One Monthly Goal - October

I think I have lofty goals for October....but why not try???

I will have two goals for October. The first one is to finish hand-quilting my Shimmer quilt. 

I was poking along quite nicely on this quilt pre-Covid, as I had hoped to have it done in time for the Norfolk County Fair....but when that got cancelled this quilt was quietly forgotten.

I've picked it up again this past month and have made some good progress...and now I just want to make it a One Monthly Goal so it can be done.

 I've been quilting with my favourite thread, YLI, in Coral. I think I was always one to use white or cream thread back in the day. About 15 years ago I attended a lovely quilt display at a local historical house, Cottonwood Mansion. I was surprised to see some of the vintage quilts quilted in bold-coloured thread....dark brown and red are what I specifically remember. Those quilts really made an impact on me, and I think I've used colourful threads ever since.

I've also been using an air-erasable marker to mark the quilting design....love it! The only problem is that the more humidity is in the air, the quicker the mark disappears! At this time of year the mark disappears almost before I can get the motif quilted. When I use the same marker in the dry air of Winter, the mark may last the whole day.

So that's my first goal....to have this quilted and bound by the end of October.

I'm not sure about accomplishing my second goal, as I do seem to have more time to spend on hand-work than piecing by machine. 

I'm just starting a Snowflake quilt, using the fabrics I won during last month's One Monthly Goal.

I didn't make a photo-copy of the first page of the pattern, but this picture may give you an idea of the quilt...

Mine will be a scrappy version, not the 4-colour version. I did take a bit of a sew-therapy afternoon to get a start on this quilt.

Here is the first row of blocks laid out on the design wall...

....and I couldn't resist sewing a few blocks together. They went together surprisingly quickly...

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal. Hopefully I can reach my lofty goals for October. It would be great to have the Snowflake quilt ready for use in December!

One Monthly Goal - September

 I've been writing a list of my UFO's....and there are soooo many.

I think I'll try knocking one off the list every month (or two months if that particular quilt needs a lot of work).

This month my goal is to complete the Farm Life Vintage quilt top.

I think it needs three borders, maybe four, one of them being a border of flying geese....like the ones to the left of the picture. 

This quilt has been taken way too long to be a real quilt, so I look forward to having it completed. 

Another thing I'd like done is three hats made of these balls of yarn...

I am just finishing some knitted socks. Normally socks don't take too long to finish, but this pair has been so uninspiring. I'm almost to the ribbing of the second sock, so finally almost done. They also happen to be the biggest pair of socks I've ever made, on a 2mm needle (small!), so that has helped in dragging these out so long. I'll be glad to see the end of them!

My goal this year is for everyone in the family to have a knitted item for Christmas. Luckily the hats will knit up quickly. Only a few more after these ones, and one to knit in secret, and perhaps one more pair of socks, and I'm good.

I wasn't going to show the pair of socks that I'm working, but oh well, why not. The colour is called Hamburger and the one good thing is that they are turning out to be almost identical twins...not bad! I like doing the toe-up method, but I'm not a fan of how this particular heel looks. It's the first time I've done a Fleegle heel and despite not liking the look of it, I did like the knitting of it. 

Edited to add: Now, after a bit more knitting, they are finally complete! Yay!!! On to the next pair...or one of the hats.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal

One Monthly Goal - August Finish

My goal for August was to complete my Halo quilt top.

This was a quilt that I started a couple of years ago then stalled on. I'm glad that I came across a Halo sewalong on Instagram that helped motivate me to get back at it. We were to do two blocks per week....easy peasy.

I'm so happy that I accomplished my goal...

When it came time to sew the blocks together I used a method of organizing the blocks that I learned on a retreat last year. 

Normally I would gather up all the blocks for the first two vertical rows off of the design wall and sew them together, then gather up each subsequent row and sew it on. 

This method, instead, has you get all of the blocks carefully stacked in a pile waiting to be sewn together.  It's a bit scary, but it works! Thanks to SS for teaching me a new trick!

And, of course, I just had to put a few stitches in....there's just something special about the very beginning of a hand-quilting project.

I'm using Hobb's wool batting, which is like quilting through butter, and Wonderfil Spaghetti thread for big-stitch quilting. For someone like me that has spent 40 years working on traditional tiny stitches, this kind of quilting is taking some concentration. 

I love everything about this quilt....I wish I'd had the patience to make it a bed-sized quilt, but I settled for a lap-sized quilt :(

Meanwhile, I've been a bit behind in the Summer Sampler 2020 sewalong. One block is released each week. The theme this year is blocks that are constructed in a manner easier than they seem. They are all quite unique and are looking good up on the design wall.

In the picture above you can also see a narrow peek of my Leaders and Enders blocks. I've been keeping two little containers near my sewing machine...one with 1" light strips, and the other with 1" dark strips. I'm really wanting this to be a full bed quilt so I imagine I'll be working on it for a while!

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of a bouquet of roses from our garden. They are really starting to flourish (it's a fairly new garden), and they have suffered a little from a couple of heat waves we've had this summer, but we are getting some spectacular blooms.

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal - August Finish, and with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?.

Old dog, new tricks....

Well, I wish I was someone who used the Covid time as an opportunity to work on their UFO's....but I've been caught up in a couple of sewalongs along the way.

I've said it before....I'm a sucker for a sewalong!

The latest one is hosted by @thenextstitch on Instagram. She started a sewalong a few weeks ago called @shutdownstitchalong....I think because her area in Melbourne, Australia had entered a shutdown again because of an uptick in Covid cases. (I just have to say....up until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never ever heard the word "uptick" before. Now I hear it all the time and here I am actually using it!)

During this stitchalong we are encouraged to slow stitch for at least 15 minutes a day. Hey, I start everyday with slow stitching, so I'm in!!

Somehow during the beginning of the sewalong I saw the quilt Hills 'n' Hollers being shown and remembered that I have this pattern and what a good opportunity to try it. 

Should have worked on a UFO, right?...oh well. 

I thought it would be a great opportunity to use my Jen Kingwell Stash....just needed a background fabric. So, I made my way to my local quilt shop, Quilt Junction. Well, didn't I find out that Lana has started carrying a couple of Cotton & Steel fabrics....and I have a lovely stash of C&S fabrics sitting in a box at home. So I switched thing up to use these fabrics.

You can see that I basted down all the pieces first to make sure the "hills" were spaced out nicely across the fabric. 

I baste in my applique once in a while....normally to attach all the "vines" in a piece of applique. It takes extra time, but I find it worth it in the end.

When I posted a picture on Instagram showing my progress in the sewalong, a friend commented that it looks like surfboards....I like that and I think this quilt will now be known as Beach Blanket Bingo!....anyone old enough to catch that reference???

Once the surfboards were in my head, my brain somehow leapt over to a pattern I bought recently and thought that if I incorporated part of that pattern it would kind of look like sun rays. The pattern is "Hunt" by Carolyn Friedlander...

So I read through the pattern and was surprised to find out that she uses a whole other method of applique in this design. 

It scared me and thrilled me at the same time, lol!!!

I've been a quilter for over 40 years now and I've got a lot of my methods down pat....but I always enjoy learning a new tip or trick that I may be able to add to my toolbox. 

Here are all the pieces pinned to the background...

The next step was to baste each piece down....with the stitches precisely 1/4" from the edge of the applique piece. Not difficult when you've been a quilter for a while as the 1/4" measure comes quite naturally, right?

Then I was to needleturn applique the pieces. But wait a minute....for years now I've been finger-pressing my seam allowances....how was this going to work????....that was the scary part. I was prepared for the fact that this would not be my best work, but it would be a learning experience.

So I started this morning...on a straight section as the curves were going to be the messy part...

Well, here's the brilliant part of this method....those basting stitches really make a nice "edge" that my needle used to follow as I was needle-turning. So pleasing in an inexplicable way.

Then came the curvy bit, and it worked out just fine. I'm quite happy with my work this morning, and I can see using the "Hunt" pattern for a full-sized quilt.

I will digress for a moment.

A long time ago I read this book and I came to call it my applique Bible...

Almost everything in this book revolutionized my method of applique.

 When I have trouble with curves (and circles were my nemesis for a long time), I always remember this bit of the book...to just make that next stitch a good stitch, concentrate on just that stitch...and this passage of the book served me well again doing the curves this morning. 

My design wall is full at the moment, but I had to see how Beach Blanket Bingo was really looking...

I like it....a lot!!! I can even hear Annette Funicello singing in the background as she dreams about Frankie Avalon.

This quilt has been quite the journey that has morphed in many different ways since I began the #shutdownstitchalong!!

On the design wall is my Halo quilt....a long-time UFO that will finally be a real quilt because of another sewalong on Instagram.

I put the blocks up haphazardly to live with for a while and shuffle them around when I see something that needs shuffling...

Already I know that this is a quilt that will call for hand-quilting.

Halo will be my One Monthly Goal for August. I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.

I am also linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching

One Monthly Goal - April

I've been working on the mystery quilt that has been generously brought to us by Edyta Sitar. 

She offered this to help us get through our isolation at this time. There has been one block per day over 15 days...but each day you have to make a few multiples of that particular day's block. After 15 days we have 100 6" blocks.

Today is day 14....one more day to go!

Here is my quilt so far...

I may put a bit of a border on when it's done...not sure yet. I don't know if I have enough of any of my 30's prints to make a border. I guess I could do a white border.

I will put these blocks together using a Doug Lenko's 3-pin method. You can view his method on YouTube, HERE. 

I've actually tried something similar in the past, but he has a couple of tips that I'll incorporate into what I have done before.


We're in for some beautiful Spring weather in my area. My hope for all of you....please try to get some fresh air. We are all feeling edgy and worried, and that's to be expected. I believe that some fresh air is so good for our mental health at this time, even if it means just sitting out on your front porch and listening to the birds sing. 

I've been worried that my local park will shut down....I go there frequently for a run. Last Fall they paved a 1.1km walking trail around the baseball diamonds for people to use safely away from traffic. There's hardly anyone there when I go for a run....and the track is at least 8ft wide, so it's easy to be socially distant. I'm always glad to see this track utilized by local seniors, walking to promote their health. 

Sometimes I wish I could just step out my door for a walk or a run, but it's not safe as I live on a provincial highway.

I think of all that has transpired over the last month and realise that only a month ago I'd never heard these phrases before...

Social Distancing
Self Isolation
Flattening the Curve

...and now we hear them on a daily basis....as well as the word "unprecedented". I think that that will be a word that I will not miss when all this is in the past.


Now for my One Monthly Goal for April. My goal is to complete the quilt top on my Edyta Sitar mystery (shown above). I'd even like to have it quilted if I can find an appropriate backing in my stash....but the goal will be to at least have the top done and not have this be a UFO!

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.

One Monthly Goal - Finish

Well, it's the end of the month already and I almost forgot to post my One Monthly Goal Finish for March!

My goal was to get the main body of Farm Girl Vintage together....finally!!!....and I'm happy to say that I accomplished it!

I'm really happy with it. I think I will make a goal to have it done in time for the Fair this year. It still needs a pieced border, etc...but the end is in sight.

I've had some extra sewing time. The longarm is not very busy at the moment so I'm taking advantage of the lull.

Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts has been offering a mystery quilt....a new block every day for 15 days. Some days we make as few as 4 of the daily block....the other day we had to make 16.  There will be 100 blocks total, which will make a nice lap-sized quilt.

I decided to do mine in 30's prints as I have a lot of them, and I do still love them. 

Here is mine after Day 11...

There are some bits I'm not too sure about, but it's staying as it is.

I will name this quilt in some way to remember that it was made during this pandemic :(


And...wouldn't you know it...Bonnie Hunter has started a new mystery quilt to keep us busy during isolation. At first I thought, "no way"...I want to concentrate on my UFOs.  But I'm doing it....I haven't participated in her mystery quilts in quite a few years as they usually take place between American Thanksgiving and Christmas....a longarmer's absolute busiest time!

Well, I'm not so busy at the moment, so I'm jumping in on this one!

It's called the Unity Quilt-along and you can find Part One on her blog today, which you can see HERE.





You can have a look at her Intro post HERE to see Bonnie's suggestions about fabrics.

One of my goals during social distancing is to make some sense of the sewing room and get it tidied and organised.  I've been saying it for a few days now, and after I finish this post I will actually start. I think one of the things I will do is start a box for donation to the free table at the guilds...I'd like to part with 5 UFOs that I will never get back to doing. I'm sure I can come up with 5. 

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for the One Monthly Goal linky party.

One Monthly Goal - August

August???....already???....

I thought I'd check in and share what is up on the design wall lately at my house. 

First up....my Temperature Quilt, which is across the top of the picture.

Those rows represent May, June, and July....I actually finished the July row this morning so I'm almost up-to-date.

All the rows for January thru' April are sewn together and by the end of August I'd like to have the whole thing all together so I can share it a the next Guild meeting.

I figure it will be nice to show this one in progress so other people who may want to do a Temperature Quilt for 2020 can start looking for ideas for their own quilt. The secret?....keep the block choice simple so as not to get bogged down with it. I only work on mine once a week or so and it's very quick to do.


Next up...a quilt that I haven't shared yet. It's one I came across on Instagram called Shades of Scotland Souvenir Quilt. 

Here are the blocks....

There will be 16 blocks in total. When I go to Scotland in the Fall each block will "photo-bomb" a photo of some Scottish scenery, so when I put the quilt together I'll have a nice memento of my trip!

You can check the idea out at #shadesofscotlandsouvenirquilt on Instagram. You can also follow me on Instagram at @sandra.croley if you'd like to see my version progress when I am in Scotland!

Mine won't be a large quilt....the blocks are supposed to be 6.5"....mine are only 5-7/8" due to a printing problem, which is ok since they will all be consistently that size.


Next up is a BOM I'm falling a bit behind on....Geometric Fun designed by Gosia  at Quilts My Way...

That picture represents blocks 1 and 2....block 5 has just been released, so I have some sewing to do! 

Here is my colouring page for this quilt...

Getting this one up-to-date will be my goal for August.



I've started a new "leader and ender" project this month to use up small scraps. 

The blocks are log cabins, starting with a 1/2" orange centre and 1" logs.

I'm not quite sure if this one will work because there may not be enough contrast between the lights and darks, but I will continue as I have a vision for this quilt and I will trust that vision...for now.


Finally, I'll share some gardening pictures.

My perennial bed is out of control with weeds and such this year, but that is a project for this month. 

I do love this lily, which was a gift four years ago. The lily has always been beautiful, but it's never been this tall!....

.....and I don't know why it gives me so much pleasure to succeed at garlic, but it does...

I know what is on the calendar for this weekend...braiding the garlic :)


I didn't know whether to share this, but what the heck!! lol....

I've recently run a unique 5k....which was held at a nudist campground. During the race the runners had dyed cornstarch thrown us. I'll never do a marathon or a triathalon, but I can now say I've done something that many people haven't!! 

I don't know who had it worse for bouncy bits...the women or the men, bwahahaha!!! Not a great picture, but it's all you're getting!

I am linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?,  Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or Not Fridays, and with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal - August.

My Design Wall

Today I am going to share my design wall with you.

I am lucky enough to have space for a design wall that is 8' wide and goes from floor to ceiling.

When we installed it, my husband wondered at it's size. Now he admits that I've made great use of it!

Here is the view today...

Too many sewalongs....I know, I know!!!!

There is the latest block in the Harry Potter QAL, Hagrid, hosted by Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts...

Here are all the blocks, so far...

I wasn't sure of my fabric choices for Dumbledore, but I've grown to love him...even though he looks like he has a booger hanging out of his nose...

There is the Hand-pieced SAL....still keeping up...

In the above picture, you can also see three blocks for the Dear Jane sewalong that begins this month. I have to admit, I'm still nervous about this one....but the blocks are so sweet!


There is also the 52blocks52 weeks, that the Canadian Quilters' Association is hosting this year...

There is a block (the orange and green diamond block) that won't make the cut. I used a vintage fabric that I like and it turns out being too dull for the cheery 30's reproduction prints in the other blocks. 

I considered letting this project go....but it's only one 6" block per week so I'll keep at it.

Here is the area where some of my I Am Enough quilt is hanging out...

My One Monthly Goal for February had been to get three more components completed for the I Am Enough. That did not happen....I just got the Around the World section done.

My goal for March....I think it will be to get two more sections done for I Am Enough. Wish me luck!....I'm going to need it!

In the above picture, you can also see my February row of my Temperature Quilt entwined amongst the other "stuff". I'm not sure if I can get much sewing done today, but I will finish off the February part of the Temperature Quilt. I don't work on it daily, I find it easy enough to do it every five days or so since the blocks are simple. 

I think that about sums up all I want to say about the state of my design wall today...even though I've left a few items out. 

I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal, and also with Elm Street Quilts for the Hand Pieced QAL.

Have a great weekend!

One Monthly Goal - February

Finally....it's Friday....but not only that....it should be the last day of extreme cold. For a little while anyway! 

I think it's true what they say, we Canadians do like to talk about the weather. But who can help it when it's been so very cold?

I'll have to work on my Temperature quilt on the weekend....I'm sure I'll be using some of the dark purple fabrics for this last couple of days. I'm also looking forward to beginning the second row of the quilt as it is the 1st of February today.

At the top of this picture is the Temperature quilt so far...

Most of what else you see in the picture is the progress on my I Am Enough quilt. I don't want this to end up in the UFO pile, so this project will be my One Monthly Goal for February. I'm not exactly sure how many steps were left to do for this quilt, but my goal will be to complete three steps....what they are, who knows....that has yet to be determined :)

Because it is link-up day for the Hand-Pieced QAL, I am posting pictures of my first two blocks...

I notice on Social Media that other people have been able to "twirl" their seams on the second block. I have not been so lucky....but after I post this I am going to re-address this situation...

....if other people can manage to do it, then darn it all, so can I!!

That's all for today....I have a few things I must do this morning, then I'll be taking it easy for the rest of the day with a new book to read or some English Paper Piecing. I hardly had any sleep last night so I know it will be an extremely unproductive day :(


Today I am linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?,  Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal, and with Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or Not Fridays . Also, for the Hand-pieced QAL I am linking up with Elm Street Quilts and Simple.Handmade.EveryDay.

Stay warm people!