Sewing and Growing Vintage: January Final Four Finishes

January with the cold and snow is my least favorite month of the year and it’s the month I would choose to hibernate but we were still busy. Besides the semi-weekly visits to the GP House, dental appointments and hubby’s gigs, I was feeling my age this month with catching my first Cold of the season. I have been doing some reminiscing lately and this may be the reason for this theme with these four finishes—quilts made with vintage children prints which have been sitting in my stash for maybe ten to twenty years and just “bugging” me for the past years to finally use them. 

Although I Ike to start the new year with a quilt with bright colors, I decided that I would finally make a quilt with with a group of fabrics I’ve been collecting for over twenty years which included the 26 Letters designed by Chloe’s Closet, several Thimbleberries prints along with miscellaneous prints from Moda and Lakehouse. Can you guess which print was the inspiration for putting these fabrics together?

It was this blue floral print which reminded me of the curtains my late mother made and I loved the vintage look. You can see on the ticket that I purchased this fabric in 2001 and it was only $2 per yard.

I designed a pattern which I call Crazy Eights which are blocks in increments of 8” or eight patches and came up with six different blocks made using the same fabrics. Not pictured is the 8”x16” plain block of the blue floral print.

Coincidentally, while I was planning this quilt,  Mary, Country Threads, restarted the Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge for 2026 and #12 was pulled. I decided that since this was an UFO it would be my #12.

Here’s a pic of the 26 Letters fabric and the adorable vintage illustrations which I remember seeing in my childhood books and the reason why I named this quilt Vintage Alphabet.

I decided to machine quilt with just soft horizontal meandering curves with Mother Goose Star Thread.

Here’s a collage showing the backing which is the blue floral I definitely had enough yardage to use. Can you see the Quilt illustration? The binding is the brown dot which I thought accented nicely with all of the fabrics. Vintage Alphabet measures 56”x72” and I could have added another row of 8” blocks but decided not to since this is the year I wanted to focus on making smaller quilts.

Sacre Bleu or should I say Sacre Pink! While I was sewing Vintage Alphabet, I found yardage of the floral print in Pink while I was in the backing vault. I don’t remember purchasing it and I don’t think I want to make another quilt with it. I do think it would make lovely curtains though.

While I was working on the Vintage Alphabet quilt and within my view, was a bundle of another vintage children print which I had plans to make a wall hanging for several years. I decided to quickly make this after the Vintage Alphabet Quilt was finished since I like dual finishes. The focus prints with the children are from Windham Fabrics. This wall hanging measures 24” square and definitely was a quick and easy make. I should mention that the focus fabrics in this quilt and the blue floral print in the Vintage Alphabet quilt were purchased on one of the many shopping trips, locally and Shipshewana, made with my Peeps.

Since arriving home on Tuesday from the GP House, I thought I would machine quilt these two flimsies made in 2024 and I had on my Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge List and they were fitting for the children theme I’m on. Both of these were made from my American Jane stash which included charm packs. The table runner is a modified Villa Rosa Clover pattern and measures 18”x 43”.

This small lap quilt was made with charm squares and rectangles and I can’t remember if this was a pattern or something I came up with because I didn’t want to make another Fat Quarter Shop Charm Pack Cherry. This measures 45”x54” I have a love/hate relationship with this quilt because I decided to try a new batting I purchased and it’s a little too poofy for me. I definitely will have no problems with laying this on the floor or grass. Fortunately, I still have lots of American Jane stash to make more quilts. Also, I do have a lot of Mary Engelbreit fabrics and I could make a lovely wall hanging with her adorable prints.

Thanks to the cold and snow, I definitely had good SewJo in January with six finishes. As mentioned earlier, I had two major dental visits for the final fitting of my implants and for a crown replacement. This pic is definitely something I did while laying  in the chair for over an hour during each visit. Boy, I ddid I have some aches and cramps afterwards. Thankfully, my dental visits are over but yearly physicals are scheduled for February. It’s looks like cold and snow and growing old or vintage will continue this week and I definitely will be in the studio. Tomorrow a new number will be drawn for the Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge and I am ready. I have a lot of projects I would like to make from this list.

Folklore Prairie Rambling Rows & Bars Quilt

Just fifteen days into the New Year, I have my first DrEAMi project completed. As the DrEAMi name implies, this was not in my plans to make in 2025 but just happened to be made for several reasons

The darling Granddaughter’s father (aka, my youngest son who made a sad mistake of only gifting me a $20 gift certificate at the local gift shop for my birthday in which I suggested adding another zero next time) gave me this past Christmas a $100 gift card. I purchased a Villa Rosa Designs Tiffany pattern card perfect for 2.5” strips. I mentioned to Mary Etherington that this pattern reminded me of her Rambling Rows pattern of which I have made several versions of this pattern. It is one of my favorite patterns for 2.5” strips.

With the Tiffany pattern in mind and thinking what fabrics I could use to make this quilt,  I thought of a small jelly roll (23 strips) and a small layer cake (24 10” squares) of fabrics both designed by Moda’s Fancy That Design studio. I had received these fabrics in several Fat Quarter Shop Sampler Box and have sat in my stash for several years. I thought I would subcut the 10” squares into four 2.5” strips but decided to just cut them into two 5”x10” bars (rectangles) since some of them were larger prints. It was then I decided to make a version of the Rambling Rows quilt which I’m calling Rambling Rows and Bars. I should mention I was in the process of sewing a backing for my #12 of the Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. 

There are only two types of blocks; one made with four 2.5” strips and the other made with two 5x10” bars. Although they are slightly different height sizes, you can use them together provided they are not on the same row which is what I learned from making so many runners/wall hangings with the Villa Rosa Clover pattern. I had just enough fabric to make 24 blocks each of the two block types when I added one additional 2.5” strip. I thought these two fabric lines would work well with each other since of the colors, brown, gold, blues and coral were in both fabric lines.

Once the blocks were made, finishing it was quick. I machine quilted straight horizontal lines using Star Mother Goose Thread. I found a gold and green ticking stripe in the backing vault which I had for years and glad to finally use it. Since I didn’t have any fabric from the two fabric lines for the binding, I used a brown mini check which I think went well with the fabrics. The Folklore Prairie Rambling Rows & Bar quilt measures 58” x 68”.

Here’s a pic of the fabric remains. I don’t think I ever made a quilt using all of the fabrics since I like to sew with the intention of having scraps for another quilt. BTW, the two fabric lines in this quilt are Dawn on the Prairie and Folk & Lore so I used a combination of the two names for this quilt.

It snowed last night so no outside photos could be taken of this quilt. I just love this quilt, especially how fast it was made. I’m thinking the Rambling Rows and Bar might be my pattern for the year since I already have several fabric groupings to make more. But first, I need to finish my #12  Challenge Quilt which I am hoping to machine quilt this weekend since it might be good sewing weather.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

Happy Endings and Great Beginnings

I’m a little late with my Post to recap my 2025 projects and my 2026 plans but then this is the year I don’t want to be stressed or restricted with schedules and deadlines. In the past, on New Years Day, I sat in front of the TV to watch the Rose Bowl Parade and compiled my lists of completions and plans but somehow the last few years I forgot about this ritual, especially forgetting about the parade. I did watch the parade on New Year’s Day but was disappointed since it rained and the floats and marchers didn’t look as pretty and the next day I finally compiled my lists.

In 2025, I finished 29 quilts and 10 flimsies which I am pleased since I thought my production was down from previous year but then I did finished some pretty big projects. The photo above represents the five quilts which received the most views, three were made with Kaffe Fassett fabrics and the bottom two quilts were made with fabrics which did not sit on my shelf for more than five years. Seventeen quilts were lap size or larger and 12 were wall or table runners. Six were UFOs, Seven were made from newer fabrics, Nine were made from stash over five years old and seven were made from scraps. To bore you with more details, five were made with Kaffe Fassett fabrics and four with Marcia Derse and Ruby Star fabrics. Most of the quilts were on the colorful side with four made with my next favorite color combinations of black, brown and tan. You can view my wonderful makes Here. I do have to mention again that my most challenging quilt finished is the one I can’t show until later this year, sorry.

As for my 2026 plans, I have five lists: Flimsies to be machine quilted (I have 16), UFOs (12 projects), Scraps by Designers (8), Stash (12 Designers) and Patterns (10). I compile these list so I can review what needs to be finished which calms Eunice, my Studio Tormentor and what the Studio Squirrels can throw at me. Happily after my UFO list was compiled, I later learned that Mary Etherington, Country Threads, has resumed her annual Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge starting as of January 1st (it used to be July 1st) and I have been a happy participant in the past. What’s so funny and coincidental about this is that I had already planned to sew a UFO as my first project to start the year. Mary pulled #12 for January so I decided this project as my #12. The Master Quilt Holder had the honor of randomly numbering my UFO list which he took quite seriously.

Would you believe I have a flimsy finish for #12. One of these fabrics shown is one I purchased 20 years ago, can you guess which one. I am pretty sure this will be a finally finish by the end of January and will then post more pics and details.

I already have my first Finally Finish for 2026 which was not on any lists. I made this fleece throw on January 2nd with Chicago Bear fleece purchased again twenty years ago. I came across this fleece while rummaging through one of my bins and pulled it out several months ago. I thought this would be a good time now to make a simple throw since the Chicago Bears are the NFL Central Division Champs. I’m gifting this to Demando, who is a Paramedic/Fire Fighter in the town which may be the new home if the team relocates. I felt so good after I made this, it was a sew/soul cleansing.

During the first few days of the new year, I’ve already “lost” fabric; my National Park stash which I have been promising my niece a quilt. After spending an hour trying to find it, I decided that I was not going to get stressed and  have accepted the idea that my niece got tired of waiting and contacted her cousin Demando who gave her the fabric. I’ll be giving him some side eye when he picks up his Chicago Bear throw.

We’re experiencing some crazy weather right now, first the normal cold Wintery weather and by next week there will be warm weather in the fifties and sixties depending upon which house I’ll be at. I prefer the traditional Winter weather which is great for staying home and sewing because I have some great projects lined up.

P.S. The new year is definitely starting out great because I remembered how to add the 2026 Quilts and Projects Tab on my Blog. Sometimes I amaze myself.