AXOLOTL GAMES TO WIN
Completed June 2023
Checkerboard
40″ x 40″

The quilt itself is a pretty simple design of alternating blue and light blue squares, with a green accent and the novelty fabric outside border. Freckle and Lollie’s Belle + Blue fabric for the theme wasn’t a deliberate choice – I didn’t have a anything in mind and was just wandering around the fabric store when the cute little axolotls, salamanders, geckos and lizards caught my eye.

The quilting was also fairly simple – just grid quilting on the game board and piano keys on the border. I’m counting this as part of my 2023 #AllSummerLong(Arm) finishing effort though, despite using my regular sewing machine instead of the longarm. Nice to know that old school is still an option when I need to!

While the design and quilting were child’s play (pun intended), the checkers were not. The primary issue was that they had to be big enough that baby wouldn’t choke on them. I solved that by making each approximately 3″ across. For fabrics, I chose the same print in two colorways – kelly green and lime green – so each player can easily distinguish which game pieces are theirs.

Each checker is made from 2 circles of fabric. I used the embroidery machine to add a decorative stitch around the edges and machine embroidered a quirky little crown on half of them. Then, I hand sewed a crown-free and a crown side together, turning under the edge and, before stitching it closed, inserted a wood circle with batting glued on both sides. They have a soft squishy-ness but are definitely sturdy enough to hold up to hours of play, too.

When looking for coordinating fabrics, I came across remnants of this blue/green/teal stripe. It had been in my stash since 2009 (2009!) but it matched the new novelty fabric perfectly. There was enough to both piece the back and make a bag for storing the checkers.

I was also able to back this scrappy blue tooth fairy pillow with the stripe, so everything looks like a cohesive set. I do love including a tooth fairy pillow with every baby quilt I make!

New babies are a blessing, and we’re delighted that a new great-nephew will soon be making his debut. But I have to admit – if my niece has another little one, I don’t have a clue what game a fourth quilt would be! If you have any suggestions, please comment with them so I can plan ahead.

In the meantime, my hope is that the whole growing family enjoys playing checkers with this quilt and our newest family member wins “axolotl” games!

My favorite outdoor fabric supplier no longer exists; instead I chose a clothing-weight polyester poplin for this project. As usual, working with polyester is a trip when you are used to 100% cotton! In this case, I used an iron-on stabilizer and I’m a bit worried because it’s, I guess you’d call it, papery? I hope it doesn’t dissolve in the next rain shower. (This spot gets a lot of late afternoon light, so I’m going to protect the pillow with an outdoor Scotchguard that’s supposed to help with both the rain and the sun. Fingers crossed.)

The pillow is 20″ x 36″ king size, which works really well with the proportions of the flag design while fitting on our existing bench. Instead of quilting, I topstitched each section with an invisible thread. Other than that, it was a really easy project to finish, once the right fabric arrived, and it makes a great addition to our entryway.

Happy Pride Month 2023 (and beyond)!

I put a lot of effort into what he might like in terms of the design, thinking back to time we’d spent together and conversations we’d shared. His really seemed to appreciate how thoughtfully the finished quilt matched his personality while also being a reminder of fun experiences with “Aunt D”.

Given how great that first nibling quilt turned out, I decided all our siblings’ kids deserved their own quilted keepsake from Aunt D. All 16 of them.

For nearly 2 decades, I’ve taken an average of a year or so to craft a special quilt for each of our nieces, nephews and niblings and it’s finally time to present a fabric treasure to the last, my brother’s youngest daughter.

Ever known someone with a strange talent? Like the ability to solve a Rubik’s cube in seconds or spin a basketball on one finger? My youngest niece is amazingly good, like undisputed world champion-good, at hiding Easter eggs, gold coins and Easter eggs with gold coins inside. This was always her favorite activity when she came to stay with us, and months (sometimes years) after each visit, we were still finding items she’d hidden in odd, overlooked spots around the house. The last gold coin I’ve found (so far) now lives in my sewing room as a good luck charm.

Memories of her delight at outfoxing me with obscure hiding places time and time again were the basis of this quilt design.

HIDDEN TREASURE
2023
Latifah Saafir Glam Clam Pattern
60” x 72”

Although I’ve been quilting for nearly a quarter-century at this point, I had long been to afraid to try curved piecing. But this quilt absolutely had to look like Easter eggs, so learn I did. Latifah Saafir’s Clammy rulers made the whole process super easy, though – to the point that I started wondering why I’d avoided curves in the first place! I did choose 12″ clams because bigger seemed best for a first-timer. Also, I have to admit there was a little side-eye at her insistence that pinning wasn’t really necessary. In the end, I went with minimal pins, using just 2-4 per clam and it really was all that this novice needed to get lovely pieced curves!

All the fabrics, except one, came from my stash. Working with bright pastels is one of my favorite color palettes – a sewing space never looks happier than when all these cheerful Spring-y fabrics are strewn about. Because I was using so many different shades, I didn’t want too much pattern, so most of these “Easter eggs” are “dyed” with tone-on-tone fabrics. The one exception is towards the lower right corner, where I added a novelty fabric featuring gold coins! It’s the perfect little hidden treasure for a quilt called HIDDEN TREASURE. 

I agonized so much over how to quilt this top! Just a quick glance at Pinterest will bring up dozens of really intricately long-armed clamshell designs that were far too complicated for my skill set. But I did like the idea of there being some interest to the quilting instead of an all over design. In the end, I chose four alternating patterns – horizontal lines, vertical lines, echo curves and mini scallops – which turned out to be the perfect compromise. 

As easy as piecing the top was, curves are going to curve. So, yes, there are bubbles and ripples and stretching in places I wish there wasn’t. But for a beginner effort, I’m really pleased and I think my niece will be to.

My niece’s favorite color is purple, so I chose this P&B Textiles 108″ yardage for the backing. It’s called Day Dream, which really fits its wistful, watercolored design. The binding is a multicolored print I had left over in my stash. I auditioned solid bindings in nearly every color and considered a black and white stripe, but nothing really looked right until I tried the print. I’m just lucky the colors matched so well.

My niece really is a delight. Everywhere she goes, she brings such a wonderfully fun energy. I’m calling the quilt “Hidden Treasure” but what I’ll always treasure about her is that her personality is never hidden – she brightens up my life and I hope this happy, colorful quilt brightens up hers, too.

I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad to see this tradition come to it natural conclusion. I loved all the time I spent trying to create the perfect quilt for each kid, mastering traditional designs for some and experimenting with new techniques for others. But it’s been a LOT of work over the last 20 years. (Probably not as much work as raising them, but that’s why I love being an aunt!)

Every one of these delightful children, from oldest to youngest, is so different – and so are the experiences we shared. Those wonderful memories will always be there for me and hopefully for each niece, nephew and nibling as they curl up in the special quilt “Aunt D” made just for them, too.

You can’t be part of the quilting community without hearing it at least occasionally – “quilts shouldn’t be political.”

What bullshit.

From cotton plantations at the start to climate change today, political issues have woven their threads through every aspect of quilting. Campaign quilts changed elections in the 1800s, the AIDS quilt changed hearts in the 1980s, and social justice quilts are changing minds today.

So, yeah, stop saying it’s just a hobby, stop saying quilters should be quiet, stop saying you want to piece in peace. Quilts always have been, and always will be, political.

TO PROTEST AND SEW
Completed 2023
Word Play Letters / Improv Sawtooth Star
60” x 66 ½”

I don’t know exactly when the idea for the message behind this quilt came to me, but once I started seeing similarities between the quilt police and the real police, I couldn’t unsee them. The color scheme grew out of that law enforcement connection and originally it was going to be solely blue and white. But just those two colors alone made the quilt seem flat and it didn’t project the rage and resistance I was feeling.

Adding the high contrast yellow, though, gave the design the power it needed. That’s also where the idea to add the Sawtooth Stars came from. They remind me of images of firearms where the barrel is pointing straight at the viewer or, spread as they are around the quilt, of used paper targets from a shooting range. I wanted the impact of the white “O”s, with their dark centers and exploding points, to be just as triggering, complementing and contrasting with the dark humor of the message.

All the fabrics for this quilt were tone-on-tone blenders from my stash and I chose a simple navy Grunge for the backing fabric. (As an aside, 108″ wide backing Grunge has a distinctly different feel than regular Grunge cotton. I don’t know if the difference is well known among quilters, but it sure surprised me when the fabric arrived.)

When it came time to quilt this, I knew I needed an equally powerful pantograph pattern – no hiding stitches in the ditch on this one! Patricia Ritter’s Shazam was perfect, though I printed it slightly larger than recommended for even more impact. I love how “in your face” the yellow thread is. It really pops on the blue background, but doesn’t take away focus from the letters either. Finally, for the binding, I chose a yellow stripe.

This quilt is slightly smaller than I normally make, at 60″ x 66.5″. I didn’t want to add a bunch of borders or extra blue around the edge; instead, the message is the entire focus of this quilt.

I’ve been making a number of quilt tops that I hope to donate to raise funds for various causes, but I’m not sure this will be one of them. It seems like the audience for TO PROTECT AND SEW would be specifically quilters with an interest in social justice and most of them are making their own protest quilts. But at least I’m ready with a retort the next time someone says “quilts shouldn’t be political.” Should or shouldn’t is irrelevant – quilts always have been, and always will be, political and fuck your opinion otherwise.

Politics is how democracies solve problems. When people demand you stop being political, they’re announcing their decision to never solve the problem. ~ Joshua Henson (@the1henson)

As I explained in my previous post, the freedom to work on anything I want to lately has resulted in lots of unfinished quilts. There’s been much of the designing and piecing, not so much of the longarm quilting and binding. And, since I mostly post about finished projects, this poor blog has sat neglected.

I have finished a few things, though! Maybe not quilts, but there’ve been some fun WINQs in the last few months that I want to document.

Hat Racks

We were planning a trip to the Rose Bowl Flea Market in March of 2020, and, well, March of 2020 happened. Flash forward to April 2023 and the longed-for trip to Pasadena finally happened! Which means this hat rack project, three years in the making, finally happened, too.

These are thrifted teak candlesticks and bowls that I picked up for half price at one of the booths. I added a bit of table leg left over from another craft project to make one of the stands a bit higher and painted them with leftover spray paint (adding a little pop of color to the underside.)

These were such a simple project, but I love them so much because I waited so long to make them. Our eventual trip to the flea market was such fun! We went on Easter Sunday, assuming the crowds would be lighter, and got early admission tickets for that reason, too. That meant waking at 4 in the morning for the drive north – LA traffic has never been lighter.

Other than a few sellers, we were the only people masked, but between the mask, big sunglasses and a floppy hat to avoid sunburn, I felt like a Hollywood star trying to keep a low profile. By about 9:30 or 10, crowds started arriving (I guess Easter wasn’t the deal breaker I thought it would be) so we left, had a picnic in the parking lot and then drove back home with all our goodies. One of the best days of my life.

Funko POPS

Another reason I haven’t been getting as many projects finished as I’d like has been the San Diego weather. “But San Diego’s always warm and sunny!”, right? Not this year. For the entire month of May, San Diego was the cloudiest place in the lower 48 states and April wasn’t much better. Cloudy, damp and chilly means spray painting isn’t feasible, so a couple of custom Funkos have been waiting and waiting for their final clear coat layer. But the sun has finally broke through and I’ve added two more POPs to my collection.

Guinan

Funko does make a number of Star Trek POPs, but as usual, the number of women included in the line is woefully lacking. Where’s Doctor Beverly? Ro? Kira? Dax? JANEWAY for crying out loud! You can’t tell me those characters wouldn’t sell like hotcakes. But the one I want the most, and the one I can’t believe they haven’t capitalized on yet, is Guinan. So I made my own based on this inspiration photo –

Donor POPs for Guinan include Nakia from Black Panther for the body and Queen General Ramonda from Marvel What If? for her head. Her dreads are from Orphan Black’s Cosima (I think. I purchased them separately from a parts dealer on Etsy.)

On the Nakia doll, I formed paper clay sleeves, filled in some of the areas on the dress for a smoother look and added more clay to the dress hem to give it a Guinan-shape. For the Ramonda head, I also needed to fill in parts with paper clay, especially the ribs on the headdress.

The more difficult issue here was that Whoopi Goldberg’s hat seems to sit up higher on her head than the headdress does on the Ramonda doll, so I sanded down the gold band a bit and built up a new edge right underneath the triangles. To get the edge even, I used several layers of blue tape as a stop which worked quite well (and the tape didn’t take off any paint!) I think if I were to do Guinan again, I’d split the difference and have that hat edge end halfway down the gold, but I’m comfortable with how it worked out. Ramonda was a bobblehead, so I did have to craft a balsa wood neck connector to fit both head and body together.

I attached the dreads with Zap-a-Gap glue and filled in the sides where it didn’t match up exactly with more paper clay; now it looks like the fabric hugs her hair. The addition of dreads has made this doll very top heavy, though, so I had to glue her to the clear stand permanently when she joined the collection.

Nancy Pelosi

It’s Nancy Pelosi, rocking her fire coat! This was one of my most difficult customizations yet and I’m super proud of how she turned out.

My inspiration was this photo of her leaving Oval Office after meeting with Trump in December 2018. He was making a petulant threat to shut down the government over that ridiculous border wall and she owned his ass.

For custom Pelosi, I used a donor Beth/Queens Gambit body and legs from Selina/Veep – yes, I dismembered two POPs and re-membered them as one! Exacto knife and Dremel FTW! I bought the Sarah/The Craft head off a parts dealer and the glasses are from a Trinity/Matrix doll.

Much of the rest of the work was custom paint mixing for the hair, coat, stockings and shoes. I did add a touch of paper clay to her coat to fill in the neckline and had to add two nearly microscopic buttons there. Not kidding, the buttons were between 1/32 and 1/16 of an inch! I cut them from pieces of star-shaped glitter – the thickness was perfect and a little bit of paint meant it didn’t matter than they started out silver.

Spray painting weather also meant I could clear coat a bunch of new Funko POP wooden stands for my expanding collection. Here’s the North Wing with the new Guinan added on level one and Nancy on level two.

These shelves are on the wall next to the garage door and, every time we came in or out, there was a chance that one or more POP was going to end up on the floor! Adding a touch of museum putty and double stick tape to a bunch of the figures on the top shelf during this update has worked wonders.

If you look at the upper right corner, there’s space for more! Got lots of new feminist Funko POPs planned, though, so even with these extra spots we might need a new shelf at some point, too. Of the making of WINQs, there is no end

Lately that’s meant a lot of quilt starts with few quilt finishes, and since I mostly write about finished projects** here, the blog has been neglected.

Nonetheless, I’ve gotten a few things done over the last few months and I’m going to share the sewing-related ones here (look for WINQs, or When I’m Not Quilting, projects in my next post.)

Star Trek Curtains

I’ve written before about how our unused dining room is more of a sci-fi memorabilia museum at this point. We’ve got a bat’leth, a light saber and sonic screwdriver on display along with various books and DVD collections and this Star Trek: DS9 quilt. For years, the sliding glass door curtains in there have just been large pieces of hemmed denim fabric; workable, but they didn’t exactly fit the theme. So when they faded too much to be useful, I decided to replace them with something more appropriate:

Working on this scale was a challenge! There was a lot of math and matching to make sure the sections fit together when hung and that they weren’t too short. I also lined these curtains, something I’ve never attempted before, and you can tell that one side isn’t hanging perfectly straight because the lining shifted a bit. Other than that small bobble, I’m super pleased with how they turned out. Especially because, when the sun comes up in the morning, it streams through the red fabric and the whole room looks like the Captain has issued a Red Alert! I didn’t expect that at all, but it’s a really fun bonus.

KSU Grad Pillows

Time doesn’t keep passing too quickly for me alone – two more of our niblings who were adorable babies seemingly just yesterday have now grown into lovely young adults and recently graduated high school! Both have decided to attend their parents’ alma mater, Kansas State University, which meant lots and lots of purple fabric strewn around the sewing room while I finished four 24×24″ dorm pillows as graduation gifts, two for each kid.

I’ve made similar dorm pillows for all our older niblings, but I still get a kick out of collecting t-shirts for the center and coordinating fabrics for the borders. Between our two families, there are only three more youngsters still to graduate – I don’t know what I’m going to do when the last opportunity to make these fun pillows ends!

Vintage Sewing Machine Display Stand

For my birthday this year, I asked for a copy of Still Stitching, the documentary about antique sewing machines. When I opened my gifts, though, in addition to the DVD, I was surprised with my very own vintage Singer!

As you can see, though, it was just the machine – no case, or table or anything. I found a place on eBay that makes wooden boxes that you can use as a base, but they are just that, a plain wooden box.

I thought about painting or staining the base, but neither felt quite right. A vintage machine this cool needed an equally cool way to display it. And since I am a quilter… I decided to make a quilted cozy instead!

From my fabric stash, I found a reddish-orange fabric that coordinated with the Singer’s embellishments beautifully. The decorative designs also influenced my decision to machine embroider a gold medallion on the front panel of the cozy. According to the serial number, my machine was made in 1911, and I decided to incorporate that information into the embroidery as well. A few seams later and the quilted cozy fit perfectly over the base, hiding the inner support and letting me display my new/old Singer in all it’s glory!

Pocket Purse

I started this update with one of the biggest projects I’ve been working on, so it only seems fitting to end with one of the smallest.

When Spring arrived, I was in the mood for a cute, colorful change to my, forgive the pun, pocketbook. Since I really love a mini messenger bag, especially one I can add an actual message to, this purse that should have been a pocket was perfect. All the peachy pinks came from my stash; some are scraps from decorating my sewing room so it’s like carrying a bit of my creative space with me all the time. And while the bag itself is slightly smaller than 8″ square, it holds everything I would have put in a pocket – if any of my clothes actually came with them.

**For work-in-progress updates, I post about my quilts fairly regularly on Mastodon – @inarticulatequilter@mastodon.art. Come follow me there and share your own projects with the hashtags #Quilt or #Quilting.

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since I first started celebrating Worldwide Quilting Day by updating my Quilt Bucket List! Time flies, but my inability to finish all the quilts I want to continues apace. After I share this year’s list, I’m going to do a bit of retrospective, so stay tuned for the big *10th Anniversary Spectacular*.

But first, the last 12 months have been very interesting. You may have noticed one big change is I’ve dropped the Whimzie Quiltz business name and am now The Inarticulate Quilter. Since my style of quilting has evolved, I felt I needed a new moniker that matches my decision to have “my quilts speak for me” – check out my bio in the right sidebar for more info.

Quilt-wise, I’ve really leaned into the whole “make what I want, when I want” ethos I adopted last year and ended up completing 10 quilts total! (It sure does help to have a lot of free time now that my custom quilting business is kaput.) Some of these finishes have been a long time coming – My World is Smaller Without Him was on the bucket list for 9 of the past 10 years! – so there’s an interesting mix of my old style and my new.

As to what I have planned for the coming year? I don’t know! My current to-do list if 42 quilts long, so there’s a lot hanging out there. But I find myself adding new quilts if I feel like it, too – most recently, I saw a picture from Rhode Island of graffiti f related to community organizing and just had to turn it into a quilt. I love that now, when inspiration like that hits, I can just run with it.

I do know my top 3 in-process quilts are all social justice-related, including ‘BITE ME, a giant rainbow trilobite inspired by the queer was always here movement, and two feminism related quilts, PETRIFY THE PATRIARCHY and LUCY. Both PETRIFY and LUCY have me terrified (in the best possible way). I know to make them happen I will need to stretch my skills a lot, but I’m ready for the challenge.

After those, there’s a bunch more to choose from, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Thanks for being along for the ride, though!

10th Anniversary Spectactular

A Quilt Bucket List Retrospective

Let’s start with some stats –

Over the last 10 years, I’ve finished 51 quilts for myself or as gifts (remember 9 of these years, I was running a custom quilt business and this number doesn’t include any quilts I made for customers since 2013.) 33 quilts are still in my possession, 15 were gifted, 2 have been thrown away, and 1 was donated to the California Women’s Museum.

I have quilted over 1540 square feet and hand bound over 1100 linear feet.

The smallest quilt I made was ALWAYS LIGHT (IF ONLY) from 2021, which finished at 24.25″ x 40.5″; the largest was QUILT OF THE 12 TEQUILAS from 2013, at 80.5″ x 92.5″.

And, now, for the fun stuff… all 51 quilts from the last 10 years to feast your eyeballs on!

YE OLDE HOUSE CALL
Completed 2023
Pieced Plague Doctor/COVID Block
61 ¼” x 73 ¼”

I’d actually had several yards of this acid green in my stash for another project that never came to fruition. It’s a very unique shade that kind of reads sickly, so it seemed perfect to repurpose it for the background of the black and white doctor. (Hey, just realized it’s the same color as the Mr Yuk poison control face!) You might notice a purply-grey is a small part of the color scheme, too – that’s actually an overdye. I had scraps of a black and white damask on hand, which I dunked in RIT to darken. I wasn’t going for the purply color, but as I’d never overdyed anything before, that’s what happened and it ended up being a great addition.

The hardest part of making the plague doctor was the hat. The rest of this center section was fairly easy to piece, because it’s mostly rectangles and triangles, just typical quilt block sewing (I will point out that the damask shirt is three pieces, with pattern matching down the center. It was terrifying to machine embroider the buttons on top of that section because if they didn’t line up perfectly the first time I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make another damask block with that level of precision!) But the hat was, like the said, the hardest part. Adding it on an angle used up a lot of the acid green because I had to oversize the background and then trim.

Trimming left me large-ish scraps and that’s when the idea to add COVID virus blocks hit. Because of all the spike proteins, I originally thought about doing these blocks as appliqué, but I decided it was worth trying to puzzle out how to make a pieced version given the plague doctor was pieced. After a lot of playing around, I got exactly the look I was going for — but that means there are EIGHTY Y-seams in this quilt.

EIGHTY.

(Insert Mr Yuk face again)

In the center of each virus block, I machine embroidered a suggested ‘cure’ for something that ails you, each starting with the phrase “Hast thou tried…” I had so much fun researching possible quack cures – listening to past episodes of the podcast Sawbones was invaluable for this part, though I’d also highly recommend this episode of The Constant if you are curious to learn more about the goat testicles one. In any case, the 10 cures included are

• Leeches
• Laudanum
• Trepanation
• Goat Testicles
• Crystals
• Laughter
• Lobotomy
• Magnets
• Herd Immunity
• Bezoars

The intent behind this project has always been to have a comfy, fun quilt we can curl up with when we’re sick or recovering from surgery – “laughter is the best medicine” and all that. Because of this, I really wanted a Minky backing, something super soft and warm for cuddling. But Minky continues to be a thorn in my side and it resulted in some of the worst quilting I’ve ever done. Seriously, everything that could go wrong, did. The nap on the black 90″ backing pulled up to the top with each stitch and is visible on both the white sections and the acid green. (The quilt does have cotton/poly blend batting, but that didn’t seem to help.) Because I like lightly quilting Minky so it doesn’t get matted down, the meander fill curves are too big for some sections and the result is just weird, repetitive squiggles. And, as I got toward the end on the longarm, the Minky got pulled tighter than at the top, so the bottom kind of scrunches up instead of laying flat.

But I suppose none of that will matter when we’re feeling crummy and just want a warm quilt to cuddle under.

Ironically, I gave myself food poisoning two days before the binding on this one was finished. Could have really used it as I climbed in bed all sickly and clammy that night! But it’s not like COVID, flu or other diseases are going anywhere and, while we continue to vaccinate, wear our masks and avoid places without adequate ventilation (I hope you do as well!) I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to place a “ye olde house call” to the plague doctor in the future.

In any case, they’re there and I’ve decided to put at least one of them to use as a nook to hide in when I need some ‘sewlitude’. What’s sewlitude, you ask? Well, I just made it up, but it’s when a quilter has had a tough day and just needs a little peace, some quiet, and a chance to recharge. And what better way to do that, than curling up with a quilt?

INTROVERTING
Completed 2023
Word Play Letters / Improv Piecing
71 ½” x 71 ½”

The scrappy background on this quilt put a serious dent in my stash of pink fabrics, but it was totally worth it! I loved piecing all the Word Play Letters and the wonky rainbow/cloud last summer, but the best part is how much it brightened my sewing space while quilting it during these cold, wet January days.

Originally, there was a improv pieced sun in the upper right corner, but the more I looked at it on the design wall, the more it didn’t seem to work. Eventually, I decided to turn it into a coordinating 24″ x 24″ sham instead and the result is a darling quilt and pillow set for that cubby.

For the backing fabric, I chose Loca Linda II in the Jade Square design as it seemed to match not only the colors on the top, but also the energy. Sparkler, by Dawna Sanders, is a pantograph I’ve used before; in fact, it’s rapidly becoming my favorite choice for these Word Play Letter quilts because it’s so easy to do with rulers and looks fantastic when finished.

I have a big piece of 4″ deep foam that I plan to cover with the Loca Linda that’ll be perfect for a seat in the cubby. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to snuggle in and start enjoying some well-deserved sewlitude. If you don’t hear from me for a while, now you’ll know why!

The other doesn’t have an official pattern name as far as I know. It’s just an elongated Square in a Square block, so I call it Elongated Rectangle in a Rectangle. It’s a favorite of mine because it is a great way to use a fabric that was too cute to pass up in the quilt shop, but didn’t have a specific purpose in mind when I laid down my credit card. Recently, I finished two of these —

Both feature a novelty fabric that I purchased years ago; for STRETCHY CATS, it’s a funky fun cat fabric with mid-Mod flair, and for REPLICATED RECTANGLES, it’s the Star Trek wordmark logo fabric that Camelot sold in three colorways in 2013.

With scrappy borders surrounding each elongated rectangle, both quilts put a major dent in my fabric stash. STRETCHY CATS used up a lot of warm oranges, yellows, browns and avocado greens that matched the cute kitties. For REPLICATED RECTANGLES, on the other hand, I dug deep in to my greys and blacks.

I intended both of these quilts to be utility quilts, seeing daily use on our bed during cold winter months, so both are backed with Minky. For STRETCHY CATS, I chose Caramel and for REPLICATED RECTANGLES, Graphite (I think. Both of these were purchased at Fabric.com right before Amazon pulled the plug, so I’m not 100% sure of the names and can’t go back to check, of course.)

As usual, Minky continues to be a nightmare to quilt for me! I chose an edge-to-edge Chevron created by using a Gadget Girls diamond ruler. I love it’s simple, modern look, and when I’m using quilting cotton for the backing it is a smooth, easy process. But Minky’s nap causes such drag that, yes, it is a drag to work on. But I persevered and for utility quilts, I’m happy with the way both turned out. The quilting may not be perfect, but that doesn’t effect the cuddly warmth of these fraternal twins!

REPLICATED RECTANGLES was the last quilt I finished in 2022 and STRETCHY CATS is my first finish of 2023. As I started exploring what to work on next, I realized there were FORTY-FIVE projects on my to-do list It was so overwhelming to contemplate that decided to place all the information in an infographic to see if I could make more sense of everything.

Projects down the left side are quilt tops be longarmed; they each have a quilted background behind them (and those with the dollar icon are ones I still need to purchase backing fabric for.) The majority of the right side are quilt tops I want to piece, indicated by dashed stitch lines surrounding them that get smaller and lighter the further they are from being completed. Also listed are quotes for Word Play quilts that have been rattling around in my brain and a section of patterns, panels and color schemes tossed in for good measure. Got to admit, looking at my list this way makes it all seem much more manageable.

Warmest wishes for a quilty 2023! May your needle be swift, your stitches even and your to-do list manageable this year as well!