June 2026 plans

 I am only making small achievable plans for the month as my energy is very low and the hospital even slower!

The UFO that has been chosen for our group challenge this month is a Sew Quirky project. My first task is to locate the project and kit!!

The weather at the moment is perfect for this dress which I plan to start cutting out today. First, I need to decide the size that I need to sew. I have circled size 12 on a copy of the pattern, but I think 14 might be better. It has a lot of positive ease but I don't want the dress to be too big.

I picked up this Primrose Cottage work in progress from my basket last week whilst waiting for this month's UFO to be drawn and it should be achievable in small bites as I can't sit for long periods of time.

Another Primrose Cottage project which just needs to be finished into a pillow and displayed in my tiered tray.

I also have two customer quilts being delivered later today which I can work on steadily once set up.

Stash bee - rainbow stars

 

Kerry is the May bee mama for the Stash bee and posted her instructions earlier today. As the weather has broken and it is much cooler today, I decided to have a go at making two 12" blocks. It seems that I have fewer low volume fabrics than I thought and some are more off white than white. 

The block is called Falling Star by Sarah Watts of Ruby Star Society and was a Moda Blockheads 5 free pattern. I will package the blocks up over the weekend ready for hubby to post them on Monday when he goes int twon.

Summer blessings

Summer blessings by Primrose Cottage was the free stitch for May for being a newsletter subscriber. I find it uncomfortable to sit for more than an hour, so this has taken longer than I had anticipated. Today is a bank holiday and it's hot, so time to finish off the small bees and flowers. I will make this into a small pillow but need to find some suitable fabric.

Stash Bee - plus blocks

My local friend, Jane, recently started a stash bee so as to use up our stashes and scraps. Jane's block was chosen for May, and I initially stitched these at the Modern Quilt Club retreat. I was using an unfamiliar sewing machine, and I was disappointed that my blocks were not coming out at 6.5" square. Once home, I unpicked and resewed the blocks and I'm now much happier with the outcome.

My month is July, so not long to wait and that is also a retreat month so I might collect some blocks at retreat.

Barbara Ana - Spring

Having completed winter, I decided to finish Spring too. This is number 1 of our UFO challenge 2026but the number hasn't yet been called. As you can see I had made good progress already with Spring.

I did make a counting mistake on the bird on the right-hand side but decided that it didn't offend me, and I added an extra blue cross to that side for balance. I have decided to put away this project until number 2 is called which is summer. However, I have updated my floss ring to include only the summer colours.

I spy quilt complete

 

I finished piecing this quilt top at retreat, so it was a priority to quilt it on my return. The quilt is for a Christmas challenge for the Wednesday group that I attend, but it's good to get ahead.

I used the digital pantograph Malachite and a multicoloured thread to quilt the top. I used the backing that was already loaded on my long arm from the Tula Pink Roar which I quilted with car interlining instead of Bosal in the middle for Lizzie. There was no black or white in the quilt top, but a black and white stripe for the binding is often a good choice.

I even remembered to add a small rainbow label on the back of the quilt and there is a rainbow block in the quit top.

Frida dress

Do you end up with lots of off cuts of dressmaking fabrics? I made the Aspen dress in a seersucker from Fabric Godmother in March 20205. I parceled the leftover fabric neatly in an Ikea Ziploc bag and it has lurked with many other off cuts. 

Last week I used the Frida dress pattern from two stitches to make this pretty dress in size T2 as a gift for a friend whose daughter is having a second baby this summer. I am surprised how much fabric that I have left and can probably make at least one, if not two dresses more. I think that these dresses could be a good retreat make if precut ready to sew.