To Do Tuesday #163

Welcome back my quilty friends! Hard to believe Christmas is upon us. I am looking forward to spending time with my daughter. We have lived in different states for over 10 years. Now we are in the same town. I feel like I hardly see her because we are both living our best lives. LOL! Being so close now, we don’t make the time to spend with each other like we did when we lived 3500+ miles apart. I am sure you can relate as well.

I started a new thing since we lasted chatted. I have made a mindful decision to go UPSTAIRS to my sewing studio at least once a day for at least 15 minutes. I have also told myself, I don’t have to sew if I don’t want to but I NEED to visit the studio.

The first few times there were no sewing involved. I took my computer upstairs one time and worked on my WIP list. Another time, I spent some time searching for a project that I worked on less than 3 months ago but have misplaced (still haven’t found it). The other times I may have sewn for 15 minutes while others was for several hours. I feel like I won the lottery.

I will be linking up with Carol @ Quilt Schmilt for To Do Tuesday. Come take a look via the link below.

Project Updates

As you can imagine with hitting the studio for multiple days, I actually had a good week. Let’s take a look:

Lori Holt’s Autumn Seeds Quilt

These blocks take a while to make. They finish 18.5 inches x 20.5 inches. I love these pumpkins though. So cute. There are a total of 9. I pulled out block 3 to take a look at it. Can’t wait to cut and start it next week.

Strip Club’s Stars Aligned Throw quilt

This week I finished these three colors of flying geese for my pieced border I will be making for this Strip Club throw quilt. Only one set left to assemble. I started imagining yesterday how I wanted to replace the 2 1/2 inch inner border for this quilt. These finish 1 3/4” wide. I was considering doing to skinny cream borders but now I am leaning towards just one strip on the color side with the cream and letting the white part of the flying geese to seperate it from the rest of the quilt. I just don’t want them to blend in to the rest of the quilt.

I will have to do some quilty math 🧮 soon. My brain 🧠 wasn’t able to do it yesterday.

Abby Rose Churn Dash quilt

This week when I was working on my quilting WIP list, I came across this fabric collection name I am using for this quilt – Abby Rose by Robin Pickens under Moda. This is an old fabric collection. I don’t normally gravitate towards flower collections (even though I love flowers just not flower quilts). I cut up the fat quarter bundle into the pieces and parts for this churn dash quilt which I have been working on ever since. I came across a tenative quilt layout. We shall see. No pattern except in my head for this one. I remember having to subsitute some fabrics into to complete my blocks.

The current block I am working on is suppose to be green with cream background. It is not done yet, but so far, I am not thrilled with the contrast. Sometimes that happens in quilting when you limit your pallette to one collection. I have grown a lot since those day. Nowadays I would swap out one fabric for another to get the contrast I desired. Still it is challenging working with my past self on this quilt.

Queen of Diamonds by pink door using tula pink fabrics in this EPP project

Sheesh. Now that I no longer am running around to hockey practices, games, and tournaments, I don’t work on my english paper piecing projects much. English Paper Piecing projects were my go to for any kind of travel. I think I am going to go back to that with any travel in 2026 as well as finding more time to work on these beautiful projects I started. They are all big projects and I haven’t finished any of them. Yet, I love how my blocks turn out. Slow piecing has really improved my overall understanding of sewing a block together. I build things totally different than may be suggested.

This was the directions and I am not doing that at all. I like to have straight seams to sew so I tend to put it together a little differently.

I made a triangle for the tips versus making another diamond to attach to my “hexie” side. I am making it my own.

Weekly To Do List

Last week I was able to check off:

• Find Bring Home the Christmas tree WIP
• Updating 2025 WIP list
• Worked on Queen of Diamonds blk 3-4
• Finished Autumn Seeds blk 2
• Finish second churn dash block
• Made flying geese units for Stars Aligned

Let’s look at this coming week list:

• Finish making flying geese units for Stars Aligned Throw pieced border
• Finish a third churn dash block
• Cut Autumn Seeds Block #3
• Cut JOY* wallhanging including fused pieces
• Quilt Turkey Lurkey wallhanging
• Quilt Not My Kitten wallhanging
• Work on Queen of Diamonds block 3-4
• Work on Bring Home the Tree car block
• Continue search for the sewing table insert that fits my 770
• Order standing desk
• Play on long arm
• Quilt Mug table runner
• Quilt Patriotic table runner
• Continue working on Olympia mystery quilt
• Prep Blk 26 for Ruby’s Garden EPP project
• Add borders to 2024 Venti AG Sunprint FPP quilt
• Prep backing for Are You Game? Mystery quilt
• Cut & Prep Sparkle & Shine binding
• Cut & Prep Dragonfruit binding

Musings

This time of year, I like to remind myself what is in my control and what isn’t. I think it is important to our mental health. Setting boundaries is very important for myself and sometimes, I don’t do this enough. Just like respecting others who have set boundaries and respecting those boundaries. I also like to remind myself to BE PRESENT in this moment instead of worrying about the past or the future.

Even with saying that, I am a planner at heart and is my happy place. With working on updating my 2025 WIP list (which I will be posting as a seperate page (look in the menu to find it). At first I thought I would have a bunch of photos, then I realized that I was definitely setting up myself for failure if I planned to have a photo of everything on the list. While there will be photos, there will be only a few. I broke up the list into categories such as To Be Quilted, Working on Making Blocks, Kitted (although this may move to a seperate page as it is getting really long).

This format is way different than my Excel sheet which is by project by year with the steps completed across the page. Grouping them is making it easier for me to get a good plan in my head.

I had to laugh at myself when I realized that the last time I updated the excel sheet was like October 2024. That seems crazy to me, but when I think about 2025, it actually makes sense. I took the list from 102 projects to 80+. I found that very encouraging.

Meanwhile, I did make myself those bingo cards I was talking about in my last post. I made one for quilting and one for long arming (is that even a word?). It is task oriented versus project oriented. The long arm tasks are more about learning and playing on the long arm than productivity. The quilt tasks are about getting things done. I will be applying the WIPGO draws each month to these bingo boards in 2026.

The BINGO cards are 5 x 5 which means 25 squares. Two numbers are drawn each month except when 13 is drawn, we draw a third number. AFTER I finished my bingo cards, I realized that I should have made number 13 on all my cards a simpler goal. Reviewing, I did not do that. 🙄

I need to head to the sewing studio for my 15 minutes today so I am signing off. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my progress. Feel free to leave comments and / or thoughts.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Peggy Stockwell in Vancouver, Washington