Year End Reckoning and 2018 Goals

Normally, I do a year end review on how much quilting I've gotten done in the last year. 2017 was a horrible year for finishes, I only finished three quilts total, the worst year since I started quilting in earnest. Just because I only finished three quilts, doesn't mean I didn't work on any quilts, or finish non-quilty sewing.

Here are my empty spools from 2017. They represent 11,206 yards of thread, or 6.4 miles if you prefer.

I made a bunch of placemats, potholders, bean bag frogs and some other misc. stuff this year. I made several quilt tops this year, just failed on the quilting part.

So, how does the 2018 quilting forecast look? There are so many variables right now, it's hard to predict. I did join the Stashbusters Yahoo Group UFO challenge, to help keep me on track. I need to finish the backlog of wedding quilts that are long overdue, as well as make three baby quilts for babies due this year. Two of the wedding quilts are quilt tops, two are halfway or more on their way to being tops, and one only has some cutting done. Those five wedding quilts and the baby quilts are my priority, along with getting quilts on the beds in our house. I've got tops made for three of the beds in the house.  I have one that would match our bedroom adequately, that needs the top assembled, but all the blocks are made.

I've got things working for me quilting-wise, and things working against me. Right now, it's looking like there will be 2.5 months of 2018 I will likely get no sewing done at all. That's a big chunk of the year to lose. Also working against me is my repetitive stress injury, which is still causing problems, and is slowing my progress considerably.

In my favor are my new sit down longarm, along with the quilt suspension system DH said I should get. Hopefully the quilt suspension system will make quilting easier on my arm.

Right now I have no sewing room, but sometime this summer, that should change, and I think having a sewing room again will make things easier. Knowing I will have whole months without quilting makes me hesitate on saying 2018 will be a banner quilting year for me.

In order to keep things straight for myself, I'll list my 2018 goals.

1) Finish and deliver the five wedding quilts that are past due.
2) Make and deliver the three baby quilts I know I need for 2018
3) Finish and deliver the five weighted blankets I need to make.
4) Finish quilts for at least three of the four beds in our house.

IF I can accomplish that, I'll be thrilled. I have lots of UFO's that are not represented on this list, so finishing any of those would be a bonus. I have a couple dozen quilt tops needing quilting. I also have several quilts that need the tops assembled, but I have all the units made. Getting some of those blocks into quilt tops I would also consider a win.

I know I can't catch up in one year, especially not this year, knowing there is already so much going on. I'm really just wanting to make progress, finish some things, move others to the next stage.

For most of the year I'm going to try to be no-buy on fabric. It's not a financial decision, but rather a practical one. When I get to set up my sewing room, I may decide I'd like a piece of furniture or two, and building up some quilting funds will help with that. Also, there is a chance I'll get to Marshall Dry Goods in Arkansas this year, and if I do, I know I'll stock up on basics (blenders, tone-on-tones) there. If I want to concentrate on UFO's, no buy should help with that. I should have everything I need to finish the UFO's I've got, so really no need to shop.

Wishing all of you a Happy 2018!

Melodie

Quick Post

This is going to be a quick post, because we are celebrating Christmas tonight. I've got the lasagna ready to go into the oven, the chicken cooked and ready to go into the alfredo once it's made, and the desserts are done, so I've got a few minutes.

I got the top done for one of my nieces. This was one of the quilts I was trying to get to top stage before January 1.

I remembered I had promised DD#2 I'd make her some cloth coasters, since her little one has managed to break most of her other ones. They are coming down for Christmas today, so I was working on her coasters last night, while the desserts were in the oven.

I have another quarter done on DD#3's quilt, so only one quarter to go! I'm using a border print fabric for the borders on that quilt, and I got that cut out yesterday. Some of those border prints are just gorgeous, but fussy cutting three yard long strips is not that fun. Actually, if I'm honest, I don't like fussy cutting anything!

I had hoped to get DD#3's wedding quilt together as a top before January 1, but that's doubtful now. I won't have a chance to sew again until Sunday, and I'm only halfway done one row for the last quarter. It's been taking me a two-three days to do one quarter, depending on what else is going on that day. At least with the borders ready to go on, I feel like I'm close.

I'll definitely work on that fourth quarter on Sunday, but what I work on New Year's Day depends entirely on where I am on the UFO Queen's list for Stashbusters Yahoo group. I joined the UFO challenge for the first time. I've been  member of Stashbusters for years, and I've done the no-buy challenge, as well as the WIPs and WHIMMs challenge, but didn't really need the UFO challenge until now. The last two years my sewing time has been quite limited, and it shows in how many UFO's I have. UFO's are taking up far too much space in my house and my head, and 2018 needs to be a finishing year.

Halfway!

I've got DD#3's wedding quilt top to the halfway point! Well, it's really one row more than halfway, because there are an odd number of rows. I think this one will be stunning when finished, and photos just don't do the colors justice. It's so much prettier in person.

I've laid out the last two quarters of this quilt, each row pinned. I had to take a little break from working on this, because I had no quilt on the guest bed, and I'll have two different sets of people sleeping in that bed within the next week. One set arrives the day the other set leaves.

I have a quilt top I want on the guest bed, but no time to baste, quilt and bind it. I have another quilt pinbasted that would fit the guest bed, but again, no time to quilt and bind it. I have very few quilts in the house, since I give almost all of them away. I have no queen sized quilts in the house...except...I do have a quilt we were given as a wedding gift. The pieces to this quilt were cut out by DH's great-grandmother, but she passed away before she could finish the quilt. A friend of the family finished the quilt, and it was given to us when we got married. The top is all double knit polyester, the backing cotton.

This quilt has been used hard through the years. It was on our bed for many years, my kids made lots of blanket forts with it, there were a few times we all squished under it to watch a movie when the kids were young and we lived in Missouri. This quilt has been well-loved, and when I started to think about it, I realized if my kids were ever to fight over a quilt after I die, it wouldn't be one I made, but likely be this one, because it is jam packed with memories. I didn't start quilting until my kids were all teenagers or older. I was too busy homeschooling and making their clothes when they were younger.

This block was in the worst shape. and I knew I needed to do something about it. I had no double knit in my stash, but last time I went to see my parents, my mom gave me an old pair of white double knit pants that had belonged to one of my aunts. The "binding" was just the backing folded over the front, and it was completely threadbare. The entire backing could use replacing, but, the quilt was hand quilted and I kind of hate to replace the backing because of that. Someday, I may lay another layer of backing over it, and machine quilt it enough to stay in place, but I'd rather not. Deciding how to repair an old quilt is really a matter of preference, when it's not restoring a valuable quilt. So how did I tackle the repair?

I appliqued the "new" white double knit over the shredded pieces, adding in batting where there was none. I also added a wide binding directly over the old one. It's not perfect by a long shot, but this repair likely gave this old quilt a few more years. For now, this quilt is on the guest bed, but once I get the quilt I'm making for the guest bed finished, this one will reside on a quilt rack in the guest room. It can be an extra blanket instead of one used regularly, and hopefully the light use will extend it's life considerably. 

I hadn't handled this quilt in a while, and I had forgotten some of it's charm.

Both the top and bottom rows only have 3/4 stars. I've seen lots of half blocks on edges, but 3/4 blocks struck me as funny. There are several areas of "poverty piecing". Can you see the seam in the bottom right hand corner of the pink star? There are multiple places in the quilt where the squares were pieced. I've done that myself a few times, when I've run out of fabric.

I'm still hoping to get those two quilt tops finished before January 1st, but a lot is going on in the next week, so we'll see!

This Quilting Is Being Interrupted for Holiday Festivities

It always happens, I think I'm going to have lots of time to sew, then my schedule fills up with stuff I had no idea was going on.

I did actually have quite a bit of sewing time over the weekend. I finished the quarter of the quilt I showed laid out in my last post. I have since gotten a second quarter sewn into rows. I should have sewing time on Thursday, so maybe I'll get that second quarter sewn up and join it to the first quarter. I see the halfway point coming!

For a lot of quilts, I use two rows of the same quilt as leaders/enders for each other. This Blooming Nine Patch has such a high likelihood of making a mistake, I need to use something else as leaders/enders while I assemble it.

I finished all the little HST nine patches for my scrappy quilt. I can't make those into the bigger blocks until I cut the sashing pieces, so those are set aside for now.

After I finished the HST nine patches, I looked around and saw that I had the sub-units done for Weed Whacker, and I only needed to sew two seams to get each block done. I used these as leaders/enders until I got all of these blocks together.

Next, I laid out one of the wedding quilts I needed to assemble, and I got all of the columns sewn up today as leaders/enders. There will be strips between each column, and I still need to piece the strips together. This is the second quilt I'm hoping to get to quilt top stage by January 1. I think this one will be easy to get together by then, it's the Blooming Nine Patch I'm not sure about. At least I'm almost halfway on the Blooming Nine Patch!

I had some quilt blocks already cut out that I'm using as leaders/enders right now. Assembling a quilt that is 31x31 blocks is quite a bit more complicated than most of the quilts I make. Most of my big quilts are 12x12 blocks. Granted this quilt I'm currently assembling has little 3" blocks, but it's still a lot to wrap my head around, and I am nervous I'll switch something around.

I am determined to only use UFO's as my leaders/enders right now. I don't care if I'm taking units and making those into blocks, or even assembling blocks into quilt tops, but I will not start a new project right now. I have way too much to finish to want to start anything.

Well, that's what I've gotten done the last few days, but the next few days? Tomorrow I'm going to see some of my grandkids in a school performance. Thursday I can sew. Friday I'm babysitting other grandkids. Saturday DH is off and my main job will be to repair a quilt so I can put it on the guest bed. Sunday I'll be going to DD#1's church to see her kids recite, and she and her husband will be singing. Christmas Day I should be able to sew as I wish, since DH is working and no one should be coming over.

Christmas came early for DH. He's been saving for quite a while, but was just a little short to buy a used motorcycle. Instead of me buying him something for Christmas, we agreed to use that money to throw him over what he needed, and now he's one happy rider!

Back to Quilts

I'm finished the Christmas sewing I still planned on doing. I had other things I wanted to make, but my arm is throwing fits, not healing at all like I had hoped, so I have to be careful on how much I try to do. In fact, I am icing my arm as I type this. I've got the ice pack strapped on so I can use both hands.

Since I've finished the Christmas stuff I am making, I'm back to quilts now. I finished up the last units for DD#3's wedding quilt this week, and I've just started assembling the top.

It's a barn raising layout, so making big blocks doesn't really work. The units are only 3", so assembling the top is a big job. It will be 31 units by 31 units plus a border. I am laying out one fourth of the quilt at a time, then I'll assemble that before laying out any more.

I only got half of this fourth assembled today, and my arm is done, done, done! I stacked the remaining rows neatly, and I'll work on them this weekend as I can.

After I finished the Christmas sewing, I looked at the date on the calendar, and made a goal of assembling this wedding quilt, along with one of my niece's (her quilt is simpler and smaller) before January 1st. I may have to settle for just assembling this quilt top. I keep thinking I'm making smaller quilting goals, but my arm keeps telling me not small enough.

I, of course, also have a leader/ender project going. I had a container of bonus HST's that were demanding to be put to use. These HST's will finish at 1.25", so pretty small. My container was overflowing, and these are from multiple projects over the past few years. Once a container is full, it's time to do something with it, so I came up with an idea, which since morphed into something else, but today I drafted it in EQ7.

Right now I am only working on sewing all these bonus HST's into the little nine patches. Once I'm done that, I'll cut what I need to make the blocks, then eventually cut the sashing to assemble the quilt. I don't know how big the quilt will end up being, I'm just sewing up as many nine patch blocks as I can with the HST's I want to use. Once I have those done, I can figure out how many blocks I can make. I'm debating doing the sashing and cornerstones scrappy, but it was faster in EQ to just do it as a constant. I'll have to audition a few options once the blocks are made.

Here are some of my real-life bonus HST's turned into nine patches. This project doesn't have a deadline or anything, it's just an easy thing to grab to use as leaders/enders right now.

Now that my arm is well-iced, I am good to make DH more granola, and while it's in the oven, I'll be paying bills. Fun stuff!

Leapfrog

I feel like I'm playing leapfrog these days, jumping from project to project. I'm trying to stick with UFO's or deadline things, but it's the holiday season, so there are other things to be done as well.

We had our rescheduled Thanksgiving dinner this week. This isn't all of our family, but it was a decent turnout. Everyone in state made it! The weather was phenomenal, and we ate outside. Today I finally had to turn the heat on, it's finally cooled off in Southern Arizona. The perspective of this photo is wonky, DH is actually the tallest person in the photo, but he looks like one of the shorter ones. DH and I are in the back right, I'm wearing purple, DH has a white and blue baseball shirt on.

After a couple days of cooking, a day of socializing, and another day of clean-up, I finally got to work on the grandkids Chrismas gifts. I hunted down a vintage pattern to make something I had as a little girl. When I got the pattern, I realized it was published the year I was born.

I'm not putting up photos of what I'm making until after they are gifted on December 29th. We're moving Christmas as well as Thanksgiving. DH works every Christmas. If you look at he name of this post, you'll know what I'm making though... I hope to have them all finished by the end of this weekend.

As I'm working with vintage patterns, and some vintage fabrics, I'm also busting some vintage threads. If I can give the thread a good tug and it doesn't break, I figure it's still usable. Check out the price on this, marked down to 10 for $1.00 or 10 cents a spool! Crazy! It was also Made in the USA, which makes me smile. It seems like so few things are made here anymore.

Decorations

‘‘Tis the season...to deck the halls!

I didn’t make anything new to deck my halls with, but I’ve been busy making stuff for both DD#1 and DD#3. I just finished the last of it about 30 minutes ago.

This is DD#3 Christmas tree skirt made from men’s shirts and denim.

Here are the stockings I made to match the tree skirt. 

Did you notice the braided denim on the cuff? It’s actually belt loop fabric that I bought braided on eBay years ago. 

Here is DD#1’s Christmas tree skirt. 

...and the matching stockings I made. 

I made two more stockings for our house. Growing families means more stockings for Christmas celebrations at Nana and Pappy’s house. 

Now that all the decorative stuff is done, I can start making the grandkid’s Christmas presents. I’ve seriously reduced my to do list because of my arm, but I still have one thing per grandkid I’d like to make. 

Our family Thanksgiving got moved to this Sunday because of sickness, so I’ll be cooking tomorrow to get ready for Sunday.