2019 Year in Review

Happy New Year's eve! Lots of quilt bloggers are looking back at 2019 today to see what we accomplished, so I'm joining in. I had a busy year, and I've collected my photos in collages sorted roughly by date. Early in the year I had a batch of gift quilts, with a few charity ones thrown in. 

This group featured several panel quilts, a finish from 2018's Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC,) and the fruit-themed flimsy. One of the charities I support, Victoria's Quilts, asks for only tops.

This next batch had more panels (yes, that's a second quilt with the same Geisha) and the start of my new journey of finishing other people's orphan blocks for Covered in Love (CiL.)

Toward the middle of the year, I was up to my eyeballs in "Mendota" quilts for the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild. Most of the Mendotas were tops made by others, finished by me. I did make a few of my own "from scratch." A couple more CiL orphan finishes, too.

More orphans and Mendotas! This is when I decided to write a series of blog posts on different ways to put together orphan blocks: Giving Orphans a Home. This series will continue in 2020.

This next batch shows a few finishes for 2019 RSC, more orphans, and a Round Robin from 2018 that finally got quilted and bound.

And finally, my latest finishes. They are a few more for CiL, both orphans and original piecing by me. Whew! One thing I've learned this year is that quilts sure go together quickly when someone else makes all the blocks or when using a panel. Or both!

I had a great quilty 2019 and am looking forward to 2020. Lots more orphan blocks are waiting for their chance to meet their forever homes, and I have plans to do a deep dive into my stash and use up some hoarded fabrics. And I'm so happy to be part of the larger online quilting community, sharing inspiration and encouragement with all of you. Your kind comments keep me connected even when I'm out in the middle of the ocean. Thank you for being a BIG part of my journey!

2018 Year in Review

Welcome to my look back at 2018! If you're seeing this at the end of 2019, my apologies. I carefully put together all the photo collages a year ago but never actually published them on my blog. So I've back-dated this post to December 31, 2018, but am actually writing it on December 31, 2019. Which means it will probably be sent to subscribers on January 1, 2020. Confused? Me, too! In any case, these are old quilts that you've probably seen before, so feel free to skip this post. These summaries are mostly for myself in any case.

Starting from the beginning of the year, I made several gift quilts, some pillow covers, and several small donation quilts for Jack's Basket.

This batch is three tiny doll quilts for A Doll Like Me, a couple wall hangings for the boat, and two for other charities.

Three flimsies for Victoria's Quilts, donated as part of Hands2Help 2018. More pillow covers for us. The rest were donated to Little Lambs, Wrap-A-Smile, and Covered in Love.

A few more charity quilts. I really like that top design and should make another one of those! The Old Italian blocks, on the other hand, were fiddly enough that one quilt of those is sufficient. Too many other blocks to try to repeat ones that I didn't really like making.

I spy with my little eye one gift, one for our guest bed, three charities using panels, and at least four I-Spy quilts! 

A few more gifts, two more tiny doll quilts, two quilt along finishes, and miscellaneous charity donations. They all look like they are the same size because the way the photos are cropped, but they certainly are not!

A mystery QAL, two holiday pieces for the boat, an RSC finish. I was a pattern tester for the bottom right piece. Such a cool design!

Since I wrote this post after writing my 2019 summary, its interesting to see how my focus changed between the two years. I don't think I made any doll quilts in 2019. I also didn't participate in as many quilt alongs. And clearly we have enough quilts on board now after making quite a few to keep in 2018. If you made it all the way to the bottom of this post, thanks for sticking around. Happy New Year!