2026 - creative aspirations

2026 has started well, sewing wise.  And I'll report on what I've been working on at the end of January.  

Last year, I participated in the Chookshed Challenge and was happy with my work towards the goals I set myself.  However, I won't be doing the formal challenge this year.  I still have some goals, or creative aspirations, for the year but will work on those as I want.  I was away so much in 2025, I didn't have heaps of time for sewing.  I plan to do a lot more sewing this year.  

Realising that I've not made a quilt for my husband, a quilt for him will be my main goal this year.  He has quite a few Tshirts so I would like to make a Tshirt quilt for him.  I haven't ever made a Tshirt quilt so that will be a new challenge.  

We have a US friend visiting us this year, from St Louis, and I would like to make her a cardinal block, probably as a cushion, to celebrate her baseball team.  Once I started searching for patterns, there were so many!

Early in 2025, a friend gifted me the Quilt Recipes book by Jen Kingwell, and sets of templates for two quilts from the book.  I've become enamoured of the Wensleydale Quilt so bought foundation papers for the blocks recently and have started a project box for it.  I'm not sure what colour/s to make it with - I'm leaning towards shades of blue and beige/brown - but have not made a firm decision yet.  There are so many possibilities!  

Sue Daley's Quatro quilt is still my evening EPP work but is taking so long.  I am hopeful that I will finish the hand piecing this year - only two rounds to go! - and I will definitely NOT be hand quilting it.  This has been claimed by a friend.  

On my "Quilting to do" list are a number of projects yet to be started - they are just aspirations, after all. 

One aspiration for a number of years has been to have a few smaller baby quilts ready to give as a gift when the baby is born. This has never happened!  Instead I've been starting a quilt after the baby is born; I do usually add their names to the quilt so can't finish them until after the birth anyway, but I have had trouble keeping up with births in the last couple of years.  

Young friends of ours recently married and I offered to make them a quilt.  They have given me the wedding dress to include in this quilt, so I am now mulling over possibilities for this quilt, likely to be a wall-hanging which includes embroidery from the dress.

I also want to do more dressmaking, so that's another sewing  aspiration this year.  

Another aspiration is to complete one or more scrap quilts, made from the copious amount of scraps I am accumulating.  

So this year will be interesting, and I wonder how many aspirations will be achieved?  Knowing me, not many.  Those squirrels keep on appearing!