Quilty Goals for Spring 2026

First, a wrap-up of my goals for winter, which was honestly a pretty rousing success considering all the travel I did! I took trips to Seattle, Charlotte, Long Beach, Raleigh, Hawaii, and Long Beach again — I’m fairly certain I’ve never taken that many trips in such a short time period. But the 4 fun trips were indeed fun, and the 2 work trips were rewarding in their own way, so overall it was really fine, other than meaning a lot of time away from the sewing machine…

• Prep and launch this year’s Pantone Quilt Challenge. Done! Just a couple more weeks before this year’s challenge wraps up.
• Finish my prep and teach at QuiltCon! Done! I spent a LOT of time on prep in January, but it paid off, and I feel very good about how my workshops went.
• Make each month’s Quilts Unscripted Bee block. Done!
• Finish 1 UFO. Partial credit? I didn’t finish a UFO, but I did make a different quilt from start to finish.
• Release 1 new pattern. Nope.
• Also done:
  • Released 3 new postcard/mini block patterns.
  • Started a Hawaiian applique project.
  • Made progress on an ongoing cross stitch project.
  • Started a new cross stitch project.
  • Made some binding spools with the library’s laser cutter.
  • A bunch of tech editing.

(For those counting, yes, that’s 3 different in-work hand stitching projects. Oops. Ha!)

Now that I’m a few months into my new job, I have a better idea of what my schedule looks like and how much time I’ve got available on any given day. I’ve been day jobbing more intensely than I was before — it takes a lot of time and energy when everything is new! — but the fact that my company is 2 hours behind me on west coast time is very, VERY nice. I never have any meetings before 11 am, which feels incredible after many, many years of 7:00, 7:30, and 8:00 tagups at NASA. (On the flip side, I do end up working until around 6 pm some days, but that’s much more tolerable to me than the morning stuff.)

The change in schedule makes my days feel a little easier. I don’t actually have more hours in the day, or more hours available for quilting, than I did before…but I FEEL like I have more breathing room than I did before — and that feeling matters!

So, for spring, I’m hoping to:

• Wrap up this year’s Pantone Quilt Challenge. I’ve been happy to see so many people participating even though we dropped the prizes this year.
• Make each month’s Quilts Unscripted Bee block. The April prompt is waiting for me.
• Work on my Telescope Views group quilt. This would be a QuiltCon entry for next year.
• Finish 1 UFO. I have 2 lingering tops on my list, and intend to quilt at least one of them. (This one I think??)
• Release 1 new pattern. Pattern writing always feels like it will be quick, and it is NOT. Ha. I have several half-written patterns and would like to build momentum to getting most of them out in the world.

Happy spring to me, and you!