True Blue

I started this quilt during a quilt along in January, 2026.  It's called True Blue.  I made progress on it this week.

You can see the details for the True Blue quilt along at American Patchwork & Quilting site here.

Tulip Table Runner Flimsy Complete

Yeah!  I have something to put on the longarm.  

The pattern is Tulip Table Runner --a pattern by Amy Chappeli from Ameroonie Designs.

Can't wait to load this one.  I need a small project to test my theory on the stitch regulator issue.  I'll quilt circles on this one because it's small.  If I have stitch regulator issues like I anticipate, at least it is a smaller project and I will get through it vs. a queen-sized quilt.

Slow Sunday Stitching -- Dinner Party Binding

I'm working on the binding of my Dinner Party crib-sized quilt this week.  The majority of the fabrics were given to me from Linda at Art in Search..  The fabric line is called Horsen' Around.  

This is a fun one to bind as the quality fabrics are super soft.

I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching here.

 

This week was our son's 19th birthday.  Wow, how time flies.  We left him pick where he wanted to go and plan the road trip.  He picked a mini golf place that was one hour and 45 minutes away.

Here's a pic of my husband and I.  Man I need to start losing weight again.  It's been such a struggle.  I was a ketovore for about six years (2019-2025).  I just couldn't maintain it.  This is not he heaviest weight that I have been.  I joined Weight Watchers in February of this year.  I have GAINED 7 pounds since then!  I tried the "shots" for a year (last year).  I lost 19 pounds on that but gained it back when I joined WW.  Hopefully seeing this pic on my blog will jog my memory of what I need to do.  I'm lucky right now that my knees don't hurt like they use to and that I am still mobile.  I need to look at the positives.  I can work in my flowerbeds for hours at a time.  I'm slow, but I am way more mobile than my mom ever was.  Let's just call this my "before" picture.  I had a good hair day before this photo, but it got to hot before we took a pic.  LOL

Here's a pic of my husband and his sister.  She is such an awesome friend to me and the BEST AUNT our son could ever ask for.  She is his biggest cheerleader.

A good time was had by all.

On Friday when my husband was at work, Owen was treated to dinner and a movie with his friend.

Owen's friend's dad showed Owen how he uses AI to make a cool pic.  Yes, we saw Mandalorian (a Star Wars movie).  It was cute.

RSC26 -- Pink Tulips

I utilized my time this week to go back and catch up on a pink project I worked on earlier this year.

The pattern is Tulip Table Runner --a pattern by Amy Chappeli from Ameroonie Designs.

I pulled out the pastels from my Bit Con quilt (Bonnie Hunter pattern).  I got those sewn together.  

I cut all the rest of the pieces needed of the green stems and leaves and background fabric while at the shop with my truck last week. 

Several of you mentioned having trouble growing tulips due to the fact that animals would dig up the bulbs to eat them.  I had that problem in the past.  To resolve it I learned that when I planted the bulbs to dig out more and put a 10" square piece of wire mesh above it that had about 1" gaps in it.  The gaps let the tulip shoots grow up through it.  The rest of the mesh makes it to hard for the varmint to get to it and it moves on to eating another one of my delicious plants...

My strawberry planter is growing beautifully even with all the dry weather we have had.  Cucumbers are starting to climb around the pool ladder rungs in the back of the planter.

My tomatoes in the raised beds are not doing so great just yet.  I just got the hose out to them this week to make sure they get watered on a more regular basis.

My purple things (I think they are Bellflowers) are beautiful.  We had a very brief hard rain late last night.  They were knocked down a bit but stood back up after I took the photo.

I have been having trouble planting zucchini from seed ever since 2020.  Finally I got two plants to grow from the free seeds from the library in this old, cracked kettle.  This is the kettle that my grandparents used when we butchered and for making apple butter.  The weird cement face was part of an art pot that I bought in the gift shop in our county disabilities building.  It had a planter with it and when planted was supposed to resemble the plant being hair.  The terra cotta pot broke off the first week I had it planted.  I stuck it in this kettle for fun.  The large zucchini plant seems to be doubling by the day in the hot weather.

I finally planted my dried out marigold plants yesterday.  When I moved the graduation sign Candy the cat must have thought that would be a good way to still be in the shade.  I decided to allow the one volunteer tomato plant to continue to grow in this bed.  Usually this little bed is where I plant tomatoes.  This year the flowers growing around the edge came up again.  I didn't know that they were perennials.

I'm linking up at Angela's blog, SoScrappy, for the RSC26

Bit Con Mindless Strip Piecing

I sewed ALL the strips that was in the craft box into pieces to be cut for the Bit Con UFO that was sitting on the shelf.  I thought I would use it as a leader/ender project.  Look closely in the photo--yes, that IS an empty box!

Bit Con is a Bonnie Hunter pattern. I have no idea how many strips or yards of fabric scraps were used.  I do know that these fabrics mostly came out of the multi-colored bin.  I sort my scraps by color.  Stay tuned for tons and tons of cutting.

 

Wednesday UFO Squirrel -- Bit Con!

I was working on cutting border pieces for the tulip table runner that I was working on yesterday. 

An old squirrel jumped out in front of me this early morning.   Little pieces were appearing.

I reached for the bin to put the extra strips away... but wait... I could use this as a leader/ender project and just move it along.  It's really neat and self-contained on the shelf.  I got it out and started stitching pieces together between current project pieces:

Bitcoin Double Sized Quilt-- have cut strips in multi-colored fabrics (fabrics that are more than one color and don't fit into a specific color family bin for sorting purposes.) I have several strips sewn together in another strip bin.  This is a pattern designed by Bonnie Hunter.

Don't you just love it when you fall in love all over with a UFO?

Weather forecast here in our part of Ohio today is some rain (hopefully God will water my plants that need some steady, gentle rain.) Then I'm sure it will get quite warm and muggy in the mid-upper 80's.  Seems like a good day to clean my closet, sew, and play in the pool with the kid.  Happy Wednesday.

Arranging Tulips

 I started playing with these blocks again this week.

The pattern is Tulip Table Runner --a pattern by Amy Chappeli from Ameroonie Designs.

I cut all the rest of the pieces needed of the green stems and leaves and background fabric while at the shop with my truck last week.  Time to get it moving along.

I made it this far yesterday.

Hourglass Crib Quilt on the Frame

 This little leftover hourglass block crib quilt is on the frame.

I made the crumb hourglass blocks to use up fabrics from another project.  It's a little out of my comfort zone color-wise.  I don't think they are good colors for a baby quilt.  Hopefully it will be just someone's thing.

If you see frog eyes staring at you at the bottom of the quilt, you're not seeing things.  I'm using a fleece that I most likely won't use for anything else as the batting.  The fabrics are dark enough that it won't show through.  I actually finished the quilting of this quilt on Sunday.  It's soft and I can't see the fleece batting when I hold it up to the light.  Next to bind it.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I did move my hoop over a bit to outline another shape IN THE SAME BLOCK that I was working on last week.  I stitched on this block about an hour at the car dealership and and two hours at magnet fishing.  Boy this hand stitching is taking a long time with the stab and jab method.  

 

I switched to a longer needle and ordered some different ones on eBay.  I'm going to try making the stitches from the top.  Either way, I am still enjoying the relaxing stitching therapy as I sew.  The important part to me is that it is relaxing.  I love the improvement I'm making on nicer stitches.

I'm still stitching on this row!!!  I knew this would be a long-term project.  When I finish the current block in the top photo I will be 25 percent done with the hand quilting.  

I really liked Kathy's diagram at Kathy's Quilts about how we start new projects and and finish them once in a while.  During one of my last school days while our son was home and I was still working, he sent me this diagram of some of his summer plans.  It makes me happy that he has a lot of creative plans.  some that make me giggle are "listen to the family" and "don't be mad".  "Lisen to mom" and "Love Family" are on his list.  "Organize cards and stuff"-- thank you AGAIN for the cards that you sent him he just LOVES them!!!

I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching here. Can you believe it's the end of May?

 

Kitting for the Day

Today is my major maintenance scheduled for my 2004 Dodge Ram.  I will patiently wait with it for about three hours.  I am taking two projects with me to pass the time.  Hopefully I'll get there early enough to get the little cubby area that faces the wall like a desk.

The maintenance is sort of expensive but worth it.  For Christmas in 2024 my transmission gave it up.  The shop that handled my Forever Warranty has to replace the transmission FOR FREE because I kept up on all the service of the truck.  You can read about that in the blog post.

I need to cut the leaves and stems and background fabrics for six tulips that I made last month.

The other project I will take with me is my hand quilted crib quilt.  I don't need the cubby area to work on this project.

A fun thing that our son and I are doing this summer is T-Mobile Tuesday deals.  He is LOVING exploring new places for CHEAP lunches and getting deals like swag from T-Mobile.  Here he is eating his lunch that we got for $3.99 - $4.59 each (he had the "premium" mac & cheese vs. the steamed broccoli.

It's a great lesson on how to download the app, how to access the deal on Tuesdays on the T-Mobile app, how to pay with the app.  There's a lot of following directions and entering data like name, e-mail, address...  Food is his love language.  Might as well utilize it to teach.  He learns soooo much faster when he is really interested in the topic.  He's even getting good at remembering passwords and/or saving them.  Sometimes it's me that needs a little of his help (or at least I act like it so that he has to help me). Teehee.

T-Mobile didn't used to work very good in our area, but a new tower was installed less than 20 minutes away.  We were told that we would not be able to access our AT&T landline after 6/30.  Spring break was a great time for us to switch.  The price averages out the same, but when we utilize all the freebies (like Netflix, Hulu, Paramount Plus, and the food/movie/event stuff...) It works for us.  If you are thinking about switching, give them my name and I think we BOTH get a savings!

Ours is a little more expensive due to our remote area and our son needed a personal hotspot to utilize his laptop in the garage and on the road.  We are very happy with not losing service and a lot less buffering on the things we are streaming.

My husband was working out of town yesterday.  We finished the evening with eight wings from Pizza Hut for $1 each.  Luckily it was right on the way home and pick-up was a breeze.

Slow Sunday Stitching

I'm back to working on this hand-quilted crib quilt in the evenings.  I do it when I don't have something that needs the binding hand-stitched.  Guess I need to get some things on and off the longarm...

This is what the Random Blue Blocks quilt looks like:

I'm still stitching on this row!!!  I knew this would be a long-term project.  When I finish the current block in the top photo I will be 25 percent done with the hand quilting.  I'll take it with me when our son goes magnet fishing if I don't kayak that day.

I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching here.  Can you believe it's the end of May?

 

Poppies and a RSC Finish

School is DONE for the 2025-2026 school year.  I did not work on any orange scraps this month.  I do have these beautiful orange poppy blooms to show:

I do need to thin out that hosta.  The yellow buttercups (to the left of it) have not bloomed yet.  They need thinned as well.  I'll have plenty of time for that this afternoon!  Woohoo!  I'll also move more of the purple sedum to another bed.  I checked on the deer-resistant plants that some of you mentioned or e-mailed to me.  I have most of them.  Yeah!

I finished this RSC project this week.  I call it Kite Girl.

Kite Girl started as part of one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenges (RSC) in 2014 (I think).  The block is made from 2" squares.  The block pattern can be found at Q is for Quilter blog.  I then started to learn to do the chain stitch for the kite strings and stems in May of 2017.  In enjoyed finding things that fit easily into my school bag that made me feel productive vs. doing cross stitch projects where I had to focus on counting and couldn't keep a good eye on students in study hall.  I randomly stitched kite strings with pieces of floss from my grandma's tin. I made the last orange block in 2017 and waited until I knew what I wanted to do with the border and sashing.

This quilt does not have a specific recipient in mind yet.  It measures 61" x 87".

I was going for an old-fashioned look when I picked the green for the sashing and borders.  It was a great fabric deal when I purchased it at JoAnn Fabrics years ago using a 50 percent off coupon.  I miss JoAnn Fabrics.  But then again I save money by not going there so much when I have to wait on our son to finish one of his activities in the area.

I backed it with a gently used sheet that one of my friends gave to me.  The quilting design is Baptist Fan (using my Circle Lord giant template board).  I used taupe thread to blend into the backing.

It has been such a busy month.  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders with this eight-week long-term sub job complete.  I will be going back to the same job at the start of the school year in August.  

Graduation has come and gone.  Thank you so much for those that sent him a card in the mail. Special paperwork for our son and the next chapter of his life is 75 percent complete.  Bring on summer.

I'm linking up at Angela's blog, SoScrappy, for the RSC26

6 finishes this (Spring) quarter

Here's my Spring 2026 Ravelry UFO Club Projects:

1.  Bit Con quilt -- Needs more rows of strips sewn together -- size yet to be determined

2.  Rail Fence 3.5" RSC block -- 900 blocks needed/need arranged

3.  Piccadilly Circle -- Need a few more circle blocks

4.  Kite Girl --finished 5.28.26 -- 6th finish

5.  Folk Art Birds -- Need more birds and alternate blocks

6.  Hourglass Mini -- Needs a quilt back and then quilted

7.  Maroon Sampler -- Needs two more blocks

8.  Dicey -- Blocks need sewn together with sashing and cornerstones

9.  Fireflies Wall Hanging -- Blocks need appliqued

10.  Red/White basket crib quilt --finished 5.15.26 -- 5th finish

11.  D9P Red/White -- finished 5.11.26 -- 4th finish

12.  HST -- Needs more blocks made and sewn into rows

13.  Red/White House in Center baby quilt -- finished 5.2.26 -- 2nd finish

14.  Fish -- a 12-block RSC26 project

15. Scarborough Fair -- Needs more blocks made

16.  Random Blue Blocks -- Hand Quilting -- In the hoop

17.  Acorn Harvest -- Quilt top needs assembled

18.  Horsen Around Crib Quilt -- needs a back and then quilted

19.  Horsen Around Scrap Quilt -- needs blocks cut and sewn

20.  Pink Houses crib quilt -- Needs blocks made

21.  Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter 2025 mystery quilt) -- in the piecing process

22.  Christmas Memories 4-patches sewn, need more

23.  Dinner Party (school print blocks) blocks cut, needs blocks sewn

24.   Layer Cake Lattice -- pink blocks cut -- needs blocks sewn

25.  True Blue Sew Along (started 1/15/26) -- needs corners sewn to blocks

26.  Zip It Sew Along -- finished 5.1.26, 1st finish this quarter

27.  Classic Meets Modern QA from 2014 -- block complete, need sashing

28.  King Rosebud embroidery quilt --finished 5.5.26, 3rd finish this quarter

29.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #1 (pinwheels)

30.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #2 (squares)

31.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #2 (HST and a Square)

32.  Cheddar Jack crib quilt -- cat blocks are sewn, some 2.5" squares are sewn

You can find the 2026 Spring Ravelry UFO club here.

Dinner Party on the Frame

 This dinner party lap-sized quilt is on the frame.

I am quilting it with the Circle Lord Wanders design.  It's probably not the best choice I could have made for it, but I wanted to see how my longarm responded to a design without circles or curves.  Hmmm.  It quilted for about an hour without shutting off at all.  That's starting to tell me that maybe cleaning or replacing the vertical sensors for the stitch regulator might be worth another shot.  I'll discuss the situation with my husband and he will help me troubleshoot more.

I'm putting off calling the service person.  He charged almost $300 just to come to the house last time (not including any parts or service.) I also want to try more trouble shooting before having to ship the head to Iowa again.  Shipping to and fro gets expensive as well.  But like I said, it worked GREAT last night with NO turning off or breaking thread.

I found this feathery flowery print in my stash.  It was the right size for the backing and I felt the right colors.  I'm quilting out of my comfort zone with lavender thread.  

Danish Delights by Emma Jean

Yesterday was my day off.  I made a Danish Delight block and then reduced the size to see which one I liked.  I think the smaller size would better suit a crib-sized quilt.

The blocks above measure 9.5" and 12.5" unfinished.

I still have not put my pink scraps away from April RSC26 (Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2026).  They were handy for these samples.  I now have all my notes in my binder with the sample quilt blocks and the pattern.  It will be waiting for me when I want to whip up a quilt with squares and rectangles.

I was attracted to the pattern because of the floating look of the blocks with the sashing.  The pattern is Accuquilt friendly.  It will work great with my scraps!  Bring it on as future quilts.

I waited for the sun to come out a little bit before I started digging plants away from the outer chicken fence to move them to a safer area out of the neighbor's way.  I replaced the plants with tall ornamental grass to give the chickens a little more of a place to hide from predators (specifically chicken hawks.). I'll try to post some before and after pics of that if I get it done.

 

Danish Delights Layer Cake Quilt pattern was designed by Little Louise Quilts.

You can find the pattern here.

Graduation Day

Graduation day is now behind us.  We are so proud of our son graduating high school with a REAL diploma--not a participation certificate.  

Here's our little family of three.  Yes, that's me on the left, our son, and my husband.
 

My husband and his two sisters also graduated from the same school (but different building)... Aunt Diane, Aunt Jo, our son, and my husband.  It was a day of memories and reminiscing.  

One of my friends (that also works at the school) gave him this beaded necklace with the plastic graduation cap on it.  He has worn it every day for at least a week.  There's something about these $1 beaded necklaces that kids with Down syndrome just love.  I know I shouldn't be the person to categorize kids with DS, but if you need to brighten a kid's day at church or just any day, give them a cheap, beaded necklace.  I have a drawer full of them.  They are definitely a big hit as party favors for my kid's friends. 

School staff and school board.  The guest speaker is a doctor that graduated around 2004.  His grandma lives across the street from us.

The class of 2026 -- sixty-six students were in his graduating class.

The gym was packed!  This might be the most people I have seen in there to support the 66 graduates.

The processional had students walking on both sides of the gym, then onto the stage, then down the steps to their seats on opposite aisles.  It was sweet that our son just happened to line up alphabetically with one of his friends.  They gave each other a fist bump right at this spot on the stems.  It brought tears to my eyes seeing the friendships that he had made being in general education (inclusion) classrooms all of his school career.  At the end of first grade they wanted me to bus him to another school that had a "resource room" where he would have been separated from the general education population for "better learning".    The other school was about 25-30 minutes away.  It's one of the first schools to call off on a snow day because the roads are even more rural and slick in the winter.  We made the decision that our son will stay in OUR school district where we pay taxes and my husband and his family went.  By law our school district was forced to deal with it.  

After two more years, families of  students that were also given the option to go to the other school district with a specific special education program saw that we did not move our son.  They started moving their students back to our school district.  Now that there were more students that needed specific attention, the school broke students down by groups (high, medium, and low--like many area schools do).  Job positions seemed to be shifted.  A classroom aid was moved.  Our son never had a one-on-one, follow along aid (as many of his friends do.) I remember the look on the other DS moms in my moms' group faces when I told them the first day of kindergarten that I pulled my truck into the car line, unbuckled my kid, made sure that his backpack strap wasn't stuck in the truck door when I shut it, watched him walk from the truck and into the school.  It was up to the six-year old entering kindergarten in a new school to navigate how to get to his kindergarten class all the way on the other side of the school at the end of the hallway.  HE DID IT!

My philosophy was that the school was a safe environment for him.  Yes, he was a runner from time to time.  Hindsight told me that he was trying to run away from hard work and frustration in the early years.  Leaving a classroom after fifth or so grade was a different story to see what he could get away with!

Not having a personal aid also forced him to learn to do things for himself (such as opening the paper on a straw or opening a fruit snack--holding a pencil, communicating...). All are such important skills.  It was either hard to watch or rewarding to see his accomplishments.  It just depends on what perspective you see it.  I only became a substitute teacher so that I could slide under the radar in different school districts to see which program was best if we had to move his to another school.  What I found was different ways to introduce things to him from other school districts.  When I learned about Touch Math, our school district told me that it could not be done because they just didn't have the resources for it.  I took that following summer and taught our son Touch Math.  He became the math wiz in his group!

After the school saw how our son was now the additional and subtraction in his small learning group of about six students, Touch Math was taught to the others.  Imagine my surprise when I went to visit our son at school and saw all then numbers with the dots on them laminated and on the wall in that room!  Hmmm.  I guess the resources suddenly appeared by using some of the IDEA money...  Somehow I felt that we blazed a trail.

For years our son was the only student involved in the Exceptional Olympics.  That's a day where special needs students get a little field trip to another large school district stadium in our county and play silly field-day games.  I remember the announcer would introduce our school in the singular form - Go, Hornet.

But another trail was blazed!  Look at all that participated in the event in 2026.

Similar situation happened on the bowling team.  Our son joined the bowling team.  His bowling average was higher than typical students--they had to keep him.  He loves to bowl.  A few years later a couple other special needs friends joined the bowling team.  Here he is receiving his letter in bowling!

Here's a cute video made at the school.  Oh the emotions run high with me on this one.  I'm happy to say that our son is the HAPPY one at the end of the line of students.  He even does "the floss" at the end of the line.  He has the biggest smile.  I also understand why graduation day was emotional for him as well.  He will miss the fun he had in school.  There will be new fun to be made.  Here's the video link.

It's interesting to me when I watch the video that the girl that sticks out her tongue in the high school hallway (mind you, the valedictorian!)-- is the same girl that would have tattled on our son if he did that.  Hmmm.  Most of his class were trained at a very early age to tattle on our son of his actions.  He was under the microscope for so many years.  The relief of that feeling is now gone.

It's amazing how God directs our footsteps in miraculous ways.  I would have never found the love as a substitute teacher position if it had not been for our son.  I can't wait so see the next chapter of his life unfold.  We are going to take a real summer break.  Oh there will be budgeting, shopping, and map skills required this summer.  Cooking classes, exercise classes, and social activities will be in full force.  Riding public transit and scheduling his own rides will happen.  It will be a full summer of learning in a different way before moving on to vocational training in the fall.  Stay tuned.