Determined NOT to make THIS year like last year

I decided to try to make this year different when it comes to the charity quilting I want to do in 2026. My minimum goal is 120, as usual, but I am also hoping to get some of the larger quilt tops finished as well. We’ll see - I had wanted to do one a week.

I am going to start with the 10 a month starting here in January since I missed over the first half of the month - but truly I wanted to do 20 a month for 6 months.

This way it wouldn’t take over my life - as it was really hard the last two years. It was difficult physically but also it is hard for me mentally. I mean, I love the idea of getting them done so quickly, but it is not easy for me to come up with blog posts when all I do is charity quilting for a month.

Plus, I don’t get my own stuff worked on and it leaves me feeling very sad that I don’t have time to work on interesting stuff. So, this year I’m determined to spread it out a bit more than I did in 2025. I am going to try to bunch them up in the month, so they don’t take the whole month, but try to pace myself overall much better.

Because we gave away 191 quilts in 2025 (!), I will not plan on a give away until this coming fall - NOT this spring.

So, here goes. Sometimes I have to play games with myself to keep myself on point and going. I decided to make up a chart to keep myself going. I have 2 charts here - one is for finished quilting charity quilts (not saying they have to be finished binding at this point - but get them quilted because that is the psychologically hard part for me, and the other is for making sure I have another 120 charity tops ready to go for next year.

I have a tendency to put off the charity quilting as evidenced by the last two years when I put off quilting them until I couldn’t possibly wait any longer and still hope to get it done in the year. By not forcing myself to do them so quickly I am aware that they may end up taking more of my time, but I’m okay with that. I’ll trade in a bit more time used over the feeling of such heavy pressure.

First top quilted for 2026 - not yet trimmed, obviously

I wanted to show you the first top I finished for my charity quilting for this year. Yes, I have one quilted.

I have a bit to do before the end of January to get 10 done. I’m not trying to get all 20 (my ultimate goal per month) done by the end of Jan. 31! Instead, I’ll be happy with 10 and just get caught up later in the year. I’ll just make them up gradually over the next few months by doing 22 each month instead of making up all 10 in one month. If I had my own quilts caught up, then maybe I’d feel differently, but I still have a few quilts of my own to get quilted. I did a LOT of them in December, but still have all of these to do.

Below are the quilt tops I have left to do. I will probably try to do a few of my own each week until I get caught up !! :) LOL That’s a nice goal, anyway, right? Specifically, there are about 20 tops that I consider “my own” to get done.

(A few of these are tops I want to finish, but am unsure what to do with them when done - some are quite old like the black and whites on the left at the top of the pile.)

But I’m actually pleased to have this few. In fact, that is exciting to me, as I can foresee getting caught up on these. Now these are all bundled up with a backing, so that is even better.

Here are the tops I’ve finished up right now but they aren’t ready to go to the church’s storage in the box “ready to quilt” until they are pressed and measured. I’ll work on finishing up these ten at a time - getting them pressed and pictured and getting them ready. There are over 10 here.