Finished or Not Friday: A July Recap of Sorts

With August starting,  I'm checking in with everyone over at Quilty Girl Alycia's for this week's Finished or Not Friday link-up!

The past few months of Summer have been very scattered for me.  I have worked on many projects but most not within the project timeframes or deadlines I'd planned.  The extreme heat we had often left me too drained to stick to my plans.  Added to that was numerous community garden days and my DH on vacation for a week which pushed my already scattered attention to the wind so my project plans got even more interrupted than could have been anticipated!  

And yet, when it comes to quilting the projects must prevail!  So here's a few things I've managed to either get done -- or not!

A 3 Yard Quilt-A-Thon!

First a big finish: a three yard quilt for a future raffle for my community garden:  Fabric Cafe's "Checkmate" pattern with a gardening theme!

Front

Back with label area.

The "Checkmate" design was featured as their June "Quilt of the Month".  Inspired by a kit in their video,  I made my own and finished the top in June but didn't finish the quilting until late July.  

The motif on the Checkerboard squares was done using the Silly Moon Quilting Co.'s "Picket Fence" ruler.

When my quilting focus was so scattered, I found that for all of May, June and early July,  I was consumed by watching new and old Fabric Cafe videos.  Watching their videos is always so inspiring especially since their designs always seem like they will be so simple to "fabric fund", cut out and piece. 

Of course all of that quilty inspiration (or should I say enabling) resulted in a bit of a "Fabric Cafe 3 Yard Quilt-A-Thon" with some purchases and project prep!  In late June, over the course of three days, I managed to cut out three more 3YQ kits!

One for St. Patrick's Day

One for Mardi Gras

A flannel kid quilt, possibly for donation

I've longed to make quilts for the two holidays because they often fall within the same week or sometimes even days of each other.  My plan is to quilt them "back to back" so I can just flip over to the side needed when each begins and then only have to store one quilt but can honor two holidays!  

While the fabrics for the St. Patrick's quilt are new, the two other kits have been in my stash for years so it's good to finally get them headed toward being made up.  

Catching up on my "Alaska BOM"

I had started making Edyta Sitar's "Alaska" design back in June of 2025.  I used a Red, Pink, White/Cream and Blue colorway that I saw posted on Edyta's blog back in 2019.  I had managed to stay pretty much on track making the blocks -- that is until this summer, LOL!  I was supposed to make the last of the blocks I needed for the center back in May and when I didn't get it done that month or in June, I was determined to get them done in July.  I finally did although that didn't happen until the last week of the month.

 These were eight mirror image blocks so now this is the completed layout of the center of that quilt:

Of course now I need to sew all of those blocks together!  Unfortunately,  I am still not finished with the block making as I plan to make an addtional pieced outer border of blocks following another version of the design I'd seen on Edyta's blog when she was asked how to make the original design bigger.

Alaska with an extended border

So the BOM block making will continue probably well into September.

Other Red, Cream and Blue Quilting

"Alaska" was also one of the projects that was on my list of things to work on during this "patriotic season" from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  And while I have other projects from past periods that were supposed to also fill that production time, instead something NEW came up in the quilt project crosshairs!  Do you remember when MODA offered "Frivols" tins back in 2016?

What it included

This is the second one in the series of twelve offered that year.  It features fabrics by Minick & Simpson from their "Polka-Dots & Paisleys" line.  I have picked up a few of the different Frivols tins over the years on the secondary market and when this one came up at a great price I had to snap it up!  I did have good reasons though:  I'm a big fan of those designers having made my Brrr! quilt back in 2013 from one of their lines and in this kit the fabrics are in the "patriotic colors" of the current season.  

Then there is the fact that looking around, most of the offers for this tin were selling at premium prices way above what they originally retailed for so finding one below the retail price was a score.  The biggest reason was that often the projects in these tins required purchasing additional background fabric in order to be made but this is one of the ones where the fabrics in it covered everything except the backing and binding.  Needless to say I couldn't resist making it up!

Top and backing and a label was part of the kit!

Further proof that this was "meant to be" was that when I went looking to see if I might still find fabric from the line for the backing and binding, I found something even better!  Someone on eBay was selling just the fabrics from this same tin and also at a decent price!!  How lucky was that?!?  Even so I still needed to fill out the back a bit and had seen two prints from a more recent line of theirs called "Union Square" and picked them up too.  The two prints were of -- wait for it -- Paisleys and Polka Dots, LOL!  

I had hoped to have been able to have this quilted before I had to post but just finished these up last night so this is in the category of "Finished But Not (Fully) Finished" as we cross stitchers say.

Edited To Add:  You can now see it "fully finished" here!

The other good news is that back in 2022, I had signed up for Minick &  Simpson's “Blue Pear”  Block of the Month.  The blocks in it were colored with Blue and Lime Green fabrics on neutral backgrounds.  Later that year after seeing Pat Sloan's “Hometown Charm” quilt colored in Red, Cream, Blue with Lime Green accents, I decided to source and add M&S Red fabrics to the BOM kit stash with the idea of now making it up to look similar in coloring to Pat's quilt.  

Plan:  Color this to look similar to this

So with the extra kit fabrics, I also have some extra Red and Red on Cream fabric squares to add to that project stash.

Once Again, Something to "Show"

Another project that was supposed to have gotten done earlier this summer but didn't happen until July was that I finally made up the bowl cozies commemorating the "House of the Dragon" TV series.

Dragon Scales and Flying Dragons prints

Flying Dragons and what I call the "Harrenhall" prints

I have a good friend who also loves the show and had a birthday in June so my plan had been to have had these ready for her to choose one then.  Didn't happen but luckily we both had to attend a community meeting this past week so I was able to let her do that then.  I gave her the option of taking one or both and she chose the "dragon scales" one.  Fortunately I have enough of these fabrics left to make another one.  

What was supposed to also get done during this time but didn't was to quilt the dragon quilt top I made back in 2022.  The show's current season began airing back on June 21 and there is now only two more episodes to go.  I'm hoping that now that I finally got the "Checkmate" quilt done,  I might be able to focus on getting the dragon quilt quilted so I can have it ready for when the next (and last) season of the show airs two years from now. 

Not Much Either For "Christmas In July"

The last thing I had planned to work on in July was to finally quilt the two tops I finished back in 2024.

Needless to say that didn't get done!  However, I have a real simple plan for the top quilt in the picture ("Christmas Trip Around the World") so might still try and get that done as an August project.  I'm due to visit my MIL and her longarm in September so am thinkng I might take the bottom "Letters To Santa" one with me on the trip and try to finish that one there.  There are two other CIJ projects that still need piecing.  I may try to make the easier of the two this month but the other more involved one will have to wait until October or November to get back to.

I did however do one little thing for CIJ:  in July the Quilting Books, Patterns and Notions website had a clearance sale and I picked up this:

The ornament on the right was the one I really wanted but was already "out of stock" when I was on the site.  However,  I also liked the one on the left so got it.  I liked that it was Red and White so would go with my Red and White Christmas decorating.  

I had liked the other one for the black plaid behind it which would go with the Red/Black/Green/White/Gold decorating scheme I plan to do this year (that is, if I finish those CIJ projects!).  When it arrived,  I realized I had just the thing in stash to make BOTH desires work!

I just sewed two fabric circles slightly larger than the ornament together,  stiffened them with interfacing and taped them to the back of the ornament I had purchased.  So I can use it this year and remove the backing circle when I want it to just be a Red and White ornament.  Problem solved!  

So that's a taste of what a scattered summer quilt mind looks like!  Hopefully your Summer has been a little more organized and you were able to complete some projects.  I guess I'll find out when I head back over to Alycia's and read what everyone else has posted for "Finished or Not Friday" this week!

Finished or Not Friday: A Recap of September and October Finishes

Whew!  September and October were quite busy life-wise and as a result my blog became a victim of neglect.  Fortunately that was not the case with my quilting and in fact a lot of the busyness was related to it!  The good news is that having those projects helped during yet another time when having things either in the works or with deadlines helped to keep my mind focused during times of stress.

Equally helpful is to have hosts like the lovely Quilty Girl Alycia to provide a place for us to "jot this all down for posterity" through her weekly "Finished Or Not Friday" linkups!

So here are the things I worked on these past two months and that I am pleased to say also made it to the finish line (and this is your official "Long Post Ahead" warning!!!):

Finish #1:  A Fall Flannel Raffle Quilt (try saying that three times fast!)

One of the potential stressors was that I thought I would need a raffle quilt on short notice for an Art Show my community garden had announced in mid-August was being planned.  When word of it was shared at our monthly meeting, my expectation was for a late September or October show as we have held in the past.  I quickly came up with an idea for a display of my quilts with the theme being -- appropriately enough -- "Fall Quilts" and made a pile of the ones I planned to display.

Having successfully made a quilt to raffle off at our last show two years ago ,  I knew I would be expected to do the same again.  As such I went with the same simple design for it:  I decided to make another 9 Fat Quarter Disappearing Nine Patch quilt.  The good news there was that I already had a great bundle of Fall colored flannels purchased during a shop hop last year.  Eight of the fabrics in the bundle were from Holly Taylor's "Endangered Sanctuary" line for MODA and the cardinal print was from her “Cardinal Reflections” line.   

This was it laid out on my design wall.

When I opened the bundle, I had been surprised to find that one of the fat quarters in it was a border print that featured images of woodland animals (you can see what it looks like as yardage in the fabric line link above).  Not what I had expected but great for the purposes of this FQ design!  It did require a bit of fussy cutting and then cutting and sewing up the FQs a little differently than in the normal "disappearing block" process in order to get them placed properly in the final layout.  I liked the way it all worked out in the end!  

For the backing, I was fortunate to find and purchase another print from the "Endangered Sanctuary" line which I used to fill out the center of the back and for the binding.  I filled out the rest of the back with a brown tone-on-tone flannel print I had leftover from making this quilt from a good while back.  Just proof that leftovers and scraps can be helpful stash too!  

I got it done right before we went on our last camping trip for the season during the last weekend of September.  The campground provided a great place to get a nice picture of the finished quilt in an apropos location!

Unfortunately, a date for the Art Show still hadn't been announced by the time of our trip and the following weekend we were scheduled to travel down down to North Carolina for our annual Fall trip to visit my MIL.  So the good news is that if they do the event next year, I already have everything I need to participate!

Finish #2:  My First Quilt of Valor Donation! 

Speaking of North Carolina, we last visited there back in February.  Since my MIL is also a quilter, our visit is usually also a mini quilt retreat for the two of us.  On that trip,  I joined her quilt guild since I have attended both general and "bee group" guild meetings and workshops as a guest with her over the last couple of years.  Her guild is the Tar River Quilters Guild and they have many subgroup "bees" and many Community Outreach projects that members can participate in and contribute to.  When I joined, I picked up two outreach quilt kits one of which was for a Quilt of Valor which included fabric for the top and binding and a label.  

The guild holds a QOV presentation ceremony every November and the QOV tops have to be submitted by the end of September to the quild member that longarms them.  At the time I joined the guild, the rule was that you submitted a backing with your finished top so I had purchased fabric for my kit before we left NC (it's the blue fabric with stars at the top in the picture above).  I had the usual "quilter's expectations" to get both of the kits done before we returned for our Fall visit.  Of course, it took my MIL reminding me about the QOV submission deadline to finally get it started in August, LOL!!  

By that time, the donation rules had changed:  the guild had received a funding source for their QOV efforts so now, you just submitted the top, prepared binding and $20 and the member doing the longarming (who is also co-chair of the "Patriotic Bee") would provide the backing, batting and the quilting.  The pattern for the kit was a simple one but it turned out that the fabric balance in the kit left a little to be desired and the fabric provided for the borders was a little short too!  

The good news was that now that I no longer needed to submit it, I was able to use some of the backing fabric I had purchased to help me come up with a color distribution that was pleasing to me for the layout in the center.  That then left some extra bits of the remaining fabrics provided in the kit to craft pieced borders that helped stretch the white solid that had been provided for that purpose.

I did have to do some more work on that
lower right border before sending it though!

I managed to get the top done and the binding prepped by the end of August.  The top,  binding and a label that was included in the kit and now with my name written in as the maker was put in the mail back to NC so it could be submitted for quilting in early September.  

As noted earlier, we were scheduled to return to NC the first weekend of October and would be there for two weeks.  I expected that the quilt would have been quilted by the time we arrived and that my task in the first few days of our arrival would be to attach the binding and sew on the label by hand.  Well imagine my surprise when we attended the bee meeting and I learned that my quilt was not only quilted but had already been bound and the label attached!

The quilt displayed at the monthly guild meeting.

One of the guild angels had already handled the binding and label application for me!!  So I am happy to say that my very first QOV donation will be presented to a veteran at the guild's November meeting tomorrow!  Unfortunately, I won't be there for the ceremony but hopefully will be able to get pictures of the presentation from the guild newsletter or my MIL.  

The Patriotic Bee has decided to push for members to submit QOV tops all year round to take the stress off of getting them prepped for the ceremony as it would seem that I was not the only one that waited until close to the deadline to submit their top.  I am already looking forward to making another top for the guild that I can have ready for our return in February (and check out my sidebar to see what else I will be attending in NC that month!).  I am also once again encouraged to push forward in getting the four (!) QOV tops I've already made quilted and find out how to donate them in my own community at their annual Veteran's Day ceremony.  

Finished Quilts #3, #4 and #5:  Results of a 3 Yard Quilt Retreat

As I said, when we visit my MIL, she and I usually have a mini quilt retreat.  When we go down in the Fall, it is also during the time that there is a Shop Hop in her state.  So we also spend a few days visiting the quilt shops that are within a couple of hours drive from where she lives.  As a result, I try to take projects that are either simple to piece or don't require alot of mental focus since whatever work I do on them in the limited time we have together will be interrupted by shopping, guild meetings or other community events or activities that she wants us to attend with her.

For this trip, I decided to make my focus the many kits I have compiled to make "3 Yard Quilts" by the Fabric Cafe.  We both love the designs they come out with which are often great inspiration for our shop hopping or for stash busting.  I will admit that I now have too many kit bundles already put together so it actually kept me from shopping for more on this trip!  My hope was to piece up some of the ones that I already had and even better, quilt them using my MIL's longarm.  

On that end I was somewhat successful as I did get these three at least cut out, pieced and quilted before we left after that two week stay:

While all of these got pieced and quilted,  only one also got bound.  Once we returned home, one of the remaining two still needed to be trimmed.  So the story of those quilts are:   

#3: The Barbie Quilt!

Top made with the "Allure" pattern from "The Magic of 3 Yard Quilts" book

Back with a label area pieced in and using a cheater print
which was also used as one of the fabrics for the top.

Fabrics and quilting detail.

The inspiration for making this quilt was our trip to NC last year for the funeral of my MIL's sister.  My DH and I had traveled down for it with one of her two remaining sisters and that sister's daughter and granddaughter.  At the time, the "Barbie" movie had recently come out and despite the sad occasion, we managed to have a lot of fun talking and joking about "the world of Barbie" with the granddaughter during that trip.  

When my DH and I returned to NC earlier this year, I had come across some "Barbie" related fabric on a trip to Hobby Lobby and just knew I had to make a quilt for that little girl with it.  The pinks in the two prints I found coordinated perfectly with a patchwork cheater print that was also on sale so I immediately made plans to work on a 3YQ to give to her.  With it all done, it looks like it can now definitely be a Christmas gift for her this year!  

#4:  Another S'Gnomies Quilt!

Front made with the "Sew Fast" pattern.

The back is fleece.

This too is another quilt with a prior trip provenance:  right before our trip in February, I had pieced another 9FQDNP quilt as a birthday gift for a long-time friend of mine.  She's a big fan of Gnomes and I had found a FQ bundle using Shelly Comisky's "I Love S'Gnomies" flannel fabric line for Henry Glass Fabrics.  In the process of stashing for that project, I wound up buying a lot of extra fabric due to the timing of the arrival of a print I had originally planned to use in the backing of that quilt and needing to buy more of a directional print in order for it to work in that design the way I wanted.   

So when that project was finished, I still had quite a bit of stash left over that I thought would be enough to make another quilt.  Then when Joann's went out of business earlier this year,  I saw some fleece fabric that was the perfect color to go with the leftovers.  I had used fleece as backing for a quilt some years back and loved how the quilting looked on it.  When I finished quilting this one, I had trimmed it in prep for binding which is what you saw in the picture at the start of this reporting section.  Unfortunately, I was just short of having enough of the Aqua Snowflake print I preferred for the binding so had to get a little more of it.  When it came in last week, I was then able to complete that last task.

And it looks like I'm not done with this fabric line!  I often receive sales promotion notices from the Annie's Attic catalog site and even though I was not planning on buying anything,  I figured I'd just take a look to see what they were offering --- I know, never a good idea!  Well what did I see but a kit on sale to make one (or possibly two) rag pillows made in this same fabric line!  I had purchased the starting FQ bundle and a panel for the quilt I had made back in February from Annie's so was not surprised they might have more of the fabric still in stock.  

I actually like making pillow covers and have never tried making a "rag quilt" style project before so I admit I was intrigued.  What was not totally clear from the kit description was if the kit did supply fabric for just one pillow or for two.  Even so, I was not sure I had a need for two pillows since I really don't even have a personal need or person in mind for this quilt right now.  However, it was a tempting (and cheap) enough idea that I decided to look around both to see what the process of this technique involves and to see if there were any other rag pillow designs out there of interest that I might even be able to make from the fabric I already had left.  Sure enough, look and ye shall find!

I found this even less expensive kit on another website and liked that it was definitely for one pillow and was bigger than the one (or ones) made in the Annie's kit.  That kit has since arrived and now is on the list of projects to tackle in November!     

#5:  The "Cheers" Quilt

The "Fandango" pattern from the "Make It Modern with 3 Yard Quilts" book.

More flannel fabric for the backing!

Fabric and Quilting Detail

This one was also the result of a prior trip but it was the camping one in September!  Well actually, this also started with the Joann's GOOB sales as I found the licensed "Cheers" prints there.  At our prior garden Art Shows, everyone always asked if I sell my quilts.  I am leary of doing so only because while we quilters know how much fabric and more importantly time costs in making a quilt (and if you've never thought about that check out this post or this one),  I believe most people seem to put the value of a handmade quilt at what they can pay for a mass-produced one in a store.  

However, I do believe you can convince people to accept a rate closer to what it actually costs if you can make a quilt personal enough to them.  I think wedding, baby and t-shirt quilts fall into this category but I also think "themed" quilts around movies and TV shows could do the same.  So when I saw the discounted licensed prints,  I thought they would be good prospects along with the fairly quick to make 3YQ designs for some potential "for sale" quilts.  

And that was my plan for the two sets of fabrics I coordinated together (I have another fabric that features framed B&W pictures of the show's characters) and the plaid flannel that I bought for backing and binding both.  That is until we went on that last camping trip for the season at the end of September.  We have been camping with a co-worker of my DH who has organized trips for a group of family, friends and co-workers for the last five years and we have gone with them the last two years.  

This last trip we took was to scout out a potential campground for next year's Memorial Day weekend trip.  We camped at Lake Taghkanic state park which is actually the very first one my DH and I camped at over 30 years ago!  

So we were excited at the chance to check it out with her as well as a chance to take a trip down memory lane.  While there were a few things that were the same as we remembered like the lake with the beachfront swimming area:  

However, by and large we believe the actual campsites and campground set-up is way different now than it was all those years (no, decades!) ago.  

Our campsite and setup this trip.

While there are still some ground tent sites, we don't remember there being any platform sites back in the day!  

During one of our stints around the campfire, his co-worker mentioned a fondness for the "Cheers" TV show!  Well, you know what immediately went off in my head:  Gift Quilt!!  She knows that I quilt and has seen the quilt we use that has now become a permanent part of our camping kit (which can be seen here).  We had also talked a few years ago about her commissioning a quilt from me.  While this isn't the design we talked about,  I was really excited to make and give her another one in the meantime in appreciation for all the work she does in planning and organizing the camping gatherings we have attended.  

 A Short Aside about Longarming 

I want to again note that these last three were all quilted on the longarm my MIL purchased back in 2023.  Ever since, every trip down has been a chance for us both to learn more about using it.  She has a Handiquilter Moxie that came with a tablet to run the Prostitcher stitch patterns software.  However back in June,  the battery on the tablet malfunctioned (the term she was told is "exploded") and caused the back to pull away from the front of the tablet.  She has been waiting on a replacement so this was the perfect time to learn some lessons and get some practice on how to quilt free-hand or free-motion on her machine.  We had actually tried to do a bit of that on our last trip earlier this year but now were forced by circumstance to really dive deep into the process.  As is with doing free-motion on a domestic machine, it takes time and more importantly practice to get comfortable doing the stitching without the machine guiding it.   

We also once again started off dealing with tension problems and so once again learned more lessons about how longrams work.  This time it was realizing that when you thread the machine -- and unlike when you thread a domestic machine -- it is not enough to just guide the thread around the upper tension disk area.  

In the case of the longarm, you actually have to be sure that the thread is "popped" between the disks.  We started off experiencing lots of looping on the back of the test pieces we stitched only to find out that the simple problem was that the thread wasn't actually seated between the disks!  Once we resolved that, the tension balanced itself and we could move on to improving our free-motion skills.  

I've done more free-motion on my domestic than my MIL has on hers so I was a little more comfortable with it than she was.  However, we both got some stitching on actual quilts done and both can see where more practice in the future will definitely help us improve!  That doesn't mean we don't also look forward to getting the tablet and pre-programmed stitches back though, LOL!  We have also discussed that on the next trip down we are going to go halvesies and invest in a ruler base and she is going to purchase a ruler foot.  She already has a couple of rulers and I will bring down the ones I have that are made for longarms and that will be our next scheduled longarm lesson!  

Whew!  If you've stuck around this long, thank you!  I know it's a lot but this is what happens when you don't blog for a couple of months!  I should note that there was also quite a bit of cross stitching going on during this period but I'll save that for another post!  So head back over with me to check out what everyone else has to share this crafty week at Quilty Girl Alycia's for Finished Or Not Friday!

To Do Tuesday: Some September & October Recap and November Planning

Hello November!  It's been a busy couple of months to the point that the blog went by the wayside.  So this will be a partial catch-up as well as a look at what I hope to get done in the coming week (and/or weeks).  As always, I am grateful to our host Carol at Quilt Schmilt for providing the opportunity to link up with all of this for "To Do Tuesday".

When I last posted at the start of September, I had this going on:

Quilt Of Valor Donation Quilt

I had reported that I managed to get the top done and the binding prepped for the QOV kit by the end of August.  I put it in the mail back to my MIL's quilt guild in North Carolina in preparation for it to be quilted in September by one of the guild's members.  I am pleased to say that not only did it get done but it will be presented to a veteran this coming weekend!

More on the details of how all of that transpired will be in a "Finished Or Not Friday" post at the end of this week.  

My plans for the week of my last report had been as follows:

1.  I now need to get September's "Alaska BOM" blocks cut and ready for leader/ender sewing.

That did get done but it was touch and go for a while there!

This was the third month of my project to make Edyta Sitar's design in "Block of the Month" fashion.  Previously I had made notes for some of the blocks I was going to be making  in an attempt to try and stay organized about which fabrics and cuts I need to make for them.  

For that month's block, I had cut the corner and small triangles just fine but when I first went to cut the diamonds for the block, I cut them too large.  I am using Marti Michell's Kaleido-rulers to make all the blocks.  This is the first time I've needed to use both the "Large" and "Small" rulers for one block but was intially wrong about which ruler and cutting line to use to cut the diamond units.  

So I stepped back through the construction process and made a test block out of scraps to better visualize what I was supposed to be doing.

I had (and still have!) a big box of scraps from old projects sitting in my space.  I had hoped to process them as I worked on other things.  However they are also helpful to draw from when I need to make a test block for a project.  In this case, these are scraps left over from when I made my MIL's husband a quilt for Christmas all the way back in 2017.  He was a big fan of Westerns so I made a quilt from a western-themed fabric line that was out at the time.  

It was a big help to run through the steps for making the block and clarify just how and what I needed to cut.  I was even forced due to fabric limitations to try piecing the diamonds into the block in two ways:  as whole diamonds and diamonds pieced as two-triangles. Not only did I get the cutting for that month's block on track but I worked out the specs for two more blocks in the project and reviewed the specs for the blocks I had already mapped out.   I made sure to make clearer notes about the cutting and piecing steps so I don't have problems setting up the blocks  going forward.  

However after all of that set-up work, I did not get the blocks stitched up!  Then I also didn't get October's blocks cut out.  So it looks like now the "To Do" for this week will be to cut blocks for both October AND November and hopefully get the blocks for all three months sewn up by the end of this month.  

2.  I will resume stitching on my "New York Skyline" cross stitch project.  

By the start of September, I had completed the first two pages of the pattern....

....so the plan for the rest of that month was to continue stitching on it and complete the third page.  While I did continue stitching, by the last weekend of that month as we prepared to go on our last camping trip for the season, I was still only halfway through that page:

Then I didn't get to stitch on it any more for October partly because I focused on the next project on September's "To Do" list.  Also we were heading down to visit my MIL the following weekend and I had planned to take my "Open Your Heart" project with me to work on during that trip.  

It had been my hope to complete that page and the remaining two pages of this pattern by the end of this month so I will just have to see how far I get with it all but definitely hope to get it stitched and "fully finished before the year ends.  

3.  Continuing work on a new holiday cross stitch project.

The project that had competed with  "Skyline" for attention in September and pre-empted work on it during October was this year's Fat Quarter Shop "Christmas In July" Stitch Along  called "Up On the Rooftop".  In my last report, I was here with it: 

  

By the end of September, I was up to here:

My hope was to finish it so I can display it with "Letters To Santa",  last year's FQS CIJ cross stitch design that I finished up back in July.  I want to create a display with them that will also incorporate the "Patchwork Bow" using Christmas scraps that I had made for Melva's "CIJ Blog Hop".   

Well the good news on that front is that I did get this one finished although it took a lot longer than planned!

When I hadn't finished this by the end of September, I took it with us when we visited my MIL for the first two weeks of October.  I thought I would get it finished up quickly while down there but for some reason once I got to the sled part, filling it in proved to be very challenging since it is colored with two different reds that are close in color.  Whenever I stitched on it, I really, really had to concentrate to get the patterning correct.  

I continued to work on it once we returned home and finished the last of it just as the month ended.  No wait, actually when I finished the sleigh, I realized I had incorrectly positioned two of the little white motifs above it on the right side so on Monday quickly "frogged" and re-stitched them so now the stitching on this is totally finished!   

4. Make a quilt to raffle at the community garden Art Show.  

In my last TDT report, I had talked about plans to make another raffle quilt.  I already had a fall themed FQ bundle that I purchased on a Shop Hop and had planned to make another of the "9 Fat Quarter Disappearing Nine Patch" quilts that I have enjoyed making.  Well I'm pleased to say I did get that quilt done in September!

As I worked on the top and backing on my design wall....

The finished quilt!

Details on that quilt  (as well as the quilts I made while I was away) will also be in the FONF post at the end of the week.  Unfortunately, a date for the show was not announced before we left for NC and on our return, I learned that our garden's President had been hospitalized in our absence and is currently still in recovery.  On a positive note:  if our garden decides to do another show next year,  I already have my plan for a display and the raffle quilt!     

The last thing on my previous list was to work on another charity quilt for the guild in NC.  I didn't get to that before our trip nor during it so I've put that one on the back burner for the moment.  We will be heading back down to NC in February so I will probably try to restart that project at the start of 2026.  

So the recap for this week's "To Do" list is:

1.  Once again resume stitching on my "New York Skyline" cross stitch project and finish Page 3 of the pattern.  I may also work on my "Open Your Heart" project if I feel up to it or am so inclined.

2.  Cut out the "Alaska" BOM blocks for October and November.  I will try to also start stitching up the September blocks and plan to try to finish the blocks for all three months by the end of this month. 

3.  Sketch out some plans for "fully finishing" the two Christmas-In-July cross stitch pieces. 

4.  Something new I'd like to work on this week is that I haven't put out my Fall decorations yet:

I also have a new one I'd love to start working on: 

These are the supplies for a wool wallhanging called "Midnight Garden" (available digitally here and in print here). The Ackfeld hanger I want to use with it just came yesterday.  I've already printed out the applique templates and gathered a background from my homespuns stash and wools from my wool stash.  It's been a while since I've made someting with wools so it'll be fun to try it again!

So that's my catching up and plans for the week.  It will also be nice to finally get to check in again to see what everyone else is up to over at Carol's "Quilt Schmilt" for "To Do Tuesday"!