We had a great Thanksgiving on Thursday afternoon and evening. Traffic was messy going to our son's house but it was a breeze coming home. The rest of the weekend was mostly spent in the studio trying to meet all my goals as I hadn't done much before Friday. I was surprised at how much I actually got done.
11/24/25
✅Enjoy T-Day with family including making a carrot cake. Fun day & half the cake came home for us. Yum!
✅ Quilt on home round robin top (domestic)— started but a lot more needs to be done.
✅✅Quilt two framed 9 patch tops on Ruthie — ran one after another on on a wide back.
Make 2 or 3 more R,W,B blocks for FCQ EQuilter — no time for this one.
✅Put the Tall Tree sections together — ready for the borders.
I didn't get very many pictures to share last week. But here are a few of my projects. I was able to stitch in the ditch around the feathered star. My next plan is to stitch around the outer octagon. I started but made a mistake and need to pull some of it out. I'll get back to it this week. Any suggestions for the white spacer area? I've got ideas for a lot of it but that's going to need a little more thought. I'm thinking some straight line quilting because I prefer to use my walking foot on this design.
I did get the Tall Tree put together. Sewing the sections was easier than sewing the sections together. But once I figured out I needed to baste the few places where the designs needed to match it went pretty fast. I wanted to see how much space I had where it is going to be displayed. Unfortunately for the photograph it is between two windows. So, the best pic isn't all that good. I'll take a photo of it on my design wall once it is finished. The pattern calls for a lighter and darker green for borders. What do you think if I use the red for the narrow border before the darkest green larger border? (I think the narrow one is cut 1.5" and the bigger might be 3". The pattern is down in the studio and I'm too lazy to run down and get it!)
Here's what I hope to work on this week.
12/1/25
Border Tall Tree, prep backing, baste
Sing at local mall
Continue quilt at home round robin top (domestic)
Make bindings for the two framed 9 patch quilts
I'm guessing it will take quite a bit more time to quilt the round robin. I am doing it on my domestic machine which is not as fast as the long arm! I haven't done any free motion quilting in years so I don't plan to do any on this top. But I'm really good with the walking foot! Hopefully I'll be able to finish it over the next few weeks.
I have maintained my 15 minutes of stitching this week. The beginning of the week I was knitting our doing some needlepoint. The end was all quilting!
W/ending 11/23/25. 334 days of 2025
- 15 minute days/November 29/30
- 15 minute days/2024 = 332/334 days
- Success rate = 99.4%
For Thanksgiving I decided to give some of our family quilts that I had made over the last few years. I figure I give many of my quilts to various community organizations, so why shouldn't I give them to some family members. Each of the ten quilts I chose to give away needed labels put on. That was done Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. Then I piled up the quilts for a photo op. Sunny helped.
On Thanksgiving day I gave quilts to my daughter-in-law, two grand kids, my daughter-in-law's mother, sister, and her niece and nephew. My daughter makes quilts for her family so they didn't want any. Earlier I made t shirt quilts for my son and son-in-law. I also gave a quilt to my d-i-l's father when he had some health issues a few years ago. It was fun to watch everyone pick their quilts. I know they will be enjoyed by them.
I'm sure I'll have several more quilts ready to donate at the January guild meeting.
Please take a minute to visit the following Linky parties.
Stitching Stuff
Oh Scrap
Patchwork and Quilts
Design Wall Monday
Monday Musings
On another front I wanted to share some information about what is happening in America when security investigations personnel have been allocated to work with ICE. And remember, ICE is not differentiating between citizens, green card holders, and undocumented individuals. Rather than paraphrasing the article I read I'm quoting directly from Michael Sellers. For those of you who don't know of him, he is a former undercover operations officer who spent 10 years with the CIA. Since then he has made numerous films and has authored two books. He writes 'A Deeper Look' on Substack. This is the beginning of his column on Nov. 25, 2025.
"Citing internal government documents that have not yet been made public, The New York Times is reporting that Homeland Security arrests for drugs and weapons trafficking have fallen sharply as the agency reallocates resources and attention toward civil-immigration arrests.
According to the report, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — the criminal-investigations arm of ICE — has undergone a dramatic mission shift. Civil-immigration arrests by HSI skyrocketed from about 5,000 in the prior fiscal year to more than 94,500 between October 2024 and September 2025 — an almost 20-fold increase. That surge came at a cost:
Weapons seizures collapsed from about 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73% drop.
Those are catastrophic declines for any agency claiming to focus on “the worst criminals.” And taken together, they paint a clear picture: HSI, once heavily engaged in long-term investigations of trafficking networks, has been transformed into a mass-immigration-arrest machine.
This shift didn’t happen in secret. HSI’s acting director circulated a memo to staff calling the immigration-arrest numbers a “monumental achievement.”The praise was explicitly tied to civil—not criminal—arrests. The department is celebrating volume, not impact.
The consequences are visible in multiple crime categories. While HSI touts a rise in total “criminal arrests,” the Times notes that roughly 12,000 of these arrests aren’t categorized at all, leaving a black box in the data. Meanwhile:
Indictments for child-exploitation crimes fell 28%.
HSI identified or rescued 300 fewer child victims, a 17% drop.
Agents opened far fewer major “significant cases,” like those involving global crime syndicates.
This is precisely what happens when an agency built for complex, resource-intensive investigations is redeployed for fast-turnover, low-complexity immigration arrests.
One of the items I've read recently was about speaking out for what you believe in. Recently I have been silent on these issues but have decided I will continue to bring issues I think are important to my readers. I'll put them at the bottom of my blog because not everyone wants to read about what is happening in our country now. I respect that but if we don't open our eyes, ears, and speak out who knows what will happen to our country.
Happy Quilting All! Bonnie
