A quilty update - July 2025

It’s been a few months since I posted my quilt plans for this year, and so I thought I’d stop and reflect for a moment to see how things were going. In that post I set out six projects I wanted to work on this year, and then added in a final stretch project.

I’ve realised that the ‘stretch project’ to make a quilt a month is dominating my sewing, and so while I’m ‘on target’ (mostly) with that, I haven’t got as close to where I’d like to be with the other projects. So this post is to also help keep myself accountable, and to make sure I change that.

It’s not all bad though, I have made some gorgeous quilts and my confidence and skill levels are increasing. So much so that there’s a further surprise and addition to my sewing repertoire which I’m expecting to post later this week!

So how am I doing?

1 The teal flying geese

To say this one is still percolating would be a lie, it’s on the back burner. It’s still on my To Do list but not close to the top yet.

2 The mystery block a month

I’m doing much better at this one, and even though I’m working to a more relaxed timetable being a month behind the pattern releases it’s going well. I knew being away last month would scupper my plans a little, but I’m ok with that.

I’ve yet to start the May block, and the June block has already been released but I think with a gentler timescale for these few months I should be ok. Hopefully that’s true, and not famous last words!

3 The jeans and pyjamas

I thought that this would be the one I’d start the soonest. I’ve even got as far as sorting out some jeans to use, and the pyjama fabrics from my stash. I’ve recently added another pair of pyjama bottoms to that pile as I realised that the waistband was wearing out through use!

Other than that though I’ve yet to start this one, but I still think this one will happen this year.

4 The Essex linen kisses

I have made progress here - yay! Earlier in the year I’d cut the colourful, patterned scraps into 3 inch squares and even sourced and bought a darker grey Essex linen fabric for the background. Of course that’s not just plain, it’s got a gold tinge to it so the quilt will be rather special I think.

Last week, when I realised I wasn’t making progress on ‘my’ quilts just the stretch project this was the one I turned to, so I was right when I predicted that I thought this would be the one to start first.

I started to play with the layout one evening, aiming to have the colours wash from neutrals through to the much more brightly coloured fabrics. And it wasn’t as easy as I thought, but I ended up with a layout I liked.

Testing the rainbow layout and colour progression

I thought I’d better start sewing before I forgot my carefully laid plans, and pinning strategy. And the next day, before long I was able to lay out the blocks something close to my original plan.

The sewn blocks laid out in a colour progression order with spaces between on my kitchen worktop

I’m really pleased with this - and pleased it’s worked out just as I imagined in my head!

Clearly it’s not the largest quilt in the world, but with some sashing and borders it will, I hope, be large enough to be our go to picnic blanket, and one that’s way more stylish than our current rug.

Watch this space on this one!

5 My floral fancy

This one remains on the craft mat in the corner of my craft room. It’s still beautiful and mostly the pieces are still in the place they should be, but not much progress here.

I’m still collecting grey materials to extend the quilt, and have bought myself a sizzix machine and templates so I can cut out more flowers and leaves for the extended quilt.

I’d like to think I would have picked this one up before now if I hadn’t changed my sewing machine, but I know that my new machine will be make this one much easier to work on.

6 My English Paper Piecing (EPP) blue diamonds

This was always going to be my slow burning hand sewing project, and it is just that. I’ve added some more to the pile of completed blocks, and I’ll continue to do that over the next few months. Hopefully with a bit more speed than at present.

And the ‘stretch’ project

This one is the one that’s been getting all the attention and delivering all the results. Partly because it has a monthly schedule, and because I’m using it to burn through my stash (albeit slowly) and to build my skills and confidence.

All of these quilts will be donated to charity, so far there’s these:

And there is more to come, but I don’t want these to be my sole quilt outputs this year - so I need to work out that balance, alongside normal life too. It’s still going to be a busy rest of the year, and hopefully a productive one too.

Stay tuned…

Making my mystery block of the month: April

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and yesterday I shared the test blocks which I made into my sixth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the friendship star block I made for my own quilt.

I had a feeling that this month would be another star block, after all there’d been the cute houses, the vintage star and then the heart last month - and I wasn’t wrong, was I? So I suspect that the alternate months will also be stars, and so I formulated another plan, in that I’d use the navy materials for all the stars using these blocks to ‘punctuate’ my quilts.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I do know that next month’s block isn’t a star, so I’ve a fifty-fifty chance when the next block is released at the start of June, haven’t I?

Anyway, with navy chosen and with my test blocks completed more easily than I expected, I was ready to get going. In fact so much so, that I only stopped to take a picture once it was completely assembled.

I’m about to blow my own trumpet here, but I was really pleased with how the points lined up with the centre square of the star, and I was keeping most things crossed to see how the outer points worked out when I added the outer borders.

Back to the original border fabrics

Last month I spent some time pondering whether or not to introduce new green fabrics into the borders, even drawing myself a scribbled plan. And that helped, a lot. It meant that this month I knew that this block was the first block on my second row of the finished quilt, and so the borders needed to be the original greens.

Though I did need to lay them out and double check that before attaching them.

Happy with that, and they were soon attached.

The completed friendship star block with green borders on the left/top and the paler patterned borders on the bottom/right

And look, I kept all the points too. I’m super happy with how this one turned out, points and all - though I’m sure this is more by luck than judgement, but also because the more I sew I seem to gain in competence and confidence.

Join me next month to see how I get on with the next mystery block, and check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.

Making my mystery block of the month: March

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and yesterday I shared the test blocks which I made into my fifth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the fabulous and quick to make heart block I made for my own quilt.

For this block I was keen to use the yellow patterned fabric, so that’s what I did. I also realised that I had some fabric from the first block already cut which was the correct width, so that made it an easy choice for the background. I was pleased that this block looked to be relatively straightforward as somehow time was short this month, I’m not sure why.

I do love some chain sewing, it really speeds things up - and with its relatively simple construction it worked well for this block.

I even managed to trim all of the heart blocks I made - this one and the four test blocks - correctly, managing to not cut off the wrong piece of material, so that’s a bonus.

Pondering while adding the borders

I’m really pleased with how this simple but effective block has turned out. The more eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that the fabrics for the green borders are different this month, and that involved a lot of pondering. But during that pondering I’ve also found a new way to store the completed blocks - with a skirt hanger, which is just as well as my niece has now collected my old sewing machine and I can no longer drape the blocks over that!

I’m pretty sure that I won’t have enough of the green fabrics from the first two blocks to complete the whole quilt, and my plan all along was to use complementing fabrics for the green borders. But I didn’t want to use those just when I’d run out, as I wanted to incorporate the changing patterns into my design, and I realised this was the month to start that.

But I still needed to convince myself, and so a hastily mocked up version of the final layout confirmed that it needed to be this month whichever layout I opt for in the end. Additionally Sherri released more information about the sashing, which are borders in between the blocks, this month and where I previously thought I might need four blocks across, now I think I probably can manage with three - next month’s the crunch month for that decision though.

THIS MOCKUP OF THE BORDERS REALLY HELPED

And so, here’s a peek at how the first three blocks look together - I think the quilt is going to be a gem, but then again I am slightly biased!

Join me next month to see how I get on with the next mystery block, and check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.