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I am finished with the first quarter of my Junior Quilting Year. Time to evaluate my quilting goals so far for the year.

First up – Football Time was supposed to be hand quilting time. I have quite a few projects I want to hand quilt, but I learned how to do binding properly in September and nearly every football game time has spent sewing on binding. I’m happy with this trade-off. I truly enjoy doing binding and since learning how to do it I have finished four quilts for myself and two quilts for my DIL. I’m trying to get her to learn binding, but have not been successful yet. This goal will stay in place thru December and January and then football time will become baseball and golf time and I still plan to be hand quilting.

Snowed In Project – We haven’t had a single snowflake fall yet in New England so I haven’t had a chance to work on this goal. We are due to get our first snow “dusting” tomorrow so there’s hope yet to get time to work on this project.

Car Time Project – Streak of Reds hand piecing project. I blogged about this project previously. I found a place that sells both Synthrapol and Retayne and ordered some. I feel better now that I will be able to wash the quilt as I go along. I forgot when I set this goal that in the middle of winter I can’t piece in the car because my hands will get too cold. Maybe I’ll pick one night during the week to designate as hand sewing time. I have to think about that goal.

Saturday Class Time – I haven’t been diligent about spending Saturdays learning new skills. My biggest class time was the binding process. I have made a couple of new projects this fall – a fabric quilt book and a small catch-all bag. I was so pleased with these projects that I plan on making more of each of them. I’m going to make small tote bags and put in crayons and color books for my younger nieces and nephews.

I’m going to a Quilter’s Anonymous Dinner with a friend in two weeks. This is an evening where quilters gather at the LQS, bring a project to work on and the owner cooks and serves dinner. I have finished so many quilts in the last few months and have only added one UFO to the my list that I wanted to work on a new project. I only had one project on my “Have Patterns and Fabric” list that have the fabric and pattern already picked out so I decided I would work on that one for the evening. I’m going to work on the Stairstepper by Pressed for Time Quiltworks.

I washed, pressed and cut the strips this morning and have them laid out on my sewing table. I’m looking for some thoughts on the order of the fabrics. There are 8 strips and if you are looking at the picture you can assume that fabric #1 is on the left and fabric #8 is on the right. What do you think? Would you suggest a different order? I’m going to use a burgundy print for the background and outside border and a gold batik for the inner border.



I used my Ott light last night while sewing on binding and I love it. For once, I didn’t have to squint to see the thread as I was sewing. I’m happy I bought it. I also got more use with my Rowenta iron this morning. I washed and ironed 35 FQs this morning and the iron just glided over the fabric and took out the wrinkles.

Oh yeah, I forgot the biggest news of the day (well actually it will be tomorrow) – we’re going to get our first snowfall of the year tomorrow morning. It won’t be a lot of snow, only a dusting, but it is snow! YEAH!!!