Seasonal Goal Update: Winter 2025

Hello Friends and Welcome Winter!

I had initially hoped to post this last week when it actually looked Wintery outside, but after returning from my trip a few weeks earlier, I ended up with a head cold and needed some time to look after that.

Since then, the beautiful, fluffy snow that had piled on the ground has melted away after several days of rain. I'm really not a fan of rain at this time of year since we still have many cold days ahead of us, and rain on the ground now means ice in the near future, which becomes even more perilous when hidden by a fresh blanket of snow!

Anticipating conditions like those over the next few months, I expect I'll be spending more time in the ice-free sewing room, which hopefully means more progress on my pile of quilting projects!

But before we can take a good look ahead, I'd like to do a little look back at what I had planned to do over the Autumn months and whether I was successful in completing, or progressing, on those projects!

Autumn Goals

For the Autumn months of 2024, I had a variety of different goals and projects in the works. I shared my hope of working on several different projects; including three digital, four piecing, one garment, and one social goals!

My first project was the Fibre Arts blog, where I wanted to continue posting on a weekly schedule and share any planned absences in advance. Though there was the occasional week, like last week, when I was sick and couldn't provide advance notice, I will still consider this goal a success!

The next project was my custom font design for my quilt labels! My goal for this project wasn't necessarily to completely finish drafting a design of each letter, rather, I was hoping to draft one letter each week of the Autumn season.

Unfortunately, I only drafted the letter A and didn't get any further along than that, so I would say I was unsuccessful in completing this goal.

The final of my digital goals was to complete the instructions for my Blackwork Roads pattern, included typing, editing, and drafting diagrams. And I've come really close to reaching that goal!

Currently, I've completed the instructions for each of the nine chunks and am most of the way through the instructions for final assembly! There's really only one diagram left to draft and all the instructions will be ready for publishing, so I'll be calling this one a partial success!

The next goal also involved Blackwork Roads, but this time I was focused on piecing! My hope was that my Blackwork Roads sample quilt would be completely pieced by the end of the Autumn season, and though I didn't meet that goal, I did make a lot of piecing progress. As a result, I've decided to call this another partial success!

Another of my piecing goals was focused on my Indigo Way quilt! For this project, I was hoping to finish assembling all of the blocks I would need for the quilt top, but not to assemble them, as I'm planning to eventually use quilt as you go to finish the quilt!

I've made quite a lot of progress, on those quilt blocks, but haven't quite finished them all just yet.

However, I also put a time goal on this project and was hoping to finish my blocks before the new mystery quilt, Old Town, started releasing. As a result of this additional caveat, I'm not sure whether I should classify this as a partial success, or as unsuccessful; I made a lot of progress, but I'm now over a month past the time I wanted these blocks finished.

Indigo Way was designed by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

Speaking of Old Town, it was my third piecing project of the season! For this quilt, I had hoped to keep up with the release of the instructions, but looking back on my original Autumn goals post, the only thing put in writing was that I wouldn't start Old Town until my Indigo Way blocks were finished.

Since Indigo Way is still in progress, I haven't started Old Town. Following what was written, this goal was a success, but looking at my actual intentions, I was unsuccessful.

Old Town was designed by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.

While I'm not really sure how the last few goals should be classified, I don't have that problem with the last of my piecing projects; Ice Cream Soda! For this project, all I wanted was to continue making progress, and in that I was successful!

Ice Cream Soda was designed by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.

Moving away from quilting, I also had one garment project underway last season!

I had hoped to draft a custom pants pattern for myself so that I could make custom clothing that would fit me well! I did put together a pajama pants pattern that fits me really well and that I'm quite happy with, which fits the letter of the goal, but not the spirit of it.

I'm still working on refining that pajama pattern into one that's more structured and fitted, including closures. As such, I'll be calling this a partial success!

The final goal for the Autumn 2024 season was a social one; I wanted to get connected with a local quilt guild! After sending a few emails, I was able to attend a meeting as a guest, and after that, joined the guild as a full member!

In addition to the quilt guild, I found a social stitching group at the local library! I haven't been attending regularly and most of the regulars are knitters and crocheters rather than quilters, but I've enjoyed visiting them on the weeks I was available!

After all of that, I ended up successfully completing two goals, partially completing three, was unsuccessful completing one, and two of my goals left me unsure how to classify their level of completion.

Though I didn't complete all of my goals, I'm still really happy with the progress I did make, and a lot of the partial and unclassified goals are fairly close to completion even if they haven't quite progressed as scheduled!

Winter Goals

Moving forward, I'm planning to continue with a lot of the same goals as last season, but since I'm several months further through them all, I'm hoping I'll be more successful in completing them!

I'm keeping the same three digital project goals as before; continue sharing weekly posts on the Fibre Arts blog and give advanced notice of posting breaks whenever possible; draft font samples at a rate of at least one letter per week; and finish drafting the pattern instructions for Blackwork Roads!

In addition to those, I'll be working on the same four piecing projects; I hope to complete my Blackwork Roads quilt top; I'd like to finish piecing the blocks and border units for Indigo Way; I'm hoping to get started on Old Town but only after completing my Indigo Way blocks; and I'll continue working on Ice Cream Soda, making any amount of progress over the coming months!

Finally, I've got one garment project I'd like to complete; I hope to finish drafting a structured, everyday pants pattern!

This is a lot of projects to be working on at once, but several are very close to completion and I'm optimistic they'll reach that point this season!

Friends, I've loved taking the time to look back at my stitching over the last few months and seeing how far I've come! Some of the goals I set for myself were a little loftier than I could handle all at once, but I'm excited to make another attempt at it in the months to come!

If you have any new projects getting started this Winter, or any you're continuing from the Autumn, I would love to hear about them! Please share your stories in the comments below, by sending me an email, or by reaching out on Instagram!

I can't wait to see what we'll make together this Winter season!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA