Year End Reckoning 2019

I am pretty happy with my quilting life for 2019. I just looked back at my list of goals for 2019, and I actually only completed four of the eight goals I listed. I did, however, move forward on the other four, they just aren't finished. 

Here are my empty thread spools from this year. They represent 17,930 yards, or over 11 miles of thread. I know I used a lot more thread than this, because I had 37 quilt finishes this year. Of my 37 finishes, 14 were UFO's, 23 were new starts. Hurrah for 23 new starts not becoming UFO's!!!

By my figuring, and I did figure square inches of each quilt, and doubled it (all finished quilts have backing too) I came up with over 225 yards of fabric used in finished quilts in 2019. I'm sure that is low, because I only took off 10% for seams, and I'm sure I should have taken off more than that. I made a lot more than just quilts this year though, baby swaddling blankets, burp rags, pillowcases, bowl cozies, etc... all take fabric as well. I'm going to guess I used around 300 yards of fabric in 2019. I gave away quite a bit of fabric in 2019 as well!

Here is what my sister did with some of that Christmas fabric I gave her. She made aprons for all the women in my family. These are the women who were here on Saturday for our family Christmas. 

Now that I've wrapped up 2019, what's on the agenda for 2020? 

I have a few deadline quilts.

1) baby quilt for grandbaby due in March (pattern chosen)
2) big girl bed quilt for granddaughter turning 2 in May (quilt top done)
3) wedding quilt for nephew getting married (narrowing down pattern choice and fabrics) wedding date undetermined

I have a few quilts I'd like to finish, that are currently UFO's

4) quilt for our bed, could 2020 be our year? (cut out)
5) quilt for Miss S that got set aside (some blocks done)
6) King sized quilt for DD#1 (I need to cut sashing so I can start assembly)
7) quilt for a great-niece (quilt top done)

My main goal for 2020 is to get my second sister's clothes sewn into memory quilts for her family. This will mean 3-5 quilts. 

I had a few people ask for quillows after Christmas, if they weren't one of the 15 that got one. I have enough pellets left for one weighted blanket, and I'll have to actually make it, because one of the ones I made early on met a tragic end and needs to be replaced. 

I'll continue working on moving UFO's to the next step, especially if I can do it as a leader/ender. I have a stack of UFO's pin basted and I'd like to quilt my way through that stack, no worries if I don't though. 

2020 will be more about new starts for me than finishing UFO's. I'm sure I will finish some UFO's, but really my deadline quilts and the memory quilts are much more important to me to get done. 

2020 calendar is already filling up with family stuff, so I'm expecting another busy, busy year. It's good to have goals, but it's also good to know life happens and you can't always finish what you want to do. Family always comes before quilts. 

Wishing you all a wonderful 2020, may it be a year of clarity, new beginnings, and lots of quilty goodness!

Reorganizing for the New Year

Sometimes things come up that you never would have expected. For years, we had a houseful of kids, and no space for a guest room. When guests came we just had to make do. As kids moved out, I not only gained a sewing room (or two), but I also have a guest room with a queen sized bed, and a grandkid room with two twin beds and all the grandkid toys. I would have thought that two guest rooms would be plenty, but we often end up having people in DH's office, or people in my sewing rooms too. When we have company, we often have a LOT of company. 

I had created a large cutting station in my fabric room, which was convenient when quilting, but made that room unusable for guests. The thing is, my cutting station was made of separate pieces, so if I reconfigured it and bought a countertop, I could have the center of the room available for an air mattress when needed. I decided that's what I wanted to do, so began the fabric room reorganization project.

The first thing I did was ditch my ironing station. In the past year, I've done most of my ironing upstairs while watching TV. I just wasn't using my ironing station very often, except as storage. By rearranging some things in the room with my sewing machines, I was able to relocate everything I had stored in my ironing station, and I gave the storage pieces under the big ironing board DH made to my sister. I can use the big board top on my regular ironing board, so I kept that. 

My ironing station had been right under the shelves on the wall. The kitchen cabinet bases I used to have back to back to make up my huge cutting station, are now next to each other against this western wall in my basement. I bought the kitchen cabinets a while ago, at a used building supply place. The countertop now on top was simply the cheapest option Home Depot had in stock. The cabinets on the left have the shelves removed, and all my tall Studio dies fit in there. My Studio cutter is right above those covered with some scraps I need to cut. On the far right, you can see a short set of shelves peeking out from under the end of the countertop. Those have small Studio dies, Go dies, Blue Wren dies, and Sizzix dies, all of which I can use on my Studio Cutter. My rulers are hanging on pegboard, and although there is a small cutting mat on the counter right now, I ordered one that is 59" x 22" and it will arrive tomorrow. 

I spent two days refolding fat quarters to all the same size, breaking up several fat quarter bundles I had, and mixing them with other fat quarters I had. I choose fabrics by color, not collection, so they'll be used faster this way. One of the top shallow drawers holds other precuts, the other is just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff for now. The bottom drawers hold bias tape and thread that didn't fit where I moved most of thread to. 

Now the opposite wall looks like this. I had some smaller plastic drawers which I emptied, and those will go to my sister too. The wide plastic drawers hold my scrap user system. The purple drawers hold mostly 1/2-1 yard pieces of fabric. If I get the projects done I have planned for 2020, those will take a huge hit and I'll be getting rid of the purple drawers as I empty them. The gray and white bins on the set of shelves hold projects, some just a collection of fabrics, others cut or partially cut. 

Now the center of this room can be a guest room when needed, and I feel pretty good about the fact I was able to consolidate so much, it gives me a good indication that I've used a LOT this year. My sister helped with that, she pretty much busted my Christmas fabric stash, and I wasn't sorry in the least to see it go. 

I'm working in my actual sewing room too. I had used up enough in the closet in there that I've moved all my batting into the sewing room closet instead of the upstairs guest room closet.

DH and I talk about downsizing someday, and I realized that although I want a healthy stash for retirement years, I don't want to move everything I have. In my head, I know what storage furniture I want to move, and what I don't want to move. Now my goal is to sew up enough that my stash fits in the furniture I would want to move. This was a big sewing year for me, and that gave me a great start towards my long term goal. 

I hope all of you had a lovely Christmas. DH had Christmas Day off for the first time in probably 20 years! We aren't having a family celebration until Saturday, so it was just DH and I all day. We thought about it, and it's only the second Christmas Day we've ever spent alone in our 35 year marriage. I've spent several Christmas Days by myself once our kids were grown, but DH is usually working, so this year was a treat. We slept in, made a nice breakfast, I put dinner in the crockpot while I was cooking breakfast, and we just had a really relaxing day. 

DH got me some quilty goodness as gifts. So many fun looking quilts in these books! I already put the fat quarters away in the cabinet drawers.

DD#2 wanted more microwavable bowl cozies, so I did snag some time to sew her up some! Another quick project, start to finish took a couple hours with several interruptions. I'll give them to her when I see her on Saturday. Sewing up a bunch of these is on my 2020 list! I bought a die to cut the size we use most and they were so fast to cut now! I've figured out how to chain sew them too, so it's a really quick project. 

I've got company now, so I'm not expecting any sewing time until next week. My first order of business will be dealing with the scraps all over my Studio cutter! 

Good Reminder

I make a lot of queen and king sized quilts. I like huge usable quilts, that are large enough to have extra space for kids or pets to snuggle under too. Making giant quilts is a big investment of time. I work on stuff in between, and mostly during the time I'm working on the big ones. Because I'm usually working on big stuff, and other projects are only being worked on a little along, I actually forget that not everything takes weeks or months to make. 

I've been cleaning out my kitchen cabinets, tossing stuff that is far past it's prime, and donating things I don't use anymore. I tossed a bunch of ratty bibs, and realized I only have one bib in decent condition. There are a lot of babies in the family right now, so one bib at Nana's house just isn't going to cut it. Now that all the quillows are finished and wrapped, I actually had time to fix that problem. 

I made five new bibs for my house, in ONE DAY!!! A lot of you do smaller projects all the time, so you know there's a lot you can do in one day, but I honestly forget. I am so used to projects taking weeks or months, that I tend to put off the small stuff, because I think it's going to take multiple days, and I don't want to take that time away from a marathon project. 

Making 15 quillows was a marathon project, and I just wanted a bit of downtime to enjoy the finish. I have projects going that I haven't touched during that mad dash to finish the quillows for Christmas, so I can easily jump back in to those, but I decided to take time out to make the bibs, and I'm so glad I did. I needed the reminder, that some projects are quick, and don't really need to be put off, so much as they need to just be done and over. Instead of my to do list being filled with little stuff I never get around to, I could knock a few off my list, and be less stressed about it. 

Thank you ratty bibs that needed to be tossed! You ended up giving me a good reminder that I really needed!

Full Disclosure

Hmmm....I wanted to take a photo of all the quillows together, but I knew I would have to mail the first ones out before I was finished the last ones. My solution? Once they were all quilted, DH and I laid them out to take photos of them. 

DH's first idea was arches, but he didn't have good luck doing that. Then he wanted to lay them next to each other.

That makes for a really weird photo. 

I wanted them laid out like a donut, in a ring.

Now that's a great photo, and lots of people agreed with me. I put it up on a couple Facebook quilt groups, and it caught lots of attention! I mean a LOT of attention. Last I looked it had over 3000 likes, almost 300 comments, and it had been shared over 50 times. I did not volunteer that the quillows were not finished, but if you read my blog, here's my confession. 

While my online photo was blowing up, I was busy getting some of these finished. All they needed in the photo was a pocket and binding. Not difficult, but there are 15 to finish. 

This was the first I finished. All the rest have pockets that match the backing when the quilt is open, but with the amount of gray fleece I had left that wasn't happening. This is the only quillow that has both sides of the pocket done in quilting cotton. 

This is one I finished today, but I took a photo just before I pinned the pocket into place. The other side of the pocket (the side that shows when its a pillow) is a print, but when the quillow is a quilt it blends in. That was my plan all along. 

Here are five finished quillows, and I've got three more currently in the washer. Eight done, seven more quillows to finish. I've been pretty easily finishing two per day, so I'm hoping to get the last one finished on Saturday. My out of town company is being delayed, so I've got some extra time now. If I don't get the last one finished on Saturday it's not a big deal. I only have one more to finish that needs to be mailed, and that should be finished tomorrow. 

Now I've got to work on getting all the Christmas boxes to be mailed all packed and addressed! 

UFO Finish!

I finally finished the UFO I quilted maybe three weeks ago? Four weeks? Whenever I quilted it, it's bound and finished today!!!

This is the second garden quilt I made with this pattern. I used the leftovers of the first quilt to make this one, and I have none of these fabrics in any kind of yardage left. I might have a few bits in my scrap user system. The seed packet fabric I used for the border is gone too, I figured the size of the border based on how much fabric I had. I really love this pattern for novelty fabrics. It's an easy pattern, and leaves the pieces large enough to show off the novelty fabrics. 

I have started quilting another UFO, but with 15 quillows to finish, I'm not sure I'll get it finished this month. If I do it will be after Christmas. 

I also finished quilting the last quillow today. Tomorrow I'll get back to it by cutting the pockets. I need to get the ones that need to be mailed off finished first, but I'll likely do all I can do with the same color thread at once too. I have out of town company coming late next week, and wouldn't it be great if I could have most of the quillows finished before they arrive? We'll see, I have other things I need to do too, including making some more bibs to have at my house, since I recently tossed all the ratty ones I had. With all the grandbabies around, Nana needs to have bibs handy too!