Back After a Long Hiatus!

If you regularly visit my blog, you probably noticed I haven't been posting lately. Not just lately, but for a few months. After my last post, I felt I needed a break from the blog. I decided to step away to focus on some long-term projects I wanted to get done for myself and to re-evaluate the amount of posts I typically publish each month. In this post, I'll show some of what I've been working on lately. I'm so excited to be back working on the blog again! After taking this break, I feel more refreshed and ready to continue posting.

Back in April 2024, I decided I wanted to make a sawtooth star quilt for myself. I'd only made one quilt before, but I was determined to learn this pattern and design/create a larger quilt. The sawtooth star quilt blocks took a while to cut out and piece together, and somewhere along the way I moved on and got distracted completing other projects.

About a year later, I started working on the sawtooth star quilt squares again. At this point, I was able to get about half of the squares completed and get the rest of the pieces for the other squares cut out.

I decided to start making custom crochet orders starting fall 2025, so I was busy with that for a while. Then, I decided to make a different quilt as a Christmas gift for a family member. I enjoyed both endeavors, but they took a lot of time away from personal projects (especially the custom orders).

Earlier this year, I picked up my quilt squares again. I was able to finish all the squares this time, but when I laid them all out on the floor to see the design, I was a little disappointed with how small the quilt seemed. At the last minute, I decided to cut out strips and squares of fabric for in between each square. After doing this and laying everything out again, I was much happier with the size.

My favorite part of making a quilt is sewing together the quilt top. Quilting all the layers together was definitely the most tedious task. I didn't help myself at all in deciding to hand quilt it. I'm so happy I ended up making that decision though, because I feel like hand quilting looks better and adds a lot of character to any quilt.

The hand quilting took me about a month to finish, including breaks. I don't like using a thimble for hand quilting because I like to feel where the needle is going. I also feel like it gives me better control if I don't use a thimble. However, I did have to use a thimble several times because my fingers were getting beat up from so much hand sewing that I (obviously) wasn't used to doing every day.

I took a little break after finishing the hand quilting, but wanted to start the binding as soon as possible. The quilt was so close to being done at this point!

Typically, I like to make my own binding for most projects, since it's cheaper than buying binding at the store. Making my own binding for projects also means I get to customize it any way I want!

Making the binding involves a lot of cutting out fabric strips, sewing those strips together, and ironing them into place. Sometimes I don't even feel like sewing by the time I'm finished making the binding for a project! I just wanted to finish the quilt so badly at this point.

I'm still fairly new to sewing corners when binding (I only make them when I sew quilts, aside from a couple other projects), so I was a little worried about messing up, but I thought the corners turned out really well on this quilt.

I had to wash this quilt (and vacuum my floors!) as soon as I finished it, since it was laying on my craft room floor for a month while I hand quilted it. I'm so happy that I was finally able to finish this quilt after starting it two years ago! It turned out so pretty!

Another project I decided to take up this spring was a paint-by-number. I've never been very good at painting, but I wanted to paint something I could frame and hang in the house. A paint-by-number seemed like the perfect answer, so hopefully I don't mess this up.

I'm still not finished with the painting, but the right-most picture below shows the most current version. I'm hoping to have it completely finished in another month or so.

There have been a handful of other projects I've completed over the past few months, but one of the most notable (besides my quilt and painting) has been the garden. My wonderful husband measured, cut, and installed all of the wood for a garden fence and lattice archways on either side. There are also latching gates on both ends under the archways. We bought climbing roses to plant in raised beds and climb the lattice. They probably won't bloom this year, but I'm hoping next year we'll see a lot of growth!

In late May we planted peas, swiss chard, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, watermelon, green beans, peppers, and eggplant. I'm a little disappointed in the swiss chard - it didn't sprout at all! I even tried to plant some more a little later, but nothing happened. At this point, I think the whole seed packet I have for swiss chard is a dud. On the bright side, everything else has been growing great! I'm a little worried about my pea plants with the heat wave we're having, but at least I know to plant them a little earlier next year. This first year of gardening has been a learning process so far, and I'm sure by the time the growing season is over, I will have learned a lot more.

Part of the reason I took a break from the blog was because I was at a point where some weeks I would feel overwhelmed trying to get posts out consistently. Going forward, I'm still hoping I can post about once every week, but my solid rule is going to be at least two posts every month. I'm still planning on publishing posts on the weekends, so if you're curious whether a new post has been published, the best time to check is Sunday in the late-morning or afternoon.

I know I've said this already, but I'm so happy to be back posting on the blog! This break was much needed, but I missed being able to post recipes and crafts. It's refreshing to be able to write about what I've been up to lately, and to come back to the blog feeling ready to go again after such a long break! If you made it to the end of this post, thank you for sticking around. I appreciate all the support I get from those who read my blog and wish you all a wonderful week!