Project Update: 09.12.2025

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

After another few weeks on the market, the house has had several new visitors, but no new offers. Waiting for someone to show interest is certainly not my favourite part of the house selling experience, but there's nothing I can do about it and this is the slow time of year for house sales, so wait I must!

In the meantime, I've been doing my best to keep the sewing studio neat while working on several different quilt projects, let's take a look!

Ice Cream Soda Quilt

My last update left Ice Cream Soda irritatingly close to a finished quilt top, but sadly without enough fabric to finish the borders. Fortunately, a visit to one of Mom's local quilt stores helped me to remedy that!

Now that I've turned the final corner, this quilt top is completely pieced!

At this point, I have some basting threads left to remove, and the whole thing could use a good pressing, then it will be ready to quilt!

Of course, I'm not quite ready to get started on that just yet. I still need backing fabric and batting, and haven't put much thought into the quilted motif.

I think Ice Cream Soda will go into the quilting queue for a little while, but we'll see it again soon!

My Ice Cream Soda quilt is based on a design by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.

Midnight Circus Sample Quilt

Speaking of quilting, I've gotten a few more areas quilted on my Midnight Circus sample quilt!

After simplifying the background motif to a crosshatched design, I've decided to take that another step simpler with an uneven hatched line design!

I feel that this compresses the background areas without making the quilt too stiff, and the variation in line spacing creates an interesting texture. I'm also thinking of adding a little hand quilting into the larger spaces for more texture and interest!

With that, I've started to run out of areas to quilt, so I've stitched the next row to the quit centre so I can continue!

Meara has been eager to help with this part, making sure I've distributed the navy prints on the scrappy backing and checking the accuracy of my pieced corners. After all, if a quilt is on the floor, finished or not, it must be for puppies!

Now that I've expanded the quilt, I can get back to quilting in the new areas! Specifically, I'll be focusing on the sashing areas, and probably not quilting much on the new star block until I've sewn on the next row. Doing that allows me to quilt the whole star area in two or three continuous lines, with fewer threads to bury!

Midnight Circus is my own original design, by Valerie Anne of the Fibre Arts blog.

Potato Chip Challenge Quilt

With the quilting on Midnight Circus well underway, I'm excited to share another project that's made it past the quilting stage; Potato Chip!

I ended up doing less quilting on Potato Chip than originally planned. After finishing the alternating hourglass and crimp motifs, I was happy with the density of the quilting and felt that it didn't need the extra cross hatch.

I was really happy with the softness of the quilt at this point, and a little worried that adding more would make the quilt start to feel stiff and less cozy.

With that decided, Potato Chip needed a label!

I printed it last week, then let the ink set for a few days while visiting my Grandma. Once set, I could press the label without fear of the ink smearing or transferring to my iron plate!

I stitched the top and bottom edges by hand, and the two outer edges are sewn on with the binding!

For my binding fabric, I wanted something dark that would match the dark edges of the quilt top. I thought about using a solid black since the piecing is so busy and scrappy, but didn't have any on hand.

Instead, I decided on a dark floral print that I happened to still have a lot of!

I think it makes a really pretty binding print, and since it matches the piecing on the quilt top, it makes the pieced design seem to slide right off the edge of the quilt!

I like to use the double fold binding method, with the front of the binding sewn by machine, and the back stitched by hand. At this point, I'm about half way around the back side of the binding, so Potato Chip should be finished soon!

My Potato Chip quilt is based on a design by Brenda Logan of Conquering Mount Scrapmore.

Old Town Quilt

With a Ice Cream Soda at a resting point and Potato Chip almost finished, I felt like I could bring home another project to work on! It's Bonnie Hunter mystery season, and I'm excited to get started on the new project, Lupine and Laughter, but promised myself I would finish piecing last year's project first!

I haven't worked on Old Town since June, when I had finished 21 of the 25 total blocks. I knew a few of the blocks I'd made felt off when I laid them all out together, so I started by removing those and seeing how many blocks remained.

These are the seven blocks I've chosen not to use, most because the background colour felt too intense, but one because it felt too pale.

With those blocks removed, my palette felt a little calmer, but does still need a few more blocks! I've got background fabric for those picked out and ready to piece!

While I thought about which blocks I wanted to remove, I decided to piece sashing strips from some of the prints I knew I would be keeping!

I've made some alterations to the pattern to better fit the quilt I want to make, including a change to the placement of prints in the sashing strips so they're more colourful!

And though there's still a lot of piecing yet to do, I wanted to see how the sashing would look with my blocks, so I laid a few of them out together!

The quilt will be mostly pink when it's finished, but I haven't made any pink sashing strips yet, so our first look is of a green quilt!

I'm really excited with how this quilt is coming along, and can't wait to see how the gradient turns out when I finally have some sashing strips in every colour to play with!

My Old Town quilt is based on a design by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

Friends, I can't believe how much stitching I've gotten done in the last few weeks!

It seems like a lot of my projects are drawing quickly towards completion, or at least to the quilting queue! Perhaps one of my goals for the upcoming Winter season should be to finish some of those?

And, of course, I would love to hear what all of you have been up to! Please tell me about your ongoing projects in the comments below, by email, or share posts by tagging me on Instagram!

I can't wait to see what we'll make together next!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA