Month: October 2026

Saturday Morning Happiness

I’m counting my blessings this morning:

The hurricane Isaias went west of us here in Charleston, SC. And the offshore winds that pushed the storm west seem to have died down. We got only 1 inch of rain at my house last night. It will rain today, but it is gentle rain, which we need.

I have been obsessed with my EPP project, and I’m now working to get all the sides to make straight edges, which is happening. These past days of peaceful hand sewing while listening to audio novels has been lovely. I burned myself out on EPP projects a few years back, so I took a rest from them, and I’ve enough hand sewing at night be be content. But this project started happening during the day after my noon meal, so I must have needed a break from the upstairs projects, or…just in general.

I have not decided whether I will open the side pieces (after a good ironing) and trim the sides and add a regular binding, or if I will sew the sides to borders. I made this quilt back in January 2017 and floated it on borders.

This pic isn’t great as it is now old, and I do have this quilt here with me. I noticed it when I looked for the year on its label that I didn’t include it (it was number 129), so this lack of a date on the label is why I keep an archive. The date on the label has now been added, at which point I noted that the label had my DIL Corinne as its owner. LOL, I think both of us might have forgotten that ownership in the past almost 10 years now.

My blessings today also include a quilt on the longarm that needs some work, the November table topper that is pinned and ready for sewing a grid on my domestic, the “Tulip Swirl” top waiting for a backing and the longarm, a new “Tulip Swirl” layout leader/ender that is growing and is a surprise, the quilt “Goldie” to be continued, and…one block made with neutral fabrics from the scrap bins that is looking at me and smiling.

The weather is cooling, and I’m walking every day. I may walk later today in the gentle rain.

All my family seems to be in fine shape. Of course, there are always ups and downs, but they are all coping with what life brings to them.

I will have a very nice noon meal as soon as I cook it, and maybe I’ll even be able to eat it on my porch as the rain is straight down and gentle.

Have you counted your blessings today?

“Pumpkin” Greets October!

The pumpkin foundation piecing pattern came from Easy Piece Patterns. I used the 12.5 inch version and then added more of the blue for a border before making the orange border. It took me FOUR days to make that pumpkin–and many nights of hand stitching in the blue areas. I matched colors in the pumpkin and just sewed along the edges of the various pieces, which made the pumpkin look almost three dimensional.

So, here’s my October table topper in use:

The backing is from my stash–a very, very old (1999) fabric from Jinny Beyer, No. 287, RJR Fashion Fabrics @ Basic Realities. That’s 27 years, which means this fabric also dates the time frame of when I started quilting around 1996 or so. The cheddar binding is also from my stash, but I have long since lost its name.

My November table topper is sewn, layered, pinned, and waiting for me to quilt it on my domestic machine.

I have two finished tops now in line for the longarm. Both started as leader/ender projects until they got too big and needed to be finished to free up room on the design wall.

Here’s “Scrappy Stars” (Leila Gardunia). I have chosen a backing, but need to get it ready to load on the longarm.

And here’s “Tulip Swirl,” finished last night, made from Bonnie Hunter’s 2025 leader/ender block of that name, which is 4.5 inches unfinished. This is one version of many versions that are possible with this block. Holy Cow! So many secondary patterns form with this layout version. The block is 16 inches, and here there are 4 blocks in this 64-inch square version.

I’m not sure where this week went. It has been beautiful fall weather here–cooler, but dry. We are hoping for rain over the next few days.

Have a great weekend everyone.