Making Progress!

On my last post, I mentioned that I was about 1/2 finished with quilting my 100 Dresses quilt! It is now finished!  This was such a fun personal challenge quilt from the summer of 2025! 

This quilt was inspired by the book The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes.  The book is about bullying of children based on their race and nationality. Estes based the book on an incident from her own childhood to atone for staying silent when a peer was bullied. We need to stand up to bullying!

Some of you played along and encouraged me in this challenge by weekly choosing your favorite dress and I thank you!

All the blocks were paper pieced from over 100 different scraps from my stash (100 dresses plus tights, hair and skin tones). I drew the pattern myself so it gives the appearance of holding hands.

This quilt finished at 60" x 80"

The backing is an aqua gingham fabric! Isn't my helper adorable!

I also joined the new challenge by Taryn @reproquiltlover on IG. The pattern is called Fancy Four Patch.

Here are my first 4 blocks. They are 4.5" finished. The tiny HST are only 3/4"! Again, I am using fabric from my stash. Only needed to add one solid color to balance out the colors. 

My RSC block for February is finished too! The color is light green! Here is my flower block!

And on a final note, I started and finished the quilting on my 2nd RSC quilt from 2025! The binding is on so the last step is to hand stitch!

I'm linking to SoScrappySaturday @SoScrappy, Finished or Not Fridays @AlyciaQuilts

It Is About Time to Update!#?

On my last post I showed a peek of my Scrappy Meets Thrift Challenge quilt. I had decided to hand quilt this baby and I love the way it turned out.  

This challenge was hosted by Taryn @reproquiltlover over on Instagram. The block size is 3" and the quilt finished at 45.5" x 48.5"

I also showed the progress on my 100 dresses quilt. It is now partly quilted so it is getting close to a finish! Pictures coming!

And I showed you my quilted coat that I made from one of my quilts. My daughter wanted one so I looked through all the finished quilts that I have and determined which ones would be the right size. From those I narrowed down a few for her to pick from. We talked about a few changes that I would make from what I learned making my coat. 

She chose this bow tie quilt that I made the summer she got married! It was a 100 days of summer challenge making one bow tie block a day.

Since her birthday is 5 days after Christmas, I needed to get started right away. 

 

She wanted the coat to be slightly shorter (she is shorter that I am) and I changed the pockets to be a bit larger.  I kept the sleeves longer because she liked the idea of a cuff. 

I kept the label (although a bit faded) from the original quilt. Another dilemma I had was the buttons closures. I did not want to make button holes, so for mine I bought frogs with toggle buttons. It isn't ideal as they don't stay closed tightly. So for hers, I order heavy duty magnet 'buttons'. We are finding that they don't stay closed especially when she uses the pockets. I'm looking for alternative options. Anyone have ideas that worked for you? I did take some scraps from the quilt and tried button holes which seem to work pretty well. Looking for buttons that will work!

I also changed the way I covered the seams. It is similar; however, I sewed the seams flat to make a cleaner finish.

Here I am trying it out before her birthday.

She loves it and it looks so good on her!

See the problem with the magnets?

Linking to Finished or NotFridays @AlyciaQuilts

Finally, I started a new block for the 2026 RSC (Rainbow Scrap Challenge) over @SoScrappy. January's color is blue. I am making flower blocks using the flower pattern from Hello Spring from @Penandpaperpatterns

I may or may not add the leaves in the future! We will see how it goes!

Linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @SoScrappy