Monday Meanderings 4 -- 27 -- 2026

Our lovely, warm spring has turned back to cold weather.  The rain we had last night didn't do much as the whole greater DC area is in a serious drought.  Hopefully we'll get some heavier rain this week. Cold weather makes me want to stay in and stitch. So I've been been doing that quite successfully.  First last week's goals.

4/20/26

✅Make 4 more Dash blocks — 3 finished, 2 more cut out. 

✅Decide whether to trim flying geese blocks or just make one more and do it — new block made, blocks made into top, borders added!

✅Start new project with 10” squares — one block made.

✅Make some more “flutter” blocks — several more made and more cut out. 

✅Quilt one of my tops — Baby quilt quilted. 

I've been busy sewing.  I figured out I needed 5 more Dash blocks.  I cut out all but one, although the fabrics have been picked.  It took me more time to pick fabrics then to make the blocks.  Here are two of the new blocks.  Hopefully I'll get this to top stage in May. 

I've finished the flying geese top this week.  It was the April UFO challenge.  I finally decided to replace one block that was a half inch smaller than all the others.  I figured it would be faster to make a new block rather than trim all of the other blocks.  All the blocks got sewn together and then I checked for an another piece of batik that I could get a border out of it.  I have a nice collection of batiks but I don't tend to buy big pieces. Luckily I had one that enhanced the top.  I put smaller borders on top and bottom. And larger borders on the sides to make it slightly wider.    

The super flying geese finish at 8 x 16".  The colors are much prettier than this photo.  It will be going to the to-be-quilted closet soon. I need to find a backing for this one. On the other hand I'm happy to have found a use for these very old blocks.  

I chose a baby top to quilt this week.  I have quite a few more tops to quilt for the guild and one for my daughter. I figured a fast easy one gave me an easy finish -- sans binding. The quilting design is Criss Cross Applesauce by My Creative Stitches. It gives really good definition. I used a red So Fine on it. 

I haven't really started a new top in quite a while.  So I decided I would use Preeti Harris's pattern, Veronica. It uses a layer cake and I had one I thought might work. Except, it wouldn't -- it had fairly large animals on it.  They would have been cut apart and they wouldn't look good.  So I took a look at my small collection of precuts and found the perfect layer cake.  I've tried one block but I'm not going to show it yet.  But take a look at these beautiful batiks from Riley Blake Designs I am using.  These are going to look wonderful. I don't think I will be using all of them as I don't want a huge quilt. I'll have some squares to play with later. You can check out Pretti's pattern on her blog. I can say it is a really cool pattern. I'm excited to work on it.  

This is concert week which means I've got a major time commitments to singing, not sewing. Nevertheless here is what I hope to work on this week. 

4/27/26

Finish 3 more dash blocks, start trimming to correct size

Quilt a top 

Make some more batik blocks 

Make binding and bind Bear quilt 

Enjoy singing two concerts and one tech rehearsal 

I've been able to stitch every day this week. 

Week ending 4/26/26:  116 days of 2026.

  116 stitching days out of 116 days. 100%

I'm keeping this post short.  Don't forget to check out some of these Linky parties to see what other quilters are working on. 

Stitching Time 

Oh Scrap

Quilting Patchwork Applique 

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 4 - 6 - 2026

It was a quilty week with lots of projects moving forward. And, I had my nose in several books and my ears working too. Translation: 3 books read and 1 audio book finished this week. I'm ready to jump straight into my goals because I had a productive week. 

3/30/26

✅Sew March UFO blocks together - done!

✅Quilt Charm Challenge top — done!

✅Bind two of my quilts — both finished!!

✅Continue working on 1st snowman block — a lot of progress made. I was going to take a picture but forgot. Maybe next week. 

✅Look at April UFO challenge project — pulled out the blocks but no decisions made. 

All those green check marks make me smile. Here are some pictures of those projects. 

First up is the March UFO blocks. These are really old (maybe the early 1990s.) The blocks were paper pieced by people around the US, Canada and a few European nations. We all entered them in a drawing which I won. I don't remember if there were several winners or not.  I wasn't sure how they went together which definitely had me putting them aside for many years. Once I decided I'd finished it this year I chose to make a small star and the large white section.  

The green (and a white) will be a paper pieced border that I'll be doing sometime this year.  I saved three months for this project.  The first one was tearing out the papers and sewing the blocks together. Then making the border with the final time sewing the borders on. You'll be seeing this again as the other months are drawn. I can also guarantee that this will go to the guild's community outreach as a donation. Definitely not my style/colors. 

I quilted the little Charm Challenge quilt I did at the guild sew day in March.  It was fun and pretty easy. I used a "charm" pack that the community outreach team made. I wish I'd taken a picture of the top before it was cut apart and put back together. But no, I didn't think to do it.  All the edges are bias so you really need to treat it carefully.

I used a new quilting design called New Zealand Koru from My Creative Stitches.  The design is simple, but interesting. Here's a close up. 

 I used orange thread which stands out nicely on some of the colors and blends in with other fabrics.  The backing is muslin so the orange shows up nicely on the back. 

The April UFO challenge project is a set of giant flying geese blocks.  They are 16.5" x 8.5" made with batik fabrics.  This was an opportunity block for one of the retreats I go to.  I know I won a bunch of them as did a few others.  If I leave it this way it will measure 32" x 48".  I might have a batik I could use as a border or make a pieced border of batiks.  

Or, I could cut these into half square triangles to make pinwheels.  I had some other  of these large HSTs that I made into pinwheels.  You can see the finished quilt here. What do you think? If I use the big flying geese as is, does anyone have suggestions for an easy pieced border? 

Here's my plan for this week. 

4/6/26

Quilt one of my quilts

Make more Dash blocks 

Sew 16 patches together

Finish 1st snowman block 

Prep 2nd snowman block

Attend all day chorus rehearsal

Plus, my friend Sharon is coming for a fast visit on her way home from visiting her daughter.  So, it's a full week. 

I had another week of stitching every day. Many days were way more than 15 minutes! 

Week ending 4/5/26:  95 days of 2026.

  95 stitching days out of 95 days. 100%

For your laugh today I give you Sunny.  She was trying to get to something on the other side of the fence. She wasn't digging at all. Surprising because she is a terrier. I've seen her trying to get her nose under the fence when a lizard was involved. 

👈🏼 👈🏼

Yea, she doesn't look so bad here.  But check out 

the next picture.  

                              👇🏼👇🏼

She came in clean except her muzzle.  Strange little dog.  But she is a laugh a minute some days. 

Please take some time to check out the following linky parties.  You can see what quilters around the world are working on. (Or should I say playing with!?) 

Stitching Time 

Oh Scrap

Quilting Patchwork Applique 

Design Wall Monday

Monday Musings

I need to figure out my fabric usage for the first quarter.  I thought I had done one of the months but I can't find the info... maybe it is in my journal I keep of fabric in and out. I don't think I've used more fabric than I've brought in. Anyway, it's not going to be tonight!  Maybe next week or so.  

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Monday Meanderings 7 - 25 - 2022

Are you living where the heat has gone sky high?  The heat has finally arrived in the Mid Atlantic where we live.  We've had a pretty easy summer mostly low 80s to high 80s -- some days with low humidity until this weekend -- 96 and high humidity. Ugh.  It was good to stay in the basement studio this weekend and get some things done.  

Here's what I've done this past week.  

7/18/22

✅Keep working on Picnic Time -- made the backing and a couple of blocks

✅Quilt and bind July UFO -- quilted, no binding yet

✅Look at Halloween blocks and make some more -- see below but no additional blocks were made

✅Make more red, white, and blue blocks -- done and turned into quilt guild 

Here a sneak peek of the quilt I finished quilting this week. This is the UFO Challenge quilt for July.  I'm tickled with how this came out.  I'll share more photos soon. (Check back Friday to see if I follow through showing all of it.) 

Here's the beginning of the Halloween quilt.  Or at least I hope it will be the beginning of a quilt. Here's all of the blocks I have -- do they make a quilt this way? 

Um, no, I don't like it this way. So below are the blocks broken out by types.  First up the 6" finished blocks.  Hum, lots of the same blocks from Halloween colors and fabrics.  

The blocks below are from top to bottom:  2" squares, 4" blocks, and a 10" block -- all finished sizes.  I think the purple ghost is suppose to be trimmed to 4.5" or 5" or ?  

My thoughts are I need at least one bigger block and then I can use these (or some of these) to surround it along with some sashing or filler.  This "quilt" is one of my UFO Challenge quilts. Luckily, it hasn't been the quilt of the month yet -- I hope to at least have a plan and maybe even a quilt top done before it is. Then all I'd need to do would be to quilt and bind it.  

It was on last week's goals list and you'll find it again on this weeks -- hopefully I can make some plans for it. Here's the rest of my goals for this week. 

7/25/22

Bind Migrating Geese

Keep working on Picnic Time

Make some Halloween blocks and spider blocks 

Quilt and bind one of my quilts 

I sure hope I can make some decent headway on this list.  It would help if I didn't fall into any books this week.  I just finished Book Lovers by Emily Henry.  Loved it and all its references to book publishing and reading.  

Time to link up to some great Linky parties.

Oh Scrap

Monday Making

Design Wall Monday 

To Do Tuesday 

We had an unusual visitor in our kitchen this weekend.  We found this unhappy guy on the wall near the pantry.  Yep, he was on a vertical wall.

Hubby finally figured out how he got into the house.  Our propane tank needed filling so he carried it through the house to the garage. Mr Frog must have jumped off and landed on the wall.  Hubby carefully captured him and set him outside (in the horrible heat.)

That's it for goals this week.  Hope you find some time to check out some of the blogs listed on the Linky parties. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

  

Not a Finish Friday!

No, I didn't finish a quilt this week but I have moved two projects forward.  I put the borders on the Economy blocks but I'm saving that picture until Monday. What I'm sharing is getting all of the 16  patch sawtooth star blocks finished.  And the layout was pretty easy decision. 

First, here's what a pile of unfinished Flying Geese blocks looks like. These are ready to be cut in half and then ironed to look like Flying Geese then trimmed with Studio 180 Wing Clipper ruler. Easy peasy to make exactly the right size units. 

See below to see what they looked like while I was deciding about putting in a sashing.  It definitely looks good with the blue sashing using a nice blue from my stash.  I had some red but it just didn't go with the various colors of reds in the blocks.  The blue makes it sparkle.  Now the question is what size sashing.  I'm thinking a 2" finished sashing would work well plus it would make the whole quilt a bit bigger to fit size requirements of Leashes of Valor.  (Click on the link to learn more about this program with the motto "One Leash Saves two Lives.") One other question.  I have 2 blocks that definitely have beige in the Sawtooth units.  My thought is to  not try to "match" the locations as shown below.  I'm thinking of putting the bottom one in the 3 row down second block in.  What do you think? 

I'll be working on the blocks probably next week as I have a bit of Halloween embroidering to do.  Guess what I bought today! 

Hint -- I was at Joann today and took advantage of a buy 3 get two free sale.  Another hint -- it's really dark in the laundry room which we walk through from the garage. Have you figured it out?  Ok, there are 3 spools of glow in the dark thread in the bag.  I got such a kick out of the bag glowing away when we walked into the house I had to take a picture.  Hopefully Monday I can share some Halloween t shirts going to the grands later this week. 

Here's are the blogs I'm linking up with today. 

  Midweek Makers 

Needle and Thread Thursday

Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop

Finished or Not Fridays

Beauties Pageant

Lots of inspiration in those blogs.  See if you can find a project you might want to start soon! 

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie