Best of 2025

Welcome to the Best of 2025 post. The annual linking party is hosted by Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs. Thanks Cheryl!

I'm very ambivalent about what I accomplished this year, so I hope that you'll oblige me as I review and see how I did!😟As in the past years, I've placed my finishes in categories. These have changed through out the years to reflect what I've made. This year, the categories are quilts (which this year include baby and cuddle quilts, as well as wall hangings and runners), Practical Quilted/Sewn Objects (this includes my 2025 agenda, placemats, a pouch, cell phone holders and water bowl mats), Art Quilts and finally Hand-Stitched and Embroidered projects. The related links are within the post. It's a long post, so feel free to just look at the pictures 😁

Quilts

In my 2025 planning post, I wanted to FMQ 2 quilts. I had hoped to quilt some UFOs but instead I quilted the two quilts that I made in the 2025 SAHRR (Stay At Home Round Robin). These are the two panel quilts - a cowboy quilt and a Christmas panel quilt, that I worked on most of the year.

The Christmas panel quilt 

Finished with a few hours to spare!

My Cowboy Panel quilt is a flimsy, that I will finish in the winter of 2026 🤠

A finished flimsy to be quilted soon!

Baby and Cuddle quilts

In 2025, I made and finished one baby quilt and a purple and a teal cuddle quilt. There were all made for the Table Scraps Challenge 2025. I also FMQ a community project baby quilt for our guild.

Scrappy baby and cuddle quilts

FMQ community project baby quilt for the guild

Wall Hangings and Runner

Snow Happens wall hanging is both an embroidery and a quilt. It was a slightly late Christmas quilt decoration for my DIL.

Snow Happens embroidered wall hanging

The Floral Fusion Wall Hanging was a SAL with Denise of The Quiltery. It started in the Fall of 2024 but I didn't finish it until early Summer this year. It now hangs on my youngest adult child's wall!

Floral Fusion wall hanging

I made this fun scrappy runner purely because I could and I wanted to! 😀

A scrappy runner for these two cuties who keep me company at the back of the car.

Practical Quilted/Sew Objects

This year, this grouping includes my 2025 agenda, placemats, a pouch, cell phone holders and water bowl mats.

For the last few years I've sewn a cover for my new agenda. This year, I made an Upcycled Traveller's Journal that would act as an agenda and a place to keep my project notes, and made a cover for the journal. It turned out to be a good idea. I mostly kept my notes up-to-date and only needed to remove the individual journal to work in. I didn't really use the calendar much but I will use the same system in 2026, and won't have to make another agenda cover.

Fabric cover for the Upcycled Traveller's Journal

Inside the Upcycled Traveller's Journal

The Ombre pouch was made for Project Quilting 2025.

Ombre pouch to carry my glasses and phone

I made Scrappy neutral placemats and cell phone holders as gifts to bring to Denmark on my visit.

Call phone holders - so practical!

Scrappy neutral placemats

Finally I made and quilted two water bowl mats for Poppy. One for her home and one for ours!

Poppy's water bowl mat at her home

Poppy's water bowl mat at our place

Art Quilts 

Some of my art quilts this year were made for challenges - Project Quilting and/or from TextileArtist.org Stitch Club.

This art piece was made based on a TextileArtist.org workshop and it just happened to be the theme of the first Project Quilting challenge - Mythical Creatures. 

 

My favourite art piece of the year - The Rabbit's Liver - A Korean Folktale

Project Quilting - Common blocks

Reclaiming Fallen Feathers

My other art quilts are not technically quilts but hand-stitched textile art pieces. I learned the technique in TextileArtist.org's workshop by artist Julia Wright. I've made three of these coiled pieces so far and there are more in the works.

Pink Turtlehead Flowers 

Sunset Over Water

Desert Landscape

Hand-Stitched, Embroidered and Woven Projects

This Spring, I finished a Kawandi Style neutral mat for my niece. 

Kawandi-style neutral mat

I participated in the annual Zen Stitching event and made a lovely scrappy hand-stitched needle case as well as a Mindful stitch sampler.

Needle Case

 Mindful Stitch Sampler

This summer, based on artist Mirjam Gielen's branching video on Patreon, I started making the tree and its roots on a piece of eco-dyed linen fabric. I finished it and called it "Mercury Retrograde - Strong Roots Required!"

Mercury Retrograde - Strong Roots Required!

In October, I went back to my first love, weaving, and made a number of hand-woven pieces made on cardboard. Two of the pieces were also my Table Scraps Challenge since they incorporated, denim, quilted scraps and neutral colours!

Autumn Beauty

Earth Tones

In November, one of my favourite embroidery teachers, Mirjam Gielen, hosted a spiral challenge. 

A few embroidered spirals

I almost forgot those cute Christmas scrappy mats that were November's Table Scraps Challenge finish. 

Final finishes for the Table Scraps Challenge of 2025

Finally but not at all finished, is my Not-so-daily-stitching project. I'm afraid that it's not even been weekly but I did enjoy embroidering reminders of what I had done this year. Here are a couple of examples.

Joe-Pye weed as seen during our trip

Sunset over water

What I learned

• The year was better than I expected. I did finish many smaller projects and on the whole, had fun making them 😊(which is what it's all about!)
• The two panel quilts were a lot of work, and although I enjoyed making them, caused me stress because I wanted to get them finished! I'm going to try to avoid that in the upcoming year.
• My true measure of the type of year I had is the number of posts that I published. At 63, this is not as good as the past few years, but I'm quite happy with it, considering the year I had. 
• I'm glad that I hosted the FM Mavericks linking party - that meant that I had to publish at least once a week. I changed the party name and button as of January 1st - I Quilted This!. It has the same objective - quilts that are quilted on a domestic machine or custom quilted on a longarm. 
• My favourite hand-stitching projects were the coiled pieces and the hand-woven pieces on paper/cardboard. They were so much fun to make and perfect for experimenting and playing.
• My favourite quilting projects were the baby and cuddle quilts. They were as simple or as complex as I want to make them but always fun...they are also perfect for experimenting and playing.
• I will really miss the Table Scraps Challenge that's been hosted by Joyful. Many of my finishes were as a result of that party, so I'll have to keep myself motivated to play with scraps - especially to make scrappy hand-stitched mats and cuddle quilts. Thanks Joyful for keeping us inspired. We will miss the party but you need to take care of yourself!
• I think that I've found my 2026 words - playful experiments!

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, particularly the Best of 2025 as well as Quilting Jet Girl's #2025QuiltingCheckIn.  Yvonne wanted to know how our year went - well, it was much better than I expected - so it was nice to see that! Thanks Yvonne.

You may want to check some out! Finished (or Not) Friday, Off The Wall Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, Slow Sunday Stitching, 

Weaving on Paper

Hi and welcome. I hope that you've been having fun working on your stitching and quilting projects! I've been going a little crazy making mini weavings on paper and cardstock. What fun - and I did learn a lot about how I like to play - it was an interesting self-discovery.

Mini Woven Projects

Although I was a hand-weaver in my 20's and early 30's, I lost the joy that it brought me as life got ridiculously busy. My 15" loom was too noisy to work on while the babies were asleep and by then I had left behind my guild in Timmins and it wasn't fun anymore. I said that I would get back to it when I retired, but I just don't have the patience to deal with another large complicated hobby...yet. 😔

So you can imagine how intrigued I was when TextileArtist.org's Stitch Club had a workshop with Rachna Garodia. She does a lot of large weaving instillations but when her children were young she started weaving on paper. It was portable and perfect for experimentation. So here are my mini woven pieces so far. 

Earth Tones - weaving on a sketch paper background

Earth Tones - mounted in a card

Earth Tones was my first playing session. I used sketch paper, jute, wool and strips of denim and batik. They were the closest materials at hand. It turns out that jute is more difficult to weave than yarn because yarn fibres attach to each other more than jute. This makes yarn easier to compact.

After successfully making my first mini woven piece, I ventured to different paper and yarns. I used a piece of left-over card stock with perle cotton for the warp, as well as the bottom and top of the piece. I wove in some batik strips (earth and sky) at each end, and then added left-over pieces of woven fabric from my woven jacket. Since the pieces were not as large as the width of the piece, I wove the sections next to them with beautifully hand-dyed variegated yarn. I really love how that came out. I used a gorgeous strip of orange batik in the middle to separate each section.

Autumn Beauty 
card stock 5" square, weaving 3½" square

I then got very experimental and used a pink ribbon for the warp of Pink at Night. I had forgotten that when you use chunky yarn, you can cover most of the warp, even if you do a plain weave. However, when the fabric used in the weft is not fuzzy or chunky, you really get the effect of the plain weave and see both the warp and weft. I played around a lot with this one because I wasn't getting the look that I wanted. In the end I decided to balance out the fuzzy and chunky yarns with other materials.

Pink at Night - experimenting with ribbon in the warp

I haven't mentioned this yet, but because the space available to weave is very limited in these tiny pieces, it's best to weave the bottom and top first. Then you work your way to the middle. In this next piece, Blue Seas, I just wanted to play with blue. The warp and the top is no 5 perle cotton. I used some gorgeous hand-dyed yarn at the very bottom (blue) and the top (turquoise). I added lighter perle cotton, a few rows of batik fabric, novelty yarn and one row of navy blue fabric with yellow specks. 

Blue Seas min woven piece

This next woven piece was done with four types of yarn. I started off with a hand-dyed white yarn with pink and yellow specks, a green novelty yarn with tuffs of colour, a light and dark wool with a beige strand and finally an orangish wool woven in plain and soumak weave. As I was playing, I was thinking that all of the layers look like part of a desert. The top looks like salted caramel, then there's chocolate and pistachio ice cream with sprinkles and a layer of white cake. I called this one Salted Caramel Sunday.😋

Salted Caramel Sunday

This tiny piece is the last one I've made. It's on water colour paper what was painted for another project. Since there's a design on it, I wanted to make a tiny woven piece that would work with the painted section. It's got some finer perle cotton and yarns, as well as a piece of tule and ribbon. I added a few rows of soumak and plain weave.

Mini Sorbet 
4" x 3" watercolour background with a 1½" x 2½" weaving

Table Scraps Challenge

October's Table Scraps Challenge was neutral with denim. That was the first hand woven piece I made. When I looked at the Challenge's "rules", it did mention quilting, so Autumn Beauty fits the bill - with pieces of quilted fabric inserted within the weaving. 😎

Earth Tones with neutral
colours and denim

Autumn Beauty with quilted 
fabric woven into the piece

 

What I learned

• Sketch paper is a little bit flimsy to weave on (but still doable) while card stock, watercolour and mixed media papers are perfect.
• I love adding strips of fabric in the pieces, especially when they aren't wide enough and weaving is required to finish the section.
• Experimenting when I had no expectations was much easier than when I had an idea in mind. I found it more frustrating to get a specific look but then it was wonderful when I solved my challenge. I guess that playing is a bit of give and take. If you want to end up learning something useful you probably need to be challenged!😊
• I can't tell you what most of my yarn is made of because I tend to buy based on colour and not the material. This is fine since I use most of it for fibre art and now weaving!
• After purchasing (and finding) photo frame cards, I was able to measure the size of the weaving so that they would fit the card opening. Two of my mini woven pieces don't fit the cards, so I'm going to purchase magnets to stick behind them. They would look wonderful on the fridge!
• I love making these mini woven pieces because it's so easy and fast. With bits of yarn, paper and anything else you want to add (fabric, found objects, etc.) you can make something beautiful in under 2 hours. 

Related links

• Rachna Garodia: Website, Instagram
• Articles on TextileArtist.org: Rachna Garodia: Weaving without rules

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. Why not check some out after you've linked up below?  Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday, 

Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, 15 Minutes to Stitch 2025, Oh Scrap!, Slow Sunday Stitching, Table scraps Challenge, 

FM Mavericks

Welcome to week 555 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was a very productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Sally of Crafts, Cavies and Cooking has finished FMQ and binding her wonderful quilt. I'm sure that we'll see some glamour shots soon, but here it is, all bound!

Sally's wonderful FMQ and bound quilt!

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts made and FMQ this lovely Elmo child's quilt. Check out her various FMQ - you can see it best on the back! It was a great project to practice on.

The front of Kat's Elmo quilt 

The back of Kat's Elmo quilt 

Donnalee is making more runners for her guild's upcoming quilt show in January. The top runner is made of Charley Harper fabric that she picked up at her guild's free table - what luck! See Donnalee's other runners on her post.

Donnalee makes a runner using Charley Harper fabric

Donnalee's finished Thanksgiving table runner

Deb of the Scrappy Quilter finished this lovely Little Owls children's quilt. Her quilting ran along the horizontal lines and outlined each owl. There is even a surprise owl block in the back!

The front of Deb's Little Owls quilt.

The back of Deb's Little Owls quilt.

Gail from Quilting Gail used up some recent scraps to make two lovely zip pouches and a placemat. 

Gail's lovely zip pouches and placemat

Brenda of Song Bird Designs participated in the Out of the Dark Blog Hop. What a great runner!

See more details of Brenda's FMQ on her post

It's now your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Attack of the Squirrels :-)

Hi and welcome! I have lots of artsy, stitchy things to do but I got a full attach of the squirrels 😁 I have a wonderful, comfortable pair of jeans with holes in them - on purpose. I don't mind the style but my whole knee is poking out...so the hole is a little too big. I've been wanting to do something but I know that a patch won't be comfortable, so I wove a band across the hole, over the knee.

Weaving a band

I used a small embroidery hoop and #8 perle cotton to weave the band between the two edges of the hole.

Band woven between the two edges of the hole in my jeans

This is how it started.

For the warp, I stitched a few strands of 4 different colours of #8 perle cotton at both end of the hole. They were pretty taut and I figured that if I had to, I could make adjustments to the tension once the band was finished.

Weaving within the embroidery frame

I had an audio book and it took about 6 hours to finish the woven band.

Finished woven band

At the beginning of the project, I took a picture and sent it to one of the weavers in our Fibre 15 group. She suggested that I stabilize the ends and possibly use interfacing to make sure that it stays put.

The next morning, I put a piece of heavy duty Steam-A-Seam at the ends of the band, overlapping the band and the jeans. I attached a scrap piece of cotton and then sewed over the edge of the jeans to about ¼" of the band. I think that it'll hold.

Finishing the back of the band

Here is the finished project....so far.

The woven band across the hole

Squirrel!!!

What I learned

• I haven't woven anything in years, but it did come right back. 😊
• It was so relaxing and perfect to do while listening to an audio book.
• I used the Weaver's knot to attach a new colour when my thread ran out.
• I googled it and used two different techniques. Every once in a while I was able to make the weaver's knot without following the instructions but then it just wouldn't work. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but I kept at it until I it worked. 
• I'm linking up the two techniques that worked best for me....most of the time!
• I'm going to wash my jeans in a large garment bag so that the band doesn't get pulled off.
• I also figure that if the band does come off, that it's been secured enough that I'll be able to use it somewhere else.
• I feel like the jeans could use a little something more - maybe just embroidery around the hole? I'm not sure that I want to spend another 6 hours making a second band to go with it 😁

Related links

• The Weaver's Knot - Get knotted paracord
• How To Tie A Weaver’s Knot, Four Keys Book Arts

Linking parties

I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties. You may want to check some out! Slow Sunday Stitching, 

Put your foot down, Off The Wall Friday, Patchwork & Quilts, Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Free Motion Mavericks,