UFO Challenge September 2026

Summer by Barbara Ana has been my focus over this weekend. I completed the gorgeous strawberry headdress on Saturday and progressed to the fishes on the left-hand side. I have now progressed to the right-hand side and I'm excited to see it finished.

Don't they look great together. A slightly darker fabric might have made the white pop more, but in real life the white is more visible. I plan to continue working on this piece this week, whilst quilting a second quilt for a customer.

 

Customer quilts

I have finished quilting the first of two quilts for a customer. This is a classic spider's web pattern and the customer asked me to choose the pattern and thread. I used a cream thread and a digital pattern called malachite which picks up the print on the dark blue fabric.

My plan is to load the customer's second quilt onto my long arm this weekend, ready to quilt it on Monday. This weekend I will stitch the strawberry section of my UFO challenge cross stitch piece.

September 2026 UFO challenge

 

This is probably my UFO challenge piece with the most work to be done and what I had done, I soon found was one stitch out. It is summer by Barbara Ana ddesigns. My counting is not the best. I decided that I needed to focus on this piece as daily goals were not working for me. On Saturday I worked across the bottom of the piece to the base of the neck It is not quite complete, but I am added to it whilst working on the face when I had half a thread left.

On Sunday I worked on the face and hair and some thread colours are complete which is exciting. Once this summer lady is finished, the four seasons will be complete and ready for framing. I am planning to start on the strawberries on top of the head. I have two customer quilts ready to be quilted this week and I can put some more stitches in whilst the computerised machine does it thing.

Stash Bee Bock of the Month

 

August is definitely over and it's much cooler, allowing us to get back to our sewing rooms. I've had three lovely packages this week. Three more are in the post with one more to follow. I love all of the fabrics - Karen Lewis, Lizzy's House and Alison Glass seem popular choices to us.

Don't the blocks received so far look great together. I think I'll have enough to make a ladder quilt and perhaps two quilts to donate for Quilts for Care Leavers.

I received two customer quilts on Monday and will start working on them today, then I have two more to call in. I don't like too many piling up as it makes me anxious. I also have a table runner to quilt for Lizzie and then my star quilts towards the end of the month.

A small forest for Anne

 

It' bad news for my Atelier 7, it can't be fixed locally so needs to be sent to England for repair. I need to review my options and decide what to do. In the meantime, I have used my Siger featherweight to make these blocks for the Stash Bee for Anne. I have made this block before so spent two hours making five pairs of blocks for Anne which were posted yesterday.

The tutorial for the block can be found here.

Liminal quilt month 3

 

I am very pleased that my attempt to stitch month 3 of the Liminal Quilt by Jo Averry for Love Patchwork and Quilting on my Singer Featherweight was successful. When my Atelier 7 comes back from the spa, I'd like to stitch the three parts together.  I am using the kit from A Beautiful Thing. There is insufficient fabric to stitch long borders to one element of month 2 so I will have to accept that I will have to put a seam in the border.

I have packed everything away in the box again, putting aside any scrap that I think will be too small for the project, ready to pass to a friend in November.

When life gives you lemons ...

 I had just started stitching month 3 of Liminal quilt on Tuesday when I couldn't raise the needle. Very annoying. Lizzie was visiting for a few days so she dropped me at the opticians and then dropped off my Atelier 7 to our local dealer for a service. I am going to have to be patient as Rachel has six machines to service before the school term starts and she is closed for two days this bank holiday weekend.

I relayed the news to my husband and suggested that this would be the perfect time to paint the skirting boards in my sewing room. He applied the first coat yesterday whilst waiting to collect me from the hospital and hopefully it will be finished this weekend. In the meantime, my singer featherweight has come out of storage so that I can finish the Liminal borders for month three.

Take a stand bag

Lizzie booked a last minute short trip back to Jersey and arrived last Thursday. I should have been having some procedures done at our local hospital on Thursday, but they cancelled with ninety minutes notice, as someone hadn't signed a form!! I now have that to look forward to this Thursday and I checked - the form has been signed.

We cut out most of our pieces on Wednesday and it was more straight forward than the Running with Scissors case which goes with this bag. Fewer thick layers to negotiate.

I need to order some more fold over elastic as I only have a small amount of the fuchsia pink left and Lizzie needs some too. Lizzie leaves tomorrow so I'm not sure what she's leaving behind for Nick to take in the car in October.

Stash bee BOM - every day is like Christmas

After returning my my third hospital appointment of the week on Friday, I was delighted to receive Gill’s two blocks. They are all going to look so fabulous together.

I was on cake duty at our guild on Saturday, so I took some fabrics to cut out some flying geese units to pair with the four 6” blocks Jane has sewn for me. It didn’t take long to sew these up on Saturday evening.

Only two hospital appointments this week, one of which will be far from stress free!

August UFO complete

 

This is definitely a snuggly winter top and not for this hot weather. I took my time to choose the patter (Jarrah Sweater) and the size (10) o it wouldn't swamp me. Sewn both on my Janome overlocker and my Atelier 7. I don't have a great variety of colours of overlocker thread, so I went with black. I still spend too much time threading the machine, despite it being the air threader machine!! 

View D of the pattern is cropped so I added 4" to the body length and the fabric is thick, so I did a one inch hem instead of 1/2"The sleeves are too long so I need to shorten them before putting away the red thread on my sewing machine. That is my UFO project completed for August but I am sure to be picking up bobbles of the fabric for several weeks to come, it gets everywhere.

Stash bee BOM

It's so exciting, August is my month to be Bee Mama and photos are starting to appear of blocks that have been made for my project. The general brief is stars in red, yellow and orange on a low volume background.

Kerry has used some Elizabeth Hartman and Karen Lewis fabrics that I can spot. I hadn't thought of looking at my screen printed scraps.

Jane has also used some Carolyn Friedlander, Karen Lewis, Elizabeth Hartman and Lizzy's House. She then used the offcuts from the 12" blocks to make some 6" friendship star blocks.

All of the blocks so far are going to work well with the three blocks that I've made.

August UFO challenge

 

I bought this fabric from Rosenbergs in London about four years ago and I have been undecided about what to make with it. Lizzie favours the Oskar top with a zip and more seams than I'd like in a top in this fabric. I am thinking about the Jarrah sweater as I already have the pattern. I just need to measure myself and choose the size.

Running with scissors

 

This is Running with Scissors by By Annie in Tula Pink's grey work. I quilted the fabric on my Janome Atelier 7 with no marking. I just eyeballed the middle of each dot and it has worked out quite well.

This is not a difficult pattern but unusually I didn't precut all of the components and that turned out to be unwise. The stitching of all of the pockets for your tools took longer than expected. I took the project to the Modern Quilt Club July retreat but I wasn't getting along with the machine so it ended up coming home incomplete. 

 

A couple of hours spent sewing and chatting with my daughter, Lizzie and it was ready to bind. There are so many layers to bind that I managed to break a needle and a needle threader, I also mislaid my jar of hand stitching thimbles, needles and scissors. That necessitated buying a metal thimble even though I prefer the Clover silicon thimbles.

 

Just before going on retreat, I noticed that Minki Kim has specific labels for finishing a zipper end. Inspired by this new idea, I sandwiched the zipper end between two identical labels from Sew Quirky. I should have used some basting tape and the stitching could be neater on the label, but finished is better than perfect.

Handmade rocks

 

This was the joint project Lizzie chose for the July MQC retreat. Neither my brain nor the sewing machine were cooperating so I returned home with the applique panel almost complete. I finished the applique whilst on a Facebook video with Lizzie yesterday and then after the call, quickly made the panel into a banner.

I used lots of Aurifil 40 weight threads and Ruby Star Society fabrics. The knuckles and creases are drawn on with a permanent marker and I have omitted the tattoo. Today I need to finish hand stitching binding to another retreat project.

Liminal quilt - month 1

I dislike being behind on a block of the month, so finishing month 1 of the liminal quit medallion BOM by Jo Avery for Love Patchwork and Quilting was a priority this week. It is out of my comfort zone so there was quite a bit of unpicking.

I am pleased with the result but should have chosen a different foot for my machine to stitch the cogs as it dragged due to having been used on vinyl with the addition of some washi tape. I now need to clean that foot and put away the blocks and fabric until next month.

Here are months 1 and 2 together. Month 3 looks like two improv spikey borders, which should be in my comfort zone. 

Liminal quilt BOM

 

I decided to treat myself to an annual subscription to Love Patchwork and Quilting and a kit from A Beautiful Thing to make Jo Avery's Liminal quilt. I had hoped to stitch the first block at the Modern Quilt Club retreat on 17 July but the kit arrived as we pulled out of the garage to head to the airport, so I left it behind.

There was no colour key in either the kit or the magazine, so my first task was to make my own colour key. Then I matched the colour key with the fabric, labelled the fabrics with my homemade alphabet pins and cut a swatch from the fabric which I stuck to the colour key. 

The magazine arrived last week with the instructions for month 2, so I decided to start with month 2 as it looked easier than the block for month 1. I made a couple of cutting mistakes, but I stitched up the blocks this morning. 

Perhaps I'll attempt month 1 this weekend which will be easier now that I have all of the fabrics labelled.

I just couldn’t resist

I saw Sherie of A Quilting Life speaking about the July block for her block of the month and I decided to make it up for my Stash bee quilt. I decided to use all of my chosen colours - red, orange and yellow. There are some oldies in the mix including the grid fabric which I bought in Boston in 2019, the red is by Aneela Hoey and the orange is by Elizabeth Hartman.

I now have three blocks made despite it not yet being my month to be the bee mama.

Long term WIP

 

This foundation pieced skull quilt designed by Helen Creasey has been completed for a few years. It is now out of the drawer and ready to be Graffiti Quilted. My plan is to multiple different pink threads for the background and quilt a different motif in each section. Energy is what I lack to get projects finished, so I plan to quilt two matching sections each day and hope to see some good progress over the next few months.

August #Stash bee blocks

I thought I was the bee mama for July but it turns out my turn is August. I am ready for my turn. I am asking for star blocks in reds, orange and yellows on a low volume background. I plan to make the blocks into an autumnal ladder quilt.

The first sample block that I made was the May Block of the Month pattern from A Quilting Life. The background is by Sally Kelly.

My second block is a simple Ohio Star on an OG Alison Glass text print background, and the centre square is an old Carolyn Friedlander print.

I am looking forward to receiving blocks in August.

Honey of a Tiny Town Framed

 

I picked up Honey of a Tiny Town from the framers on Monday, and I'm really pleased with how it has turned out. I didn't want to pick out the brown or the mustard yellow, so we chose a white painted frame with a blue mount.