Monday Meanderings 3 - 16 - 2026

What a week we've had -- or at least our weather has had. Thursday it was in the high 70s. Then it started getting colder, and it snowed. That night it got down to the 30's.  See the pic below -- it had dropped 44 degrees on Thursday.  The snow didn't last long but it was wet, and was snowing hard for an hour or so.  

Here's what I planned to do this past week. 

3/9/26

Finish Feb UFO to top stage — nothing was done. 

✅Stitch on Snowman block — Several sections were finished.

✔️Trim March UFO blocks — 10 of 42 blocks were trimmed. More to go. 

✅ Sew Magnificent Mystery blocks into rows — done. 

✅ Finish knitting sock — done.

Here's a pic of my finished socks. The first sock was finished months ago. I started the second one and got to where the heel started and quit. Fast forward many months. It took me about 2 weeks to get the second one done once I started knitting again.  I wore them today. Pretty comfortable and not horribly hot. 

I did make up my mind about the Feb. UFO Challenge piece.  I'll be using the light pink as sashing and the print as the border.  Unfortunately I don't have a lot of the print fabric so I'll probably make the border as big as I can. Straighten the edges and divide the amount by 4 and that will be how wide the borders will be. Stay tuned to see the end result.  

I know you are wondering why I didn't get much done this last week. A customer called me with a top to be quilted asap.  I didn't get a very good picture of it but I did get it finished.   On Thursday (see weather report above...) there was a blip of electricity and Ruthie quit working.  Bummer. I quit for the rest of that day as I didn't want the quilting to be messed up and started again on Friday afternoon.  It was done by Saturday evening. And returned on Sunday. Margery used a lot of horse prints including a panel of horse prints like on the bottom left below.  

Margery designed the center.  I wish I had taken a picture of the whole quilt or most of it.  It is really stunning. This is what I did instead of my goals.  (Although truth be told I did get quite a bit of reading done while Ruthie was sewing.) 

Here's what I hope to get done this week. 

3/16/26

Sew Magnificent Mystery rows together 

Continue trimming March UFO blocks/take out papers 

Quilt Springtime Irish Chain

Make more Dash blocks 

Finish 1st Snowman block 

Oh! And the fabric from Marshall Dry Goods arrived. About 7 pounds of fabric according to the shipping label.  I went a bit wild buying wide backs.  Here's group 1.

The pink and blue are each 2 yards of 108 fabric. The red, white, and blue is just a yard of 45" wide. It was a little treat -- ie, I have nothing specific planned for it.  But I'll probably make a 3 yard quilt with it.  And now, group 2. 

The top one was "suppose" to go with the Magnificent Mystery top except it is way more orange than I thought it was.  It is a beautiful fabric and I'll find some way to use it although maybe not as a backing.  Underneath is white Dream Cotton Solid 108" wide.  I'll probably use it as background fabric. It has a great hand.  

I did actually sew every day last week.

Week ending 3/15/26;  74 days of 2026.

  74 days of 74. 100%

Here are the Linky Parties I'm linking with.  Take a few minutes to visit the blogs listed. 

Stitching Time 

Oh Scrap

Quilting Patchwork Applique 

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

So this week the weather is also going to be weird.  At least on Monday.  

Our community is in the greater DC region. According to the Washington Post 

"An intense storm system could bring widespread and severe thunderstorms to the D.C. region on Monday, capable of producing violent wind gusts, hail and tornadoes in addition to torrential rain and lightning." What it doesn't say but other meteorologists are saying there can be tornadoes also.  Oh fun.  A group of us are planning to go out to lunch.  So far the worst of the storm will be coming in the mid to late afternoon/evening.  I hope we can have our outing but it'll be canceled if the weather starts faster than it is currently predicted.  If you live in the way of this storm take care. Tomorrow I'll be doing a little pre-storm prep -- basically have food and drink for 3 days available.  Also, fully charge all of our devices.   Take care if you live in this area. 

Happy Quilting All - Bonnie 

 

Monday Meandering 1 - 3 - 2022

Happy New Years!  Did you stay up and watch a ball drop?  I was sound asleep by the time the year changed. Oops - not much of a partier.

I had several great days of sewing last week. Let's look at last week's goals list to see all I got done.

12/27/2021

Finish new UFO list — kind of done but need to move to computer

✅Pick 12 UFOs to focus on this year 

✅Finish quilting & bind the Peppermint Bunny top

✅Quilt and bind another top - Winter Animals & Snowmen. I had hoped to do another one but that didn't happen.

✅Work on more ombre log cabin blocks 

✅Work on Winter Wall hanging -- finished (see above!) 

                                                         

Hand written UFO list. Still needs to be
put on computer. And yes it continues
on the back side and another sheet of paper. 

For the UFO Challenge, number 12 was picked to be worked on in January.  For me that means the sail boat quilt.  When I started today there were 12 snowball blocks with the red and yellow sail boats. I had leftover ocean-related fabrics that I picked up on a give away table at a guild meeting.  I'm going to make 12 more snowball blocks with the tossed lighthouses.    

So far I'm planning to make a fairly small quilt with the snowballs and then add some borders to enlarge.  I might decided to sash the blocks to make the quilt a bit bigger.  These are 6" finished blocks. I would like to incorporate these bigger light houses into the quilt -- maybe at the top or the bottom. Unfortunately I have only two pieces that are at most 15" wide.  I'm going to have to be creative to include these.  I can see them at either the top or the bottom of snowballs. Time will tell. 

I've cut another 12 blocks of the ombre log cabin blocks.  I made several of them while I was making my snowball blocks.  Who said leader/enders have to be a far distance project?

Here's a sneak peak of one of the snowmen in the Winter Animals & Snowmen wall hanging.  I've still got a few more eyes to sew on before it will be hung above the fireplace this winter. 

This project has been in the works for a long time.  The blocks are all paper pieced and may I say, I'm not a fan of paper piecing any more.  It took about 3 years to get the blocks done and after a little more hibernating I finished the top. It was quilted this week before the end of December so it is my last quilt of December. 

Here's what I plan to work on this week.  Several items are continuing what I've been working on but there are a few new items. 

1/3/2022

Work on January UFO 

Make more ombre blocks

Start first round of SAHRR

Cut out Looking Glass quilt

Update Accuquilt Go dies online*

*I'm a fan of Go dies and have bought quite a few over the past year.  One of the things Accuquilt provides is a place to list all your dies.  I kept up through Christmas last year when I got several dies.  But nothing I bought this year has been entered.  And believe me with several really good sales (including the preChristmas push) I have bought several many new ones. I will be trying my new dies this year even if I only make a sample block.  

We had a wonderful weather on New Years Day.  It was in the low 70s.  This is winter in the Mid Atlantic?  Hum.... wait a day or two and it will change. 

Yep, there's a change in the weather coming.  We live approximately where the top, left side of the "m" in Richmond is.  Notice that is included in the 8" or so of snow tomorrow.  GOOD GRIEF -- it was just 70. Maybe we'll be lucky and the snow won't stick -- the ground isn't that cold.  Never fear -- I have a lot of piecing or quilting projects I can work on.  Plus about 4 books I had on reserve have become available for my Kindle in the last few days.  I'll be well entertained if we do get 8" of snow! 

A quick update at noon on Monday: 

Yep the snow came.  And, I bet we do get 8" at least.  This is the view outside my double doors in the studio. Looking at the same scene now you can't see any steps to the left, just a continuous mound of snow. It's time for me to quit reading blogs and start working on one of my goals! 

I hope you can take some time to check out these linky parties. I always find so many wonderful ideas when I surf blogs listed on these parties.  Hum, I figure I'll relax with a nice cup of tea and see what's going on. 

Oh Scrap!

Monday Making 

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday

That's it for tonight. (Yes, I call this a Monday post but I almost always do it on Sunday evening.)  I'll be back to link up when these parties go live. 

Here's to some hot tea, reading a good book and a bit of stitching while the weather outside is frightful!  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

       

January OMG Choice

I'm squeaking in just before the deadline for the January OMG.  I couldn't decide what to work on and then BOOM, it hit.  I have a brown bag challenge quilt to get done -- in a month or so.  Not that I haven't had the fabric for 6+ months. I believe the challenge is called "The Alphabet Challenge."  I've been considering it in the back of my head for a while.  In fact, I bought the cutest white on white alphabet fabric to use.  

My first thought was to do various sports letters to look somewhat like a crossword puzzle.  Um, too many letters are repeats -- lots of balls involved.  Plus when I went to the stash all the sports themed fabric I thought I had came down to one small piece of fabric that wouldn't fit the size I wanted to make the blocks.  Toss that idea. 

Next up was dog theme.  Checked the stash and yep, I have dog themed fabrics.  (The blues on the left, bottom and right came in the bag.  Not big pieces and not much variety.) I can augment from the stash. 

On to words -- well why not dog talk: yip, arf, bark, woof.  You get the idea.  So I decided to try the design in EQ and see how big it could be and how many blocks I would need. 

Ok.  Decided that would work once I changed the four patches from all blue to blue and white.  I could appliqué the letters on the white parts and get the results I had in my mind. 

Except my brain continued to work overnight.  I woke up this am and thought perhpaps I'll just put the words on the outside border.  I was planning on using the light fabrics on the bag in the picture above for the letters.  I even have an alphabet to use.  Today I'll refigure the quilt so I can put letters on the border. Hum, maybe I could do a big quilting stitch and just stitch the words.  More to consider...after I get the center done. 

So the OMG is to get this top pieced.  If I get it quilted and bound, all the better. It'll be displayed at the FCQ show in the spring and then donated to Project Linus.   

Are you living in the frozen zone?  The last two days the morning temp has been 0º.  Yep, you read that right. Needless to say the studio is a great place to be right now.  I keep the heat up and stay busy so I'm a happy camper.  We did go out the last few mornings for our normal workouts at the community clubhouse. 

Want to go swimming? 

If you click on the close up it will enlarge and you might be able to see that the fountain in the center is still on and throwing water up.  The ground view of this is what we see as we doing our workouts.  This is very unusual weather for Fredericksburg, Va.  I'm looking forward to later next week when it'll be in the 50's -- maybe the 60's.  

Do you live where the weather can change drastically in  a few days?  

I'm linking up with Elm Street Quilt's One Monthly Goal January link up.  

Happy quilting all!  Bonnie 

UFO's -- Slowly Finishing a BOM

Do you remember A Tisket, A Tasket from Bunny Hill Designs? It started life as a free Block of the Month in 2009.  I decided to do the appliqué version of it.  I will admit to starting several months late -- and I never caught up.  My blocks have been languishing in the UFO pile for quite a while.  Every once and a while I would take them out sew a little bit and then put them back away.  

Recently I've been trying to finish some blocks.  4 blocks were totally done, 7 blocks were in progress and one wasn't started.  After my session the other night I've got 8 blocks done, 3 needing some embroidery or buttons, and the last one is fused, ready for me to cut out and prep the appliqué pieces.  In other words, I'm making progress.  Here are some of the blocks I was working on Wednesday night. 

Three more blocks added to the finished pile.

And here's one I am still working on. 

Generally I was writing what still needed to be done on the top of the pattern sheet but this one had a long list of items to do so I listed them on a post it note.  I still need to embroider some words above the basket.  Happily, I found my bias bars today so I can make the handle for the last block.  (There are still quite a few odd items I haven't found after the move into the new studio. I still have a couple of boxes and bags of stuff stashed away.  One of these days I'll go through them and find places for them or get rid of them.) 

Richmond area has been hit with 2 snow storms -- last Tuesday 1/21 and this week, Tue. 1/28.  We weren't originally forecasted for any snow this week and we ended up with about 4" in the back yard.  The biggest issue with snow is the dogs won't go outside while either a) it's actually snowing or b) the deck has snow on it.  Usually by the day after they are happy to go play in the snow.  Go figure.  A long term forecast calls for 3 - 6" next week and 1 to 2 FEET on Feb. 8 and 9th.  WHAT?  Feet of snow in Richmond?  I'll keep you posted.  And, I'll make sure I have plenty of projects to work on! 

Here's the thermometer for this morning at 7:15 or so when we left for our workout at the Y. That is 5.0 -- not 50.  Yikes.  No wonder I was cold overnight.  Tonight is suppose to be much warmer -- 16º.   

I sewed the binding on the front side of the stained glass quilt and took the brown and blue quilt off Ruthie today.  Tomorrow I'll be sewing the binding on the brown and blue and then sewing all that binding down.  Oh fun.  But I am looking forward to a very good month of fabric usage.  

Happy Quilting All! 

Cookie Swap I

I made 3 batches of cranberry, white chocolate chip cookies! I decorated bags, made little tags, stashed the cookies in and tied it all up with a bright red ribbon.

I stashed the bags into a decorated basket to tote to the swap location. I wish I brought my camera to show you all the gorgeous containers filled with cookies!

And, if you've been hearing about the cold weather -- here's our morning temps. Top is outside, bottom is in the house but right next to the window. I'm sure it wasn't that cold inside!

I was able to get nearly an hour and a half of sewing done. Tomorrow I'm planning the whole morning in the studio. I'll get one top done, finish clue 1 of Carolina Christmas on Quiltville. And, maybe I'll get the last stocking done. We'll see how it goes. Raggs isn't particularly fond of the snow we've got. He's hoping for some warmer weather!

Happy Quilting All!