2025 Quilting Year in Review

 It's time for the annual parade of the quilts, this time for 2025.

This year started, as many of the past years, with the Project Quilting Challenges. This is sponsored by Kim Lapacek. Thank you, Kim, for hosting this every year. It has inspired me to make many quilts. For the challenge, every other week, the theme of the challenge is announced, and the participants are to make a quilt or quilty project from start to finish in just one week. That is right, just one week. This means that it is best to keep the project as small and simple as possible.  I keep telling myself that, but somehow the projects keep morphing bigger and more complex, as you will soon see.

Mythical Creatures

The first challenge, 16.1 Mythical Creatures was announced January 5, 2025.  For my entry, I made an Al-Buraq. It is the creature that took Prophet Mohammed to heaven.

I didn't finish it on time, because the project kept expanding, and it has a lot of techniques including pencil drawing, an applique border and beads.

There is a series of six videos that show you more details and how I made this quilt, and they are on a playlist for your convenience.

Ombre

16.2 Ombre challenge was announced on January 19, 2025 I knew that I had a small piece of sunset fabric that was ombre but I couldn't find it. I didn't think I had any other ombre fabric and was thinking I might have to make one, which would ruin the small and simple mantra I kept saying in my head. Just then I noticed that the piece of fabric I was using for a Glitter block, and I was able to get this one finished pretty quickly.

I finished the quilt early, but lost track of time and did not report it on time, which means I missed the deadline on this one too. 

There are three videos that go with this quilt.

Common Blocks

16.3 Common Blocks was announced on February 2, 2025. This made me happy because I was already planning on making common blocks to test out what happens when you prewash fabrics and what happens when you don't. My original plan was to make three separate quilts, but I decided this challenge is giving me permission to make one quilt with three blocks, one with prewashed fabric, one with unwashed fabric, and one with a mix.  My original plan was nine patches, but I thought a sixteen patch would provide more intersections to really see the results.

And amazingly, this quilt was finished and posted on time for the challenge.

There are four videos that show all the details of making this quilt.

Birthstone

16.4 Birthstone challenge was announced February 16, 2025. I decided to make a red and white quilt.

I did make and finish this quilt on time.  I'm glad I am making this post, because it is good to remember that I did submit some entries on time.

Since the announcements are every other week, we get a week off to recoup.  Instead, I tried to make something out of the leftovers of the Ruby Buttons quilt.  I'm not sure what it is, but I've been calling it Perfume Bottle. I think it just needs to be quilted and viewers can decide what they see.

Arrow

16.5 Follow Your Arrow was announced on March 2, 2025. I found lots of arrow patterns that used multiple arrows, and finally found a block with just one.  I decided to add a heart to it.  It looks like I didn't post this quilt on my blog, because it was definitely not done on time. I will show you a picture here, and do a separate post with more details on this quilt.

Button It Up

16.6 Button It Up challenge was announced on March 16 2025. I had already made Ruby Buttons so I decided I would make a quilt with actual buttons. I remembered a quilt that was on my to-make list for a long time, and decided to make it. Although it is a small enough project, the fact that I was trying to recreate something from memory made it difficult to accomplish and I knew going in, that I would not be able to complete it on time. It is one I'd rather get right than fast.  

I am calling it my Everchanging quilt, which does make it hard to photograph. The yellow pieces are sewn with a different fabric on the reverse side, so that they can be placed the way they are (with eventual buttons) or they can be opened to reveal the fabric on the other side, and more of the fabric square that is underneath the yellow triangles.

I have a series of videos on this quilt. There are 7 videos but since the quilt isn't finished (I need to add buttons and finish the quilt), there are likely to be more.

Scrappy Fish

In between these challenge weeks, I thought I should clean the sewing room or finish something I had already started. So I did both of those things, to some respect.  This Scrappy Fish is using leftovers from another project, and I have made several quilts with these leftovers.  I don't count them as starts until I actually get a finish because it is trash until it is used, but then I have to backdate the start date to the date that the scraps were made. So although this was a quick finish, it took years to make.

There are two videos on making this quilt.

Lupine and Laughter Mystery Quilt

I have been pretty good at not getting into the mystery quilt craze when Bonnie Hunter announces her quilt every year, but I do enjoy seeing all the camaraderie and do regret not joining in. But they are a serious time commitment which is hard for me to make since I have so many unfinished quilts. I decided to join this year, but only make about a quarter of the blocks. Hopefully I can get a nice wall hanging and skip the serious time commitment.

I did well with the first clue, but didn't keep up starting with Clue 2.  I am chugging along though and made a lot of progress yesterday.

African Stack and Whack

While you have the last photo on your mind, take a look at the Stack and Whack quilt on the left. On my channel, a viewer asked for a tutorial for how to cut fabric for a Stack and Whack that I showed a while back.  By the time I had done the video for the Opulence quilt, the squares were already cut and I was sewing them to each other. So I did a tutorial using some African fabric that had a short repeat.  I really like the way this turned out and have thought of border options. This quilt needs a better name.

I am hoping to make this quilt bigger, like 40" square or so to make it big enough to put on my curtain rods I use to hang up my bigger quilts.

Also while you are looking at that photo, did you notice the letters I made to decorate my design wall? That's the name of my YouTube channel.

Quarter Square Wreath

I had already started Clue 1 for the Lupine and Laughter mystery quilt when I noticed that some people were having trouble making their quarter square triangles. So I made a tutorial on how to make quarter square triangles. I decided to not to use my actual quilt to make this, so I found a quilt block that uses them.  Once I did the tutorial, I went ahead and finished the quilt to give as a gift. We were exchanging handmade gifts in 2025.

As usual, I wind up taking horrible photos of quilts I am giving away. I think I will be able to get better screenshots from the videos. I am making a tutorial for how to quilt a quilt and using this one as an example.  I have to edit it still. I will do a separate quilt reveal blog post on this quilt as well. 

Peacock Quilt

I made a tutorial on my YouTube channel for how to make half rectangle triangles, and I made some blocks to show how not to make two at a time blocks.  I knew this was going to happen and had a grand plan to use up the bad blocks.  

I am having a lot of fun making this quilt and it draws me to it every time I walk in the sewing room.

Quilt Journal

Not a quilt exactly, but it is quilt related. I published a fill-in-the-blank book that lets you tell the story of your quilt.   The book tells the entire life story of the quilt, not just about the quiltmaker and how the quilt was made, but then how it was given to a recipient, and its life with the recipient.  It also has space for another recipient, because quilts do exchange hands over time.  I made it a long time ago for a quilt I was making for my teenage daughter. I knew she wouldn't remember the pertinent details so I figured putting it in a book would be better. Looking back at that book again made me realize how much had changed and how grateful that the details that I thought were unimportant became more important over time.

It comes with three different covers for the hardback version and there is a softcover version as well.  Here's an Amazon  affiliate link if you want to get the book. Quilt Journal: Recording the Story of Your Quilt

Lace Canvas

 Last but not least, although it isn't a quilt, I wanted to show you a lace I painted.  I stapled a piece of lace to a framed canvas and painted it. It was fun to do, and was given as a gift so another dark photo and probably upside down. I have plans for the leftover lace.

And yes there is a video for that.

Recap of 2025

This year didn't have as many finishes as 2024, nor as many starts. I've given up on getting more finishes than starts, but am tracking it anyway. I plan to do better with posts on this blog so making a year-end wrap up isn't so difficult, and so I can stay in touch with you. This starts with taking more photographs. With the videos, and the crazy amount of space they take up on my computer, I keep forgetting to take photographs, so I am going back to taking daily photographs.

I had to switch software programs, and I couldn't find those fun numbers I was using to keep track. I liked having them even though they look like I made more quilts than I did. So I finished 7 quilts this year and started 11.  I didn't quilt much in the summer as I spent time cleaning out my garage and basement. The basement isn't finished but I am about half way there, and that makes me happy.

Annual Quilting Starts and Finishes for Shelina

And while we have the spreadsheet pulled up, here is the long term view showing the starts and finishes. I started and finished fewer quilts this year, but it looks more like an average number of starts and finishes.

Here, you can see that the gap between starts and finishes keeps increasing.  Since I want to make bigger quilts this year, I'm not sure I will be able to narrow this gap, but I guess we can keep trying. I'd rather just enjoy starting and making quilts and not worry about making any rules.

I hope you had a great quilting year and I hope that 2026 goes even better for you. I will post separate posts for the quilt reveals I missed this year, and a separate post for my plans for 2026. 

Which one was your favorite of this year?

A Recap of my Quilting Year 2024

At the end of the each year, I make a post summarizing my year, and show the quilts I made during the year.  I am late this year, but I didn't want to skip this post.

I'm pretty sure that this was a record-breaking year for me, both in terms of quilting starts and quilting finishes. I started 17 quilts and finished 13.  While I didn't finish more than I started, I did finish more quilts than I usually do. I also made tremendous progress on a lot of quilts which are not listed here. Let me show you the quilts I finished.

There are videos for all of these quilts on my YouTube channel.

Haven of Harmony

The first quilt of the year was made for the Project Quilting challenge.  The Project Quilting challenges require that the quilt be made from start to finish within one week, so they tend to be very small projects. The theme for this month waws birdhouse. I wanted to make a quilt that was in the shape of a house based on a design inspiration, and although it would have been fine as a birdhouse by itself, I had a peacock fabric I just had to use to add to it.  This was really fun to take a country design and turn it into something much more exotic. You can read more about this quilt here: Haven of Harmony.

Rabbit's Reverie

Rabbit's Reverie is made for the Just Let Me Quilt blog hop challenge. This is a monthly blog hop challenge. The theme for this month is White Rabbit. I took a pair of embroidered pants and made this rabbit quilt. It was a lot of fun to find designs on fabric to add to the quilt and let the fabric choose what would be added.

Where Horses Dream Under Endless Sky

This quilt wound up getting a lot of names. It said Inktense Sky because of the pencils I used to color the sky. This was made for another Project Quilting challenge. The theme was to use a sky color, but not sky blue. I am really happy with how this turned out, especially how the horse looks, even though the house is much more casual than the horse. You can read more about this quilt here: Inktense Sky.

Raggedy Heart

 Pink Explosion is a quilt that I made for the blog hop. The blog hop does not require finished quilts, so I didn't limit myself to a small project. I was only able to make the quilt top, and did not get a chance to quilt it before the due date.

Raggedy Heart is made for the Project Quilting Challenge. The theme was raw edge, so I used strips from the Pink Explosion quilt, and used a ribbon to finish off the edges. 

While I was making the textured fabric, I made another texture using the same fabrics. I am calling this one Crumpled Heart. I am hoping to make a series of quilts with different textures. 

Red and White Hourglass Quilt

The Red and White Hourglass quilt was made for the Project Quilting challenge. The theme for the week was hourglass.  

I didn't post a full on picture of the quilt on the blog, and it is too dark now for me to try to take a new photo.

Web of Life

 

The Web of Life Quilt was made for the  Dust Off An Old Quilt Book Blog hop in March.  Since it doesn't require a quilt that has been started during the week, I started with a quilt I had already started but had stalled. I had used a gray background for my web, and I was not happy with it, so I removed the gray background, and used a white background.  I also added the applique.

Pajamas Doll Quilt

I have been wanting to make a quilt with the flannel fabric I have saved from my old pajamas, and this Project Quilting challenge made me bring them out or this project. The challenge was Wearables. It just had to have some connection to clothes. I like the soft, cozy look of this quilt, although the flannel is a little stretchier due to its age and harder to work with. I also cut up bigger squares and triangles for a bigger quilt, but I haven't done any work on them since. You can read more about it here. 

April Showers is another blog hop challenge.  I was able to finish all but the binding in time for the challenge and it has been bound, but apparently I haven't shown you the bound quilt on the blog.  The video does show it bound though.

Beach Picnic

Beach Picnic is made for the For the Birds blog hop challenge. I hadn't finished this quilt by the challenge date, but this challenge does not require a finished quilt, so I could make quilts that are a bit more complicated..  Even though I know the deadline and theme ahead of time, the Project Quilting challenges kept me from being able to devote as much time for the monthly challenges.  

Five Minute Quilt

In September, I asked AI to give me a video idea that could go viral.  It said to make a quilt in five minutes.  I didn't know if that was even possible, but I made an attempt. The results are mixed, so you will have to watch the video to decide whether I succeeded. You can read more about the Five Minute Quilt here.

Tropical Fish

I finished the Tropical Fish quilt in September. It has an applique center and a pieced border. I love the bright colors in this quilt. This is another quilt for the blog hop, where I was able to make a more complex quilt. I submitted the unfinished quilt, and finished it afterwards.

Bona Lisa

The last quilt finish of the year is Bona Lisa. I started it in October as a part of the Something Wicked blog hop. I technically didn't finish sewing down the hand sewing part of the label, but I am still counting it as a December finish.

I have started other quilts that are not a part of a challenge, but it doesn't look like I finished any of them.  Since the monthly blog hop challenge will not take place this year, hopefully I will be able to make more progress on my quilts and show finishes on quilts that have already been started.

My Stats for 2023 and January 2024

At the beginning of every year, I have been posting my stats for the previous year so that I can compare them year to year. I am running late this year because when I ran the 15 Minutes to Quilt challenge on YouTube, I found more quilts that weren't on my list of quilts in progress, and some of my estimated dates on the spreadsheet were incorrect, so I felt like I had to do more auditing to try to be as correct as I can. This means that my charts this year will look a little different than they did last year, but not by much.

I've shown you this chart before, but it will help with the other charts. I started 11 projects in 2023 and finished 12.

Here is how it looks for 2024. The two starts are more thoughts than actual starts but I have chosen the fabric and will start cutting into it soon, so I went ahead and added them. The Autobiography Quilt will be a long term project and I am editing a Youtube video that explains it. The Pink Explosion is for the February blog hop so you will see it finished (hopefully) in February.

Here is how the starts and finishes chart looks year to year. I am going to ignore the 2024 data since it will change dramatically but it does show that I have more starts than finishes overall, but that I am getting better about making up for 2007 and 2019 when I had so many starts. I am happy that I did manage to finish more than I started in 2023 and hope that I can continue that this year.

This chart shows the cumulative starts and finishes over my quilting life. I did get the two lines closer last year and hope to be able to continue to get more finishes. With the Project Quilting challenges and the blog hops, I know I have plans to start (and finish) lots of quilts, which leaves me less time to finish older projects, but I do hope to get to more finishes. I did make a lot of progress in December, and will try to sneak in more 15 minutes for the older projects one at a time so I can get more of them down the finish line.

15 Minutes to Stitch 2024

The final chart is not on a spreadsheet, but I do want to continue to stitch every day in 2024. I haven't been updating this every week since I have been so busy making quilts for the challenges and recording and editing the videos to show them, but I have definitely been working every day.

15 minute days these weeks --28 out of 28 days

15 minute days this year -- 28 out of 28 days

Success rate  = 100%

Linked with:

Kate's Life in Pieces 15 Minutes to Stitch

A Recap of my Quilting Year 2023

 

 

Image by GDJ from Pixabay.

In this post, I go over my posts during the year and give you a summary of the quilts I made, and any big events. I make a yearly recap every year. In 2021, I did not have any rules - I could start and finish as many quilts as I wanted without any guilt. The key was just to enjoy the journey. This lead to some fun finishes in 2022, but the number of unfinished quilts grew. Then I created a rule to finish more quilts than I started. I continued the rule to finish more than I started. Let's see how that affected my quilting.

January

I started January with a strong start, with a Project Quilting challenge, The First One. All Project Quilting challenges require that the quilt be started after the theme is announced and be completed within the week. This week's challenge was to make one of something. I decided to make one tree from a pattern by Irene from Sugaridoo called One Two Tree. I gave it a very creative name, One Tree. It is so much easier to remember the name of a quilt when you give it the name that was your working title.

I had so much fun with the fast finish of One Tree, I finished the I've Got Your Back camel.

I made more blocks for the Jazzy Blues quilt.

I finished this quilt, Sonder, as a Project Quilting challenge which required the color pink. This one was a lot of fun to make. I enjoyed the combination of whimsy and elegance.

Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own -- populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness -- that you'll never know existed..

February 

 

In February, I made Boundaries for another Project Quilting challenge. was to make a quilt inspired by the 54-40 or Fight quilt pattern, but I stretched the rules to use a different pattern to describe a boundary. These challenges really help with my productivity. 

 

I made more Circle 365 blocks. I pressed and trimmed some Jazzy Blues blocks. I started the Boundless quilt for the  Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.

I made Zou the Elephant as a part of a Project Quilting challenge to make a quilt inspired by a book. I had gotten an AI drawn elephant and had wanted to put that in quilt form so I was able to combine the challenge with something else I wanted to do. Zou means elephant in Japanese so Zou the Elephant is equivalent to saying chai tea.

I also made some other things, like these hearts, and a scrappy ball. I also started the Unallocated quilt and the Spicy Stars quilt. These starts are not helpful to my challenge to finishing more than I start

March

 In March, I used some scraps from the hearts I made to quickly meet a challenge for Project Quilting, Sew Not a Square. It is the one in the middle called Mended Heart.

I presented my Boundless quilt for the blog hop but I wasn't finished quilting it in time.

 

I made the final Project Quilting challenge quilt, Fear of the Missed Deadline, using scraps from my Spare Parts box. It was about conquering a fear.

April

 In April, I was able to show the quilted and finished the Boundless quilt which was made for the Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.

I made Whose Rights? from the scraps of the Boundless quilt.

I also worked on the Spicy Stars quilt.

May

Work continued to be busy in May with overtime, so I wasn't able to do much quilting.

June

June was also a busy time at work, but I did find some time to make progress on my works in progress - the Aunt Daisy blocks, Spicy Stars and Unallocated, as well as making small amounts of progress in my sewing room.

July

I kept working on the Spicy Stars blocks. I made a lot of portraits for my index card drawings.

On the 29th, I started a Youtube channel, Quilt and Color, and showed my first completed art journal.

August

In August, I wasn't working, so I made some paintings and focused on learning how to make YouTube videos. It is a steep learning curve to know what supplies I need while trying to limit my investment, learn how to use the equipment, and decide how to make videos without being boring.

I started making the index card portraits quilt based on the index card portraits I was making. It was slow since I was recording a tutorial for it, but it was fun to explain the process without having a scripted speech.

September

In September, I finished the Portraits quilt, Making Friends, and published a YouTube tutorial for it. I enjoyed that so much, I brought out my Tuxedo Vest quilt to see what I can do  to finish it.

October

In October, I finished Tuxedo Vest by appliquéing African fabric on top. I made a YouTube video about the process. I renamed the quilt, African Garden.

November

In November, I published videos that told the story of some of my finished quilts. I didn't get much time this month to work on a quilt, but producing videos about the finished quilts and getting ready to produce a video a day in December where I will work on my quilts for 15 minutes a day made it difficult to count whether I was successful in quilting every day.

December

In December, I did a lot of quilting. I pulled out a lot of my works in progress and made and published a video every day to show how the 15 minutes to quilt worked for me. I thought it would be more interesting for people to see different projects in different stages. It was a lot of fun to get reacquainted with them, and the ones that seemed scary wound up being perfectly fine. I had made a decision early on that I would show my mistakes and how I dealt with them, so there wasn't a pressure for me to be perfect in my quilting, and since I had to make a video a day, I didn't have time to fret about being perfect with my videos either. 

There were some frustrations with my tripods not working right, and my using the wrong setting on my microphone (it has to be on "off" when using the phone but on "on" when using the camera), and the software deleted my whole video a couple of times, especially when I had used the narrate feature which meant I had to start over with the narration as well as putting the clips together. I found it easier to start over instead of trying to fix some things in editing so many times I worked more than 15 minutes on a project.

I learned a lot about my UFOs and about videos, so it was very successful for me.

I even snuck in some extra time to finish this Scrappy Cat. It uses scraps from the I've Got Your Back camel you saw in January.

Recap

 

So how did I do with my finish more than you start goal? I finished 12 quilts and only started 11 so I am officially successful! I actually made more progress than the numbers show because I made lots of progress on my other quilts a little bit throughout the year, and especially in December. Most of my WIPs at the back of the line were able to officially move up a little bit, not just because a quilt at the front of the line got finished, but also because they themselves were more completed than they started at the beginning of the year. 

 

I want to thank Wendy for her small quilt of the month challenge. Even though it has been discontinued, I am continueing to enjoy making a small quilt a month. I especially want to thank Kate for her 15 minutes to stitch challenge. I also want to thank Kim for the Project Quilting challenges. All three people have helped motivate me and gave me "permission" to enjoy myself and spend time quilting. I also want to thank all of my blog readers for coming and reading my ramblings. Your support means a lot to me.