New to my craft room in February

As predicted last month it has been a relatively quieter month for things arriving into my craft space this month, and in better news for my purse they’ve cost little, or nothing.

I’ve recently started going along to a new-to-me crochet group which impressively meets in the nearby village pub every Friday afternoon - all very civilised! But of course I needed a portable crochet project to take with me, for the first session I dug out some wool I had and a hook and at the first session made the granny square in the photo below.

Three autumnal shaded balls of wool and a completed granny square

The wool I had would only take me so far I knew, so I stopped off in one of the shops in town selling wool and picked up three matching 100g balls for less than a fiver. I’ve now got three larger than usual granny squares, a new craft group and a new project. My plan is to make eight of these squares and use them to cover one of the many canvas tote bags which are now ubiquitous aren’t they?

The shop selling wool was just along from where I bought some fabulous yellow buttons (pictured in this older post) which is sadly closing at the end of this month (mental note: must make another visit before it closes!). I was hoping to discover some more vintage buttons, and I did leaving with this bundle of buttons and trims for £10.

Nine packs of variously shaped and coloured vintage buttons and two cards of ribbons

At my sewing group I was given these small squares and rectangles of fabric, some of which are the same size that I’m using to make my scrappy houses (more on that project another day), so those have gone straight into the scrappy houses biscuit tin. I’m planning to use at least some of the others for small lavender sachets, that’s the plan anyway.

Four piles of pink gingham and patterned small squares of fabric

I also nabbed some pretty remnant Liberty fabric from an Instagram destash sale for £4, and then a few days later I added the rather fabulous and completely eccentric ‘Emergency Brooch Kit’ for another £4. I love the idea of carrying it ‘with you at all times’ for ‘those quiet moments or to kill a bit of time’.

A Liberty fabric remnant and an 'emergency brooch kit'

I’m still collecting stuff for potential weaving with waste projects, this month adding three plum fruit nets and a further lime fruit net to my stash, along with the length of blue wire cut from our new chandelier when it was installed.

A net from the limes and three from the plums, plus some blue electrical cord from our new chandelier

I’ve also finally relinquished some much loved tops from my wardrobe. They’re well past donating to charity, so they’re currently in my craft room waiting for the perfect project to claim them, or until I no longer need to store them - I’m not sure which will come first if I’m honest.

Four well worn tops of mine ready for their next iteration, whatever that may be



So that’s another month in my craft room, check out my previous updates for earlier additions, and remember to let me know below what you’ve added to your craft supplies this month.

A year of my 'stretch' project

Around this time last year I rather foolishly (with hindsight!) set myself what I said at the time was a ‘potentially crazy project’ as part of my quilt plans for 2025. It was borne out of wanting to make use of the test blocks I was determined to make so that my mystery block of the month quilt would be the best it could be.

The thing about setting myself this challenge, however crazy it seemed, was that it became a thing that I didn’t want to fail at, even though back then, and every month since, I said I wouldn’t know if I could do it unless I tried…

Well I tried, and I succeeded!

Not only have I made the equivalent of a quilt a month for charity, I’ve also improved my sewing skills and sewing confidence too. I hoped that I would also sew through my stash rather more than I have, and while I clearly have shifted a fair bit of fabric, I’m very much of the opinion that scraps of fabric breed when you’re not looking!

Seriously.

But I have a plan for dealing with that in 2026, as you knew I would, but more of that another day.

My ‘stretch’ project quilts

These quilts aren’t the largest quilts, but the are big enough to give a quilt-sized hug to children that need one. They have been/will be donated to Project Linus who provide quilts to children who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, handmade, washable quilts and blankets.

They are:

  1. A log cabin log cabin

  2. A mostly repurposed vintage star

  3. Four pink hearts and a hug

  4. The Friendly Bee

  5. Pleated Tulips

  6. A Raspberry Plus

  7. Half the Scraps

  8. Blues and greens

  9. Marmalade hearts

  10. Ohio flower garden

  11. My Dresden buttercup

  12. Stars and spots

PICTURED (FROM BOTTOM): BLUES AND GREENS, MARMALADE HEARTS, OHIO FLOWER GARDEN, MY DRESDEN BUTTERCUP AND STARS AND SPOTS WHICH ARE WAITING TO BE DONATED TO PROJECT LINUS

PICTURED (FROM BOTTOM): BLUES AND GREENS, MARMALADE HEARTS, OHIO FLOWER GARDEN, MY DRESDEN BUTTERCUP AND STARS AND SPOTS WHICH ARE WAITING TO BE DONATED TO PROJECT LINUS

Lesson learned

I am proud to have finished all of these quilts and to donate them to charity, but I won’t be setting myself any such similar challenges for this year, though I will still continue to make quilts for charity. What I found was that this was the focus of my sewing time, and it meant that I didn’t spend anywhere near as much time as I hoped on the other quilts on my list, or on garment sewing - though of course, I found there’s always time to make a pouch or two!

Making my Mystery Block of the Month: December 2025

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and in my last post I shared the test blocks which I made into my fourteenth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the centre block I made for my own quilt.

It’s the final block of the month, and it’s a star as I was expecting - and another scrappy star at that. It’s similar in shape to the April and August blocks, but this time there’s triangles cutting across the edges of the centre square, which gives the effect of having the remaining central square set diagonally.

It’ll make more sense when you see it, but first I had to choose which blues to use for this month’s block. I have three navy fabrics which I’ve been using, but now the quilt assembly is within touching distance I have my eye on having enough of one of those navy fabrics for a border.

Laying two navy and one lighter blue fabric out to visualise how the final block might work

So I used the blue fabric in the centre which reminds me of Portuguese tiles. I know it’s not much and it may not save me anything at all, but my mind is in conservation of fabric mode, so the combination above is the one I was the happiest with.

And it’s a great block to sew, in fact I forgot to take any pictures until this point. Oops.

Three rows of the block sewn together with two rows attached - the final row is adrift and waiting to be attached

And of course having paused for a photo, when I restarted sewing and added that final row I was a little more off with my seams than I was happy with, so out came the unpicker…

Thankfully I was much happier with my second attempt and so next came the borders, and I’m back on the original greens for this block.

The completed block with borders - the original green borders on the top and the neutral borders on the bottom (these remain constant throughout the quilt)

SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT THE CENTRAL SQUARE SET ON THE DIAGONAL?

I know now that switching greens when I did, back March, was the right call as I have very little left of the outer green with white circle fabric left. Phew - but I did ponder on that a fair bit at the time!

The final block is now hanging on my bookcase in front of all the completed blocks

So now I have twelve completed blocks, but not yet a quilt.

Next up is finalising my plan for adding the borders and sashing between each of the blocks. I know that I want to use the borders to give the quilt as much width as I can without it looking daft, and I think that I’ve got a plan - I just need to check that I have enough fabric to do it.

As I’m a spatial learner, and like to see how things will work out, that’s likely to mean laying all the blocks and rough measuring the fabric alongside them. I’ll be using the kitchen floor for that!

Look out for a post soon sharing all the blocks together - I haven’t laid them out yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be good!

This is the last mystery block now the work starts to assemble the quilt top, you can also check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.