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!
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