Enduring Goals: QALs and Cross Stitch

One of my enduring goals is to catch up on all my old quilt-alongs (QALs) - they are so fun to start but hard to finish.  When I talked about my double-digit WIP list, most of the items on it were QALs that I had lost interest in.  Last year I really buckled down, finishing three QALs and starting zero! 

2025 QAL Finishes: Marble Mystery, The Rest of the Quilt Back, Pooh Corner

My WIP list currently has two old QAL projects on it and both of them are almost finished: the 2019 Summer Sampler (1 block and a lot of setting away from completion) and Under the Sea (3 main blocks and some finishing blocks).  However, there are several new QALs I want to start in 2026 so I made a deal with myself: one old QAL block before I start a new QAL project.

One Under the Sea compass block down, one new QAL started guilt-free!  Farm Fresh is a new QAL from Lori Holt featuring her old books, Farm Girl Vintage and Farm Girl Vintage 2.  I bought the books when they first came out and have made blocks from them, but never used them to make a full quilt, so I was excited to see this layout that combines both books together.  I knew right away that my quilt was going to be scrappy, but I do like to have "rules" for my scrappy quilts so that there is some cohesion.  For this quilt, the background of each block is a Lori Holt print (I bought a half-yard bundle) and at least one piece of colorful scrappy fabric is also Lori Holt (I have several charm packs of her fabric from when I used to get the FQS subscription box).  The rest of each block comes from my scrap bins, unless a different piece of fabric is begging to be used (like the blue jean overalls on the scarecrow).

So far, it's working great.  Most of my recent scrap projects have used larger pieces of fabric, so using up some of the smaller ones feels good too.  For example, all the leaves in the crop block were made out of scraps that were already triangle-shaped!

My second enduring goal is make finished cross-stitch pieces ready for display in a timely manner.  I had two quick finishes in January, both of which are my favorite tiny quilt style.

Let It Snow is a mini from my Caterpillar Cross-Stitch subscription box, and I stitched it during the post-Christmas blizzard.  It came together very quickly because I was basically only working with one color at a time.

Shark Witch was a free pattern from Black Waltz Stitching, and it made me smile so hard the first time I saw it that I knew I had to make one.  I followed the general color scheme of the pattern, but used the unlabeled scraps from other cross-stitch projects so it's a little bit original too.

I'm almost done with my fourth and final Halloween Snowglobe, and then I get the fun of finishing my first cross-stitch pieces stitched on paper.  I enjoyed doing the stitching, but I'm not sure how I'll like the finishing!