April 2026 – Page 2 – Time to Quilt

Patriotic Brick Street

It’s been a busy week, but I finished this quilt and I’m happy with it. It’s based on the Fabric Cafe pattern called Brick Street. You can find the pattern individually or in their book, Fast & Fun 3-Yard Quilts. I added an extra row to lengthen it.

I also made a small wall hanging quilt for my guild’s challenge, but I can’t show it until after the meeting since it will be voted on and some members might read my blog. 🙂

I didn’t take a photo of the back but this is the American flag print I used on it.

After rearranging fabric all week, I definitely need to use my fabric stash instead of stressing over finding the “perfect” backing.

Here’s the before on the left and after on the right.

While organizing, I decided to do my annual inventory, which I usually do in June, my birthday month. Since I took everything off the shelves, it felt right to do it now.

Here’s a preview of the before and after photo. Tomorrow, I’ll show you where I moved my pre-cuts (mostly fat quarters) and kits. The majority of my kits are just fabric grouped by project but a couple of them were purchased from my local quilt shop. I’ve numbered them and created a list for quick reference so I can easily pull them out and sew when I’m ready.

I really hope there’s something good on T.V. tonight because I’m too tired to do much else than lay on the couch! 🙂

Breaking up is hard to do

If you quilt, you create fabric scraps, and eventually, storing them can become complicated. Accumulation often outpaces use. This leads to the question: Save or toss? Most of us would hesitate to discard a half yard piece of leftover backing fabric, but what about smaller pieces? What size, type do you keep and why? It’s easier to use yardage, pre-cuts or even newly purchased fabric, and that means scraps pile up.

Every quilter has their own threshold for what to keep versus what goes in the trash. Last night I was texting with a friend who’s planning to move in a few months. She was taking a good hard look at her stash and making tough decisions about what to keep.

You can spend hours, if not days on end, watching YouTube videos and reading blog posts about how to sort your scraps, but space is finite. Eventually, you run out of room to store them no matter how much thought, and work, you’ve put into organizing. That realization smacked me in the face this morning when I walked into my sewing room and was thinking about my friend facing her own stash decisions..

Once again it’s messy! 🙄 It gets messy because it’s harder than it should be to put stuff away. It’s harder to put stuff away because there’s too much of it.
So, I’ll start with the two areas that only need a quick rearrangement to look better and then slowly make the hard decisions about things that need to go.

My string bins are fine with just a small pile of fabric on top that I was auditioning for a quilt but need to be put away now.

My stacks of fabric need some TLC but I now have room at the bottom that I can use for the bolts of wide backing. That leaves room on the top shelf for the large pieces of yardage . Once I pull those big pieces out, I’ll be able to see if there are some fabrics I no longer love and let them go. The goal is to make it easier to both retrieve, and put away, the fabric I have.

Scraps piling up faster than I can use them!

I need to make sure I’m only keeping what I’ll actually use and let go of the “maybe” and “some day” fabrics among them.

It’s better to have a clean organized space that I enjoy, compared to one where I’m hoarding so much fabric that there simply isn’t room to “put things away”.

Rainbow Over Australia

I wrote about making the blocks for this quilt last month. They were the 80 blocks I took to our guild meeting last weekend to show how easy it is to remove the papers. I prefer using paper instead of fabric foundations. Some ladies even joked that I was tricking them like Tom Sawyer but I’ll never tell! 😉

Stephanie, an Australian member of our Heartstrings online group, came up with this layout so I’m calling it “Rainbow over Australia” to give her full credit for such a great idea. She’s not just a gifted quilter but an extremely prolific one as well. Quite a feat considering she quilts everything on her domestic machine.

I finished stitching down the binding last night then worked a bit on a new patriotic Brick Street quilt, my favorite 3 Yard Quilt pattern by Fabric Cafe.

I’m behind on frankenbatting, which will be the very next item on my to-do list. I need to use up the small amount of thread left on my longarm bobbins while I’m at it.

My list of inspiration quilts is still untouched so I need to focus on rotating between string quilts, simple Villa Rosa or Fabric Cafe type, and my bucket list. I also want to keep cutting a few scraps at a time to prevent them from overflowing the basket. I need more hours in my day, and more days in my week!

The next quilt will be one from my bucket list. I think I’ll chose the one that looks to be the closest to the finish line.

My doctor’s appointment went well yesterday. Good thing because I need to live a long time to finish all the quilts I want to make. 🙂

String block challenge – first quarter

In December, I wrote about the online Heartstrings group’s informal annual string block challenge. Today marks the beginning of a new quarter and I’m eager to see how I’m doing. This calculator shows that 90 days have passed, including the start and end dates, so I don’t need to check my calendar to count the actual number of days. I was recovering from a short stint in the hospital after Christmas and didn’t do any sewing in January. So I wondered, did I still manage to make at least 90 blocks??? 🙂

THIS photo from 2007 on the Heartstrings Quilt Project page has always inspired me. When I need motivation to start a new set of blocks, this is where I find it.

I don’t count my blocks until the quilt is completely finished. Here are the ones completed since the year began. If I remember to do this every quarter, it’ll be easier to total them up at the end of the year.

When I looked back, I realized I never posted a photo of the one I finished on March 13th.

I used 12 string blocks for the sashing. I began with 10″ x 12.5″ rectangle string blocks, then cut each one into 4 units measuring 2.5″ x 12.5″.

Here are the other three. For the Kaffe Fasset and patriotic string quilts I used the easy method of making two half square triangles at a time. For that reason, I’m only counting half as many blocks as you see in those two quilts.

So, let’s count:

12 – patriotic sashing (finished March 13)
24 – Kaffe Fasset 48 HST’s (finished March 6)
60 – patriotic 120 HST’s (finished February 27)
20 – puppy quilt (finished February 21)

116 blocks total

Yay! The patriotic half square triangle blocks only measure 6″ finished instead of 9″ but, I’m giving myself a break on that. I think the pieced blocks in the sashing quilt and the needle turn appliqued puppy make up for it. 🙂

Today I’m stitching the binding down on an 80 block string quilt so I’ll be ahead of my goal. I’m ready to get to my other goals for this year, these bucket list quilts! I think I’ll choose the easiest one first, or maybe one I’ve already made a little progress on. I could always number them and pull one from the hat… hmmm. How to choose?