The Last of the Christmas Ornaments

Welcome to the first TGIFF party of 2026! Did you stay up to celebrate the arrival of the new year, or did you go to bed early? We usually head to bed around 10:00, but we made the effort to stay up with Nathan and Zachary last night. We're definitely not party animals - our New Year's Eve tradition for probably the past 10 years has been to watch a movie together, timed so that it ends just before midnight. Then we wish each other a happy new year and go to bed 😆 Last night's movie was Wake Up Dead Man, (Knives Out 3). It was an easy choice, since we watched the previous two as New Year's Eve movies as well.

I have a small finish to share today, but it feels like a big one. In 2002 I decided to make an ornament to celebrate Aiden's first Christmas, with the intention that I'd make him an ornament every year until he graduated high school. When Zachary was born in 2004, I increased it to making two ornaments every year, and in 2008, I added Nathan's ornaments. The ornaments are not at all Christmas themed, instead they reflect something from their year. That means my Christmas tree is full of odd things like a frog (Zach's favourite animal that year)...

A drum set (for when Aiden started drumming)...

 Three vans (for the years they got their driver's licenses)...

This recreation of a sign Nathan made the summer he spent drawing pictures and selling them by the side of the road (it was a very successful venture!)

And so much more. What would be on the ornament was always a surprise, and coming up with something for each of them, and finding a pattern for it, was part of the fun for me. Most of the ornaments are cross-stitched, but there are a handful that are embroidered because there was no cross-stitch pattern to be found.

In 2018, I wrote a tutorial showing how I made all of these into ornaments, using the snowflake on red fabric in the picture above. It's the same process whether the ornament had been stitched on cross-stitch fabric or quilting fabric.

Aiden graduated in 2020, then Zach graduated in 2022, so I haven't been making them ornaments for a few years. Now Nathan will graduate this spring. I made Aiden and Zach an ornament with a graduation cap that I gave them on graduation day, so Nathan will still get one more ornament to complete his collection, but this was the last Christmas I made one that was a surprise hung on the tree for him to find.

I figured he knew what his ornament would represent, even if he didn't know what the design would be, but he says he wasn't sure what it would be. To me, this was the obvious choice, making it one of the easiest years to decide what to make.

In the fall of 2024, he came home from school one day saying there was a contest for a trip for students to go to France to visit WW1 sites, and he wanted to go. He spent that Christmas break writing an essay about a WW1 soldier as his entry, sent it off in January, then waited and waited. He was crushed when a classmate found out she had been accepted and he still hadn't heard anything. Then a couple of days later, he got a call saying he had been selected, too! 

The trip is an annual thing, sponsored by the Newfoundland government, and last summer they took 99 students from the province to France and Belgium, all expenses paid. They visited the 5 caribou statues that commemorate significant battles for the Newfoundland regiment, along with several other sites including Vimy Ridge, holding remembrance ceremonies at each site.

Nathan and his classmate both absolutely loved the trip, of course! Nathan was amazed by the architecture in Europe, sending me pictures of everything from stained glass windows, to stone walls, to cathedrals. His classmate declared she's going to learn Flemish and move to Bruges after she graduates 😆 It was the trip of a lifetime, for sure!

For his ornament, I thought about finding a cross-stitch pattern for the Eiffel Tower, but decided against that. Though they did spend a little time in Paris, and did visit the Eiffel Tower, that really wasn't the focus of the trip. Instead, I had Paul scan the logo on one of Nathan's shirts from the trip, then I traced that onto fabric and embroidered it with Aurifil 12 wt thread. I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

I was ready to stitch the front and back pieces together when I realized I hadn't added the year to the ornament! I'm so glad I realized that before I finished assembling it! Since the pieces were already cut, I didn't have room to stitch it onto the front, so I stitched in on the back instead. 

Though there will be one more ornament in May, this still feels like the last one in a lot of ways. I find it hard to believe I'm at the end of a Christmas project that spanned 23 years!

So that's my finish for this week's party; what is yours? Do you have a Christmas present you can now share? Whatever you've finished lately, link it up below and then visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too.

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Goal Planning for 2026

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We're almost to the end of the year, so I've been thinking about my goals for 2026. I actually have two sets of goals each year - the mostly quilty ones I share in these annual posts and the business-related ones that stay behind the scenes - which means I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want the next year to look. Before I dive into my 2026 quilty goals, let's take a look at how I did on the 2025 goals.

1. Keep making small quilts

I define small quilts as anything baby size or smaller, and as of my mid-year review, I had made two. Since then, I've made another five and quilted one that was already pieced. All of the ones in the second half of the year were baby quilts, except for my Bright Side Up mini quilt for the inaugural Quilt the North box. (And if you missed the first couple of Quilt the North boxes, but you'd like to get in on the fun, you can sign up for the Spring box or sign up for a whole year of quarterly boxes!). 

If you like the Bright Side Up mini quilt, stay tuned for something fun that will be happening with that pattern in 2026!

2. A Roman Adventure

The 2025 QAL and Devotional Journey was great!

3. WIPS-B-GONE 2025

Another successful WIP-busting challenge! I finished one baby quilt, finished making my blocks for the Kitchen Party BOM, and worked on a few other long-standing WIPs during October and November. If you took part in the challenge, how many projects did you finish?

4. Quilt the cover quilt for These Three and release the pattern

5. Make my Night Court wall hanging

Oops. I didn't get to either of these.

6. All the Stash Artists things

I love the Stash Artists membership! In the second half of the year, I released another three patterns (Cross-Stitch Heart, Showstoppers, and Disco Squares, which hasn't made it to the blog yet) plus we met over Zoom every month. I always look forward to our Zoom Sew Together Sessions! 

7. Go to Quilt Market

I decided to postpone the trip and go to the H+H Americas show in Chicago in May 2026 instead. 

8. Keep working on the Hexie Rainbow

Yes! As of the mid-year review, I was working on the first of four lines of yellow quilting and I'm now finished the last of the yellow and started on the first of two lines of black in the next ring of hexies. I just shared a post about my hand stitching progress, on both the Hexie Rainbow and my Shoo Fly Garden blocks.

9. Keep doing the strength workouts and get that step count a bit higher

Like it was in June, this is a yes and a no.

I'm loving my morning strength workouts! I do workouts by Lindsey of Nourish Move Love and I am amazed at how good I feel. I highly recommend her if you're looking to increase your own strength and mobility! The workouts are all free on Youtube and she has a bunch of 2 week programs, so you never have to figure out what workout to do next. I've been doing them consistently Monday-Friday since September 2024. When I went for my flu shot a few weeks ago, the nurse put her hand on my shoulder, then said, "Oh, nice deltoids!" It was funny, yes, but also felt good because you can't really see all the work I've been doing, but apparently she could feel it 😊

As for the step count...it's still around 7,000/day on average over the last 12 months, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

Now, what are my goals for 2026?

1. Keep making small quilts

We're doing a 'Mini of the Month' in Stash Artists this year, rather than a BOM, so there will be plenty of mini quilts over the course of the year. I have ideas for a bunch more, too, so this might be the year of the mini quilt for me. 

2. Make my Night Court quilt

I really would like to hang this in my sewing room, which will be much easier to do when it actually exists 😅

3. Make a Spring Sling bag

The Necessary Clutch Wallet I made myself back in 2018 is looking worse for the wear these days, so it needs to be replaced. After debating for a year or more about what to make, I ordered the Spring Sling pattern and all the interfacing and hardware needed from Emmaline Bags, so now I need to get to the making part.

4. Go to H+H Americas

My hotel is already booked. Next up, getting a new passport, since mine expired a few years ago, and booking flights. I can't wait to go and actually get to meet some of the quilty friends I've known online for years!

5. Keep working on the Hexie Rainbow

As I said last year, I don't want to set this aside and not pick it back up again. Progress will be slow, but as long as I'm still working on it, it's all good. How far will I get with another year of stitching, I wonder?

6. All the Stash Artists things

In 2026 there will be new multi-size patterns, plus the 'Mini of the Month' patterns, plus the monthly Sew Together Sessions... I'm looking forward to all of it! Here's a little hint about the January pattern that will soon be available for members (no, the stars aren't arranged like this in the final pattern). If you'd like to join us, get on the waitlist so you'll ne notified when the membership doors are open for new members.

7. Stick with the strength workouts and work on that step count

I've set myself a goal that I'll need to buy 20lbs dumbbells before the end of 2026. I started doing the workouts with 3lbs and 5lbs weights, and now I mostly use 10lbs and 15lbs, all of which we already had. We don't yet own 20lbs ones and I'm looking forward to the day I'm strong enough that I need them.

As for the step count, I'm not setting any particular goal, except that I'd like the daily average for the year to be higher than the 7,000 it is now.

Have you set quilty goals for 2026?

I'm linking up with Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl for her last Goal Planning Party.

Hand Stitching Progress

I've been stitching my Shoo Fly Garden blocks for a few months now, so today felt like a good time to take them all out and see what I have. 

This is what the finished throw size quilt will eventually look like. Emphasis on eventually!

That's 154 flowers made of ½" hexies, hand stitched to their backgrounds and with black snowball corners machine stitched. I'm nowhere close to that yet!

So far, I have 15 finished blocks, plus another 2 that have half their corners sewn on. I've been using these as leaders and enders, doing one corner at a time as I've been doing other piecing.

I have another 25 flowers stitched to their backgrounds and awaiting corners. I'm using mostly tone-on-tone white fabrics for the backgrounds, with some solid white thrown in, too.

And I have another 23 flowers stitched together. Pinned to the design wall like this, they remind me of insect specimens 😆

That's a total of 65 flowers, so I'll still be basting and stitching these for a while yet! This is my travel project, though I've worked on it at home now and then, too, mostly while talking to my mom, Aiden, or Zach on the phone, or when we have company.

If you want to make a Shoo Fly Garden quilt of your own, the free tutorial is here.

My other big hand stitching project hasn't received as much attention this year, though I have made progress. I'm hand quilting my Hexie Rainbow using Aurifil 12 wt. thread and I'm now working on the last line of the yellow quilting. Each of the coloured rings of the rainbow gets four lines of quilting and the black rings get two lines of quilting, on the inside and outside edges of the hexies. This morning I set myself a mini goal of having this last line of yellow finished before the end of the year.

The black thread pretty much disappears into the black fabrics. The coloured threads are easier to see, though they still blend in on some of the fabrics.

All of the quilting shows up on the blue backing, though!

It's really hard to get a good picture, but I love how the rainbow is appearing on the back. The texture is fabulous, too!

Both projects are obviously not going to be finished anytime soon, which is fine by me. I'll keep picking away at them and it'll be fun to see where I am this time next year 😊