2018 Year End Reckoning

2018 was a good quilting year for me! Much better than 2017 where I only finished 3 quilts. 

As usual, I took a photo of my empty spools for the year.

This really isn't a very accurate way of determining how much I've sewn, but I figure from year to year it eventually evens out. I did a lot of quilting this year, but I didn't empty any of my large cones, so none of my quilting thread is counted in this. 

These spools represent 19,035 yards of thread, or 16.5 miles.

I started this year with a UFO list of 53. I finished 19 UFO's this year, with another 6 new start finishes, bringing me to a total of 25 finished quilts for the year. 

The 25 quilts I finished, along with numerous non-quilting projects throughout the year, used about 250 yards of fabric. 

I finished all the goals I had set for myself at the end of 2017. Yup, definitely a good quilting year!

I've been revamping my UFO list for 2019, as well as making a list of quilting goals. 

I listed 51 UFO's for 2019. One of those I am currently quilting on, 20 are quilt tops waiting to be quilted. Probably another dozen are stacks of blocks needing assembly, or at least part of the blocks done. The rest are either cut out or have some units made. I likely have more than 51 UFOs, but I don't see much point in listing more, because I know I can't finish that many quilts in one year. 

My cutting table is a disaster. I'm currently on a cutting spree for several quilts on my 2019 deadline list. The quilts I'm cutting for on my deadline list I did put on my UFO list. I am cutting for a couple more that I'm not planning to work on soon, that have no deadline, so they are more a WIP or WHIMM and aren't going on my UFO list. 

I've been working on my 2019 goals, and although I'm still fiddling with whether or not I'm likely to actually finish them in 2019, here's what I'm attempting.

1) Three wedding quilts for nieces and nephews. All of these are currently being cut out.

2) A quilt for my bed, which is currently being cut out.

3) Baby quilt for grandbaby, Mr. T, due in May, not started.

4) Twin sized quilt for Miss S, started.

5) Twin sized quilt for Mr. J. Fabric collected, need to design before I can start

6) New bed quilt for DD#1, cut out

7) New quilt for DD#2, top done, waiting for quilting

8) Make weighted blankets until I am out of plastic pellets.

I have a couple other quilts I'd like to start and finish in 2019, but for now, this a good list of goals. I'd like to get at least a dozen of the completed quilt tops quilted in 2019, but I'm hoping for more than that. If I can get some of the quilts in blocks assembled into tops that would be great too. 

Moving UFO's to the next step was my method this year, and it was pretty successful. Every time I was assembling a deadline quilt, I grabbed a stack of blocks from a UFO and assembled that too. Everytime I needed a leader/ender project, I looked through my UFO's and looked for units that could be assembled as leaders/enders. I'm not trying to get caught up in a year, I'm just trying to keep momentum going. 

Right now I've got a house full of company. I've got lots going on in January, including more company and an out of town trip. I was hoping for a basting spree in January, but that may end up waiting until February. Until then I'll work on whatever I can. I still have baby bibs to finish, and I have lots of cutting to do. I'm hoping I'm not too high on the 2019 UFO challenge list, but we'll see. I could always finish my quilted mouse pad for a quick finish if I need to. 

Even More Weighted Blankets

I finished two more weighted blankets, and that is very important to me BECAUSE...those two blankets finished the list of goals I had for 2018, that I made at the end of 2017!!!!! Go me!

The last few years I've not met my goals, because life has been crazy. It's still crazy, but in different ways now. It feels amazing to finally meet my year's goals again. I'm working on next year's list, and it's already longer than I'd like, but I'll do what I can. 

This was one of the weighted blankets.

This was the other. It's for kids so a little smaller. 

I was playing bobbin chicken on that last weighted blanket, sewing on Christmas Day. I had a nice Christmas win at bobbin chicken, and finished with only a few inches to spare. 

Since we celebrated Christmas early, and our next round of company arrives today, I actually spent Christmas Eve taking down all the Christmas decorations. I knew if I didn't get the decorations down, there was a chance I wouldn't get them down until mid January, and that would have driven me a bit crazy. 

I'm not planning any more quilty finishes in 2018. If I get any sewing time, I'll work on baby bibs. I mostly plan to work on cutting in any scraps of time I find. At least with the Studio cutter even 15 minutes of cutting leaves me with a noticeable pile of pieces! One of the quilts I'm cutting for is an equilateral triangle quilt, and I can cut 60 triangles in one pass. Honestly, I now spend more time ironing the fabric before cutting than I do actually cutting. 

I ordered some fleece to make up more weighted blankets. Fleece has been my favorite fabric for making weighted blankets. Quilting cotton I think you can feel the pellets too much, Flannel I worry about holding up, minky is really messy to use and drives me nuts. Fleece is sturdy, thick enough to not feel each individual pellet, and easy to work with. I have a LOT more pellets left than I anticipated. I'll just keep making weighted blankets until they are gone. I like using fleece for quilt backing, so any extra fleece I have will be used up soon enough. 

I am still working on FMQ my oldest UFO. The center is finished, and I've got a plan for the three borders. My plan is to have that old UFO be my first finish of 2019. We'll see!

A Little More

I'm determined to finish the year strong, even with the crazy holiday stuff going on and lots of company. 

I had cut these brown HST's for another project, but hated how it was coming out. I dug some blue and orange out of stash to match the tiny flowers in this vintage brown calico, and ended up with what to me looks like a fairly modern quilt. I even had a vintage sheet I had picked up at a thrift store with the same colors in it, that was just big enough for the backing. Now I've got a bonus quilt I'm quite happy with, instead of pushing through and using it for my original purpose and hating it. 

I finished four bibs yesterday. I've got nine more to do, but I may buy more towels and increase that a bit. The bibs I have here at my house are pretty worn out, some are left from when my kids were young. It might be nice to have some nicer bibs for Nana's house too. 

I have two more weighted blankets ready to fill, but that's going to wait for Christmas Day when things should be quiet around here. Any sewing time I have this week will be spent either FMQ on my oldest UFO, making bibs, or cutting projects for next year. My list for next year's projects is already pretty long, and the sooner I get them cut out, the sooner I can start working on them. 

More Weighted Blankets

I finished two more weighted blankets. I thought both of these were on my UFO list, but only one of these was.

^This one is going to Indiana. It was on my UFO list.

^This is going to Washington state. This one I thought was on my UFO list, but wasn't.

^This quilt, however, was on my UFO list, and it's finished too! The blocks were leftover bits from a different quilt, that actually had different blocks entirely. I cut HST's from leftover stripsets to get these blocks. Because I was just cutting from whatever was left, not all my pinwheels spin in the same direction, so I needed sashing to make it work. I had the perfect border fabric in stash, and I think this border used all I had. 

I started quilting on my oldest UFO that I talked about in my last post. It's a monster! 

I also prepped all the boy bibs for sewing. The appliques are fused, and each bib is matched with a ribbing collar, though nothing is sewn yet. 

I have two more weighted blankets ready to sew channels in that are for specific recipients. I'm going to have more plastic pellets left than I thought I would, and eventually, I'll make more weighed blankets until they are gone. I've got several projects that take precedent over that though, so as soon as these last two weighted blankets are done, I'm packing the remaining pellets up for a while. My arm injury is not fond of making weighted blankets, so when the pellets are gone, they are gone and I won't make another one. 

I had just a couple things left to pick up for Christmas, and DH and I got that done today  (besides grocery shopping, still have that to do). I have a little bit of wrapping left to do, but not much of that. Good thing too. We have some of the grandkids this weekend, company for dinner on Sunday, a family arrives Monday to stay a week, then I'll have a couple down days while DH works, then another round of company! I still have some hope I could have another finish or two in 2018, but we'll see, it's getting really busy!

Year End Push

I know I'm not the only one busy in the sewing room this time of year. The thing is, I'm not actually making any Christmas presents this year. I'm mostly trying to finish up some projects I had hoped to finish LAST YEAR! I'm also busy making baby bibs for the latest round of grandchildren. 

I made nine bibs for my granddaughter that was born in May. She's just starting to eat table food. I just found out my next TWO grandbabies are boys, so Miss E got all the girly colored towels I had, so I can use all the more boyish colors on the next grandsons. Truth is, I probably need to go buy more towels to make bibs if I want to give them nine each.  I figure nine is a good number, three days worth, and how many people with babies in the house do laundry less than twice a week?

I finished one weighted blanket since my last post.

Too bad I can't count this one as a UFO finish :-( I already finished the UFO version of this weighted blanket earlier this year. Then, the recipient thought is was TOO heavy. I use a serpentine stitch to quilt the channels to reinforce the seams. No way I was unpicking all those stitches! I ended up cutting the too heavy blanket apart, and salvaging as much of the fabric as I could. (I've got a plan for that fabric, so it's another UFO now) This version is a new start for this year, but at least it's a finish as well. 

I have four weighted blankets to finish that really are UFO's, tops were made last year. I'm hoping (somewhat unrealistically) to get those all finished by the end of the year. 

AND...because working on baby bibs and five weighted blankets wasn't enough...I dug out my oldest UFO and started working on it. My oldest UFO is the Double Delight mystery quilt from 2008. Yup, ten year UFO that won't be finished this year either. I am hoping to have it finished in January though. 

Why was it a UFO? Let me count the ways. First, although I love scrappy quilts, I was a beginning quilter at the time, so I didn't have a quilter's stash. I only went scrappy on two colors, and I had to buy fabric to do that. I ended up finding my quilt boring compared to others. 

Likely because I found it boring, I decided to do a different layout. Instead of putting it on point, I decided to straight set it, which meant I needed to make more blocks. Even with more blocks, it wasn't large enough for my bed, so I added three borders, one of which is pieced blocks, which also needed to be made. 

Eventually, I got the top together (a couple years later), but remember the beginner quilter thing? Yeah, well I now had this huge quilt and no idea how to quilt it. I got it basted and stitched in the ditch around the blocks and borders. Not a bad beginning, right? I was at the very beginning of my foray into FMQ, up until this point I had only stitched in the ditch or cross hatched the entire quilt with a walking foot, which would have gotten the job done and the quilt on my bed. BUT, at this point I decided I had put enough work into the quilt it deserved nicer quilting. BIG MISTAKE! Determining a quilt needs nicer quilting is a sure roadblock for me. 

I decided to use quilt stencils. I bought a stencil appropriate for the size of the blocks, and bought a pounce pad to mark the blocks. I originally bought a white pounce pad, which didn't show up well enough for me to the marks on the quilt. I set it aside...FOR YEARS. I bought a pink pounce pad eventually, and decided to try again. By this time I had done a couple quilts with quilt stencils and done OK. Of course, none of those quilts were this big. I could see the pink on the quilt, and I quilted some blocks. It didn't take long to decide I hated using the pounce pad and the stencil, and I set the quilt aside...FOR YEARS!!!

I've finished quilting the other quilts I had basted, though two still need binding. I don't really have time to baste another quilt right now, so I decided to dig out Double Delight. I had decided if I had less than 20 blocks quilted with the stencil, I was going to rip them out and start over with a non-marking method. If I had more than 20 blocks done, I was going to do all the marking at once with a washable marker and push through. 

I dug the quilt out of the closet, spread it out upstairs, and counted the blocks I had quilted...four...four blocks and the quilt was the start of my UFO pile. I took a couple days of ripping for short periods of time during breaks, and ripped out those four blocks. I'm leaving the ditch quilting in, even though I decided to do an allover leaf design in the center of the quilt. It will only be noticeable on the back. Today I quilted for just over an hour, and quilted 12 blocks. One hour of quilting and I'm further along than I was before. I'm sure I won't get the center finished before January, so I have plenty of time to think what to do in the borders, though the wide outer border I'm going to use the same allover leaf design in. I'm only actually going to custom quilt two of the borders. 

The biggest bummer for me about finishing this quilt, is that I am in a different bedroom now, and it really won't match my new room. So I'll have finally finished a quilt for my bed, that won't match the bedroom!

With the holidays comes lots of stuff going on. I'll have some kind of company 14 of the days between now and January 2nd, plus I have a grandbaby due January 3rd, so whenever that happens we'll be taking a quick trip to see the new baby. I will have a few days to sew between different groups of company. What will I get done before the end of the year? I don't know, but hopefully I'll have a couple things marked off my list! 

Oh, in my quest to clean up my sewing rooms before the company comes, I've been using my new Studio cutter to deal with the scraps from the last few quilts I've finished. 

I even used my strip cutter die to cut up the batting scraps so I can try to make a jelly roll rug next year. I've got all the fabric scraps cut into scrap user sizes now, and the cotton batting scraps that were hanging around were cut into 2.5" strips. I've got a bunch of batting scraps in the closet, that need to be made into Frankenbatts, but that's a job for a different month! 

It Runs in the Family

Some families run thick with musical talent, others athletic ability, mine runs thick with creative genes; the need to craft something yourself, even if it would be easier or less expensive to buy it ready made.

I remember my maternal grandfather woodworking, my granddaughter now has the doll cradle he made me when I was a little girl. I have my paternal grandmother's treadle sewing machine. I remember the bookshelves my dad made me, and all the clothes my mom made, even taking the time to hand embroider on my Easter outfit. My mother still crafts, and I hope I'll be doing the same in my 80's. 

My mom made this afghan for my next grandchild to be born. I left the note she tied on when I took the photo. She converted a coloring book picture to a stitch chart to make the elephant, still crafting, still innovative, still creative, even in her 80's. I had kept the afghan she made for my son too, when he was a baby, so this new grandbaby will be getting two afghans from his great-grandmother. 

My oldest sister is also incredibly talented, and while I mostly quilt, she dabbles in so many crafts! One of my daughters is currently pregnant, and she wanted something specific for the nursery wall, but was having a hard time finding it. My sister heard what she wanted, and made it in just a few days.

Won't this look adorable in a nursery?

My sister made herself this scrappy afghan and I loved the look of it...

..so she made me one. It's usually me giving away blankets, not receiving one! 

While she was crocheting, she made hats for my grandkids. She actually made two more than this, but two of my grandkids already got theirs. 

My sister does a lot of papercrafts too.

She made beads out of scrap scrapbooking paper, then made a basket from the beads.

She likes upcycling as well, her junk mail looks way better than mine!

All the quilling in this is made from junk mail.

This little lady also started out as junk mail. The junk mail in my house just goes into the recycle bin, and my version of upcycling is turning clothes into quilts! 

I've been watching the next generation figure out their creative talents. One of my daughters is really into photography. Another is an amazing baker, making up her own recipes and flavor combinations. My youngest daughter likes to weld and do metal crafts. 

She made me this quilter from scrap metal and old bicycle parts. 

My oldest son has dabbled in woodworking, and my youngest son was really into cartooning for a while. I have a niece that's a chef, and another that does the graphics for video games. One of my nephews has done extensive landscaping and remodeling. Those creative genes go on, I can't wait to see how they show in the next generation!