Consider the Lilies started 08/23 as part of a SAL with Jo Kramer of Jo’s Country Junction. She has since moved on to other things.

Projects finished in-between:

• Manor House 2025
• Fabulous houses 2025
• Birth Sampler 2025
• Punch needle Halloween 2024
• Halloween cat/moon 2024
• Snowman pillow 2025

I had put this project on the back burner when I started the Fabulous houses in January 2024. Once finished with that house-a-month, I pulled everything out, once again, into my stitching area. I have a chair and light with a Lowery stand set up with a small cart in a corner of my bedroom. All of my stitching supplies are in the sewing room, this little spot stays neat and organized for the one project I am working on.

I have been steadily working on this since restarting it last May. I put it aside for June and July to do a Birth Sampler. Then restarted with the intent to finish by the end of 2025.

Once the Summer was over, I worked at a more steady pace. I put the last stitches in on 3/10/26.

I’m not sure how I want to frame this, it’s large, I will need to go get a foam core board and figure out how much of an outer border of white I want to show. A mat might be nice too, but it would add more size. Stitching this piece reminded me of making a tapestry, like the medieval ones. People spent hours and hours on them, with little light and limited materials. Well, that part isn’t similar, but telling a story with the stitching is. I think that’s why I enjoyed stitching the Long Dog Sampler of Pilgrims Progress, the story of the stitching.

Be Kind.

Sew many pieces together and make a block or two or 32. I have been sewing the blocks for the star bright quilt the past few days. Each diamond log cabin has 17 pieces and 7 colors, all on a paper foundation. I think that trying to make this block without a foundation would be a terrible idea. Maybe if there was a special ruler involved, but the chances for error are great, seam allowances are very important in getting this block to be the right size. I read ahead to the construction phase, and Y seams are employed, imagine trying to get wonky diamonds to play nice. I have an older UFO that suffered from a similar construction mishap. It was (is) the maze pattern called Labyrinth Walk, lots of diamonds and bias edges. I’m still not ready to re-start that one, it might just get culled in next years de-cluttering.

I am hoping to finish these blocks up today. Although I have 5 that I have to wait for more fabric to come for. I mistakenly didn’t order enough of the graphite gray, and was short a few strips. 27 blocks done is a good start, and the complimentary blocks are a bit simpler. Strip piecing and more assembly line cutting.

I am trying to find an appropriate pantograph for the Starry Nights quilt. There are some zodiac themed ones out there, but none that will work for me. I am toying with the idea of making my own, I have the software, and sort of the knowledge. I want to do something like this print, the symbols for the signs in a swirly pattern. How hard could it be? The hardest part is setting up the laptop and remembering how to use the windows program -ew.

I am almost finished with the last page of the Consider the lilies cross stitch. I have five more motifs and five more border flowers. Yesterday I devoted a few hours of time to it, mostly while talking on the phone. I also got notification that the four patterns from Nashville that I “liked” were in stock. I ended up buying two, the Bird in the Berry Patch from Luminous Fiber arts and Hearts Garden from Blue Flower. I got the thread pack for Hearts garden, as I didn’t have any of the Weeks dye works threads called for. I am going to finish the Lilies soon, I was looking at the piece yesterday, to see where I needed to fill in flowers on the top border and saw that the year I put in the personalization space was 2023. I might change it, because it really didn’t take me three years to stitch it, but three years to finish it. A hyphen would look weird, I’ll think on it a bit.

Be Kind.

Three down and one across its like a puzzle or a parking lot in my sewing room. This weekend was a good sewing time. I finished three small quilts and got the Quandary quilt back on the frame. Plus I started organizing for the first of three commissioned quilts. The three smalls bound and done were a custom quilting, the second Awesome Ocean and the last (hopefully) Thomas quilt. Plus I sold two more quilts (including #150) to end February on a high note in the shop.

This week I want to get a good start on the Starburst Quilt. It is a paper foundation pattern, yesterday I spent some time printing the papers for the 32 log cabin diamonds. The version I want to make is purple and green, similar to the one pictured in center. I have all the fabric, I just need to take the next steps and get the pieces cut. I am hoping to use my Accuquilt 1 ½ ” strip cutting die for this. I foresee lots of assembly line sewing in my future.

I am still stitching away on the lilies, I am almost done with the border lilies, there are a few on the other sides of the border that need the yellow added to the centers. The mortar on the house is almost done too. I think I am going to start the Mirabella mermaid stitchery next. I got the pattern in April of last year, and recently found all the threads and beads needed for it. Maybe if I kit it up, I’ll have even more incentive to finish the lilies. On a sad note, the art and framing store where I got my last huge cross stitch piece framed, is closing. It was a great resource for art materials, paper, pens, paints as well as framing. It was family run for decades and a beautiful and well stocked store.

Be Kind.

I got a lot of sewing in yesterday, finished up the Starry Signs quilt top. It took me about eight hours on Monday to stitch the mountains section. You would think that these large size PFP pieces would be easy, but I found some difficult to wrangle and there was a bit of ripping involved. Whole Circle Studio has a good video on how to make large size FPP blocks on YouTube. It also helped that I precut all the pieces before hand. Usually I just cut strips and use them as I go. I am not sure how I want to quilt this yet, maybe part manually and part Qmatic. I was thinking of adding lines to the mountains to give them a bit more texture. Adding swirls to the clouds too, but the sky is so dark I think any custom designs would be lost. The original quilt has ½” spaced horizontal lines, very tedious to execute on a 88″ square quilt. I am really happy to finish up this BOM, and I can start something new.

Speaking of BOM, I got the second block of Merry Halloween ironed together. I need to figure out how I want to finish the edges and embellish them. I made Berties Year a few years ago, and it was a BOM with flannel. It was easy to do the hand embroidery on the blocks when they were separate. It was done with Perle cottons, I wonder if I have enough left overs from that to do this one too. It might be too much though with the thinner cottons of these blocks.

I also finished the Log cabin re-do quilt. I made the binding slightly larger than usual, 3″ wide. I sewed it to the back with a 3/8ths inch seam, so when it was folded over, it shows 5/8ths on the front. I am really happy with how this came out, and will be returning it to the happy couple tomorrow.

Today I am working on a Walker Saddle Bag, a By Annie Pattern. Lots of steps involved, I was able to quilt the main pieces last night and will try to get this mostly together today. I had to order some folded elastic, poly-webbing and a zipper in matching colors. This is one of those times I miss Joanns. Amazon actually had these available for delivery today. I feel like I should do some carbon neutral activities to offset this purchase though.

I was reading through Jo’s Country Junction the other day and she showed a new sampler from Heartstring Samplers called All things Wise and Wonderful. It’s going to be available at Nashville this coming month. I wish it had been around before I started the Lilies, I like it so much more. I doubt I will do another huge sampler of this type again. I would rather do a Long Dog Sampler, if I am going to invest a years worth of stitching. I really want to start a smaller piece – must be strong and finish Consider the Lilies.

Be Kind.

So (sew) many stars. The past few days, except yesterday, I worked on getting the Starry Signs BOM, from Whole Circle Studio together. Sunday and Monday I made the last monthly block, Sagittarius, and all the center stars. Thankfully I had the moon made, and the single stars were relatively easy compared to the constellations. In preparation for the queen sized quilt, one must first make the throw sized version. Then add three more borders to make it into an 88 inch square top. I am at that point right now. I need to set aside a day for making six more stars and the mountains. I did end up replacing the dark pinks I originally bought with two slightly darker shades. When I first started this quilt I purchased a ten yard bolt for the dark blue background fabric. I have about two and a half yards left, the pattern calls for about 11 yards for this version. I am wondering if I should order another yard or two to finish, I could use extra for binding.

I got the Log Cabin quilt loaded and started quilting it. I picked a feather panto that covers nicely, not too dense, but it will hold this quilt together for another ten years.

I am starting to feel like I am nearing the finish line on the Consider the Lilies cross stitch. I worked on the bottom right side border yesterday. I will confess that the two pieces didn’t match perfectly, off by one stitch. I was able to adjust it on the diagonal corner section. No one will ever know, the stitches are so small, and unless I point it out, I doubt anyone will notice. Thankfully the rest of the piece isn’t throw off. I did notice that my fox is two stitches lower than it should be. Hmm, now I am wondering if the other fox is low too.

I’ll admit to pre-ordering a few charts from Nashville, along with buying a full kit for a new project. It’s called Needleworker from Little House Needleworks. I thought it would look nice over my sewing room door.

The weather outside is frightful, I may just stay home and sew today.

Be Kind.