The Last Finished Quilt for 2024 and the End of the Year Wrap-up

Flower Power is the last finish for 2024! I finished up right before Christmas, but never could manage to get a decent picture before now.

It's a moody looking tulip quilt and I actually really love that. The deep blues just sort of try to grab all the energy from the brighter flowers while simultaneously making them almost glow. 

It's a smaller quilt than a lot that I make. Definitely not a bed sized quilt at all. There is scraps of shirts from me and my son and also some of the last of a vintage floral fabric I bought years ago at a quilt show. 

As I was working on the hand quilting for this quilt, I was struck, over and over, how much I love and appreciate the mixed fabric block backgrounds and outer border! For whatever reason, this affect just sort of thrills me on a deep cellular level. 

And though I do have a very practical nature, always using whatever bits and bobs I can scrounge together for backing pieces.... This one is almost 'too much'. It's a retro looking piece of fabric I picked up years ago from and aunt {remember the fabric given to me that smelled horribly like mothballs?}. Yeah. After soaking and bleaching the gifted fabrics, they were finally useable, though of course very dated. Many of them have eventually found their way into a backing for one of my quilts. I mean, why not?

Anyway. That's enough about that particular quilt. On to the 2024 list of absolute completions! 

2024 Finishes--A

2024 Finishes--B

Here's the data broken down like I like to see it every year:

2024 Finished Quilt Details

• 1 Baby Quilt
• 2 Lap sized Quilts
• 7 Bed Sized Quilts
• 7 Quilts Hand Quilted
• 1 Machine Quilted
• 2 both Hand and Machine Quilted
• Gifted 5 quilts, new or gently used

Definitely a very lean year for me when it comes to finishes. Just so much going on with a very ill and then slow recovering husband. We're still not at full speed there and wowsers, does the man blow up my plans, schedules and best intentions all of the time. Still very thankful to have him with us and if quilting has to suffer then, so be it!

I'm not a huge fan of making resolutions, but this year my mantra for quilting is to just go with the flow. Take it as it comes. Do what I can. Pick up a hoop and stitch. Or not. For whatever reason, I have been quite stuck in the hand applique groove when it comes to new inspiration. It's like my brain doesn't even hardly want to fire properly when I try to imagine any quilt without it. So I'll keep starting applique projects and keep my bag stocked for the quiet times of waiting. If I feel like I'm drowning in quilts that will never come to a proper conclusion, who cares? The hand work is worth the effort regardless, in just the self soothing alone.

Blogging at Quilty Folk has suffered in 2024 and I know that I've not been a good friend in reaching out and making comments--keeping up with everyone else's creativity. That's not likely to change anytime soon as there is even more going on behind the scenes here than I feel comfortable talking about. We'll just say that in life there are always seasons for every single emotion. For now, I'll just plan on checking in occasionally and do what I can to continue keeping an online diary of my quilty makes. I'm still deliberating about the third Bramble Blooms in the QAL, whether to give it up or try and forge ahead. I know what my heart wants to do! 

October Quilting Efforts

 Another finish to show off! Gold Crossroads ended up being even sweeter than I expected. The original inspiration was from an old quilt I stumbled across in a second hand quilting book years ago. Still love it!

Gold Crossroads

I find it super interesting that I was hand quilting this particular quilt when the DS Wagon Wheel SAL started. How crazy is that? My quilt was made out of cut-out circles and also, it is appliqued to the background rather than machine sewn like the Denise Schmidt pattern. Super classic look though and it seems to look amazing in many, many color palettes.

Another 2024 finish!

Some day maybe I'll make a brighter version like hers, but for now, I'm just crushing on the texture the hand quilting brings! Quilting in a simple grid isn't something that I do very often for whatever reason. Laziness? Or more because I really, really hate marking my quilts. Such a chore. Ughh! Every now and then a quilt just calls out for the look though and wowsers, this was the right move for sure.

Sweet, simple color palette

This quilt is the first one in my 'Circle Games' series where I'm starting each quilt with cut-out circles from behind other quilts. Lovely to have it come to a true-blue finish and see that I'm not just wasting my time.

Sometimes it pays to mark the quilt....

Flower Power is coming along with the hand quilting too. It was the 'next up' in the hoop. It's pretty hard to see what I've been doing as the quilt is so dark. Trying to do very simple quilting with perle cotton as always. Nothing fancy here either. Strings are great fun to quilt organic straight lines through. Always makes me wish for more of them!

In the hoop

Old Fashioned Wildflowers is all ready for an outside border now. I went ahead and powered through the applique. Sometimes its easier to not think about the time involved and just takes big bites out of it till it's all done. Will probably put off figuring out the border till some other stuff gets wrapped up. There's a couple ideas percolating in the back of my brain so I'm feeling pretty good about it coming together properly. Will just keep the fabrics together with the quilt top until I'm ready to attack the next phase of the quilt. Sometimes that urge comes from out of the blue, you just never know.

All the hand work is done!

Not a great picture below, but I wanted to show the prep work for Bramble Blooms II-A. I'm already putting in the hand stitching. After finishing Old Fashioned I really wanted to dive right into something easier and the skinny borders feel so much better on my hands already.

Ready to pin

All the details and prep work are done for Bramble Blooms II-B too. I used the same flowers and just made them a bit smaller than those on the original quilt. Seems to suit these quilts better. I ended up incorporating the same leaf shapes from the first Bramble Blooms quilt too {very important to me for this project!}. I'm really liking how interesting these leaves look instead of my normal simple leaf look. It's also something that I feel will help keep this series of quilts more connected, having a continuity in the applique motifs. It's the simple things!

Getting it ready for hand stitching...

It always takes a chunk of time to get all the leaves and flowers cut out out and the vine pinned down into place. Much more time than I ever expect! Once the stitching starts though, it's free sailing for those of us who enjoy applique. I'm definitely eager to see if these two quilts look as good in person as I'm hoping for. Using older, less exciting fabrics usually means quite the slow build up and then lots of second guessing. Are these fabrics actually going to look good in these special little flower shapes? Yes, no, maybe so? I wanted to get these two quilts in particular moving along and then I want to start a couple new projects with fall colored palettes. I am positively antsy at the thought that fall might be over before I get a chance to start something new. I mean, there's only so many open-ended projects my brain can handle at a time!

Meanwhile, we've been having a little bit of company the past week or two and that of course means less time for quilting. Then today I spent most of an hour on the phone with Verizon whose customer service is frankly, quite pathetic. Isn't customer service just so terrible compared to how it was 30-40 years ago? Why in the world would I want to try and communicate with a machine?

Coronacrazy Made it to the Totally Finished Up Stage!

Finally got the Coronacrazy quilt completely finished up! It's one that I started just after the lockdowns happened in 2020. Basically just went out on a limb with the rows of arcs or 'hills'. Really no clue what was going to happen from there!

Another 2024 finish!

Lots and lots of applique in the quilt. It was so very time consuming. But what else did I have to do at that time? ha!

The outside flowers are my fave

Later on, after adding on the leaves in the outside border, I discovered that one of the fabrics used was a bleeder. That didn't make me very happy. After struggling with all the ways it could be addressed, I just went ahead and took those 5-6 leaves off and soaked them until the dye was done bleeding out. Very annoying to have to 'redo' any work at all, but much better than ruining my quilt over something so simple.

Will probably have to keep this one for myself...

Although I generally wash my quilts directly after finishing up the binding, this time I've decided to wait till later. Just want to enjoy it for awhile and not have to worry about something else giving me problems. Like maybe one of those orphaned flowers stitching into the center of the quilt? Ughh.  Don't want to take the chance right now! 

So awesome to see all the orphans being used up!

It's such a sweet quilt. Hard to believe it was started during a time when my mind was practically exploding with worries and stress!

Never know where I'll end up these days...

Love seeing the texture from the hand quilting take shape and give it all a little bit more depth. It's definitely a quilt that needed the little bit extra time and effort.

Still love the quilt colors too

I've also got my Gold Crossroads quilt ready for the last bit of binding stitching. I ended up doing a crosshatch pattern throughout all of the quilt except for the circles. Love the simplicity and old timey charm it brings to the quilt! And the colors of this quilt just kill me. Love how soft, sweet and cozy it feels to me. This is a quilt that I just sighed into every time I was adding quilting stitches. Very relaxing to work on!

A cozy look to this one

I've also been working a little bit almost every day on the Old Fashioned Wildflowers quilt. Have all of the vine work stitched down and am working on the flowers and leaves now. I thought {so optimistically} it would only take a week to do all of the hand stitching, but it's going to be tough to even finish it in two weeks and three is more like it. Really wanted to plow through this before getting to the hand work on my Bramble Blooms quilts.

Still enjoying the background blocks for the base

Which have actually seen a bit of work too. There is now an extra 2 1/2" on each of the outside border rows of the BBII-A quilt. It's a very subtle cream and lt. tan, every other square addition but I think it works well for basically expanding the area for the vine detail. 

An easy way to make it larger and not detract

It's one of those things that I didn't want to do, but now I'm thinking it adds something special to the quilt. Will definitely lift the overall look of the quilt. Bonus!

Now for the applique!!

Lots of quilting stuff on the list and mustn't forget, a quilt project for my SIL too, which has a Christmas deadline. Why oh why do I do these things to myself? 

Third in the Melon Patch Series and A Tisket A Tasket Finish!

 Lovely to get the applique border on the Melon Patch Blossom quilt! I was ready to talk myself into another border and then pulled myself back from the brink.

Wrapping up the Melon Patch Blossom top

It really does look pretty good 'as is' and it's a large throw size now so why bother adding more onto the quilt and quite possibly ruining the look? Gotta know when to quit!

A lot going on in this quilt

In my planning, there was supposed to be some of those green leafy things inserted on either side of the corner whatchacallits. Just looks sooo much cleaner without them though. Had to leave them off of the quilt which of course meant less hand stitching and so I finished up faster. Yay!

Hard to get the true colors for this top

I've been determined to get this third Melon Patch quilt in the series {plus a couple other things} done and squared away before doing more on the Bramble Blooms QAL. And.... ahem! There are a few more of these leftover melon blossoms that may or may not be the start of a fourth Melon Patch quilt! hehe  I told you, these series quilt can be sort of addictive. But I won't start that just yet, promise!

Love the crumpled vibes

Also put my nose to the grindstone and got the binding completely sewn onto the 'A Tisket A Tasket' quilt. Now I just need to get the label taken care of.

A Tisket A Tasket is a completed quilt!!

This quilt was basically a project dreamed up just for the simple joy of using up some of the oldy gold fabrics. I don't know if you can tell, but the gold fabrics behind the baskets actually have an interesting green cast to them. I sorta love playing with these strange, oddball colors. Always so much fun to see if I can make them shine!

Looking across

I also managed to squeeze in as much of a red plaid shirt that I could. It's one that my dad wore years ago and I just loved the idea of putting it into a cozy, snuggle-up sorta quilt!

Up-cycling an old shirt from my dad

There was a lotta old, stale-dated fabrics used up in this quilt and I'm so very happy to see that it didn't ruin the look and vibe at all. Not one little bit! The few, newer bits of fabrics here and there were a big help in perking up the some of the more boring fabrics! Oh! Did I say that? Some fabrics are much more wonderful looking when carefully grouped together with a great supporting cast. 

Simple baskets

So that's that. I also managed to get six pair of jeans hemmed, all thrifted this summer. I'll be happy if three or four of them find their way into my new favorites stack as I wear jeans all fall and winter long. Last year there was way too many skinny jeans to choose from and that just drove me crazy. Ugghh.  Crossing my fingers these jeans work out better!  

Okay, now I'm gonna try and catch up with some of my blog reading. I have been falling so far behind with everything this year. Feels like all I ever have are good intentions....

The Finished Baby Boy Quilt and Free-Cut Strips

The baby quilt is all done finally. It's bound, washed and even has a label! The binding was the last little detail to get figured out and luckily I had the perfect fabric waiting in the wings. On its own, it was an uninspiring piece of fabric, but for the purposes of this quilt? Just what was needed.

Grandsons baby quilt is done!

I struggled with this quilt all along. Mostly because baby quilts can be difficult for me these days. There's just no room for expanding on the original idea and that just feels a little suffocating! And it was a boy quilt so that feels even harder. As per usual, I gathered together fabrics from what was at hand. Then I went looking for more.

Simple quilting here in this area

I was able to use a couple fatquarters my mom gave me early this spring and also, managed to buy just a couple pieces that seemed necessary to convey the color palette my DIL wanted. When the quilt top stage was finally achieved, I have to admit to feelings of abject failure. Why oh why didn't I just keep going with the overall block theme and leave off the outside border inclusion? 

Want to know a secret? Because it was a very old fabric that I was quite determined to use up and this seemed like the best quilt opportunity ever. Huh. So muleheaded when I get an idea in my head. Was it worth it? Hmmm.... Ill let you decide.

Decided to add more quilting texture into the border 

Thankfully, after the quilting texture jumped into the quilt and the washing revealed the quilty goodness, I was able to stand back and view the quilt a little more kindly. Yes, it could have been better, but overall, it's a warm, boyish looking quilt. Goal accomplished. After all, a baby quilt doesn't have to be the best of all of our efforts. It just has to be sweet, cozy, cuddly looking and not too special to be used!

Crumpled and cozy looking

Bonus, my DIL seemed very, very happy with it! Gotta love that. Goes wonderfully well with the newly finished baby room decor of highland cows and little cowboys.*sigh  Also, what a relief to know that even though it was late by my standards, it was good timing for her.

A little bit of the back showing

In other news, our daughter gifted us with a trip to Alberta, Canada. We drove up to Banff {with her} from our home here in Washington. Very fast trip, but such a lovely drive and all the mountains and glacier fed lakes that we saw were just incredible. We were in awe! Wish we could have had more time to explore, but it was definitely a trip that we will treasure forever.

Lake Louise, Canada

I know this will make some of you uncomfortable, but we are actually quite poor at the moment. Which made the trip all the sweeter as it wasn't something we would have been able to do on our own! Though my husband is doing better now, he has had lots of sickness in the last several years with this past winter being the absolute worst. We really almost lost him and so our time together seems very precious. All the lost work, together with the poor economy, rising inflation etc. and we are just struggling financially. As I'm sure others are as well. I mean, have you noticed the price of groceries and fuel?

Got to start somewhere!

Which brings me to quilting. So very thankful for my totes of fabric. Even without buying a single piece of fabric, I can probably keep making quilt tops for at least a couple years. They might be 'interesting' color palettes, but then, that's my thing, right? No worries there. And then there is the bins of scrap fabric. Surely that could keep me occupied for another year or two? Ha! Not that I'm complaining. It is what it is.

The completed slabs of fabric strips for cross-cutting

I came home from the trip with an overwhelming need to get busy in the quilt room. Kind of like an ache in my heart just to play with fabric. I wandered around sort of aimless though, until finally making myself pick a project and sticking to it. Can't imagine why I landed on a project that featured so much blue, can you? 

Getting the baskets joined together

I free-cut strips until I had enough to make at least ten slabs of the mixed blue and violet fabrics. As always, it was tricky getting started, not knowing how exactly to set things up in order to not waste fabric. Eventually I decided that these final strip sets needed between two to three strips of blue for every addition of the violet ones. I know they are a little blendy looking in the blue sections, but that is by design. Hopefully this results in a calmer, cozier vibe for the baskets without competing too much for imminence.  

Each row of baskets will be slightly staggered if I can just figure out how to do the layout. Then there will be a section to the right with more of the dark brown fabric {no baskets at all}. This will be the 'background area' where I intend to cut out and applique a largish folky looking tree and perhaps a bird or two. It's all doodled onto a piece a paper, but putting it into fabric is wonderfully challenging as always....

Grandma's Fans is Complete!

 The brand new quilt finish is 'Grandma's Fans'!  This was started in 2021 sometime after my daughters wedding. Just felt like getting a couple of the fabric stacks moving and grooving.

Grandma's Fans Quilt is finishedd!

Didn't get the top together until September of 2022, but that's not really an extra long time for projects around here. You're probably thinking 'Wow! There's no applique in it.' but actually there is. All the wedges and quarter circle are machine sewn together, but then, well... I simply had to hand sew them to the background squares.

Doesn't really look like a quilt my grandma would have made

Just something that I prefer to do most of the time. Gotta have a couple hand applique projects in the works at all times. Might break out in hives otherwise! Plus, precision and circles are not my strong suit at all. 

Loving this hand quilting texture!

I've always really loved the fan quilts, such a lovely, classic design. Just never thought I'd make one in these lighter, brighter colors! The final inspiration {after soaking up many ideas for 'fan' quilts through the years, was this quilt. It's not very often that I make a quilt that so closely mirrors the inspiration but for some reason I fell in love with this particular quilt. 

Still happy about the change-up in fans presentation

I did change up the colors slightly and also, turned some of the fans, changing the look incrementally. My quilt just wasn't happy with all the fans pointing in the same direction! 

Love the text fabric backgrounds in mine sooo much. There's something about text fabrics that always make me smile and this design helped show them off a bit. Obviously, I didn't go off of a pattern, but made it up on my own. Always have to do things my way, don't I? It's going to be extremely hard to get rid of this quilt when the time comes. It's already earmarked for one of the nephew weddings someday! Probably. Maybe. Unless I change my mind....

Definitely a cuddly sort of quilt!

Mostly I'm just thrilled to have another quilt finish. Things are moving so slowly around here lately {in regards to quilting} that I wonder if I'm even a quilter? Ha. Nope. Not wondering at all. It's still my thing!

The background isn't stark white 'cuz of the text

Must be. Since I dream of quilts and see quilt patterns and ideas practically everywhere I go. And yes, I still have a notebook by my bed where I can doodle a quick quilt idea just before nodding off at night.*sigh

A happy looking circle of fans!

The hand quilting has picked up a little of late. 'A Tisket, A Tasket' quilt is the newest one in the hoop. It's got a very easygoing, cottage country sort of charm. I stitched in-the-ditch between all the blocks and now I'm coming back and doing some hand quilting with Perle Cotton thread. Always seems to makes the whole quilt perk up! The colors are very different from the prior quilt in the hoop, which isn't always a bad thing. Helps keep things interesting!

In the hoop

And the little baskets below are the current hand applique project finally finding its way to needle and thread. Got about half of them done now with the slightly larger {taller} baskets left to stitch. It's so lovely to sit and do hand applique. I know many of you detest the neede-turn application, but if everything is prepped and ready to go, I just love it. So satisfying! It's rather like painting a picture in fabric to my mind.

Baskets for 'Peace Always' quilt

That's it for now. Every now and then I pull out a stack of marinating fabric and fiddle around with it, trying to conjure up some good quilting mojo. Sometimes I go upstairs to my quilt room and try to soak it all in before I have to scurry and get back to whatever needs my attention more. It's been great seeing all the BBI quilt tops together--how very, very different they are! Have you seen how many there are now? Loving the creative response to the QAL prompts and how original everyone has been. Hopefully it hasn't been a waste of anyone's time. We only have so many quilts we can make in our lifetime, right?