rainy day with no tornados in our area. Some areas had a lot of trees down but not in our general area.   However, we weren't sure about how bad it was going to be so we canceled the lunch.  We'll reschedule at some point.  I did get most of my goals list done.  Here's what I was going to do. 

3/16/26

✅Sew Magnificent Mystery rows together — all done!

✔️March UFO blocks/take out papers — all blocks have been trimmed.

✅Quilt Springtime Irish Chain — quilting done! 

✅Make more Dash blocks — 3 more added to collection.

Finish 1st Snowman block — nope, nothing done. 

First up the finished Magnificent Mystery top. I'm very pleased with it.  I'm not happy that the backing I bought on line use is way too wild. You can scroll down last week's post and see the orange fabric. It's beautiful fabric but just too colorful for this quilt. 

Close to the end of the week I was able to load my top Springtime Irish Chain. It is a 3 yard quilt in the book Quick Christmas 3 Yard Quilts called Irish Christmas. 

The backing is from Marshall's Dry Goods.  The floral fabric was from my stash and was probably quite old.  I have 3 choices for binding: the solid pink, the floral print, or the backing fabric pink. (You can see a little of the backing at the top of this photo.  It is a floral with multiple shades of pink.)

Three more Dash blocks were completed today.  Earlier in the week I grabbed a bunch of reds, blues, and lights to make more Dash blocks.  I finally was able to cut 3 blocks and sewed them in the afternoon while I was Face Timing with my friend Sharon. Unfortunately I only took a picture of the top block-- two more are behind it. 

I've got 4 more fabric sets planned but not cut yet, I "think" I need to make 15 more blocks.  So I need to make quite a few more.  I may have planned this bigger than I need so I'll look at the setting and number of blocks needed.  It's going to show up on the goals list for many more weeks. 

I did get all the March challenge blocks trimmed.  I need to clear a spot on the design wall to lay out these blocks. They are paper pieced which means there is a lot of papers to take out! I think I'll take the inside papers out leaving the edge papers on before sewing them into rows.  Let's hope I can get these moving forward. 

I "might" have worked on the snowman this week but I don't remember doing it.  (It's so much fun aging!) I usually would work on it at my Monday stitching group but we didn't meet because the clubhouse was being painted. So maybe some got done but who knows! Perhaps I should take a picture of it at the beginning of each week so I can check what's been added. 

Here's what I'm working on this week. 

3/23/26

Sew March UFO blocks together

Bind Springtime Irish Chain top

Continue working on 1st snowman block

Quilt Charm Challenge top

Quilt and bind one of my quilts  

The end of the month is coming and I'd like to have 2 quilts finished.  The second one may be smaller than the Irish Chain one but at least I'd have another finish. 

One of the things I forgot to put on the goals list last week was the Charm Challenge our guild sponsored at our open sew.  The guild provided charm square packs made from donated fabrics.  I chose a wild one with lots of colors.  I enjoyed the sewing and was happy with the result. The community outreach chair brought me a backing so I can get it quilted before the next meeting.  These were sewn into a straight rectangle then cut along two diagonal lines and sewn back to make this square.  Unfortunately, I didn't know how the charms' placements changed the finish.  I'm looking forward to making another one soon.  Cutting the charms will take the most time! 

I also was able to finish the February UFO challenge top.  I'm very pleased with the results.  It's going into the closet for a while.  I need to use some of my new backing fabrics before I buy more backings. (Although, honestly, I need to check out my stash to see if there is anything that would work for this wall hanging.) Originally I didn't want to use the dark fabric for the border. But, it really looked better than all the other fabrics I auditioned.  

I'm keeping up with my 15 minutes of stitching.  Generally I stitch way over 15 minutes.  

Week ending 3/22/26;  81 days of 2026.

  81 days of 81. 100%

Here are the Linky Parties I participate in.  

Stitching Time 

Oh Scrap

Quilting Patchwork Applique 

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

We had a beautiful warm day today: low humidity and 80º. I was able to enjoy the sunshine looking out of the French doors in the basement up to the back yard. And, it was still beautiful when we took Sunny for a walk this evening. The temps are going to be up and down all week. That's better than really cold as in Jan/Feb and ridiculously hot and humid which is our normal summer. 

Let's keep quilting to keep our spirits up! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Irish Chain Finish!

I have no idea what I've been doing but it certainly hasn't been blogging. Some of my time has been wrapped up in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I got it from the library on Thursday and then Saturday I got a message that Diane Gabaldon's new book was also available for me to pick up. YIKES two 500+ page books coming in at the same time. And both have reserves on them beyond me so I knew I would only have them for 2 weeks. HELP. So I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend reading The Lost Symbol. I found the sheer amount of information in it amazing. I learned all sorts of new things. The mystery part -- well, not all that great. But the other stuff held my interest. A lot of what he included was factual.

I've got a paperback going now. I will be picking up the Gabaldon book on Thursday. Another long book but I've been sucked into all her previous books so I am sure I'll be into this new book next weekend.

This is the Irish Chain quilt that I finished last week. For some reason whenever I take a quilt photo Raggs stands in front of it and poses. (Have I taken that

many pictures of Raggs?) Also wanted everyone to see the state of the trees around here. My back yard trees haven't turned more than yellow but trees around the area are various shades of green, yellows, reds, browns. Fall colors are doing there thing here. Anyway, it was a mystery quilt presented by Marge at Mysteries for Relay. Each mystery costs a $5 donation to American Cancer Society. There is another mystery coming up the first week of November if you'd like to join in the fun. Marge uses this site to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. So, if you'd like to do a mystery quilt Marge's are well written and lots of fun to do. On this quilt when I got to the part where we were laying this out I told Marge how much I liked it. And, I knew I would never have made an Irish Chain knowing what it was. Yet I really like this quilt -- but it is a gift to a friend so I won't be keeping it. I liked this because I'm pretty sure all of the fabric came from my stash. And, if it didn't, I only bought the brown. (oh, where oh where has my memory gone, oh where, oh where did it go? . . . ) Everytime I talk about Mysteries for Relay I do a sales job too. So, those of you have heard this sorry for the repeat but it is for a good cause. For those of you who have joined or are planning on joining thank you so much for supporting this worth while effort.

Here's what I've been working on most

recently. The pattern is called "The Witch Is In." I've still got a couple of bats and the letters to stitch on. And, don't you just love my big board! I do. I have room for the whole wall hanging on this. Nothing is hanging off the edges.

As I have been machine buttonholing this I've been using phone book pages for the stabilizer. I have fancy stabilizer that actually washes out but it gets expensive or at least it costs money! However, I've read from many of the blogs I read that the gals use phone book pages especially for string blocks. I've been against it because of the ink transfer I thought would happen. So, I grabbed a piece of white scrap and rubbed it against the page. Not much came off. I was really surprised. So I used pages under each design element. Because it is so thin it pulls off easily. After doing these parts I noticed my machine bed was a little dirty. Hum, the big question was -- was it dirty before I started or not? I hadn't looked. I cleaned it off and closed up for the night.

Today's plan is to get the letters on and the bats. So I'm heading up now to quilt. I've already put dinner in the crock pot and now blogging for the first time in 5 days it's time to get going.

Happy quilting all!