cheery (easter) quilt, a finish

my eternal spring break handstitching project, which has accompanied me on the last five spring break trips, is actually finished!

the quilt adorned the couch in the bedroom i stayed in, which is also where i stitched on it. there was a full wall of windows looking out on the view of the costa rican jungle and ocean in the distance. i think the brightly-colored boxes of the quilt looked right at home in the modern decor with the tropical view.

i actually finished off the handquilting about halfway through the trip this year, for once underestimating how much i would be able to complete, and was left twiddling my thumbs during downtime when i'd have been happy to be stitching and had none to do. 

here i am, about to complete the last box of handstitching. on this extra-thick blue section i decided to do two sets of stitches on the inner and outer borders of the frame. i considered doing several rounds to fill the frame width completely, but liked the look of just two on each side.

another design switch i made was i opted not to handquilt the hot pink frames. i've never been happy with the thread color i got for this color, so i decided to leave them unstitched. i feel like this was a good choice.

the sun was going down as i finished up. what a spectacular setting to be handquilting in!

after being taken on five international trips. this quilt was ready for a wash. at the beginning of the trip i was a little anxious i wouldn't finish it this time because i knew it shouldn't go any longer without getting cleaned up and i didn't want to wash it before i finished the stitching because that would definitely affect the look of the stiches that came after washing. but i got it done and all is well. as soon as we got home after more than 10 hours of travel, i threw it in the washer, and put it in the dryer just before going to bed.

just look at how fabulous the handstitching looks after being washed! it takes the quilt to the next level, in my opinion, and i love it so much. i'm one very pleased quilter. sticking it out over five years to complete all the stitching was absolutely the right choice. i've been rather ambivalent about the quilt for a long time, but now it's done and washed, i truly love it.

now we're home, i've had it casually draped on the bed in this window so i can frequently look at the crinkle and smile.

this is how the double rows of stitching on the big blue section looked. love it. there were two other frames in different blocks that were also wide that i would have added the second row to, as well, but i didn't have the other colors with me on the trip because i'd already completed those sections. oh, well. this one corner is extra nice.

the back shows off the handquilting really well. again, i'm just so pleased with how this turned out. i thought all the different colored threads would show up against the mostly solid curry backing, but the stitches are so small on the back that the colors don't show as i imagined. however, the look of all the stitches is quite impressive, so i'm happy with the outcome.

this has me excited to do my next color box quilt when i get my wips finished and get back to starting new projects. all in good time!

the binding is a darker cinnamon brown from the top. i think it frames the bright colors well. the post-wash crinkle on it is another textural hit.

i did a beach photo shoot with this quilt in mexico, where we normally spend our spring breaks, a couple of years ago when i got the sun stitched into the top. too bad the crinkle isn't in those photos; these will have to do for crinkle and those show the full quilt.

that's a wrap! the cheery quilt that d4 told me looks like easter colors is now ready for easter season, spreading its sushine in my heart if nowhere else. 

epp progress, wip wednesday 2026.11

i've been steadily sewing a couple of pieces, or at least just one seam, for "london wardrobe" every day now. fourteen out of 100 days, done and dusted. my plan of attack is to put 3 to 4 hexagons & adjoining pieces together, then join those as pairs, and keep upscaling the size of pieces i'm connecting until i have this row complete. one of the original 3 wheel cogs (what i call the interconnected wheels) will be attached to the right of the above pieces, and then there's one or two more sets until this row is done.

looky what i found in my sewing room! mooooore of the original fabrics for this project. when i was gathering all the parts of this project together a few months ago, i thought i had seen some of them in one of my milk crates, but couldn't locate them. today i found it.

so. much. fabric.

there are even some more black-and-white prints i put aside to use as hexagon centers. i like these prints more than some that i've already used, so i would still like to incorporate them into the project.

these are the only fabrics that weren't prewashed yet. all the fabrics in the basket that i purchased for this quilt were prewashed because the book that taught me to epp said you really need to wash for epp projects. so i did. that makes it hard to use the leftovers with other projects because i'm not a prewasher for all my other quilts! so i'll have to prewash these if i decide to still add them in the quilt, but i will only wash small amounts, not the whole fat quarter (or whatever is here of each).

i also came across my travel epp pouch with the makings for two wheels inside. i would just mix these pieces back in with the others, but i already attached all the squares to one of the hexagons.

so i'll be completing that wheel by adding the triangles in, but mix the pieces for the other wheel into the general pile. that's one more individual wheel i'll have to work in now, but it just is what it is.

i did my first bit of unpicking when i accidentally sewed a triangle side to a hexagon. that isn't supposed to happen. it won't even lie flat that way! 

and then i did another unpicking when i turned a partial wheel i was adding onto a cog the wrong way. i let out a sigh or two of frustration with myself and then just fixed it. not so bad, really.

i was stitching during a zoom meet-up hosted by heather ross and denyse schmidt about a quilt kit collab they did. the zoom meeting was fun, but it made for some distraced stitching. maybe it wasn’t the best idea to combine the two activities? . the "crazy star" quilt is a fun one, especially in the fabrics heather used. it's one i'd like to do someday. i'm pretty sure denyse sent me the pattern as part of my prize kit for the fwsg quiltalong, but it will have to wait until my "season of wips" is over. 

epp is the only quilting i've done this week as i've been going hard at house design and i've got some travel coming up, so i've had to work at packing. my sewing projects were packed first because i know my priorities. so no other piecing or quilting for me lately. however, with spring break around the corner, i'll have some handstitching time soon. "cheery (easter) quilt" will get some more colors added.

i'm still strong on the unintentional fabric fasting. i'm just not buying fabric because there has been no need for it and as i've buried my head in the sand from social media, i'm not tempted by what i don't see out there. heather ross did mention in the zoom chat that they've added 35 new colors to the ruby + bee solids collection, which is really tempting. i think i can wait, though. since they're solids, they will be available for a while as part of a permanent collection. i looked at them on the windham site and they are pretty, so they are definitely on my wishlist for the future. but for now, i am not motivated enough to purchase immediately.

i had a scathingly brilliant quilt-related house design idea come to me the other morning. if it actually comes to fruition, i'll share. it involves heather bailey and possibly hsts. that's all i'll say for now. the house won't go under construction until next year at the earliest, so i have time to work on it. until then, it lives in my brain and makes me smile on occasion.

happy stitching, friends!

ooooold wip(s) wednesday 2026.10

i think this is the oldest wip i have. it was an original, exciting-to-me idea i had about two years into my quilting adventures when i was just getting started making hsts and they were so nerve-wracking (to my mind). i went to my (now long closed) local shop and picked out the most attractive charm pack they had available, because i didn't want to cut squares but rather focus on mastering that scary, tricky hst shape. i liked this "spring house" collection by moda enough to pick it. the colors were fresh, funky, and the collection was a little edgy. it's a bit bright for my tastes nowadays, but i can live with it. my current inclination for precuts and fabric collections is to mix coordinating fabrics from stash with them for a scrappier, less currated, unique look, but i really don't want to cut any fabrics for this. i'd rather just use what i've already got and get it done. 

the idea was to create a large, radiating, off-set diamond from the hsts. i got started with sewing one set (of three total) charm packs together before i left off this project and jumped to something else, never picking it up again until now. i don't know why i left it off or why i never got back to it, but it's about time to finish it! i think after it had been long enough since i started the project, i lost interest in all those hsts (because - trimming) and then i lost interest in the fabrics and doing a single-collection quilt. but it's still here and somehow i don't mind just doing it now.

i spent all of 30 minutes one afternoon this past week to mark and sew the next set of charm packs together (one left to go!). i could have had d5 do them for me, it's within her ability range. maybe i'll get her to do the last set.

obligatory chain-pieced hst bunting photo

i threw it in d4's lap and gave her a pair of snips. "cut," i sad. "i don't like to cut," she said, but then she did it anyway.

this set is snipped apart and added to the pile. i'm glad i haven't separated and pressed any of them yet. i'll do that all at once when they're all pieced.

d3 was home from school for a wedding this weekend, and since we weren't 100% sure she'd helped with the "sixteen going on eighteen" quilt (no photographic evidence), i sat her down and made her help me piece the backing.

that's my piecing report for the week.

as for the rest:

epp

• lots of progress! more than just a piece a day. i now have about 3 sets of 3 or 4 interconnected cogs put together. i had to baste a few pieces and sew several half wheels together to get there and it's been quite satisfying. more than once i've gone to my room to take a nap to relax and done some epp sewing instead.

quilting

• i completed all the horizontal and vertical straightline quilting and a quarter of the diagonal lines on "frosted forest star." just those last few diagonal lines left to go on this one.

organizing the sewing room

the state of the solid fabrics shelves has been bugging me. i needed to pull a green to see if i had the right one for a binding, which turned into me organizing the green stack, which made me want to do the blues. i remembered to take a “before” photo at this point. I did all the blues and was getting tired of it, but persevered until i had refolded and restacked the warm colors, too.

better.

purchases

• none!

100 days of epp

day 1, first piece

 i was reading about juliann's 100 days of circles project and as i was commenting to her that i've never done a 100 days project because we travel so often, i thought about my epp project that is portable and sadly in need of some progress. (i've definitely travelled with it before: alaska, san diego, yosemite, the south, scotland, switzerland, italy.) what would it look like if i sewed even just one piece on every day for 100 days? that would be a lot of pieces put together and certainly farther along than i am now.

so i pulled out my project, which has been living on the floor next to my bed since i pulled it out in december so i can think about it, and added a triangle. then i went ahead and added a square, too, because i was in no particular hurry to get to anything else immediately.

as i stitched, i thought about what pieces are needed next, which is important to know so i don't join the wrong things together and make more work for myself or, heaven forbid!, need to unpick some handstitching. 

i spread the pieces i have out on the floor to decide just what it is i want to do with this mess and what would be the quickest configuration to complete.

the two sets of three interconnected cogs i already made are really throwing a wrench into things. they don't easily fit into the simplest layouts i could do. i moved pieces around for quite a while to see what was possible and what would be required for different layouts. my brain started hurting and i was getting bored. but i kept at it for a while. after all: "little quilty chores equal big quilty finishes."

i used two colors of bright squares (the pink and turquoise) to easily see what squares would be added to current joined pieces, which is why there are so many of them in this photo. this large slab is one piece of a five-interlocking-rows layout i was considering. it feels like so much work still to go!

finally, i have landed on making a row of 15 hexes across and another interconnected row below it. this will start with one of the three wheel cogs, then require an X connecting piece between seven more already completed wheels and a hexagon and half a wheel (three squares, two triangles) in the next row down. that's where i'm starting and i'll see how i feel about what's left after this is complete.

something i'm still very much undecided about is what to do with all the unbasted pieces i cut for this project! each little stack has something like 60 pieces in it, which means i easily have enough to do 60 more wheels. that fit into my original plan just fine, but it's way more than i need now! they aren't precisely cut to exact measurements because they were for basting, not machine piecing, otherwise i could just use them in some other machine-pieced configuration. honestly, it's such a small bit of fabric but it's giving me a lot of angst about not using it!

i will need to dip into these piles to round out the additional pieces i need because i only have about 75 basted squares left and less of the triangles. i'm going to have to be more aware of what pieces i'm selecting now, laying out what i want to go where before i start joining them. this won't be the carefree "pick up a piece and add it randomly each day" approach that i was anticipating. but it will move the project forward.

oh, my 'lanta! just look what's in this other box i found in my sewing room. it's, like, two jelly rolls and more of strips. plus more squares and a whole mess of black-and-white squares for the hexagons (which i will actually need). i may be making another quilt entirely just from these strips or making a striped backing. i'd go right for the backing idea except i still have those large cuts of yardage i already set aside for backing. i really should have done some more maths before i got started on this project! me and my boundless enthusiasm for how much i was going to want to handstitch. yikes!

feeling lazy on day 2 and i laid out the first set of pieces to be joined while still in my pjs, bed unmade.

my pieces to join for the next few days

originally, part of the joy of this project was picking the pieces for the individual wheels and completing those. however, if i want to join them together, i'm going to have change my approach.

unfortunately, i realized when shifting all the parts around that the two pieces i added on day 1 are in the wrong place to be useful as a connecting X! haha, already off to a bad start. but that's not anything i'm not used to around here. i'll just adjust and figure out where to work it in as i go.

i'm currently about a week in and have completed that lower middle hex in the above photo. day 3 was d4's birthday and i clean forgot this was a thing, so i had to make up for it/start over on day 4. but i'm getting at least one side of a piece stitched each day now. mornings are best, but i did do one piece at the end of day 5 so as not to miss.

maybe, just maybe, this project will go somewhere this year after all!

wip wednesday 2026.9

i got some sunday slow stitching done this past weekend and i finally came up with a pattern order for my stitching on "groovy liberty." i've been stitching the middle of each piece in the pinwheels of this block, but there was no good or obvious way to work around the block as the stitching is not connected from one piece to the next and the stop and start points on the ends aren't always close enough to each other to easily move between on a continuous thread. this slow stitching session, however, a feasible order of stitching occurred to me. if you look closely at the stitching done in the above photo you can see my plan of attack. i know it's so hard to see in the floral piece, but if you look closely/zoom in, you can see that the floral piece in the upper right corner has stitching across the middle horizontally.

the stitching starts in the bottom right corner on that dark chambray piece. i stitched a vertical straight line in the middle from the bottom near the lower sashing to the top, ending just before the floral piece. then i move my needle under the fabric to the far right side of the floral piece, poking the needle back through at the horizontal mid-point of the floral piece, next to the sashing on the right, and stitch across the middle of the floral piece towards the center of the block. it's kind of an inverted L shape or an off-center T shape, except the lines don't touch anywhere. i cut my thread length just long enough to do those two pieces, so i tie off after making that L/T. then I'll start over in the next chambray piece in the top right corner and turn 90 degrees down to do the adjacent floral piece to it's left. i can do this four times per block and just keep wrapping around 90 degrees each time. if i wanted to work with a longer thread length, i could easily move to that green "thorpe" piece in the upper left square and then move to the chambray in the upper right corner next before having to tie off. but i like the shorter length for now.

easy - peasy and it feels good to have a consistent plan.

d1 & R came to help out for their portion of d4's birthday quilt. so we got that top all put together into a flimsy now.

now that she's done with all the 16 patches for "pinky stinky" edna, d5 and i have been discussing her next quilt make. she's been wanting to make use of the fat quarter set heather ross gave her at quiltcon 2025. she wants to fussy cut the ponies and feature them in the quilt. she's been pouring over my books and wracking her brain for an idea.

 we spread out the beautiful courthouse steps quilt i got from jennifer (penelope handmade) to look at that pattern because it's simple and d5 likes it so much. we were pretty much decided on this one with 4" pony squares for the hearth pieces until she started seeing dumbbell shapes in the blocks. so there went that (easy) idea. she really wanted to make economy blocks but i was trying to find something with larger blocks and simpler piecing for her to tackle. plus, we couldn't get enough ponies out of the fat quarter if we cut them in diamond shapes. so no economy blocks this time.

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when i got jennifer's newsletter featuring her newest pattern, constance, i knew we'd found our pattern. it's going to be so cute and will help push d5's skills up a little with the introduction of hsts and flip-and-stitch flying geese. we're excited! she'll be doing a toddler size for her niece, little A.

i've been working on the quilting for "frosted forest star" here and there. i spent one evening labouring over it, getting basically no where because the thread kept breaking about every foot. oh my goodness, was that frustrating! i tried everything: changed the thread spool for a brand new one, changed the needle (twice), cleaned out the interior of the machine (which was pretty clean), adjusted tension, adjusted bobbin tension, switched bobbins, changed the needle a 3rd time. after a while, i remembered having the identical problem with this same thread on "radiant suzy" many years ago. i looked up blog & intsa posts to see how i solved the problem before. the answer last time was "tension." that was unhelpful as i'd already adjusted that as much as i could and was getting no where. 

i finally changed machines altogether. i'd been working on d5's 2020 juki and switched to my original tl2010q for two reasons: the 2020 special edition doesn't go quite as slow on the turtle and the thread looked like it was getting rubbed somewhere along the path to the needle, and the original machine was the one i'd done this quilting on before and gotten it to work on. i'd been meaning to switch around which machine does what in the sewing room set-up anyway. it makes sense that the piecing machines are closer to the pressing table and across from each other and that the quilting machine is at the end of the table where there's more runway for the bulk of the full quilt behind it. that's all settled and situated now.

it took a trial run or two to get the tension correct on the new/old machine, but in the end it worked. hallelujah! i'm so much happier now. seriously, i could have probably completed the entire quilt in the time it took me to do a 1/3 of it with the thread breaking constantly.

weekly report

piecing

• d4's 16th birthday quilt flimsy completed

epp 100 days project

• i will be talking about this project next post. it's not a new project but a new approach to an ooooold project. i'm doing a little epp every day in hopes of moving the 13 yr old wip towards the finish line.

quilting

• "frosted forest star" straightline quilting begun

handquilting

• 4.25 "groovy liberty" blocks stitched (10.25/42)

planning/fabric pulls

• selected a pattern and fabrics for d5's next project: constance

purchases

• "constance" pattern from jennifer jones at "penelope handmade" (but this isn't for me)
• no fabric! that's two months straight no fabric purchased

robin nests

 

the design wall is layered up three deep at the moment. my grandchildren came over for the evening while their parents went out and r and i got to sew together for the first time this year. i asked him if he wanted to work on his quilt or make some "cute betsy hearts." he chose the quarter log cabins, which i now call "robin nests" rather than "valoe cabin." i wanted to see what we'd made so far so we could keep mixing up the colors, so i put them up on the design wall on top of "pinky stinky."

i've been letting r decide which order to put the colors in, but we're ending up with a lot in a similar configuration, so i intervened a little for a few blocks and we are now a little better mixed.

to keep him from curiously pushing buttons and turning dials on the sewing machine while i'm pressing seams open and cutting strips, i introduced him to a little basket of scraps i've been saving for him to snip. using scissors develops fine motor skills in young children, so i like to give him opportunities to work on those skills. d5 looooved to cut paper or fabric into tiny little snow flurries when she was small. i've been saving my too-small scraps for r for a few months now so that he can have fun with harmless, skill-developing cutting, too. he definitely enjoyed it! 

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an added bit of nostalgia was realizing the basket i put the scraps in was one d5 used to collect her own scraps in over a decade ago.

we switched up the sweet bowl for some valentine's leftovers. r wanted to put them in the harp space right in front of him so he could keep an eye on them while we sewed. he gets to pick one piece after each block we complete, which means he only got two in this session.

we were having some real difficulties with the stitch getting dropped after the first few on each new seam. it was getting really frustrating for me. i checked the bobbin several times, adjusted the tension on it, cleaned out the inside of the machine more than once. nothing was helping. i was also hearing a weird triple click every two seconds. i thought for sure something was wrong with the bobbin. finally, i decided to do the fail-safe thing and change the needle. r turned over the "key" (the machine's screwdriver piece, which he insists on holding every time we sew) so i could turn the screws for the needle.

voila! it worked it's magic just like it always does. no more issues, all smooth sailing.

sixteen going on eighteen

does this look familiar? it's not technically my project, so its not listed on my wip page.

i was browsing old blog posts looking for something in particular when i came across the post about d4's 8th/16th birthday quilt. her 18th birthday is right around the corner and we haven't worked on the quilt since the birthday two years ago when we started piecing it together. 

d4 (once my mostly sewing companion) is about to become a legal adult and will be leaving home for college in the fall (she just got accepted to her school of choice). i realized we need to get this quilt finished stat! one of the special features we worked into this quilt is that every member of the family sewed some of the pieces together at some point. everyone except d1 and two siblings that both happened to be home this weekend. i jumped up off the couch and found the project box for the quilt. now was the time to do it!

s2 was in town for a weekend break from college. we got him to add his stitches to a couple of blocks.

d2 was next. i grabbed her before she left to the climbing gym with d5. the middle siblings have now done their part.

we only had the last two columns to put together, so i made d4 drop her lazy saturday afternoon plans and finish joining the rest of the columns while i pressed, pinned, and handed her pieces.

the top is nearly complete! we left one long seam joining the last two columns to the rest of the top for d1 and r to do when they come over for sunday dinner tomorrow. we want them to have a hand in the making, too.

in order to get as much done as possible, i got d4 to make the binding. we picked that out two years ago, so it was an easy make, done in minutes.

i have the backing pieces ready to go together and will be doing that myself later this evening. we should be able to baste it tomorrow after d1 and r finish the top for us. we were already pretty close to a finish on this, and now i can taste it. it's about time! ten years is long enough.

wip wednesday 2026.8

after i finished the quilting for "bright forest" with the tawny gold aurifil 2318 thread, i looked to see if i had any more quilts that would look good with this thread for a quilting color that would also be quilted with the walking foot. 

i was thrilled to decide that this combination, already on the machine, would work for my "improv in an afternoon" quilt that i adore so much but haven't managed to finish yet. this was a happy find for me and i quickly bumped the quilt to the top of the queue for working on. (did you guess right after i hinted which quilt would be next?)

i put the guide foot on so i could do some straightline quilting and it mysteriously allowed me to get much closer to the foot/make a smaller space than when i used it previously. in fact, i started out with something like 3/4" spacing, which i bumped up to a full inch after a few lines because it was going to take forever to complete at that rate. i did actually think the 3/4" spacing was attractive, but it was being so tedious and monotonous that i changed it. i timed myself: each line took about 3.5 minutes to complete. after a couple of sessions that were a ew hours each, i was done. it may have been monotonous endlessly feeding the quilt through the machine in a straight line, but i was constantly delighted by the fabrics and colors in the top, so it sort of evened out and made it bearable.  

this is a small quilt, to be sure. it's definitely in the toddler size category and it would certainly suit a little girl well. but i love it so much myself that i don't think i can send it away to be grubbed up by any little girl i know. i wish i had made it a lap size quilt, but i think part of the idea behind it was to use a specific piece of extra batting, which is what determined the size. so, small it is.

 

i'm glad to be moving these other projects along in addition to "pinky stinky" edna. i'm really looking forward to having handbinding to do soon once i'm done with the batch quilting of the six in the quilting queue. i also took out another piecing project just for a change and worked on that, too.

i have an actual report this week, not just an "i did more edna and here's what went wrong."

piecing

• i worked up the star points on all the sashing for the last two rows of "pinky stinky" edna
• d5 made 7 more 16-patch blocks (yay!!! - 3 left to go)
• 8 cute betsy hearts
• 2 quarter log cabin blocks with R for "robin nests"

quilting

• "bright forest" started and completed
• "improv in an afternoon" started and completed

fabric pulls

• i got to thinking about what fabrics i might like to use for "edna" so i can try the pattern again, doing the easy version (not organized scrappy and no 16-patches) this time. i'm thinking of black gingham for the stars and a soft blue for the background squares. i pulled a couple of vintage farmhouse type florals in yellow and red to use for the sashings. it was a fun exercise to match the fabrics, but i won't be cutting into it any time soon - too many wips to complete first!

fabric purchases

• none! still going strong on that front and just using stash. i was tempted to look for some fabric on etsy for some idea or other that i had, but i got over it.