Last year, 2020, was an unusual year to say the least. My summer in Maine was delayed because I could not cross the border until the end of June unless I quarantined. I had to buy groceries so I delayed my summer. Gardens were overgrown and beyond hope. It was discouraging. Then I decided to sell and one of my daughters bought the property. It was a quick move and I was back in N. H. on August 31st. Combining two houses into one was interesting. Some of my “stuff” is still in Maine in the garage to be sold at a yard sale next summer.

After I settled in, I decided to work on Dear Jane. Row A and row B had been completed and I thought that I would sew them into the main body of the quilt. But, they were missing. Did I leave them in Maine or are they in the N. H. house?

Since September I have been checking and organizing every cupboard and bin. My fabric is neatly organized and I know where most thing are now. The rows were still missing. I have just three places to look.

The pile of batting. I had found another missing piece in the batting pile before.

The bins of wall hangings, and the dreaded attic. If they were up there, they would never be found. It’s to cold to go up there now for a search.

I took two bins of wall hangings down. As I was checking them, I decided to divide the wall hangings into two piles, hand quilted and machine quilted. The last wall hanging in one of the bins was a green piece that I made last year for March – St. Patrick’s day. As I started to pull it out to put it into the machine quilted pile, I noticed another piece inside with circles. What joy!!! It was the missing Dear Jane rows.

Now, another puzzle. How did they get there? Why were those two pieces together in that bin? The answer was simple when I looked back into the pictures on my iPhone. I took pictures of the two pieces the same day in May. I must have folded both up and put them away in the wall hanging bin not noticing that Dear Jane was in the middle of the wall hanging. Dear Jane never did go to Maine with me last summer like I thought.

I’m attaching the rows to the main body of the quilt so that I won’t loose them again. I’m working on the blocks that are missing in the upper right. When they are finished, there will be just three more rows to make. Of course, there are the triangles that go all around the outside. This is a long, long, term project.

I’ve finished the second row of the pandemic round robin quilts. This row had to have a cross.

The gold is darker on this row. This fabric was dyed in an Ombre dyeing class. As I go out, the gold will be darker in each row. It’s a happy, unintended, design element.

I have to pay attention to value with the black and white.

One of my UFOs. It was a sample for my mile a minute class. The mile a minute blocks were cut into quarters and an inch sashing was inserted. The block is the same size as it was when I started. The inch insertion is fun to do. I’m quilting the UFOs using the chapters in Angela Walter’s book, Background fillers. This was the second chapter. Loopy meander. I finally figured out how to do it by the time I finished. It’s not my favorite background filler, but I might use it in another piece.

I think that I’ve figured out how to finish all my UFOs. Have fun, learn something new when finishing them, and just get them done.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

I have had an adventure in quilting for the last three days. It has taken a quilt community to get me this far. I was working on a few ufos when I read Laura Kate’s blog, Daily Fiber. Laura Kate is awesome. She quilts, makes the most wonderful knit products, and does water color painting. I admire her very much. When her blog shows up, it is the highlight of my day. Laura Kate led me to another blog SAHRR 2021 chrisknits(wordpress.com.)

Chris and a few fellow bloggers are making a Covid round robin. This is similar to the traditional round robin, except that the quilt never travels out of your house. Each blogger gives weekly challenges to the group. They show their progress on their websites.

The round robin starts with a single block. Any block that you want. It can be an orphan block or a new one. I checked all my orphan blocks, but decided not to use any of them.

I had bought 5 1\2 yards of a Ginny Beyer border print for $2.00 a yard at Mardens. This would be my focus fabric. I like to fussy cut the prints. There would be enough for a border. I hadn’t used any of the hand dyed fabric that I made two years ago. I had ombre fabric and graduated dyed fabric. The colors that I chose seemed to go very well with the focus fabric.

Ginny Beyer has lots of quilt block patterns, so I chose on that I could do fussy cutting in the center. Things were going very well. Pieces were cut and sewed. It went together very well. Then, I looked at it. It was awful. I did not like it and knew that it would go into the ufo bin, never to be seen again, it I didn’t do something. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but it had to be the colors.

The center was nice,

That night, I saw a black and white block on Pinterest. I have a challenge of a two color quilt so this would work. It was a total turn around. I found a block on EQ 7 and made the block. It was so much better than the colored one.

Chris chose Piano Keys for the first round. She decided that the block needed a coping strip and then a small 1 1/2″ finished border. That would be easy.

The blog picture showed only two border sides, so that’s what I did. I made two borders. It was different. Then I looked at the blog for finished blocks from the other bloggers and they had all four sides. Chris’s block just wasn’t finished.

I had four quarter square triangle squares left over so used them in the four corners of the black and white block. So far, I like this quilt.

Now, back to the colored version. My quilting buddy daughter and her husband came for lunch the other day, Of course, it was show and tell. She took one look at the block and said that the red was the wrong color. It needed to be changed. I unsewed the block and took out the red points. It was much harder to insert the new points. The fabric stretched a bit with the unsewing. I can quilt out the puffiness. I also removed the border print borders and replaced it with piano keys. What a difference. I think that I can save it now.

I’ll make two Covid round robins.

Each new challenge is presented on Monday. This project can rest for a few days and I can work on something else. First, I have to clean up the mess that I made making these two blocks. It’s much nicer to work in a clean room.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

Miss Molly will be celebrating her birthday on January 16th. It doesn’t seem possible that she is 11 years old. She was such a cute puppy.

Miss Molly is a great companion. She does love my quilts.

I’ve been busy sewing on various quilts during the past two weeks. Three more Dear Jane blocks are finished. It’s enjoyable to piece and quilt a small project.

Two quilts have come back from the long arm quilter.

This is my first and my last Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt. Now, I can say that I have made one. I found a large piece of fabric that I had used in the first border and used it for binding. It is completely finished.

This is an old quilt. It was almost an antique before it was quilted. I hand pieced in the first five years of my quilting journey and this one is hand pieced. I like the idea of a quilt block in the middle of another quilt block. I may make another on like this. I’m looking for fabric for the binding. If I had made binding when I made it, it’s long gone. I’ll look for something today so that I can finish this quilt.

I have more ideas in my head than I have time for. It’s a good thing that I’m staying home and working on a few of them.

One of my daughter in laws asked me if I had some fabric that she could use for a project. What a question!!! I sorted all my fabric drawers and pulled out two bags of scraps for her and two bags for one of my daughters. My daughter makes the most beautiful Grandmother Flower Garden quilts and can use small pieces. My daughter in law will have to show me what she’s working on when we can finally get together. She lives in another state and can’t cross the border until the quarantine is lifted. All the leftover fabric is folded and neat. I don’t imagine that it will stay that way for long, but it looks great for a while. In the meantime, I decided to organize the sewing room again. It was such a mess. I didn’t want to go in there and sew. Most everything is back in it’s place and I can find what I want.

I’m enjoying this new plan of not planning what I’m going to do. Quilting should be fun.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

I’ve been asked what my plans are for 2021. I thought about making a list, but decided not to do that. This year will just flow with whatever I feel like doing at the moment. There will be finished ufos, or maybe not. There will definitely be new quilts. Maybe a new look to the blog. Who knows? It will be a journey and the trip will be interesting.

There has been a plastic bag in the ufo bin, I bypassed it many times and decided to look into the bag. It was a project started in a John Flynn class many years ago. The laser cut fabric pieces were jumbled up.

Some were pinned together. There were three finished blocks. I remember when I took the class, I didn’t like the colors of the fabric. Now, I love them. Tastes change. I don’t have the instructions, but I can figure out how to put the blocks together by looking at the finished blocks.

I remember that we had to buy another fabric for the background. It must have gone into another quilt because it’s not with these pieces. Will I finish this quilt? Maybe, but not now. It would be beautiful If I did. I’ve checked John Flynn’s website and this quilt is nowhere to be seen. If I run across the instructions in the depths of my note books, I might start it again, one block at a time.

The ufo bin produced a little pieced house. I originally made this block as the center of one of the Miss Rosie quilts. Then I decided to make a Christmas quilt.

The original house block was put aside. When making this little quilt, I decided to try a new technique from Kari M. Carr’s book “Just Around The Corner”. It teaches quilts with easy mitered borders. I pieced the mitered border and then added a striped second border. The little house came alive.

My plan of cutting up leftover fabric after finishing a piece hit a snag. My original plan was to not put the leftover fabric back into the fabric stash. I would cut it up into small pieces and make a small quilt. It was no different. The box of 1 1/2″ squares was overflowing. It doesn’t really make any difference where you put the leftovers unless you use them. That led to three days of sewing tiny pieces. Now that box is empty

Dear Jane has been in the sidelines for a while. I forgot how much fun it is to make these little blocks. Maybe I can finish this quilt in 2021. Also my oldest hand quilted ufo. The Amish Thistle is 35 years old. I’ve been quilting on it in the evening. I can see the end in the far distance.

Have a great day and happy quilting.