Monday, August 1, 2016

Back to the Fun Stuff

I try to blog at least once a week, but sometimes that doesn't happen. I have been sewing though, and I'm back to sewing fun stuff!


I'm sewing stars for one of my granddaughter's quilts. These are 10" stars. I need 24 ten inch stars, and I'm making three each of 8 different stars. I've got three each of these done, but still lots more 10" stars to make.


These are 5" stars, and I need 35 of them. I'm making five different stars, 7 of each. Only one more set of seven, and I'll have this size done!

The star quilt is my main project, but as usual, I'm working on other stuff on the side, as leaders/enders.


These are all the units for a wedding quilt for my niece. Once these units are sewn into pairs, I'll have 8" blocks, and be ready to figure a layout. Her king size quilt will have less than 1,000 pieces, and that's soooo different for me. Most of the wedding quilts I make have 4,000+ pieces. I'm glad I chose something easy and modern for her, both because it suits her better, and because I'm short on time.


I ran of of the other units before I pressed them, and I needed more leader/enders, so I grabbed this quilt which is cut out but I hadn't started sewing it. This is three blocks together. I'm not sure how big this quilt will be, when I run out of the lavender side pieces it's done, because I cut up all I had. I can cut up more of the scrappy pieces, but switching the side pieces will ruin the look I'm going for. Sometimes I enjoy completely winging it on a quilt, and this is one of those. I could count the lavender pieces and figure it out, but I'm ok with it being a surprise for me.

So, there you are, my main starry night quilt, and a couple quilts I'm using as leaders/enders. I have a bunch of deadline quilts still due this year, and I'll be pressed to get them all done. It's hard to believe it's August already! Thankfully three of the quilts due are baby quilts, and those don't stress me out much. I can get most baby quilts done in three or four days.

I'm already thinking about next year, and Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt this fall. I am determined to skip the mystery quilt this year. I have a grandbaby due early December, and I'll be gone for a while once he arrives. There would be no keeping up, and I still haven't finished last year's mystery quilts. I have all the blocks done in both colorways I made, but I haven't assembled either one yet.

I already have one deadline quilt for 2017, but it might be four instead, I haven't heard back yet. I expect that number to go up, but aside from whatever deadline quilts come up for next year, I hope to concentrate on UFO's next year. It's not that I won't start anything new, a couple sizes of strips are overflowing, and I need to start some quilts that will tame those, but I want to get several UFO's that are now quilt tops quilted, and get some that aren't into quilt tops yet to that stage. I've been trying to use only UFO's or deadline quilts as my leaders/enders, and that's been moving things along nicely. I think if I continue to do that, and have a couple big quilting sprees next year, I can whittle my UFO's down a bit.

I am OK with having some UFO's, but I'm over 20 right now, and that's more than I am comfortable with. Twenty UFO's is my cutoff point. I figure one year of concentrated effort could finish 20 UFO's, and have a few new starts, but any more than that, and you are talking multiple years worth of finishing stuff, with no new starts, and that sounds like no fun to me. Next year I'll be trying to buckle down on those UFO's. Most of my UFO's are quilt tops, and several others are in blocks waiting to be assembled. I only have a few that need more units done. A couple big quilting sprees, and I can knock out a bunch. Hopefully I'll stay motivated to work on them as the year goes on. Right now I can only work on UFO's as leaders/enders, because I have too many deadline quilts to do anything else. I have been sticking with that though, so maybe I will be primed to "catch up" in 2017.

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