Tag: quilts

Can you believe it’s 2024?

January 3, 2024

Personally, I’m excited for what this year brings – summertime means I’ll be officially retired. The next couple of months will be spent jumping through hoops to apply for retirement benefits and keep our health insurance moving along the continuum until retirement officially begins. I’m very thankful for the teacher retirement system advisor who told me about the process to keep our insurance in place in case I needed to leave employment before my official retirement date. For us, this proved to be the catalyst for retiring two years sooner than planned. It has been SO worth it!

Normally, I select a word of the year and make several resolutions for the coming year. I’m not doing that this year. Health, travel and quilting are my priorities. I’ll continue the health and wellness journey I began last year. Travel plans are now being made for summer and fall. FMQ Academy with HollyAnne Knight starts tomorrow.

The first 18 months of retirement have been focused on improving my piecing and walking foot quilting skills. Now, I’m ready to move beyond a loopy meander and do more “custom” quilting on my throw/lap size and smaller projects. The occasional large quilt will still be quilted by checkbook as I have no desire to own a longarm machine. If I get my FMQ groove down, but still have issues with consistent stitches, I’ll consider buying a Bernina 770 or Janome 9480 (with a stitch regulator) as a retirement gift to myself.

Quilty goals: focused destashing, improving FMQ skills and donating more projects to charity.

  • 2024 has been designated as “low buy” year for fabric, patterns, books, and notions. I am intentionally limiting myself to stash based projects that are free or use an existing pattern/book in my library.
  • I have so many flimsies in the pile that need to be finished. I do not have the budget to send everything out to the longarm quilter. Hello FMQ. I can do a loopy meander just fine, but want to up my FMQ game. I’ll spend the next 3 months in FMQ Academy with HollyAnne Knight of String & Story. This is also a test to see if guided, focused practice over time means I can do without a stitch regulator.
  • Several of my flimsies used for FMQ practice will go to my guild’s community service. Any orphan blocks or blocks made while learning a new technique can easily be turned into placemats for Meals on Wheels if I have no plans to keep it for a personal project.

P.S. Sadie and I made 26 facility visits as a therapy dog team in 2023. We’ll definitely be upping that number in 2024!

De-stashing Progress

December 10, 2023

This is all that remains of my solid white fabric – a smidge over 4 yards. I had 3 full bolts back in the spring. My fabric storage bins are roomier and it’s becoming a challenge to find fabric in my stash for projects requiring more than a 1/2 yard of a single fabric. That’s a good thing.

Since retirement, I’ve been working diligently to reduce my stash. Approximately 1/3 of what I had in June 2022 is gone – donated, used in kid’s classes, shared with my sewing squad or turned into completed blocks, flimsies and quilt backs.

There have been some fabric purchases in recent months; however, I’ve been much more mindful about what I actually buy. It’s usually for a specific project or from a special event such as the northern lights fabrics from our Alaska trip. Lately, I’ve focused on completing projects where all the blocks have been made, but the quilt top still needs to be assembled. After the holidays, I’ll turn my attention to actually getting the pile of flimsies quilted and bound.

One benefit of clearing out and reorganizing my sewing space is that it’s easier to shop my stash for future projects. Coupled with a buy nothing fabric-edition challenge, it didn’t take long to select fabrics for my BOMs that begin in January 2024. While I might be short of white yardage to use for background fabric, I do have several yards of light gray on hand that I can substitute for the white. One project calls for two matching jelly rolls. I have two coordinating bright jelly rolls in my stash that look great against the light gray background fabric. I’ll be using those. The second project lists a lot more fabric than is needed to make a throw size quilt, so I’ve opted to start with a small FQ. bundle (8 FQ total) from my stash. I’ll make a couple of blocks before deciding any other fabrics I might need to add. This quilt will also use light gray as the background fabric.

A few members of my Friday sewing group are participating in a no-buy fabric challenge for January 2024 in another sewing group to which they belong. I thought it would be fun play along. The rules are simple: no spending your own money on fabric or notions for the entire month of January. No getting your quilting pal to buy it for you with a promise to repay her in February, either! Methods allowed to acquire fabric under the buy nothing challenge include: swap, borrow, take from the free table, and/or use gift cards received as a present. Since I already have a line item in my monthly budget specifically for quilting/crafts, no spending in January means more shopping at QuiltCon in late February!