Monday Meanderings 2 - 3 - 2025

Welcome to February. It's still pretty cold but rumor has it  it will be nearly 65 on Thursday.  But the local weather report showed the worse case weather for later in the week and it included snow. OH GOOD GRIEF.  My weather report on my iPhone is all about rain but no snow. (Do I admit that it is frequently wrong?) 

I had a great week of getting things done.  Here's the list.

1/27/25

✔️✔️✔️✔️Make more potato chip blocks — Yep 4 more done although 1 is  for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

✅Bind black, green, and white quilt — finished. 

✅Make a placemat from orphan block — done. Looking for more orphan blocks. 

✅Make backing for flannel quilt — done. 

✅Spend 15 minutes/day cleaning up studio — actually did about 2 hours of cleaning and cutting up scraps rather than 15 mins every day. 

✅Start a knit headband — finished it. I like the idea but need to refine the knitting. 

I failed to take many pictures this week.  Here's the placemat I made. I had made the center block a few years ago when I was practicing with Studio 180's Lemoyne Star ruler. I couldn't find any of the green or magenta fabric but was able to use the royal blue. The backing and binding was left over from the T Shirt quilt I made my son a while ago. 

I have already found my next block to use. (Evidently I had piled some on the corner of my long arm which I unearthed while I was straightening up the pile!) I'll probably continue to use orphan blocks over the next several weeks. 

Here's the ear warmer headband. It called for bulky weight yarn or 2 strands of worsted weight. I used the worsted weight with one purple and one turquoise yarn. (I'm trying to use up odd ball yarn.) 

I've been wearing it walking the dog and I like the fit of it better than any of the hats I have.  I will see if I have any bulky weight yarn to see if it works better. I need to figure out whether my tension is off on the cast on or perhaps the cast off.  I'm happy it keeps my ears nice and toasty warm. We only have random patches of snow left thank goodness. Just know that 6 months from now I will be bitterly complaining about the heat! 

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

2/3/25

Sew ‘22 Sherri McConnell mystery blocks together with sashing

Make more Potato Chip blocks

Quilt flannel baby quilt

Cut out and sew together a new quilt using only stash fabrics

Find a backing or two for some tops I have ready to quilt

15 Minutes to Stitch -- another good week.

W/ending 2/2/25. 33 days of 2025

• 15 minute days/Jan = 5/5 days
• 15 minute days/Feb = 2/2
• 15 minute days/2024 = 33/33 days
• Success rate = 100%

I'm linking up with the following parties:

Stitching Stuff

Oh Scrap

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

One last question -- what fabric do you use when binding a flannel quilt?  Flannel or regular quilting cotton.  I hope to get the little, flannel baby top quilted and then bound -- but was wondering what most people prefer. Thanks! 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Friday Finish!

Before we left town last week I got this pink flannel quilt quilted.  I didn't do anything else on it until Tuesday evening after we got home. (I generally don't like sewing at night but I wanted to get this finished.) I have several more pieces of flannel that I would like to make into small quilts to donate to good causes and get it out of my stash. I'll probably wait until fall to start up on them again. 

First up -- the front. The purple mottled and the solid pink I bought at JoAnns at deep discounts.  One piece I know I only bought 1/4 yard -- I didn't want to have leftovers to deal with.  The other two were in stash including the backing. 

Pattern: Random Clams by Jessica Schick

Thread: So Fine! 495 Gerber Daisy

Size: 36" x 43" (approximately); blocks are cut 6.5" and set 6 x 7.

I decided to set this up on the long arm with the length going across the long arm and the width running perpendicular to the rollers. Doing it that way makes it faster to run. I have never used the Random Clams design before so this was a trial.  Unfortunately, I should have added a few more patterns across.  These are a little flatter than they should be.  I'll try it again sometime and see if it looks better.  Nothing really wrong this way it just didn't look much like the pdf. 

I took this picture on the morning of a day where we were going to have a ton of rain.  I was happy to get the photo shoot finished before the rain started although I just used a railing on the deck.  No nifty location. 

I was tickled to have done such a great job on the binding.  I apply the binding to the back of the quilt by machine, pull it to the front, and then sew it down by machine.  I was amazed that I had quite a few spots that looked like this. (You might need to click the picture to enlarge it.) 

This may look like two corners of the back but it actually shows a front and a back.  Have you started sewing your bindings on by machine on both sides?  Part of my rationale is I donate most of my quilts to various causes and I don't want them to fall apart.  One of the quilts made for my first granddaughter the hand sewn binding fell apart. Generally, it's much faster too.

April is slipping away really fast, or so it seems.  I'm much more on top of my statistics as I have them finished today rather half way through the next month.  And they look great to me.  

2021	Fabric In Month	Fabric In Year	Fabric Out Month	Fabric Out Year	Total In or Out Year
Mar	4.375	13.375	13.875	35.125	21.750

Wowzer!  21.75 more yards out in 3 months than brought in. I haven't shown that type of fabric usage in years ever.  I am keeping my scraps that would normally be hitting the trash and weighing them periodically something I didn't do last year.  There was about 5 yards of fabrics in the scraps I had gathered over the last two months. 

Warning!  I just put in an order for 8 yards of fabric so unless I get going and get some projects finished I will not have such great numbers for April.  Nothing like a little motivation to keep my nose to the grindstone!  

Here are the parties I'm linking up with: Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Finished or Not Fridays, and Beauties Pageant. I'll be checking out these blogs to see what others are working on. Won't you join me?

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie