This past week’s charity work

This week I did a fair bit.

Saturday (Nov. 15) - pretty much all day til about 2 pm -

I was feeling like if I just skipped the whole thing about 30 min a day, I could just get done with my quilts to be quilted in 2026 and get the tops combined with the backings. I was going to feel such a relief if I had that done ahead of time.

So I did. I ironed all of the Mickey panel tops I finished yesterday. I then put myself on overdrive and worked on the last few tops by adding borders to tops I had sitting been given and got them all done. My hsuband helped me put everything way up high, so i can say that part of this project is done! I only have some bindings to make, but am not sure how many I will make before I stop working on them. By comparison they are pretty quick to make since I’m just sewing strips that are already cut together and trimming off the diagonals and pressing flat. First I’m using up the leftover pieces from last year and the year before’s charity quilts.

Can you tell in many ways I have just had too many things going on - heading in so many directions at once I’ve felt like I’ve had to take time to just regroup and finish up “something”.

I have been wanting to get to tackling my own quilts here towards the end of the year (quilting them) but the long arm room was such a mess with things hither and yonder that I just couldn’t work in it like that. So, now that I’ve got that under control, I’m feeling a lot better about things.

This is how it looks up there! All of them completely ready to actually quilt! So shown below are 120 quilt tops AND backings - all approximately 60”x80” or some are a bit bigger - as big as 68”x86” or so. I know there is a lot of light in this spot, but they won’t be here all that long as I will start on this in January. And I turn off the lights when I’m not in the room.

Ready to go for 2026! i feel really great about having this all ready to go!

Monday - quite a bit of time ironing and working on sorting out bindings - so far these are all leftover partial pieces from 2025 charity or even 2024. I had a lot misc. pieces that I sewed all together.

Tuesday - bindings prep - trimming, ironing rolling up and getting ready. Am measuring out 300-320” inches for each one.

Wednesday - 60 minutes or so I ironed bindings and rolled them up and put them in my box. They take longer than it feels like they should.

Thursday - 1 hour - bindings - sewed pieces together in long strips, and then measured out several for ironing and rolling up on Friday.

Friday - 45 minutes plus 3 hours prep for the Give-away

In addition to prep for Saturday quilt give-away, by putting things out on chairs and making sure some things are ready, I did continue to work on bindings here at the house for 2026. I am doing a variety of scrappy bindings. For now, I’m going to be pulling out of my bags of 2.5” strips and making up a variety of single colors ones such as browns, blues, greens, etc. I pressed strips and then wound up 5 more. then once wound, I put them in the box I’m collecting in.

And from now on, for the rest of the year, I will probably be working on bindings - or at least as long as I write about charity prep for 2026. That’s the main thing I have left to work on besides inventory of the all the tops I have in the storage room at the church building.

But I will keep taking pics and reporting. I hope to fill up that plastic bin with prepared bindings. It saves me so much time when I’m trying to get a lot of quilts done quickly to have these bindings already done!!!

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Becky PetersenComment