Hey, everyone!

It’s Friday again, and like every weekend, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get it started since yesterday! Honestly though, in fairness, I did kind of actually start my weekend early this week. Since Kali is out of town, I didn’t have my usual LIVE with Lisa obligation to show up for on Thursday, so — I didn’t! Instead, I took the opportunity to stay away from work for the day and focused on myself, which was great! As busy as I am, take it from me… we all need a day to ourselves every once in a while!

Now that I’m officially within hours of my actual weekend getting underway, I have one quick reminder that I want to share with you before there’s no turning back! Remember how I’ve been mentioning that we have not one, but TWO holiday quilt-alongs waiting in the wings, that are just about ready to take the stage? Well, good news my little stitchy friends! Information pages on both the Joyful Gatherings II quilt along, AND the annual Primitive Gatherings Countdown to Christmas Quilt-Along are now up and available for your viewing pleasure!

As you probably already know, my Joyful Gatherings II Christmas fabric line just recently arrived here at Primitive Gatherings, and just in time too! It won’t be long before we shift our focus from birds, bees, and bright summer florals to Christmas reds, greens, creams, and all the cozy goodness that comes with the holiday season. In fact, Joyful Gatherings II barely had time to settle in before we started putting it to work in BOTH of our upcoming holiday quilt-alongs!

The first QAL to start this pre-holiday party of ours will be the one literally named after Joyful Gatherings II. The quilt will seem familiar to some of you because it probably is — we are making the same Christmas Tree quilt that we did two years ago with the original Joyful Gatherings line, but with Joyful Gatherings II this time around. Starting on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, five blocks will be released each week for five weeks, with a total of 25 main blocks all together. On the sixth week, the final cornerstone blocks will be released with plenty of time to finish the project before Christmas. Here is a photo of the quilt done in Joyful Gatherings I for your reference:

The second holiday quilt-along on the docket is our annual Countdown to Christmas Quilt-Along. As always, this one’s a mystery quilt, which means you will not know what it looks like until the very end! Starting October 7th, 2026, the quilt-along will unfold over six total clues, with a new clue released each week, with the final clue releasing on November 11th, 2026. Aside from that, the only thing I can tell you is that the fabrics used for this beauty will be Joyful Gatherings II and Candlelight Christmas by 3 Sisters, and that two size options will be available to choose from. The rest is a MYSTERY!

You have a bit of time before either of these fantastic quilt-alongs are officially underway, which means there’s plenty of opportunity to get organized and ready to go beforehand! We’ll soon have printable pages available for both QALs, including a cover page for your QAL binder if you keep one and a progress sheet to help you keep track of where you are as the weeks go by. We’re also working on the Countdown to Christmas quilt kits, which aren’t quite ready yet but will be available soon, so keep an eye on the Information Pages for all of that!

Excited to get started? I know I am. If there’s one thing I love almost as much as summer, it’s the holiday season… I say, bring it on! Information Pages featuring full details on each of these quilt-alongs are available by visiting my landing page at lisabongean.com and clicking the “Quilt-Alongs” tab, OR by clicking the correlating buttons below!

Isn’t it funny how just when you think you’re about to wrap up a quilt-along or two, I have a way of swooping in with yet ANOTHER quilt-along or two that are totally irresistible? I’m telling you, I know FOMO can be a real STITCH… so much so that I’m banking on it at this point! I think we’ve established that I’m not really in the business of letting you run out of things to work on. If anything, I seem to have the opposite problem! Anyway, let the weekend — and the holiday stitching — commence and I’ll see you all next week! Take care. ~Lisa