Seasonal Goal Update: Summer 2025

Hello Friends and Welcome Summer!

It has been a very hot start to the season here in Southern Ontario, with a record high temperature yesterday!

Of course, that would be the day my husband ran out of gas and called me for emergency roadside assistance. Somehow, despite being over an hours drive away, I was his best option for help, so Meara and I went for a little road trip! She loves riding in the car, so was quite happy to join me in spite of the heat and we were rewarded with ice cream!

With that unexpected journey out of the way, I'm looking forward to greeting the new season in my more usual way; with an update to my seasonal sewing goals!

Spring Goals

Before jumping into my plans for the next few months, let's take a look back at last season's goals and find out how successful I was in completing them!

For the Spring season, I had hoped to work on nine different projects, across digital, sewn, and quilted mediums. With so many things in the works at once, I have a lot of choice as to which part of the creative process I want to work on on any given day!

On the other hand, sometimes I fixate on a singular project and leave the others without any new progress for months or years at a time. Checking in with my project goals periodically helps me get back on track, and I can't wait to see how I did last season!

Let's get started by taking a look at my digital goals for Spring 2025!

The first of those was to continue updating the Fibre Arts blog, giving notice of posting breaks along the way. In that, I was successful!

The next of my digital goals was to finish drafting my custom font templates and send them to be cut as stencils, and I'm thrilled to say this was another success!

If anyone is looking to purchase stencils, I highly recommend Muddaritaville Studio! They have a variety of stencil designs in stock, as well as the option to cut custom stencils from your own designs! Joanne knows her craft and was an absolute joy to work with!

Moving along to the next digital goal; I had hoped to post more frequently to social media, but I was not successful in doing this.

I'm constantly working on one or another of my stitching projects, so it's not that I don't have something to share, it's that I keep coming up with excuses to not take pictures. I think the habit I need to get into moving forward is to take photos of the stage that I'm at rather than waiting until a project looks good enough to be shared. I'm sure it will be difficult getting into that mindset, and the photos might not look as good as I hope, but I'm sure to learn and improve along the way!

The final digital goal I had for the Spring season was to get started on my next quilt along design. Another success, and I'm excited to share a little peak at part of the design!

Of course, this is just a digital mock up of the pattern, it's sure to look a little different when pieced together in fabric!

And speaking of piecing, there were three projects I'd hoped to make progress on throughout the Spring season!

The first two were Old Town and Ice Cream Soda, both of which I wanted to continue making progress on, but with no particular amount of progress in mind. And after another season of stitching, that's two more successful project goals!

For my Old Town quilt, I had only one completed block back in March, but am now up to a total of 21 completed blocks!

There's still a few left to make before I match the pattern instructions, and I might make a few extras since I'm not sold on the intense coral backgrounds, but progress is definitely happening!

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

As for Ice Cream Soda, I was finishing up my partial edge blocks when the season started. I have since finished those blocks and started assembling the rows of my quilt top!

There's five blocks missing before this side of the quilt will be completed; two from the lower row and three from the upper, and I haven't made any progress on this since sometime in May, but it's closer to completion than it was when Spring arrived!

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

My other piecing project had a slightly more specific goal; for the Generations Quilt project, I wanted to finish 20 blocks each of the Dresden Plate and Six Pointed Star patterns in my Grandma's style, as well as make progress on my own scrappy white versions of those blocks.

This was another goal that I succeeded in completing!

For my Grandma's imitation blocks, I reached the goal of completing 20 of each, but later decided it might be a good idea to piece a few extras. I now have 11 authentic and 14 imitation Dresden Plate blocks for a total of 25 Dresdens in her style. For the Six Pointed Stars, I have 11 authentic and 9 imitation blocks, for a total of 20.

As for my own blocks, I'm not totally sure how many I had in this colourway at the start of the season, but I think it was about 6 to 8 of each pattern. Now, at the end of Spring, I have 25 finished Dresden Plates and 24 Six Pointed Stars!

The Generations Quilt is based on the traditional Dresden Plate and Six Pointed Star blocks, using templates drafted by Valerie Anne.

With so much piecing underway, I was ambitiously hoping to get some quilting done too!

I didn't pick a project at the beginning of the season, instead, I set the goal of finishing the quilting on one quilt. As the Spring season progressed, I decided to continue quilting my Meadow Mystery quilt!

While I didn't finish quilting this quilt, I did make quite a bit of progress, completing another row of quilted blocks! I didn't meet the goal, but I'm proud of the progress I did make, so I'll call this a partial success!

My Meadow Mystery quilt is based on a design by Cheryl Brickley of Meadow Mist Designs.

My final project goal for Spring 2025 was to make progress on my custom pants pattern draft!

When setting this goal, I acknowledged that it wasn't something I was inspired to work on, rather it was a utilitarian goal since I will need new pants one day and most stores don't carry my size. It's not a surprise to me that this goal was not met, but perhaps I will find the inspiration to revisit pattern drafting in the future!

Of the nine project goals I had set for the Spring season, six were successfully achieved, one reached partial success, and two were unsuccessful.

Overall, I'm very proud of these achievements and think I had a very productive and successful season! There are a few areas I can improve in, but the most important and goals were met!

On that positive note, I'm excited to move forward into the Summer season!

Summer 2025

With the arrival of a new season, I'm looking forward to working on nine unique projects! Some will continue from past seasons, others will be brand new this Summer, but all are things that I'm looking forward to learning and growing from!

To start off, let's take a look at my digital goals!

• Continue posting weekly to the Fibre Arts blog, giving notices of absences in advance whenever possible

• Post to social media more frequently, posting at least as many fun progress photos as post updates

Both of these are ongoing goals that I'm always hopping to improve upon! If you have any suggestions for improving the way I document my work that you'd be willing to share, please don't hesitate to share those with me!

Moving into the realm of stitching, there are five patterns I would like to work on. Some have particular deadlines or guides for how I want to progress, while others are much more open ended!

• Finish piecing my Potato Chip quilt before the challenge deadline in September; in accordance with the challenge rules, I'm not able to share updates on my progress, but I will share photos of the end result once the quilts have been voted on

Potato Chip is a design by Brenda Logan of Conquering Mount Scrapmore.

• Continue piecing Ice Cream Soda, making any amount of progress

• Continue piecing Old Town, making any amount of progress

  

• Continue piecing scrappy white blocks and imitation Grandma blocks for the Generations Quilt project

• Start the new Cherish quilt along only if my Ice Cream Soda quilt top is completely pieced

This last piecing project is one that I haven't mentioned before because the quilt along was only announced yesterday. I've enjoyed working on two other Tales of Cloth quilt along projects; Hexie Harvest and Ice Cream Soda, so I'm really excited to make another of her patterns! However, my usual clause of not starting a new quilt along by the same designer while still working on a past project comes into play here.

Essentially, the goal isn't that I want to start a Cherish quilt this Summer, it's that I need to finish my ongoing Ice Cream Soda quilt top before I can start working on Cherish, and if that means I don't start Cherish until next year, so be it!

Cherish is a design by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.

With pieced projects thoroughly covered, I also have one project in the quilting stage that I'd like to work on!

• Continue quilting Meadow Mystery, making any amount of progress

After setting goals for eight unique projects, we've finally reached the most important project of my Summer season; next year's quilt along! This single project spans across digital, piecing, and quilting, so I couldn't place it in any one of those categories, so it gets its own!

Here's what I have left to do to prepare for the pattern release in September:

• Draft, type, and edit the instructions for the quilt along pattern

• Completely piece the first sample of the quilt along pattern

• Start quilting the sample of the quilt along pattern

All together, I'll be putting a lot of work into this project over the next few months, but most of it won't be shared until the quilt along is launched in September. This is a little sad since it means the progress recorded in my project updates might slow down a bit, but I'm so excited to be able to share the finished pattern with all of you when the work is done!

Friends, thank you all so much for joining me for a look back at the Spring season and a glance ahead at the Summer to come! I've been really inspired to see just how much progress I was able to make over the last few months and can't wait to stitch my way through yet another season!

And I would love to hear about your own goals for the Summer ahead! Please share the projects you'll be working on in the comments below, privately via email, or by tagging me in your posts over on Instagram! I love seeing what you're working on and am excited to see your plans unfold over the next few months!

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

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA