It All Adds Up

I was trying to tidy up the sewing room a bit after getting Grand Illusion into a quilt top, and I came across my quilting notebook. In 2009, I started writing down each quilt as I finished it. Back then, I had more free time than I do now, so I put down the measurements of the quilt, date completed, and yardage used. The last couple years, I write down the quilt "name", usually something inspired like, "John's quilt". If I'm really motivated,  I'll write the month I finished it. At any rate, every year I add up how many quilts I made that year. When I saw the notebook, I realized I had never added up how many quilts I've made since I started keeping the notebook. Hmmm...a little counting, and I had my answer. In the last six years I have made 112 quilts. I don't know how many I have made in my lifetime, and I can only guess. Pre-2007 I had made four, but 2007 was when I really started quilting as my main hobby, and I kept no records in 2007 or 2008. Maybe 130 or so, as a lifetime total.

My methods have changed drastically since my early quilting days. I started out being a start to finish quilter; one quilt until it's finished, then the next, no UFO's, no mess. Well, in the last four days, I have worked on seven different quilts in some form or another. If you count tweaking a design on EQ, you can make that eight quilts. I have quilting projects going on two different sewing machines right now, each has a leader/ender project on it too. I pin-basted a quilt, got Grand Illusion into a top, and cut out another quilt, which will be perfect as a leader/ender project. One of my quilt projects has bonus HST's, and I already have a project planned using them.

Do I have UFO's now? Yes I do. I think I have seven quilt tops hanging in the closet (counting Grand Illusion), and at least five as completed blocks, still unassembled. I have a couple other quilts cut out, and parts done, but not enough to assemble anything yet. Does any of that bother me? Overall, I'd say no. A couple of those projects I'd really like to get finished soon, but overall, I've learned having a couple extra quilt tops hanging around is not a bad thing. There have been a couple times I really needed a quick quilt for someone, and I just finished a UFO, instead of starting something new. One of the ways I still get to donate quilts, even with so much less sewing time than before, is I often cut out two or three of the same quilt. I may or may not use the same fabrics for each, but while I'm sewing that pattern, and "in the groove", it's pretty easy to sew a few more blocks and make a donation quilt from the same pattern I was making a gift quilt. Working on several quilts all at once, is the only reason I finished 15 quilts last year. If you had asked me at the beginning of last year if I would have made that many quilts, I would have said no way, because I knew it was going to be a crazy year. Several of the quilts I finished in 2014 were actually started before that though, and it was just their time to be completely finished.  That's why I made no predictions on what I'd finish in 2015. There are a lot of variables on my time, and that will determine a lot of what I get done, but if I spend the year mostly finishing things already started, I may surprise myself. I have several things I want to sew this year that aren't quilts, and that will affect things too.

One of my non-quilty projects is finished. I finished that t-shirt dress for Miss S today.

The twins are having a Scooby-Doo birthday party, but I couldn't find a girl's Scooby-Doo shirt the correct size. I just bought two boys shirts, made one into a dress with some Scooby-Doo fabric  had in stash, fringed the sleeves and added some pony beads that have been hanging around since my kids were young, and voila, his and hers birthday outfits.

Now that this dress is finished, I can work on quilting that baby quilt for my great niece. I got it pin-basted on Monday, so it's ready to go!