End of Week 3+ Charity Quilting 2025

I will start with “I’m tired”.

Yes, I am.

I am hoping to never do this to myself again.

But at the end of this third week I did this in the six days.

I trimmed all 120 quilts - and finished up that on Monday.

I do trim with my Kai shears. I couldn’t do it as quickly with a rotary cutter and cutting mats - or at least I don’t think so. MAYBE I could IF I had a nice huge place to work on - as in, big enough to put a 60”x80” quilt on with mats underneath and then trim. But I don’t. So, I just use scissors. However, without a very large pair of Kai shears which cut like butter, I could not have done it. I would have had blisters and very sore fingers. As it was, they were all just tired. No blisters, nothing that didn’t recover overnight.

My beautiful amazing piles looked like this:

After trimming for hours, I did feel a sense of accomplishment.

I then had to divvy up the batting and the fabric that I had trimmed off. I did all that on Monday after trimming most of the day. Yes, I almost talked myself out of it—but I had such a big mess…

Dividing all of this up took hours. At the end of that time - here it all is.

The bags are batting - the fabric is on the left front and right front. The paper bag is kindling and the trash (also kindling) is also on the floor beside the paper bag. I swept it all up and put it in the paper bag.

I stacked the fabric neatly (for Ewa to cut up into more squares for charity quilting) and bagged up the batting to give away to someone as I can. Some was trash and the long selvages will be kindling. The Polish fabrics selvages are not interesting. They don’t put any names or put any interesting markings on them. So sad.


Tuq enjoyed all the mess, however. Here is the process.

I did make a little video about the progress.

I did transfer all that amazing fabric leftovers to this nice big bag. It’s heavy. But I’m tired of looking at these pieces and don’t want all these in my strips bags. And I know Ewa really wants it. So there’s that.

I was tired by the end of the day. I had thought I would just trim a few a day and bind as I trimmed. However, I soon talked myself out of that and just decided to get that step all done.

I then started binding. I wanted to attempt to do 10 a day.

So, I did finish 10 per day Tuesday through Saturday. This means I have finished 50 so far.

I’ve taken photos of over 10 so far, and have washed 15 or so.

waiting to be washed These are all bound. I do wash them so that there are no surprises for the recipients. Hopefully the quilt will continue to look just as good after washing. If there is going to be an issue, I want it to be now.

I am chugging along on this project.

I’ve been trying to get started by 7 or 7:15 am and have been working usually quite long hours.

But I’m starting to feel the end of this project. While I’m completely finished 50 bindings, I have sewn the first side of the next 10 or so on, so I’m very close….very close to halfway done. Then, once I’m on the downhill slide, well, I may just forget everything else and work even longer or more intensely. Adrenalin may kick in. We’ll see. Maybe not as well. I just might keep on chugging along and finish in time.

We’ll see. I did hope to finish by the end of the month.

I have so many more things I want to work on! I mean, seriously - so many other things. My heart is on them. But at the end of the day after devoting so much energy to these, I don’t have the mental or physical energy to work on something else. I had worked hard to get enough done ahead of time for the daily blog that I could devote myself to these completely and have something to offer each day that wasn’t just charity quilting.

I’m pretty much using scrappy bindings, pulling from my 2.5” strips bags. Just a few of them are not scrappy. I am trying to coordinate with the tops (front side)’s colors.

I’ll explain later while WHY I’ve felt the need to give so much time and energy and intensity to this project in August. I had one lady encourage me to just finish 60 because we were gone so much earlier this year. But I didn’t think that would make me feel right. So, I stuck to the 120. I had to at least TRY for 120.

I am trying to wash these only during our cheaper electricity, (we have a dual tariff), so that is my biggest limit at the time. It is definitely self imposed as well, but it’s okay. I do have the weekends to wash as much as I want.

Anyway, thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.

















Becky Petersen5 Comments