September Monthly Recap

September was a month filled with pondering, planning, stash shopping, and stitching.

Studio Squirrels Exhibit A  - the quilt top and scrappy pieced backing for Ludiosis were started and finished, neither of which were seriously on the radar until after the first of the year.

The long-planned set of twelve new pillows achieved a major milestone with the top slabs stitched and the batting and backing for those slabs cut.  Next month I'll get them sandwiched, quilted, and trimmed to size before cutting any of the pillow envelope backing pieces.   The goal is to have them in use by early November.

The vacuum sealed pillow forms were released from their packages and are expanding while the rest of the process proceeds.

Exhibit B for the studio squirrels is Candy Corn - a gift project that saw a quilt top and a finished quilt started/completed during the second half of September.

Exhibit B-Part 2 is the long runner made using the three extra columns from Candy Corn.  

On the intentional side of things, Rastro (the second bonus quilt from the Macnas series) became a finished quilt.

Githerments, the third bonus quilt from the Macnas series, was pin basted and is ready for quilting/binding in October with thread chosen and bobbins wound.

Motley, the fourth bonus quilt top from the Macnas series, was donated to Many Hands and Many Hearts along with yardage I had planned to use for binding.

September saw plans come together and significant prep work for several sets of seasonal utility mats and placemats.  

The squares cut for December's set of reversible utility mats (posted here) have now been sorted into groups for 5 top slabs and 5 back slabs ready for piecing.  Batting and binding strips were also cut.

(Above) Six 

tops (gray print), six backs (spotted black), and six pieces of batting were cut this month with lots of binding made for a second 

set of January placemats.  

I pulled this gathering of pieces from the resource boxes to make a companion set of five utility mats for January.

The scrappy tops will be pieced using these fabrics and the backs will be cut from companionable yardage (pulled but not shown).

I finished this pair of gift pillowcases on the 29th making them the last project of September.

Finally - squirrel Exhibit C - introducing Dug.

* * *

Stay tuned for lots more stitching/quilting/binding during October. 

Quiltdivajulie

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"Little by little, one travels far."

J.R.R. Tolkien

It Was a Good Day

This is what the top tray of Max's rolling side cart looked like after I finished quilting Holus-Bolus Tuesday evening.  

And this (or the back side of this) is what shoppers could see from pretty much everywhere in our Costco store when we were there Tuesday afternoon.  Halloween, Autumn, and Pumpkin Spice items everywhere with Christmas decor filling several aisles (but no Christmas trees or wrapping paper yet).  

(Side note - When I stopped to get something last week, Hobby Lobby had all of their trees up; hanging and boxed ornaments displayed in multiple aisles; gift bags, ribbons, tags, and wrapping paper galore; and they were stocking even more aisles with bins full of "Christmas stuff" as fast as they could work.)

I'm perfectly happy switching our seasonal decor from August's 'back to school' to September's 'sunflowers and apples' later this week.   

(September's newly quilted placemat slabs were trimmed to size Tuesday after lunch and are now ready to bind)

* * *

My happiest success though was renewing my driver's license and upgrading it to Real ID Tuesday morning.  

I went to the same location DH used (20 minutes from home), was there 25 minutes before their 8:30 opening time, and was #6 through their door after we had been pre-screened in line to be sure each of us had the necessary documents.  

I was done and out the door at 8:45 and home by 9:15.  

Amazing!

Quiltdivajulie

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From a poem by Mary Oliver:

Instructions for living a life.  

Pay attention.  

Be astonished.  

Tell about it.

So Far So Good

The first few days of this week were indeed chaotic but multiple non-sewing things did get handled and/or finished.

Unfortunately another huge to-do made itself known and it is one that needs to be dealt with sooner and not too much later (think paper tiger on steroids).

For the sake of sanity, I sewed the strips together for the backs of the six September placemats, pressed the tops and backs, cut batting rectangles, and pin basted the six quilt sandwiches.

Thread color remains to be decided but I'm guessing it will be some variation on "gold."

I ran across this image early in the week - I keep reminding myself of it when a task at hand seems more complicated than I feel like handling.  So far it has worked . . . 

* * *

There are only ten days left in August and I'm still hoping to get Holus Bolus and the placemats quilted and finished.  

I've also realized  that I'm woefully behind on responding to your comments . . . 

One thing at a time.

Quiltdivajulie

The Squirrels Have Done It Again

The wide back on the left has been waiting in the closet for ages and the squirrels are on a rampage to USE what is lurking.  As usual, their one thing led to the next.

The fabrics above will be used to make two quilts - one using the wide back and the other backed with the black and gold paisleys.  When I thought there would be just one quilt, I had started calling it Color Burst - but when the second "sister" project developed, I needed another project name.

The wide back quilt shall be called HAPPIFY (verb - to make happy).  The current plan was inspired by Gerful (2021) and Vivacious (2016).  I'll use black on white prints as the alternate fabric.

The paisley backed quilt shall be called ENTHRALL (verb - to capture someone's attention or fascination; to charm or captivate).  At this point I'm thinking about making another version of Poppyseed's baby quilt (that baby is now nine years old).

All of this will happen next year, unless the squirrels keep making trouble in the studio.

Downstairs, I've switched our seasonal decor from July's "Red, White, and Moo" to August's "Back to School." 

With Young Man now in fourth grade (!!) our decorations continue to evolve from his ABC building blocks, crayons, and coloring books to classic black and white composition books, colorful pencils and erasers, a big bowl of scrabble tiles, and the like.  

And when I started to clean off my art table so I could drape the backing and top in order to roll them onto the pool noodles, I found myself drawn into the beginnings of a long-planned pink and green joy journal.  There is something deeply satisfying about cutting and gluing in order to turn paper scraps into a visually pleasing, cohesive something.

* * *

The good news is that the drafting table is now clear and Holus-Bolus WILL be pin basted over the weekend.  

It's time to move those four Macnas bonus quilts forward.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Be the attitude you want to be around."

Tim DeTellis

Scrumdifferous - Bits of Progress

I spent much of Thursday prepping pieces and parts for a scrappy quilt to be named SCRUMDIFFEROUS (an adjective for something that is excellent or first-rate).

This is a photo of the un-prepped scrappy leftovers laying on top of yardage that will be used as backing.

This is what all of that was turned into.  

There are 65-70 rectangles (2.5" x 4.5") in each of the five color groups.  Some were left after making the four bonus Macnas quilt tops and others were cut from an array of abandoned 2.5" strips.

The roughly 350 2.5" squares were cut from light rectangles left after making the four bonus quilt tops plus several shorter pieces of yardage that were begging to be finished off.

The plan is to turn these into a quilt in the style of CAIM and COMFORTABLE and Githerments.

At the end of the day all of the rectangles and squares were sorted and paired, ready to be used as leader-ender or mindless evening sewing.  

(Scrumdifferous is the first of 3-4 projects sorted from my overflowing box of gathered leftovers)

* * *

This is what the 35 sewn WOF strip sets from the last post looked like after being pressed.  

This is what they look like now.  

The shorter lengths (18") will be used to piece top slabs and the longer lengths (20" plus) will be used to piece backing slabs for September's set of six placemats.  

(The extra strips on either side are to be used along a side edge if any of the strip sets aren't quite wide enough - I make my top slabs 17" x 24" and the backs 21-ish" x 28")  

Once quilted  the slab sandwiches will be trimmed to 14" x 20" before binding.

Onward . . . 

  

Quiltdivajulie

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining."

Shirley Chisholm

Digging Into New Projects

Over the weekend, that stack of fabrics for a set of September placemats was transformed into lots and lots of 2.5" strips.  There are a few WOF but most are shorter since they were cut from scraps.  

(The small stacks outside the plastic boxes are the 2" wide leftovers)

The 2" strips were sewn together end to end (pinned to design wall).

Using some of the shorter pieces of 2.5" reds, I made six test blocks using the Duckworth Quilt approach (6" irregular/liberated/improv log cabin blocks).  The blocks are not for this project, but just because I've wondered about using that kind of approach for a future scrappy quilt.

Once I got that out of my system, I sorted the rest of the 2.5" strips into WOF and shorter before sewing the shorter ones into WOF lengths.

Yesterday after attending a funeral mass for the wife of our 30-years-plus next-door neighbors, an afternoon and evening power sewing session ensued resulting in 35 WOF yellow/red strip sets ready for pressing.

Over the weekend, I had also pulled out the stack of fabrics for December's set of five utility mats for our living room and cut these many 6" squares.  I also saved the end cuts and not long after this photo was taken, they were turned into 35 bonus scrappy 6" blocks that will be part of the mix when construction happens later in the fall.  

The best part?  There were far fewer pieces of yardage put back into the stash than what I had pulled out, and I didn't even feel guilty about using the last of several fabrics.

And on a non-fabric note, someone very special turns TEN years old today - it has been an amazing journey so far, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Quiltdivajulie

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"By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before."

Edwin Elliot

First Day of Spring

Welcome to Spring 2026.  I know many of you are still dealing with winter-ish weather which is what I grew up with, but here in western Tennessee the new growing season has begun.

This is one of our pot-planted hostas coming up for its third season.  

Yesterday, DH brought home four of the combo planters we use to fill our largest backyard pots.  It makes us so happy to see these from the kitchen window instead of only khaki color grass.

I'm already planning a trip to my favorite garden center to spend time with the newly arriving plants and flowers.

This is an early morning photo of our "eager beaver" hosta.  

Given the success we've had with overwintering in pots, I think we'll add a few more hostas this year. 

Indoors I've swapped out our St. Patrick's Day decor for Easter bunnies and eggs.  When I finished the second scrappy runner made with leftovers from Esperance and Haru, someone asked me what I was going to do with a 110" runner.  This time of year, it lives on the dining room buffet until the next seasonal decor shift when it will return to the back of the rocking chair in my studio.  

* * *

Young Man will be here this weekend for a sleepover.  No rain in the forecast so I'm guessing the backyard swing will see some action along with his scooter.

In the studio, Razzle Dazzle is pin basted and ready for quilting next week while Morning Fog is waiting patiently.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green.” —Frances Mayes

Moving Ahead

I've cut out the squares for Ruska's top so Young Man can lay them out (the finished quilt will be for the large ottoman in the living room at his house).  

I'm on the fence with the bright gold on the right - but once the squares are on the design wall, I'll know if it needs to be swapped out for a less-loud fabric (which I anticipate happening). 

I saved the end cuts and will sew them into an insert for the scrappy pieced backing.

(and we will be using the wilder fabric for binding since there was not enough of the brown stripe when I unfolded it)

I've also put out the seasonal decor for February.  The crocheted table cloth being used as a runner on the buffet is one made by my paternal grandmother and the buffet and radio belonged to my maternal grandfather.  The silk quilt on the wall is Azaleas in Bloom made using a design from Sujata Shah's Cultural Fusion book.

The chair in our foyer turned out to be the perfect spot for my long-ago cross stitched piece that became a pillow.  

The quilt on the chair is Ukiyo - which started as a scrappy backing and turned into a quilt in its own right.

I'll finish with this photo taken by younger son as we drove through Shelby Farms.  The herd of buffalo in the trees was just too good to ignore (you can supersize the photo to see the animals more clearly). 

* * *

The snow in our back yard and part of the front is gradually disappearing (the upper part of the front yard is shaded and will take a lot longer to melt).  

The best part is having our entire driveway visible/usable once again.

Quiltdivajulie

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"The rain will stop, the hurt will fade.  Hope is never so lost that it cannot be found."

Ernest Hemingway

2026 Begins

One of the things I want to do this year is to take a photo like this one on the first of each month.  No particular reason, I just want to document the seasonal changes.

We had a light frost overnight but the afternoon temperature was 62 with a very light breeze, which meant I could sit on the back porch to regroup after spending most of the day packing Christmas away.

I'll get January's seasonal decor put out in the next day or so.

I had so much fun with last year's Full Deck Challenge 3 and, since there is going to be a Full Deck Challenge 4 (with a major twist), I'm going to participate once again using manila shipping tags instead of playing cards.

This is my first tag's front side.

And this is the reverse side.  This year, the back of each week's card will feature a strip of washi tape along with the prompts that I use (the video linked above explains more about the prompt approach for this year's challenge).

* * *

Our new phones were delivered late Tuesday.  Our representative was not scheduled to work on New Year's Eve day and Costco closes for New Year's Day.  So Friday will be our day to take the phones to the kiosk at Costco and get the transfer from our old carrier to the new one finalized and the phones activated.  

Eventually I WILL get back into the sewing/quilting studio - I promise!!

Quiltdivajulie

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"There are no wrong turns.  Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk."

Guy Gavriel Kay

One Thing at a Time

I sewed!  

All of the 4-part blocks for Githerments are sewn together and roughly 80% of them are pressed.

I grabbed this small group at random and put them on the design wall to reassure myself that the plan really would work.

The amaryllis that Cherie sent has grown so much!

And since the waxed bulb amaryllis blooms are beginning to fade, while we were at Costco on our quest to update our phones / change carriers, I nabbed this planter from the same company (Bloomaker).  These flowers will be white in not very many days.

The khaki accordion album contains a random array of Christmas postage from the early 1960s until now, arranged in more-or-less chronological order.  The two red volumes underneath it contain annual entries from our first married Christmas until now.  Starting next year I'll need the waiting-in-the-wings third volume.

The planter on our kitchen table is also growing well.  Having a sunny day after multiple deeply dreary ones was a definite happy.  

And after several weeks of colder air, our temps will be in the upper 60s-low 70s for Christmas weekend.  SO odd given that we all grew up/remember living in PA, MI, and IN where Christmas was almost always cold and more years than not, snowy.

This is the one new nutcracker that joined our collection this year.

We had early Christmas with Young Man and his family last weekend.  He was SO happy and proud to gift me the clay angel he made in art class.  The detail he managed to include was wonderful including, as he pointed out, the ruffled edges on the angel's wings.

The lighthouse was part of my mother's Christmas village.  We've started using her pieces in various spots instead of all in one place. Some are under our table top trees and others like this one are displayed on their own.  Honestly, it is much easier without burned out light bulbs, extension cords, and all the tiny trees, people, and animals she had gathered.

Speaking of Young Man, this is 2025's photo with Santa.  We have one of him with this very same Santa every year beginning with his second Christmas (during the pandemic he stood in front of the plexiglass shield that protected Santa).  Oh, how time flies!

* * *

Along with lots of life-activities, there's been a lot of thinking and pondering going on in the background.  Much of that will appear in the projects I've settled on for 2026.  

The quilts to make/finish list was already pretty well established with only one new addition (a gift quilt for autumn).  The journal side was much messier.  

There's so much inspiration out there that it is too easy to get distracted and scattered.  I don't mind long term projects but I don't like ending up with a bunch of abandoned projects I've lost interest in.   I'm hopeful that my efforts now will help prevent that scenario, even when the studio squirrels get noisy. 

To that end, I'm virtually off Instagram (checking in once a week for no more than 30 minutes) since it had become an unsatisfying rabbit hole that consumed too much time and mental energy. And instead of too much doom scrolling, I'm reading again (how I lost that habit I'm not sure but it feels good to get back to my books).  

Wishing each of you a safe, happy, and healthy rest of 2025.  I hope to post again before year-end, but we shall see how the time frame for creative playtime works out.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Creativity itself doesn't care at all about the results.  The only thing it craves is the process."

Elizabeth Gilbert