Tonight we will attend the final gathering of the year. I don’t know how it happened, but we were kept pretty busy with “gatherings” this season, more than in the last few for sure. We enjoyed impromptu meals with our neighbors, and I hosted one myself. We made the effort to participate in the holiday parties of the two clubs we joined. We somehow made it on to Open House guest lists of some new friends. It all added up to a full calendar. My stomach and my heart have been filled to the brim as well. Tonight, at this last Open House of the year, I’m sure I’ll manage to find room on my waistline for just one more nibble of cookie, just one more sip of eggnog.

The monthly online linkup parties over on Stories From The Sewing Room have been fun too. Here’s my year-end One Monthly Goal report: I participated in the challenge all twelve months. I met all of my fabric-related goals. But when it came to the Sewing Room Closet Clean Up, I found that the space I cleared refilled itself with new projects. Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum. I will say that, overall, it’s better now than it was before.

Here’s just one more linkup party:

So, to join this party, I get to revisit my favorite blogpost of the year, which is http://cutswithscissors.com/2023/11/24/tah-dah/

Happy New Year.

I was going to title this post “Sleigh Bells Ring, Are You Listening?” But that was too much of a reality stretch for me. There aren’t any sleighs or their bells anywhere near me. This is an example of my reality: I spend yesterday’s winter solstice day gardening in a tee shirt under the bright sun. While I picked fruit, pulled weeds, and set gopher traps, I had Christmas carols streaming through my earphones.

I was thinking this morning about the traditions we keep for Christmas. Listening to holiday music is my favorite element of the season.

What’s your favorite Christmas song? I’ve got two.

The runner-up is In the Bleak Midwinter. It gives me chills with its “snow on snow.” Christina Rossetti is a gifted poet.

My number one favorite song is a real oldie, The Wexford Carol. It came from Ireland in the 12th century. The tune is intriguing, and the words tell the story so well.

The Wexford Carol

1. Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His belovèd Son.
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day;
In Bethlehem upon the morn
There was a blest Messiah born.

2. The night before that happy tide
The noble virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town.
But mark how all things came to pass:
From every door repelled, alas!
As long foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble oxen stall.

3. Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep;
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear.
Prepare and go, the angels said,
To Bethlehem, be not afraid;
For there you’ll find, this happy morn,
A princely babe, sweet Jesus born.

4. With thankful heart and joyful mind,
The shepherds went the babe to find,
And as God’s angel has foretold,
They did our Savior Christ behold.
Within a manger He was laid,
And by His side the virgin maid
Attending to the Lord of Life,
Who came on earth to end all strife.

Am I listening? He came to earth to end all strife, not out on the world stage, but inside each of us. We now have an end to the struggle of working out our salvation. Peace and joy is ours, because the savior has come and our eternal salvation is secured. This baby, born to die, has done it.

My One Monthly Goal had something to do with babies. You can read about that in my last post, December

The plan was to bind this baby. Done, and ready for gifting to the pregnancy center in town. You can see that I’ve even got another donation all quilted up and ready to bind. Join the party HERE.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Is here, and with it my monthly post for the OMG Challenge

You’ve caught me in a rare moment of wild abandon. Throwing off my need to protect my privacy, my dignity, and basic self respect, I’m going to show you the state of my sewing room at this very moment:

Let’s begin the tour, shall we? From left to right, you see scraps of fabric which I had originally laid out in an organized spectrum of color across my quilting frame. This gave me the ability to visualize and pull from the scraps as I cut strips for my new project, Star Upon Stars. But as you can see, as I’ve been pulling and cutting, it has devolved into a hot mess. That Big White Lumpy Thing in the back is my newly finished Bible Sampler Quilt. It was unceremoniously dumped there after its photo shoot as seen in my last post. Yes, this does make me squirm. I’m sorry. To the right is a donation quilt that only needs a binding. It has been spread eagle there because I figured I’d grab it and finish it up sooner rather than later: The annoyance strategy. Well, it’s now later. This is my December goal, to finish up and donate this little guy.

It’s the first time I’ve done clamshells.

The panel and backing were both given to me by friends, so they are a part of the donation to Birthchoice too. Thank you!

I want to show you the scene behind the scene, to redeem myself a little bit. Turning around from the quilting frame, my camera now shows you what’s happening on my sewing table:

Star Upon Stars: This new project is really stretching me. Come to think of it, this has more biased edges than anything I’ve done before, so “stretching” makes perfect sense. This first block I’ve laid out in pieces on the left is rough, really rough. I ripped out and redid seams so many times. They still don’t match. It’s got horrible color choices. I was going to throw it away, but realized I could use it for the partial corners and sides. It won’t be so noticeable in those positions, and it took too many hours of fiddling to just toss it out. The first is always the worst, right? The second star in progress on the right is already going much more smoothly.

This project has forced me to stop winging it. It simply won’t let me. I’ve had no choice but to adopt three new habits in order to succeed: 1. Starching 2. Marking seam lines with a mechanical pencil and 3. Using a stylus to guide the pieces under the sewing foot. This makes me feel like a fiddly old lady instead of a bold, carefree modern quilter. Oh well, I’m embracing it. This quilt is not for the faint of heart.

(My apologies and all due respect to fiddly old ladies. Truth is, they are the bold ones.)

I hadn’t planned to jump in to this one right away and so intensely. It’s supposed to be a very long long range project. But I wanted to try out the steps, new to me, and complete one whole block “just to see”. Well, I came, I saw, and I plan to conquer.

Veni, vidi, vici.

What will you conquer this month?

I’m done.

And just in time for the link up party. You’ll want to visit Stories From The Sewing Room to see what others have also finished in the month of November. It’s where we post a goal at the beginning of the month, then report our progress at the end. Thanks to Anne-Marie for hosting this One Monthly Goal Challenge. It has kept me on track.

My November goal was to finish this quilt. All that was left to do was the handstitching down of the scalloped binding.

How do I wrap up my huge Bible Sampler Quilt Project in this post? This quilt provided the focus, gave the purpose to my decision to start blogging in the first place. A lot of living has been lived in those five years: family members have passed, a global pandemic has come and gone. Where do I begin?

Shrinking away from such a monumental decision of what I could say, I look to the Bible, from whence cometh this project in the first place. After the amazing miracles the children of Israel experienced in the Exodus, Moses wrote the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. What did Moses say? He recapped. He reminded God’s chosen of the places they’d been, and what their God had done for them there. He included lots of facts and figures. So here we go. Here’s my own list of facts and figures if anyone is interested. I fully realize my humble project lacks miraculous events of any importance, so I thank you for indulging me in this recap:

Number of pieces: 4,490.

It felt like a lot more. Jane Stickles had 5602 pieces in her quilt, which only took ONE year to make. And I wonder if she added the binding and sleeve to her total? (I did.)

How many years did it take? Five years. That’s sixty months. I began in mid-November 2018, and we are now at the end of November 2023. (And I sewed by machine. And didn’t quilt it at all. It’s tied.)

How many Blogposts published during this project? 210

How many Views? 7,733

How many Visitors? 3,335

How many different countries visited my blog? 49

Now I probably should not count the one from: “Unknown Region”. And I’m not deluded enough regarding my popularity to believe that the views from some of the more remote countries are actually humans looking at my quilts. Do bots count? (I’m looking at you, China.) Even so, I welcome you, bot or not, and you too, one viewer each from Pakistan, Oman and Algeria. I counted you in. It IS a small world after all.

Most favorite block? This one, number 12: Dove in the Window. I like how it rolls around inside the square.

The very close second choice is Goshen Star, number 20:

I like how tidy it looks.

I’ll close with this: I thoroughly enjoyed every step of the way. I loved each block, and each part of the process as I went along. Even the step of tearing out of all those papers from the backsides. There was blood, there was sweat, but there were no tears.

My usual trajectory when undertaking a project comes in three phases: One: Initial enthusiasm. I’m excited as I pull fabrics, imagining how fun the new challenge will be. This phase is followed by Number Two: Dislike as I get underway, at times bordering on disgust. I question myself about every little decision. “WHAT was I thinking?” Then finally, Phase Three: Satisfaction as the project wraps up. I feel tickled and surprised by my accomplishment. The second guessing, the mistakes, the ripping out, is all forgotten.

But not this time. And the best part of this project? It was the reading through of the Holy Bible, the Living Word of God. I highly recommend you jump in if you’re thinking of doing this.

Here’s one last look …

That is all!

Thank a teacher. Remember those bumper stickers?

But, speaking as a teacher myself, (who taught hundreds of children to read), I feel qualified enough to say that I would mark this statement as incorrect. I would cross out “teacher” with my red pen and write “veteran” in its place.

This is exactly what I taught my students each Veteran’s Day: That our schools depend on stable communities in order to operate. And it is our military that makes this possible. We are not a war torn country with interrupted education being a casualty of the chaos. This is because we have men and women who willingly leave their homes to bravely serve and protect us on foreign lands and seas. They keep the chaos far and away. Therefore, our schools can function and our teachers can get on with the job of teaching. So if you can read, it’s because the military did its job: providing you and your teacher with a secure place to proceed with your education in safety.

This Veteran’s Day I am so grateful for our armed forces. I’m a few days late here, but, thank you to all who serve and have served. Active duty members number less than 1 per cent of our population, and all veterans around 6 percent. The rest of us owe you so much.

My previous post included some photos I snapped at the quilt show. I’m going to add another quilt here from that show.

This quilt displays the names and stories of men and women from our own county who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Too too many names. It’s overwhelming. I snapped just one quilt square to focus on.

This one hit very close to home. This young man aspired to be a teacher. He interned at the same school as many of my friends, including my husband.

How very very sad that he was not able to achieve his goal, his aspiration: to be a teacher. To teach children to read. I was teaching on the day he was born, and on the last day of his life. I got to enjoy a fulfilling vocation of exploring, learning, and laughing with children. He never got the chance. How can I thank him?

Or,

To Bee or Not to Bee . . .

I know, I groan at puns too. Especially mine.

Today’s post is brought to you by my local quilt guild. I spent it at their biennial show.

The raffle prize giveaway

They held an auction

I shopped at the market

I joined in a demo about appliqué and made a new friend

I enjoyed it all, especially talking with the members. They encouraged me to join the guild, as they do. But for now, I choose to remain guild free. Why? Maybe it’s because I don’t think my hobby plus an organization is a good mix. I want to keep it obligation-free, informal, casual. I know I’m missing out on bees and retreats, but I probably wouldn’t show up for them any way.

Moving on, here’s my choice for the One Monthly Goal challenge: Finish the Bible Sampler Quilt. All that’s left to do is stitch down the binding. I’m over halfway around.

Thank you Anne-Marie from Stories From the Sewing Room for hosting. Click the link HERE to see what others have chosen to complete.

Here I am, second month in a row, showing up to crash a Linkup party to which I was technically not invited.

Rule of participation: Post my goal at the beginning of the month. Well, I meant to, but the first week flew by. I was busy with my new toy, and selling the old one.

Lucky for me, I know you people. You are kind and generous. I would guess you are model rule-followers, as am I, but you also know when to let it go. So here I go.

My October goal was this: Get binding on the Bible Sampler Quilt. Last month’s post left off with me needing to find the right lavender gray fabric. After hunting through the bolt stacks in five different shops, I brought home two possibilities, then decided on THE one.

BUT . . . before I could finally cut my scalloped quilt edge and then attach the binding, I decided to add a hanging sleeve. Because it was an afterthought, I had to hand stitch it on. That took awhile. But now, at last, the binding is on and I’m happily taking my sweet time handsewing it down around the scallops in the evenings.

So as I was approaching the finish line on this quilt, instead of focusing, maybe even getting the binding all done, I answered the siren song of the YouTubes and watched Edyta Sitar’s quiltalong videos for Star Upon Stars. Which led me to decide to take it on, which led me to purchase her new book, Patches of Stars.

Which led me to drag my stash bins out of the closet and pull the colors. I believe I have plenty to make the Star Upon Stars quilt.

I know I mentioned last month that I had a hankering to purge fabrics from those bins. I’m glad I didn’t get around to it. I might not have held on to some of these scraps which will find their home in this next project.

Which leads me to ask myself, why am I starting a new project before I’m done with the old one? I’m so very very close to the end. Maybe it’s because I’m subconsciously preparing for a possible letdown that might come when this project is done. Maybe I’m generating excitement a new challenge provides to keep my sewjo flowing. Do you do this too? I really have no idea why. I’m thinking I shouldn’t be overthinking. For now, I’ll continue to take my time, relax, and enjoy all the things.

. . . “a love once new has now grown old.“

And that’s my last blog title using this lovely song. Paul Simon’s lyrics ended with September. And even though they flew by, a lot happened in those six months.

I didn’t get around to posting my monthly goal for September over on Stories From The Sewing Room

But, if it’s all right, I’m showing up for the finish party Here.

My unposted goal was to push forward with the next step on my Bible Sampler Quilt – which was figuring out what to do with the border triangles, then doing it.

I did!

Because the quilt is tied, I didn’t want anything too densely quilted for the border. So I decided to just run an outlining seam around each colored triangle. Eleven triangles per side = 44 triangles to stitch down in thirty days. Easy peasy. The only hard part was switching top threads to match the different colors, which wasn’t even hard.

Next decision: how to finish the final border – scallops for the win! Anything less would feel like I was phoning it in. I went to the internet for tips, tricks, possible templates to purchase. I was a little nervous about getting just the right arc. Too rounded doesn’t say “old, or “traditional” to me. Too narrow wouldn’t allow me to try again if I cut off too much. Then I decided I was wasting time overthinking it. I told myself that Jane Stickles wouldn’t overthink, she would just do. So I did.

I used an oval crockpot lid to create my curve. I made my template out of scratch paper and penciled in the stitching line with my Dollar Tree mechanical pencil. Then I stitched over my pencil line.

At this point I really wanted to cut those scallops with my Gingher scissors to enjoy the crunch of slicing through those layers. After all, my whole theme here is “cuts with scissors”. This is because I prefer using these slo-mo, traditional methods, as you’ve seen over these years.

Instead, I ran an overcast stitch around to secure those layers. Then I marked the quarter inch cutting line. NOW I will let myself cut those scallops.

BUT FIRST – I want to have my bias binding all ready to go. Time to look through my stash in the sewing room closet.

And this brings me to the other OMG challenge I’ve been doing – the cleaning out of that closet.

Shopping my stash for the binding fabric gave me the opportunity to haul out ALL of the bins. When I did, I realized how much progress I’d made. Over the months, I had been removing the closet clutter in a steady trickle, and now when I needed to get to the big bins, there was no longer that annoying stuff in my way, dropping off high shelves and in to my face. Clutter is so mean.

Instead, it was an easy thing to pull out the bins. I looked at ALL my fabrics and tried out a few possibilities. Nothing worked.

So next decision: I’ll splurge and get exactly what I want at my local quilt shop. I’m leaning towards a soft lavender to match the cornerstones.

But back to the closet: As I sifted through my stash, I saw a lot of fabric pieces I’d prefer not using in ANY future project. I wanted to pull and sort them out right there, but I needed to stay focused on the purpose at hand.

As part of the closet project, besides pillow forms, books, and lots of little miscellaneous, I’ve been trickling out fabric I no longer like. I’m down a whole bin, and it feels good.

Which brings me back to the song lyrics: “A love once new has now grown old”. It’s interesting to me how personal taste changes with time. How does that happen? How does the brain make the switch as we move through preferred styles and fashions? How come we recognize and like what’s “in” and dislike what’s “out”?

Some floral fabrics I once thought pretty are now downright ugly to me, but not to someone else. I used to be a fan of batiks, now, not so much. And Christmas fabrics? Will red and green ever look congenial in a quilt? Not in my opinion. And can I just say – Brown. Ugh. But sometimes it’s the perfect choice and I love my brown quilts very much. Go figure.

And I have been holding on to pieces of coordinating fabrics just because they coordinated and I have enough for a big project. But the urge to do that project has now grown old. I can let go of all of the above for someone else to enjoy.

I think I’ll set a goal to purge those bins next month, I’m ready. Now that I have some breathing space in that closet, I find that I want more.

“Die she must.

The autumn winds blow chilly and cold . . .”

I can safely bet that Paul Simon wasn’t in Southern California when composing this song. It’ll stay hot and dry here into September. But, finishing what I started, these monthly OMG post titles will carry forward the lyrics of this gentle song nonetheless.

“OMG” as in, One Monthly Goal: August Finish Link-up

Click the link above to join the party over on Elm Street Quilts and Stories From The Sewing Room.

I met my quilting goal, but the jury’s out on whether I achieved my Swedish Death Cleaning goal. Yes, I examined the remaining contents of that underfoot bin. No, it did not all get processed to its end game. Yes, I organized and filed lots of stuff. No, I’m not ready to purge some things that probably could be let go. Mind you, I’ve already deep cleaned the rest of the house. This stuff I’m talking about is what organizers say should be kept for last: the family/memory/emotional stuff. It’s sticky, like the last five pounds you’re hoping to take off to achieve THE GOAL.

Here’s where I remind myself that the proper title is actually: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. So I am being gentle with myself, as I know that slow and steady truly does win races. On to the photos:

The goal was to finish tacking the Bible Sampler Quilt. Done!

I truly enjoyed tacking this huge thing. A back view shows the alternating white and lavender tacks. Some are a little crooked, which makes it really handmade, really mine.

It’s holding together quite well. Next step: deciding how to quilt the triangles.

I have to share with you what occurred that caused me to stop what I was doing and sit down to write this post. One side effect of this “life cleaning” is melancholy. I’ve been reliving so many memories as I’ve sifted through photos, baby books, letters, and cards. It’s not been easy, watching your life pass before you. I especially miss my mom. Well, this is what happened. I was cleaning house, and took down the wall hanging my mom made for my fortieth birthday. As I shook out the dust, I noticed for the first time that she had tied it. It made me smile. I had thought it wasn’t quilted at all because it was small. But there were the black perle cotton knots, lined up on the back. Made with her touch, her love.

If you recall, I’ve been on a tying spree myself. I can’t explain why, but it made me happy.

Here’s to August weather passing, and pleasant autumn days ahead.

Well here it is, block 100. Why did I choose “Odds and Ends” for my final block? After all, this is it. This is the final block in my Bible Sampler Quilt project. I should be saying Ta Da! Well I’ll tell you. The reason was, this project is far from finished. There are odds and ends to attend to before I can call it DONE.

And this rings true with the Bible as well. Although I just read through it, every word, from beginning to end, I will never finish it. Holy scripture is a living word; to plumb its depths would take more than my lifetime. I am myself at odds and ends, and the “cure” is to stay in His Word, and follow His words.

I’ve actually been making odds and ends progress behind the scenes:

I am now in the process of tacking the blocks . . .

I chose to tack this quilt because 1. Ideally, it should be handquilted or custom quilted, which is not going to happen, 2. If I pantograph quilted it, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, and 3. It’s not like it’s going to be thrown around at a picnic on the beach. Tacking in a three inch grid should hold it together well enough.

So tacking seemed to me to be the most traditional, and least-intrusive-to-the-designs quilting choice.

My goal for the challenge will be to finish up the tacking. There’s ten blocks across ten rows, six tacks per block. Shouldn’t be too hard.

I know what you’re thinking: How is she going to quilt the triangles? Like Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

But today is the day to set goals. Head over HERE to see what others are doing for their One Monthly Goal.

In the Swedish Death Cleaning department, I’m also going to attend to the odds and ends in that bin which is still underfoot. Come to find out, it held more than my year in Europe. So for August I’m going to deal with the rest of its contents and get it gone. There’s VCR tapes, cassettes, some pictures in nice frames, and who knows what all. I guess I’ll find out.