I have been spending time trying to eliminate baskets and containers of "stuff" in my house and my sewing studio. I will admit Marie Kondo has a few great ideas that work for me and my drawers in kitchen, bathroom and laundry room are looking very organized and it is easy to keep them that way (as long as I am the one putting the clean towels and facecloths away). It really does make me smile when I open up a door or drawer and it looks lovely, tidy and easy to get what you want from it without disturbing everything else in there.
Downstairs is a bit different. In the late summer our friendly realtor delivered a huge number of vacuum sealed bags with contents from our Arizona house. A lot of the quilting items were duplicates and I have been shoving things around but not really feeling like there is a place for everything so everything can be in it's place.
It was a slow start to the month with my husband having Moh's surgery and me being behind in my quilting which didn't get done on schedule the last week of December. I also have a lot of small projects from the Advent boxes and bags that I subscribed to in 2025. Plus, I started a number of projects that were being work on intermittently.
First step yesterday was to clean off my white board. It was behind my ruler rack (from AZ) that I love and it works great where I mounted it on the wall. But, I couldn't reach half of the white board. I use post it notes on my board so took them all off, washed the wall, re-positioned it, and started fresh for 2026. It looks off center but I can live with that. I need a small wallhanging to the left and it will be good.
I threw out post it notes of anything I no longer wanted to make and reorganized. I know it still looks messy in the photo with 'stuff' but there are my fabric buckets for scraps of fabric when cutting. There is a container with scissors, rotary cutters and a container with all my Villa Rosa patterns. The cutting surfaces have been cleaned and given some water to rehydrate them. So much better than before I started and am a great believer in touching everything at least once a year.
This is the area I am going to tackle today! Lots of in progress projects.
But, I do have a couple of tops finished, ready for quilting , starting next Sunday, last week of the month! Lazy Goose is the sew a long with Running Doe, a Villa Rosa pattern and I chose some reds and browns with a Northcott Canadian print for the background. I reduced the block size to 15" so top will be 60 x 75. Ready for quilting.
I am using Bonnie Hunter leader and ender from last year and now working on quilt #3 using 2.5" strips (she used 2"). So many scrappy strips in various locations, I can probably make these forever and not run out.
These are the leftover houses from my Missouri Star table topper that was in the Advent box in 2024. I have extra doors as well as the pattern so will offer them to someone who wants to make this... good deal with houses already made except for the background sky... I have no more of that fabric. I have the top finished and ready, waiting for quilting.
I have been slowly working on these economy blocks and they originated in AZ as my end of the season project every year. Once the house was ready to for us to leave it for 6 months, and my sewing room was clean, tidy and organized, I would stitch up some of these and then add them to the ones from the previous year. It is now a complete top and ready for quilting. I find it interesting when I look at the picture, so many yellow fabrics!! I wonder if being in the Valley of the Sun inspired me to use yellow so often, remembering that all these fabrics are leftovers from quilts I made?
These next quilts are ones that I brought home from the group that does long arm quilting for our modern guild. They work with donated fabrics and create quilts and I bring them home for the labels and binding. I did NOT make these quilts.
By the end of the first week of the month, I had these quilts finished, ready for donation. I should have led off with these but forgot that my last blog posting didn't include them because they hadn't been bound yet. The first one, a log cabin was made by Cathy in my traditional guild and she donated the top to Quilts of Valour so it is now quilted, labeled and bound. These log cabins are made from really small strips of scrappy fabrics. I am not patient enough to work with pieces that small but it looks great. A big thank you to Cathy.
A quilt from from vintage florals and I cut this Five and Dime quilt from my well aged fabrics sometime last year as a project to take to Saturday sew-ins. I worked on it at the retreat in early November and it is now finished and ready to donate.
Bonnie Hunter's leader and ender project #2 using 2.5" strips. The instructions on her blog are excellent and each block needs 20" of one coloured fabric and same with background. Yesterday, during my clean up of my cutting table, I cut more of the pieces needed and now have #3 ready to work on.
We are having a very early spring. Our weather is fabulous with some incredible sunsets at night. A lovely break from days (months) of dark, dreary, rainy weather. Daffodils are starting to poke through the ground and grass is growing. This morning I saw that the iris are starting to poke through as well.
Off to deal with the messy table full of baskets of projects as well as kits I have cut, ready to stitch. I will also tell you that I went through so many pages printed off that were lists for organizing your UFO's, fabric, projects etc. I dumped them all and typed out a list on the computer of projects patiently waiting. So many quilters are writing blogs with lists you can download. All of the paper printed on one side is now in my printer tray and I learned that from Elaine on Crazy Quilter on a Bike blog. I didn't take a picture but my rolling cart beside my computer is now tidy and my recycling bin is fairly full as is my thrift shop and free table at guild full. I am down to the basics which reminded me that I really need to tackle the filing cabinet upstairs. Am sure we have paperwork for vehicles and appliances that we no longer own.
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