Ok; what's next?

I am hopeful that 2025 is a year of discovery, fun, family and friend gatherings...but mostly, quilting!

Hey, it is what it is! I spent the bulk of my first month of retirement just relaxing, and that was good for me. Very little happened in the way of quilting other than tearing off the foundation paper from the Tattoo Quilt and adding sashing to the blocks. In the crafting area, I played with my ScanNCut and cut out names from vinyl for each of our granddogs and grandcats (and our own Jolene and Jedi) and adhered them to bandanas made from fabrics in my stash.

First priority in the project list is the completion of the Tattoo Quilt. We made a quick trip to NW Arkansas in early December to work on Katrina's longarm, and Katrina offered to quilt the Tattoo Quilt for me. I had planned to quilt it on my new-to-me Luminaire, but there was going to be a learning curve on what I wanted to do, and the quilt needs to be completed soon. Katrina does beautiful quilting so there's no hesitation there. I'll make another trip in January to work on it. 

Retirement has been good for the brain (and my heart) because the ideas have been racing around in my head and I'm trying to write them all down! But here's what I want to do this year beyond the Tattoo Quilt:

NEW PROJECTS! It's the Year of the Kit for me; in my life I have purchased three kits and all three within the last two years, and I want to make all of them in 2025. That doesn't necessarily mean I will, but I'm hopeful to get two completed:

• The Sierra log cabin quilt designed by Jennifer Sampou. Yes, I bought ANOTHER KIT after I swooned over Jennifer’s quilt that she made for her college-bound son using her beautiful SKY ombré fabrics. Honest, I want a bolt of each one and of her Chalk and Charcoal line, too. 
• Woodland Wander—another kit that I just had to have. I blogged about taking a class at Stitchin’ Post in 2023 to learn how to use the Robin Ruth mariner’s compass rulers and really enjoyed the process. I scored a great deal on this kit from Keepsake Quilting; the bonus is that it will go perfectly with our living room. 
• Carnival Flower—I swooned over Ana Blickenderfer's coloring of this quilt and snapped it up right away. Ana is a certified instructor for Quiltworx and she owns Sew That! in Iowa and has a beautiful quilt barn that I may just have to go to for a retreat. I probably should do a less complicated Quiltworx project before jumping into this one, and that may or may not happen. I realized this week that I have at least 4 Quiltworx patterns. 

FINISHING. I have many UFOs and I'm ready to finish some of them. Some of this year's selections are from the FLIMSY List on my blog -- 

• IMT Cabana Huts 
• Flowers, Flannels and Plaids 1
• Girl Gang DIY Sampler

Is it a UFO, or a WIP? The Stitch & Bitch Sampler and The Birds collage quilt made the cut. It helps that The Birds have been living on my design wall since it was installed here at the new house. Cindy gave me a cat quilt project that she decided not to finish, and I’ll finish it and gift it to a family member. There's the Pumpkin Pie quilt that is flimsy-ish, but needs an adjustment and borders. Every quilt mentioned in this list except for The Birds has been in one of The Bins for at least 4 years or more, so my recollection of their current status may differ from what I said earlier. And most of the UFOs/WIPs on this list were included in my 2022 list for finishing. Geez…

Also, I’ll be attempting another deep dive into digitizing (how many times have I said that?). I’ll revisit the class I enrolled in 2022 with Sarah Vedeler using the Hatch embroidery application. I recently purchased Stitch Artist 1 by Embrilliance. I have their Essentials application and it’s extremely handy, and now that I have the Luminaire and ScanNCut, it appears to work seamlessly with both for machine appliqué and is considerably cheaper than Brother’s digitizing application.

I purchased a lot of fabric, patterns, dies, tools and the like in the last few years (including a new sewing/embroidery machine and ScanNCut), just to make sure I’d have enough to do in retirement. I have lots of ideas of how I’ll go about depleting my stash. 

There’s more, but this is enough for now. I’ll post as time allows and when I remember to take photos. I may even do a video now and then.

Oh, and we’re bingeing on The West Wing—could you tell from the title of this post? 

And this week brought us a new year, fresh beginnings, and my 32nd anniversary of my quilting life. We took a quick trip to Nashville this week to attend our granddaughter’s wedding. I’ll be back in my studio this weekend. In the meantime…

Go make!