Category: Long Arm

2025…..2026?

Oh wow, how did I not ever post in 2025? I seriously did not plan on that! I did finish a couple of items in 2025 that I should have posted and I worked on so many things last year!

I finally got back to quilting on the long arm and finished working on my Crowning Star quilt. Almost the entire thing was done with ruler work and I loved how it turned out. This was completed in February 2025, took almost 2 years if I remember to complete it – EPP for the entire center!

I did complete a special gift for Cassie’s birthday in March, I had originally intended it as a Christmas present! It turned out really nicely, I used my Scan and Cut to add the footprints all around the frame. She loved it and at some point I’m going to do one for myself using the Hufflepuff colors (she’s a Gryfindor!).

At guild meetings I issue short monthly (or a couple months) challenges. March last year was a color by number challenge – I had saved it for a long time and decided it was time for everyone to do it. We did have a lot of people do the challenge, using various sized squares. Mine used 2.5″ squares and I love how it turned out. It’s currently hanging in the half bath on a wall that needed a little bit of color!

I worked on various quilt tops for Honor Quilts at guild. We gift quilts to veterans in our county. Various people work on the tops but they need people to quilt them. Since I have the long arm it’s easy for me to do, I just have to take the time to do it.

In August or September my favorite EPP designer, Elise Baek created a design to make a tree skirt all in EPP. So what did I do? Decided to make both the kids tree skirts for Christmas. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea, but to my surprise I was able to do all the work for both quilts in 3 months and get them completed finished just 8 days before Christmas. Cassie’s was entirely out of Harry Potter fabrics and Alex’s was out of all kinds of plane fabric I found on Ebay.

I also finished 19 Diamond painting canvases, too many to post pictures here! I even did 2 of them for a gift for my brother-in-law of his 2 favorite football teams. I need to get back to working on them this year!

I’ll try and be around more, it might help me to work on projects!

2024 Recap

Wow what a year! So much happened this year! Alex is learning to fly with his dad and he loves it! We got him the new version of Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 to help him with his flying. Cassie is so darn smart I can’t stand it! She’s all about Harry Potter still which makes my heart soar.

I’m loving my long arm, haven’t had a lot of time to go to the basement in the last 2 months due to travel, Xmas stuff, etc. I really want to finish the massive amount of ruler work there is on my Crowning Star quilt. I don’t think I got even the first row completely done before I had to take a time out on stitching.

I did finish another quilt last month, the 2022 guild quilt block exchange quilt. The quilting was all done in October, binding finished in November. After my October long arm classes I was more comfortable with doing ruler work so that quilt was chosen to play with it. Took awhile but it looks great! Cassie has already stolen the quilt for her bed.

I finally started working on Barb’s T-shirt quilt again, hoping to get it finished before we go to see her in March for Spring Break. It’s going to be HUGE, which means a long time to quilt on the long arm, but I’ll make it work.

Hand stitched a bunch of 3D ornaments for teachers at school this year. Took quite awhile, but I loved how they turned out. The bus driver got one too and I saw it hanging in the bus the last few days before winter break. The teachers I talked to after gifting loved them as well.

Hoping to get my UFO list down more in 2025, I got 8 quilts finished and 6 cross stitch projects finished in 2024. I’ve added a few new projects and I might get 1 or 2 off the list before the challenge starts February 1st. We’ll see what happens.

It was a great year for crafting for me in 2024, and I hope 2025 is just as great.

Happy New Year!

Busy Summer!

Ugh! I swear I had major intentions of doing a lot more posting this year. And I have been finishing projects this summer. However we had a LOT of stuff happening this summer. My sister got married in July and it was a wonderful day! We had a bit of traveling to North Carolina, a bunch of camping trips and then it was time to get ready for school to start again!

So I did manage to finish my plaid-ish quilt the end of June, with a small problem – self inflicted! I was having problems with thread breaking and changed the needle. Unfortunately I put the darn thing in backwards and the thread just kept breaking. Didn’t know I had it in wrong until I called Handiquilter Customer Support and they told me. Once I fixed the needle it worked perfectly again and I could finish the quilt before our July 4th camping trip. The kids used it to sit on for fireworks when camping.

We have various charities we donate quilts to through our quilt guild. I volunteered to quilt 5 quilts for Honor Quilts. We give quilts to veterans in the county where I live. That was fun and good practice my quilting when I didn’t have anything ready to quilt. They didn’t have anything else needing quilted at our last meeting so I can work on some of my own quilts. I have 2 that just need batting cut and they need pressed before they can go on the frame. Hope to get to work on that this week. One of the quilts is from the workshop held on September 12th at our last meeting. We had the Redneck Quilter teaching us how to make a Deb Tucker quilt Star Shadows. It was a great workshop and I already have the top completed and waiting to be quilted. Can’t wait to see that one finished and not joining my UFO list for next year!

I was able to finish the Fall Simply Sign from Fat Quarter Shop, Cassie couldn’t wait to put it up on the door and get the Summer one down. Only 2 more to get done for this series and I don’t know if I’ll get to them this year or not. We’ll see, I might skip Halloween and do Christmas first.

So I know I’ve mentioned in the past my participation in Elise Baek’s groups and SAL’s (sew alongs). Earlier in the year I did a hexagon flower swap and 16 people signed up with only 10 sending in hexagons. It was asked that we do another one and I currently have 74 people signed up! This means since I’m making 1 hexagon flower for each person I have to make that many flowers. I think I have all the petal pieces picked up and grouped and I’m working on basting them. I need to figure out what I’m using for the centers so I can start putting the flowers together. The deadline for mailing is October 31st, so I have time but I don’t want to wait until the last minute!

I’m also working on basting pieces for the Daisy Bloom EPP SAL that is currently happening with Elise. I have 2 basted and the other 14 are in baggies all with the fabric ready to be basted. I’ll work on these when I have time. My plan is to make all of Elise’s flower EPP blocks and applique them all together on background blocks. That will be another long term project and I don’t even have all the templates for the other flowers yet.

I’ll be back soon, I’ll have 2 quilts to show!

Kelly

Long Time No See….

Wow, I didn’t realize it had been so long! Let’s see if I can do a life update to explain before I get into the quilting.

Fall of 2022 (back to my last post) changed everything for us. My mom had some medical issues that she couldn’t come back from and ended up going to a nursing home for long term care as we couldn’t take care of her at home any more. All my free time was spent running out to see her multiple times a week along with helping dad out with things at the house. May of 2023, the week after Mother’s Day, she had multiple strokes which the doctors said there was nothing they could do to help her. May 22, 2023 she passed away and we had a lot of things to take care of. Lawyer, bank, cars, etc. It’s been hard to deal with mom not being here the last year, but she’s not hurting anymore and is at peace.

To add on top of the things going on with my mom, my lovely husband broke his leg in January. 2 surgeries and about 4 months later he was back on his feet with a cane and walking. Then over the summer we realized that when he fell and broke his leg he also damaged his shoulder. Surgery for that in October to repair 2 massive tears in his rotator cuff. 2023 was not a good year for our family!

I didn’t have a lot of mojo to quilt the rest of the year, I used to quilt with mom and my heart just wasn’t in it. Oh I still worked on EPP projects, but didn’t get anything close to a finish. I also picked up cross stitch again and spent evenings working on that when I didn’t want to work on EPP. At Christmas, hubby and I decided we weren’t getting each other gifts but did a weekend trip to Kalahari Indoor Water Park as a family gift from Santa instead. To my surprise he handed me a letter basically saying that due to him being home most of the year and not working as much (plus everything with mom) he realized that tomorrow is never guaranteed. We needed to enjoy life more. So he made me a promise that come 2024 we’d figure out how to get me the long arm I’ve been wanting for a REALLY long time. So, April of 2024 I purchased a Handiquilter Moxie XL, the 10′ frame and the overhead light bar. In order to have a place to put it I had to do some MAJOR cleaning in the basement – I had between 15-20 garbage bags, a few things that went on Facebook Marketplace and were sold and a lot of sorting! There’s still a little bit left to clean up and/or sell but the basement is now pretty usable. I also had to call an electrician and get a lot more (and better) lights and outlets in the basement. That turned out WAY better than I expected!

So since the beginning of May I’ve been quite busy working on finishing various quilts. 2 small ones that were donated to the guild community service group, 1 the kids stole almost immediately (waiting since 2013 for quilting), the Pokemon quilt (waiting since March 2020 for quilting) and Cassie’s bed quilt (currently finishing the binding and has only been waiting 2 years for quilting).

In addition to getting all these quilts finished in the last few months, I also got a few cross stitch projects finished. A new line of signs from Fat Quarter Shop that I loved but finished totally differently than they did – of course I quilted them and made them wall hangings for the doors! I finished 3 of them, I have to start working on the fall, Halloween and Christmas ones. I finally finished my quilt-o-logy and stitch-o-logy pieces, instead of buying the wooden spool, my dad made them for me out of wood from our backyard that he’s been making things for us for years. Of course I just realized I haven’t hung them up yet and I don’t remember where I put them after I showed them off at guild! I’ll have too look so I can hang them in my office/sewing room.

Today is the first day of summer break for the kids, they’ve accomplished so much in the last year and a half! Alex is doing great in middle school, Honors ELA and science (8th grade science in 7th grade!), and almost all A’s (a B+ in Honors science). Next year he takes 9th grade science in 8th grade and gets high school credit for it! Cassie is moving to 5th grade next year and is so smart it kills me! She’s been identified as gifted in math and ELA so that should continue into middle school like Alex with honors classes. I’m very proud of both my kids, even though Alex has surpassed my height at 13!

I’ll be around more, I have lots of things to finish and I think my mojo is finally back!