Mariners Compass Quilt ~ A UFO Plan

 Last December, I started sorting through all my UFOs and making plans to finish them. I managed to complete a few this year, but there is still plenty left, and I’ve even added a few more to the list. HAHA! Such is the life of a quilter. Last year’s UFO plan will carry on into 2026 and beyond until I’ve finished them all. Of course, I’ll still start new projects as well when I get bored with UFO's.  Right now, I’m in full 2026 UFO planning mode since I’m not quilting due to home updates. My most recent UFO pull is the Mariner’s Compass quilt. Originally, I planned to use the 12 quilt guild BOM blocks as a border around the Compass, but after much thought and input from many of you, that plan has changed and those blocks will be used to make a very traditional BOM quilt, 3 blocks across and 4 down, with sashing's and borders.

The Mariners Compass was paper pieced on parchment paper.  Did I draw it or did I print it on parchment paper?  Who knows.  I can see that I labeled the pieces by hand, but I can't tell if the lines are hand drawn.

I remember drafting the flying geese border because I blogged about it back in 2012, describing my method. You can find it here. I took the paper out of the outer flying geese years ago to make sewing the next round easier, thinking I might need to ease in some fabric.

  Mr. Podunk loves the compass and originally had other plans for it (you can read about his plan here), so adding a little more time and effort to the design of the quilt.  After a little internet Mariners Compass quilt searching I came up with this plan for adding borders.  It will finish at 68 x 68.  That should be plenty big for him to burrow under like a hibernating bear, snoring away in the recliner.

As usual, I couldn’t resist experimenting with different ideas. The girly side of me thought adding a small print fabric could be cute. Would that make it too feminine? Maybe I could find a blue anchor print instead...it would still be cute but not overly girly.

Then I was thinking a darker outer border might work better, but nothing is set in stone. Whatever I decide, I’ll need more fabric. There are a few scraps left from making the compass that can be used to make a few flying geese blocks, but not enough for the final border or the inner solid border. There’s still plenty of time to make changes, and I don’t plan to start this project for a few months...ideally in the first half of next year.

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The Purple Iris Quilt Top

One of the best perks of social media is stumbling across people you’d never meet otherwise. A few months back, a quilting newbie named Melissa found me online, and wouldn’t you know it...she lives just down the road, a whopping 4 or 5 miles away. In Podunk, that’s basically neighbors. It took us months to finally meet in person, but when we did, she showed up with an armload of things she no longer wanted. Among them was a hand-embroidered quilt top.

Everyone knows my well documented aversion to purple, but this quilt top has earned the right to be finished. Melissa told me she got it from her mother, who got it from a friend who had passed away. Sadly, Melissa’s mother has also passed, so the maker of this purple masterpiece remains a mystery. All I know is she lived in Indianapolis, I guess I could add that to the quilt label.

 

I plan to gift this quilt to my daughter. She and my granddaughters love the color purple, and my daughter also has a fondness for vintage and homemade items.

The quilt top is as crooked as a dog’s leg and needs a bit of fixing. The plan is to take it apart, square up the blocks, and add sashing. My fabric stash is short on purple fabrics, but I managed to find a couple that might work.

After finding the fabric I decided to draw up a quilt plan in EQ8.  I even uploaded a picture of the quilt block into the program.  That's an EQ feature I use about as often as my treadmill. HAHA!

As always, I like to play the what if game when designing a quilt and I played around with the colors. Hmmm....A deeper purple might just be the touch this quilt needs. Looks like a fabric shopping adventure is in my future...always dangerous for my wallet but delightful even if it's for purple fabric.  Any ideas you may have are welcomed. I’ll start working on this early next year and hope to have it finished in Spring or maybe early Summer.

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Blue Scrap Buster Quilt

In the comments of my last post, T. Holster asked, “Are you missing sewing or not much time to miss it?”  YES, I MISS IT! As the saying goes, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I miss it so much that in my downtime I’m planning quilt projects for next year. I’d rather be sewing, but the sewing room, like the spare bedroom, is currently a dumping ground for everything during painting. So, the next best thing to sewing is making plans to sew.  

As I mentioned in the last post, I need to sort and organize some of the scrap bins.  Since my newly painted living room accent color will be blue, I'll need to make blue quilts.  I've drafted and done the quilty math for two quilts already but that's not enough.  The image below, found on Pinterest is perfect.  A quick and easy quilt that will use up a ton of scraps. Funny how it took an hour of scrolling through Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to be inspired by the most basic quilt... HAHA! Thirty years of quilting experience, and I’m absolutely floored by this simple beauty.

With the new quilt plan ready, it was time to dive into the three blue scrap bins...light, medium, and dark. For this quilt, the focus is on using medium and dark blue fabrics. I yanked the light fabric bin because I have a bad habit of sneaking rogue colors into places they don’t belong.

 

Digging through scraps is always fun.  I love bright colorful fabrics, they’re so cute, but not for this quilt. It’s time for adult Lea Anne to take charge and tell the little girl to hush, because she can be a bit annoying sometimes.

I also came across a few fabrics (the rogue I mention earlier) that didn’t seem to belong in the blue bins, so I figured I might as well take care of them now. They were hastily tossed into other bins with the promise of one day being neatly folded and stored with their friends.

And then there was this print.  It has a magic trick, pair it with darker blues and, presto, it turns green! I was convinced my aging eyes were pulling a fast one on me, so I snapped a photo just to see if the camera would catch the chameleon act. It did! How strange!

After having about an hour of fun sorting through the fabric bins I have the initial fabric pull.  They will be stored separately from the scrap bins.  Initial because I can't decide if they all will be used in the quilt... 

OR...

Option B - use only solid blue fabrics.

Option C - use only navy blue print fabrics and no solid blues.

Of course, the background fabric is also up in the air.  

Option A - Do I go with solid white from yardage?

Option B - Scraps of solid whites in different shades of white.

Option C - Low volume white and cream prints.

Sigh... All the options will simmer in the brewing pot until I return to the sewing room and start stitching again.

  

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Sewing Room Update ~ No Sewing!

 The sewing room may be freshly painted, but it’s not quite ready for quilting marathons just yet. In the meantime, there’s been an Olympic level amount of fabric sorting, folding, and yes, some affectionate petting. Honestly, this could be my dream job! 

If it weren’t for the holiday season looming over me like a pallet of fabric about to drop on my head, I would have sorted every color from light to dark. For now, I’m in a mad dash to whip the house into shape before the new year hits, because apparently whatever you’re doing on January 1st becomes the year's theme. So, here’s hoping I’m stitching cozy quilts all year long, not stuck repainting walls and playing furniture Tetris.

These Brightroom stackable 6W x 12L x 4H acrylic bins are from Target are perfect for holding fat quarters, half yards and one yard cuts.  They’re sturdy, unlike some I’ve come across in other stores and brands. In the image below, some of the folded fabric appears thicker than others due to the varying sizes of the fabric cuts. One day, I might sort them by size and color, but for now, I’m racing against the calendar.   By the way here's a quick video by Clover and Violet on how to fold the fat quarters to fit these bins. 

You might spot a “new” fabric storage cabinet on the left, new to the sewing room, but definitely not new. This hutch has been with me for about 30 years in the kitchen. When the old, wobbly white cabinet started collapsing, I saw my chance...a buffet upgrade, more counter space, and a perfect excuse to showcase my prettiest fabric stash.  Hopefully someday soon I can replace the other old white cabinet with another hutch or glass front cabinet so I can see even more of my favorite fabrics.  By the way those larger clear bins are 12 x12 and also from Target.

As you all know the old large white cabinet held my not so loved older stash of fabrics.  Well, I did some purging of the sewing room and made room for them in my cutting table.  They are rarely used but they do come in handy from time to time when I work outside of color pallet of choice.

Oh but wait, that's not all the fabric! HAHA!  Let's not forget the scrap bins. Sorting through the scrap bins is something I plan to do someday, but for now, they’ve found a new home under the quilter.  They barely fit tucked up against my treadle machine.  I refuse to part with my treadle sewing machine, when the power goes out, I can still stitch away by the romantic glow of candlelight!

This is also where most of my UFO boxes are stored.  The scrap bins below them used to be stacked, so the wheels had been taken off of the ones stacked on top. I've lost the wheels!  Let's hope I can find some replacements because the different heights is making things a little wonky under here and driving me nuts.

As you can see, it’s still a bit chaotic in here. We’ve had a small setback in the major projects for two reasons, it's hunting season and Mr. Podunk has been helping his 96-year-old mom pack up and move. We live in Indiana.  She’s relocating from Pennsylvania to Ohio, near one of his sister’s homes.  I can install most of the ceiling tiles myself, and when he has the time and the energy, he can handle the electrical work for the ceiling fan and lights.  There's plenty to keep me busy until then.  

I still need to paint the living room and restore the spare bedroom to its former glory. Right now, it’s serving as the official dumping ground for anything and everything that doesn’t have a home while the rest of the house gets its makeover.

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Shaded Four Patch Rabbit Hole

It's been weeks since my last post, and we're still knee-deep in paint and renovations across four rooms. If you missed the chaos, check out the previous blogpost here. I haven't stitched a thing in what feels like FOREVER! To cope, I've been indulging in the next best thing: endless scrolling through the quilty corners of the internet. Naturally, I wanted to make every single quilt I saw, but the one below completely stole my scrap loving heart. It was quickly sketched in EQ8, and the quilt-planning frenzy commenced! Now, I just need to crack the code for quickly making the red-highlighted unit.  

 EQ gives you three choices for making this unit: paper piecing, individual paper templates, and rotary cutting. The first two? Absolutely not happening. Rotary cutting triangles is fine, but let’s be real, I’d prefer a faster, easier method, something like whipping up flying geese or half-square triangles in bulk. And here’s what EQ suggests for rotary cutting.

I painstakingly did all the math and drafted a quilt plan, only to realize afterward that my old Billie Lauder books probably had a shortcut for this quilt unit. Honestly, I should just keep those books on a pedestal in plain sight, think of the time I’d save!

Well, I'll be darned, it's actually in one of them! Who would have guessed they’d call it a shaded four patch? The instructions are decent enough, but oh boy, I’d love to see this magic in action. So, off I went, back to the wild world of the interwebs for some visual enlightenment!

I stumbled upon a video by Deb Tucker.  Same method just oversized so you need to trim them to size. It was surprisingly helpful, though, with some genuinely useful tips sprinkled in.  Click image below to watch or click here to go to the video on YouTube.

Then I stumbled upon this gem from Just Get It Done Quilts. She has instructions for 3 different methods.  She even went the extra mile and cracked the code for making eight at a time! Her 8 at a time method isn’t in the cards for me right now, but it’s comforting to know it’s out there for future quilting emergencies.  Click image below to watch or click here to watch on YouTube.

Now that I've cracked the Shaded Four Patch code, this quilt should be a walk in the park!

 Before I go, let me share a hidden treasure, a video by Billie Lauder herself. Billie passed in 2018, and sadly, her website and most of her videos have vanished into the abyss. After a rabbit hole expedition, I unearthed four of her videos on YouTube, but they were not worth watching.  Then, like a quilting miracle, I found the one I remembered best, the Ultimate Scrappy Four Patch.  It too will be helpful in making my quilt block.  This technique is in one of my Billie books. Watching her video brought a big smile to my face. She's absolutely giddy about four patches! The video is embedded in a Quilted Hugs blog post, so you'll need to visit the blog to watch it. I snapped a screenshot for the image below.  Head over to the blog post, click the video, and don't forget you can make it full screen by hitting the square in the corner. Happy watching!

See you in a day or two for the sewing room update!

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No Quilting For Me

 A huge shoutout to everyone who noticed my vanishing act! It warms my heart to know you’ve been missing the weekly quilty updates. I had grand plans to check in nearly every day these past weeks, but by the time the day ended, I was too pooped to do anything but kick back and chill. Sewing progress? Virtually nonexistent. The last thing I managed to sew was on September 19th.can you believe it? Wow!

Every day, I promise myself I'll get out there, sew a few blocks, or cut fabric for my Yo-Yo quilt, but by the time the day is over, that motivation has packed its bags and left town.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Painting, unfortunately, not the masterpiece kind, but the kind everyone dreads and procrastinates on. We (a.k.a. me, myself, and I) decided it was time to paint the laundry room, kitchen, living room, and sewing studio.   All rooms will be painted the same colors.  Antique white for the walls and White Cotton for the trim.

And as always, painting is never just painting, it’s a scavenger hunt for things that need fixing or upgrading. What started as a two-week painting adventure has now transformed into an epic saga stretching well into the unforeseeable future.  HAHA!  One of upgrades/fixes is this window into the kitchen that is in corner of my sewing room.  We think my sewing room was a carport at one time.  The floor was concrete before Mr. Podunk added the ceramic tile.  The rest of the house has a crawl space an the typical plywood subfloors.

My sweety is a Mr. Fix-it.  There's almost nothing he can't fix.

However he's not real handy with caulk or drywall mud. What you see below is my work after he "tried" his best.

The walls in the sewing room are textured.  Neither of us like it but making the walls smooth is a DIY nightmare we would like to avoid.

All of the fabric has been moved to the spare bedroom.  Well, all except the scrap bins and three project boxes.  My plan was to sew a little each night. LOL!  Silly girl.

The spare bedroom is a chaotic haven of fabric, bursting at the seams with so much color. I can't help but confess that I visit this room daily.  Those clear bins filled with colorful treasures make my little art heart skip a beat! 

For now, everything else from the sewing room has been stored in my fabric cabinets. When it's time to paint this space, all of it will be moved into the living room.

The sewing room has officially retired from stitching and now moonlights as a door-and-trim painting studio, doubling as a cozy storage unit for my painting supplies.

The sewing machine table has turned into a catch-all. It’s a bit disheartening, isn’t it? Stay strong, Lea Anne! They say absence makes the heart grow fonder!

So that's it, my quilting friends. How about weekly updates on the painting saga?

 

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UFO Finish ~ Snow On The Farm ~ Test Block

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Oh yes, quilty friends, I’m a total snow fanatic and eagerly anticipate that first frosty flurry. In my dream winter wonderland, the boring brown Podunk landscape gets buried under a fluffy white blanket from early November straight through to March.  Of course, I wouldn’t want blizzard conditions.  Just enough snow to make snow angels, build snowmen, and craft snow forts to hide a stockpile of snowballs for launching at Mr. Podunk when he gets home from work... HAHA! 

Quilt measures 45 x 45

And let’s not forget sledding! Unfortunately, the only hills around here are packed with trees, and at my age, trees and sledding don’t mix well. The next best thing? Taking the truck into town and spinning some glorious donuts in the snow covered Walmart parking lot. That’s classic Podunk entertainment, something we may or may not have indulged in back in the day!  But these days we tend to keep our winter entertainment simple with no chances of crashing or visits from the police.

Since I see snow as one of life's many simple pleasures, I thought it only fitting to keep the quilting on this quilt simple.  The crosshatching lines were drawn on the quilt before loading it to the quilt frame.   Doing ruler work typically takes longer than free motion but not on this quilt due to the large scale of the quilting.  She was quilted and off the frame in a little over an hour.

The quilt back was made (not one solid piece of fabric, more on that in a bit) using the leftover fabric from the quilt top. By the way, it's old Walmart fabric from back in the early 2000's.

I usually like to store my quilt tops with backing and binding so they're ready to go without any hassle when it's time to quilt. But for some reason, this quilt top bundle ended up in the chaotic mess you see here. Clearly, I must have been drunk on the day this was stored and I don't even drink!  Thankfully, trimming off the wonky edge gave me just enough fabric to piece it into a quilt backing.

When I say just enough, I mean teetering on the edge of disaster. I thought about adding a strip of white fabric at the bottom of the backing but decided to live dangerously instead and leave it as is.  She was carefully loaded onto the quilt frame with scraps of 100% polyester batting, and she quilted beautifully, leaving just a tiny sliver of backing fabric at the bottom of the quilt.

As always, a simple label had been added to the backing before quilting.

 In my opinion this quilt needed a simple white binding.  Anything else would have taken away from the beauty of the snowflake.  To keep things quick and easy the binding was 100% attached by machine.

Remember the title of this post said test block?  Well, I designed this block in 2015, original post here.   I never planned to make a larger quilt using the large snowflake block, but a friend suggested it could be a simple and quick Christmas quilt pattern back when I had my pattern writing business.  I reluctantly put together a pattern and quilt, and honestly, it looks pretty dull, doesn't it?  You’re probably thinking, why a black snowflake? Well, no deep reason, black and white Christmas decor was just all the rage back then. I was trying to sell quilt patterns by making them trendy and not my normal happy bright colors.  It worked!  I sold a ton of this quilt pattern.

Full Quilt 71 x 71

And here's the photo that made this pattern fly out of my shop.  Add a little of my favorite color(red) and a few pillows, then put the quilt on point on the bed and TADA!  She looks pretty cozy and inviting, doesn't she?  These days, this quilt and the black pillows are with my son, adding a cozy touch to his couch during the holiday season. 

Yep, I love to play in the snow!

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