First Finish of 2026

Hello friends and happy Tuesday

 If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, or if you follow me on Instagram, you know just how much I love English Paper Piecing.  This quilt is called 1797 Revisited and is my first finish for 2026.  It was a quilt along that went around the internet in 2019 (I think).  This quilt is based on a quilt in the V & A Museum and is made up of 60 degree diamonds that are “snipped” on each end.  

I just finished binding this quilt a few days ago. I had Back Door Quilts do the machine quilting, and they finished it before I had my knee replacement surgery in July of last year.  I just finished trimming and hand sewing the binding on this year.  I really enjoy the process of sewing the binding down to the back of the quilt by hand – especially in winter.  I just had to add some fussy cutting to my quilt.  

I like fussy cutting English paper piecing and glue basting as much as I like the sewing.  I’ve always got some EPP all prepped and ready to sew.  Yes, I even put some in the corners.

Over the weekend we had 12" of snow or maybe a bit more.  We don't normally see that much snow at one time here.  It's really cold outside and with the wind chill it feels like it’s way below zero.  OK.   I don’t really know that for a fact, because I’m not going out there.  I just know what all the internet meteorologists are saying.  Either way, we’re under a travel watch so you’re only supposed to be out on the roads for work or if you’re an essential employee.  This is the drift outside our front door.  

Here in the Midwest, we call this a French Toast storm.  When they predict a big snow most people head to the grocery and buy bread, milk and eggs so they’ve got French toast ingredients.  

While we were snowed in, I decided I was going to find a recipe for French toast casserole on the internet and try it.  It was just ok.  The problem was that I think there was a typo on the instructions because they said to use a 9” X 9” pan.  When the casserole was about 10 minutes from being done, I began to think my eyes were going.  Everything looked cloudy.  OOOpppps.  The 9” X 9” should have been a 9” X 13” pan.  So there was a big burned mess on the bottom of the oven.  I’m surprised the smoke alarm didn’t go off.  I cleaned up the spillage and ran the oven cleaner and then cleaned the grates.  That was something I hadn’t planned to do, but I’m glad it’s done. 

I fixed bacon and sausage to go along with the casserole.  We don’t normally eat this kind of breakfast, but with the weather it just seemed like the thing to do. 

 

More on what I’ve been working on in my next post. 

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you're finding some time to stitch today.  

Projects to Start the New Year

Hello Friends and Happy New Year

I’ve seen other bloggers post their goals for 2026.  I tend to work on what I’m in the mood for at the time.  Right now I’m working on Christmas projects that I’ve started over the years and never finished.  I usually get them out each year, look at them, and after Christmas is over they go back into hiding until the next year.  I have 4 that I’ve started.  I’d like to finish at least 2 of them before I move on to something else.  

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know that I love anything with hexagons.  The center of this one was the start of a Millefiori block if I remember right.  Then I had Christmas fabric that I could fussy cut, so I started making hexagons.  

I even freshened my Christmas fabric stash this fall with more fabric I could fussy cut and a nice striped binding.  I'm not sure where I'm going with this project which is probably why it keeps going back in the bag and stored away every year.  Any ideas? 

I started this Granny Stripe Afghan several years ago.  I’ve decided this is the year to finish it.  The first photo is where it was when I found it in the closet where all my yarn projects live.  

This photo is where I’m at now.  I’m really enjoying yarn projects so I expect a finish on this one.  

I started Merry Mistletoe earlier this year.  I was sure I’d have it done by Christmas. 

 I think my mistake was doing the hexagon part first because that’s my favorite part.  I should have saved those as my reward for finishing the embroidery.

I don’t think I’ve touched the embroidery since my original post about the project.

All I know about this Santa is that he’s from a McCall’s magazine.  At least that’s what I wrote when I posted a photo of him in a post in 2014.  So he’s been around for a long time.  I started hand quilting him.  I think this one falls on the What Was I Thinking list.  I don’t know if you can see how much is hand quilted, but I’ve been tempted to pick it out and just do some machine quilting on him so he will be finished.  

I spent a lot of time making different Christmas cookies the week before Christmas.  I think I made 5 different types, and my daughter came and made 2 other different recipes.  Plus I always make  of spiced pecans for my husband and son.  You can find the recipe on my Recipe Page under my blog header.  

Even though we had munched on cookies all Christmas Day, my grandsons like it when dessert time happens.  I made this toffee brownie trifle.  It was something I found on line, and was a hit.  

My Grandsons also came over the weekend before Christmas to bake cookies and decorate them.  Here’s some of their handy work.  

I  hope your holidays were happy ones.  We had a great time as usual with lots of family time which we really love.  I love Christmas decorating.  I put up 4 full sized trees plus other decorations, and it felt like it took forever to pack it all away.  I can do most of what I used to do, but I feel like it takes me twice as long to accomplish things  I don’t know if it’s the knee replacement or my age……or maybe both.  Can you relate?

                                                   

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today!!!

 

Christmas Decorating, Knitting and Crochet

I’m not sure where the time has gone, but December is half over already.  My favorite thing about the holidays is spending time with family and friends.  My second favorite thing is decorating the house for Christmas.  I love pulling out all my old favorite decorations to enjoy for the month (or maybe more).  I’ve made quilts, cross stitch and crocheted things that I love to unpack and display.  I wish I could show you everything, but for now I’ll start with the guest room.  Here is the quilt I made a few years ago.  This was a mystery quilt from Kevin the Quilter.  

This is the tree in the corner of the guest room.  I crocheted the tree skirt a few years ago.  The pattern is really easy.  I can share it with you if you’d like.  

I like to decorate our back porch.  It’s enclosed, but at these temperatures it’s too cold to sit out there.  Still, I enjoy looking at the decorations.  

The pillow on the couch is from my Charming Hexagon pillow pattern.  The pillows that look like giant peppermint candies came from the Target dollar spot last year.  I made the tree skirt under this tree, too.  It’s the same pattern as the one in the guest room.  It just looks different because I used different yarn. 

On the coffee table is a mix of pine cones from the farm where my husband grew up.  I touched up the pine cone edges with white paint.  Some even have glitter.  The vintage ornaments were on my mother-in -laws tree.  And the big light bulbs were on our house when we were first married and bought our first house.  

I haven’t done much sewing lately to show.  I’ve been enjoying knitting hats and scarves to donate.  

I was looking at my yarn UFOs, and I found this Christmas afghan that I started to crochet.  I checked on my crochet blog, and this picture was in a post there in September 2015.  This is a 10 year old UFO.  I really love this Granny Stripe pattern.  The pattern is on my crochet blog, too.  

I’ve put a few more rows on.  I’d love to finish this by Christmas, but I know that I’m a seasonal crafter.  Once Christmas is over this afghan will probably go back in the drawer until next year. I'm going to keep working on it so hopefully I'll finish in time. 

We had a nice Thanksgiving with only a few mishaps.  The top half of my double oven decided to be stuck on broil.  That was not helpful for trying to bake Thanksgiving dinner.  I know before I moved here I managed to get everything on the table at the same time with my oven, but I’ve gotten used to having two ovens to get all of the dishes baked and warm at the same time.  The oven was just repaired a couple days ago, so I’m ready for Christmas baking and cooking. 

The ice maker in our refrigerator door decided to stop working right after Thanksgiving, too.  My answer for everything that stops working is to throw the circuit breaker.  Well it worked.  So that was one repair we avoided.  Our garage door opener wouldn’t work over the summer, and throwing the circuit breaker fixed that, too.  It doesn’t work with everything, but I look at it like when I’m doing something on the computer and I click too many things too fast, and the computer hangs up.  Sometimes just a simple reboot helps.  The important thing is that we were all together and had a wonderful Thanksgiving day.  

There’s still lot to do.  Hope your Christmas plans are coming together.  

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today.