WORD for 2014 - FINISH IT UP

I've been a member of the StashBuster group for years, but had not been involved the last couple of years.  After finishing up the Christmas Holiday orders I turned the emails back on and jumped in with both feet.  Instead of a piddly little 15 projects  (see previous post)  that my Bee had us list, I started going through ALL of my projects (past & present) and while I keep adding more to the list, right now, I've got 47 (read FORTY SEVEN) UFO's that I would like to finish.

The list have been discussing the WORD for 2014.  Mine is more of a phrase... FINISH it up!

So, to that end, since the beginning of 2014 I have been quilting (and piecing) like crazy working on that list of UFO's   8 Finishes already, and it is only half way through the month!  Can I get a WHOOP?

UFO's for 2013

 Every year for the past several years, I've listed my top priority projects that have been UFO's (UnFinishedObjects) that I wanted to finish for the year.   Well, at the beginning of 2013, we had just moved not only our home, but our business (T-Shirt Quilts of Texas and Shadywood Quilts).  Not an easy task, let me just say...
 
We moved right before the Christmas/holiday rush began..   We had contractors building out our new studio, and we were only down about 2 weeks, and then we were working round the clock to fulfill orders.  Granted, there were a few local folks picking up their quilts on Christmas Eve, but hey.. EVERYONE got their quilts before Christmas!  Whoo Hoo!
 
This year, we made the cut off date a wee bit earlier (last weekend) so hopefully, we can enjoy a trip to visit the kids over Thanksgiving, and still get everything done.

UFO's, Stashbusting and so on....

Boy, May zoomed by in a huge flash! Got a lot of things done, just not all of what I wanted to get done. OK, that is the same for most of you probably! Recovering pretty well from my arm surgery the first of May. The stitches have pretty much dis-solved, so I can start lifting my arms without worrying about ripping something.

Did finish up a UFO from early last year. This is one that is very hard to admit to. Here I am, a professional longarm quilter, and the quilt that was supposed to be done when Chloe was born last September didn't get quilted. The top was done, but alas, my humble excuse was HURRICANE IKE. OK, no power for 3 weeks got me off the hook for awhile, but really - 8 months????

Like those Kilgore was here fingers at the top? That is hubby holding the quilt.. He hates doing that. ha ha. This little quilt just screams little girl. It has fussy cut images in the corners and soft pinks and whites with nice loud hot pink polka dots on the back. The fabrics are mostly by Lakehouse.

An old quilting friend of mine from Tulsa has moved to north Houston. She is a quilt teacher and speaker and I'm looking forward to having start with her first class to our Monday Bee. This quilt she calls the Texas 2-Step. It uses Sally Sneiders method where you piece the blocks without using triangles! She has a special tool to do this. Well, so much for not buying fabric. I've been picking up the most fabulous oranges (my new favorite color) in order to do this very scrappy. (Have I mentioned that I love SCRAPPY???) . Anyway, the color are kind of like Halloween, and this one has a few pumpkins in there, but I wouldn't consider it a Halloween quilt.

As far as Stashbusting goes - all I can say is that "I've been bad". Take a peek in this bag for the oranges and blacks. There are more than a few yards of fabric in there! But I always figure you can't have too many blacks, and boy did I find some nice black toned fabrics. And Orange. What more do I need to say? Then I was going through my shirtings for a background or light fabrics in the quilt. Most of them were too 'white' . The fabrics I selected have a more yellow cast to them. My buddy Sharon went through her stash and found a few that I could use as well.

Another UFO Finished! Bamboo Quilt

Well, I had such guilt over going into the hole on my Stashbusting efforts, that I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone - as they say. About Festival Time (Houston) in 2007, our Thursday Bee swapped a bunch of Oriental fabrics. From that we made bunches of blocks for the BAMBOO quilt. Well, I've had the top done for some time, and finally got it quilted this weekend. Also used several yards of fabric for the backing & binding, which I will add to my next stash report. I'm just finishing up the binding, so haven't taken a new picture yet. This is the quilt without before I put the borders on it. I quilted it with a gold colored thread (not metallic) but because of all the metallic colors in the quilt, it looks like I used metallic thread.

Did anyone watch Quilting Arts on PBS Saturday? I was glad to see it back on again. Had 3 cool projects, but the last item really got me excited. They used some software (new to me) call Kaleidoscope Kreator. I think this will be fun to play with, as you can take a digital photo or scan some fabric, and then create the kaleidoscope on the screen, then print it out on fabric. No piecing! They have a couple of companion software packages that do other shapes. Definitly think this will be fun to play with.

The other new thing is that I've joined yet ANOTHER Bee. This one is an Art bee, and amazingly there was a huge turnout at the meeting. 17 of us were there with a few more saying they couldn't be there because of Spring Break. We were trying to come up with a name for the group, and from Quilters with an Attitude, Ruth suggested ARTiTude! Next month when we meet, we're going to do some fabric dyeing. Not sure yet what kind, but a couple of the ladies are putting together a program for us and we'll do some hands-on work. At the meeting we talked about doing some resist dyeing, or dyeing with natural elements. Here is a link at Pioneer Thinking that gives all sorts of suggestions of what to use to attain the color you are looking for. Am looking forward to see what we're going to do!

Found ANOTHER UFO!

As I have moved my studio from the upstairs to the new location, I have been finding things that I had not seen in YEARS (may DECADES). This is a cool quilt (top) that I had even started hand quilting (yes - I used to hand quilt all my quilts) !!! This is the quilt that I had the leftover 1.5" strips that I used in my Bargello Bowl top. I totally laid this one out and designed it myself. No patterns on this one. In fact this was done about the time Rotatry cutters were coming in vogue (how many of you actually remember quilting BEFORE rotary cutters??) . I started to hand quilt this one, and ended up putting it away. Think I started this in the late 1980's or early 90's. Anyway, plan on removing the hand quilting, and am adding it to projects that are to be finished up this year!

At The Movies! Another UFO Completed!

This is one of 6 quilts that my friend Linda G and I designed and put together. We found this cool movie fabric at Quakertown Quilt Shop in Friendswood TX last summer. We used that in the center, and there are paper pieced boxes of popcorn in the corners. There are markee lights running around the movie fabric. Cool huh! Didn't get it done in time for Christmas (Although Linda got 4 done). This will be a birthday present for a lucky son-in-law in June!

This is me showing it for Show and Tell at the Greater Houston Quilt Guild meeing in January.


Oh, the gal that was going to buy the whole of pantos backed out. Now I've got to list them again. Bummer....

More UFO's Bite the Dust!

There were 6 of us at the sew-in on New Years Day. Everyone brought superbowl type snack food and everyone worked on their own projects. No sports tv or radio broadcasts could be heard; only the sound of the sewing machines and ladies chattering about fabric.

Finished the top of this batik spider web. We officially dubbed it "Piece 'O Pie" because they are more like pieces of pie than of cake! I can move this one from UFO to Ready to Quilt!

This next one I started this one just before Christmas 2006, and didn't get it done in time for gift giving, so it ended up in the UFO pile. Just needed the borders completed. It is all flannels and very scrappy. The pattern is Terry Atkinson's "Cheese and Crackers". It took longer to the borders than the inside of the quilt. The pattern wasn't with the pattern so wasn't real clear on what you were supposed to do in the corners, so I just winged it, and just used all blues (no lights) in the corners. Another one moved from the UFO list to the Ready To Quilt list.

Getting Organized

Puttered around in the studio today. Yesterday, hubby built a couple more shelves for me to store some of my bolts of fabric. (That's not really a big mess on the table, I had just cut the batting for a customer quilt and layed it down when the phone rang).

I'm still getting the new studio organized. Yesterday, I turned the sewing area around, and then ended up putting it back again. To finish up, just need to hang quilts, curtains and get the remaining fabric that is still in tubs and onto shelves. Having one of my Bees over later in the month, so that will give me a nice deadline to finish it up.

Been working on UFO's. Got the Fractions quilt quilted, and the binding attached. Will sit and finish that up tomorrow evening in front of the tv. Also, worked on my Bamboo and Pinwheels quilt that our 'sub-bee' swapped blocks for in November. It's a cool pattern, and you end up with two quilts when you are done. One is Bamboo and the other is Pinwheels. Picture shown is the Bamboo quilt. Got all the triangle blocks sewn into blocks. The pinwheel blocks (the other half of the triangle) are in a nice stack for later (oops I mean another potential UFO).

Pulled out another UFO. It is a batik spiderweb quilt that I was going full guns on, then got hung up on the corners of the borders. Decided today that it wasn't that big a deal, so will finish that up first thing tomorrow.

Saturday, several of the girls (sub-bee) are coming over for an impromtu sew-in. Going to pick out the fabrics for our class later in January, and then work on UFO's. We're not buying any fabric, but plan to work on something that is in process and hopefully get finished up.

UFO's and Stashbusting

OK, it is after Christmas, I have a few days before the new year, and it is time to start considering goals and objectives for next year. I have had a huge list of UFO's and Ready to quilt items listed on the side. How many new projects will I start? How many projects have I comitted to? Oh, and the block exchanges and Mystery quilts !!

Right off the bat, my Monday Bee is doing a Charity Challenge where everyone gets a yard of the same fabric and the challenge is to complete a charity quilt by a certain date, and we all turn them in a future guild meeting. They have also discovered Dear Jane. Mine has been sitting since 2005 (see http://www.shady-wood.com/quilts/dearjane/index.htm for my DJ Journey).

I've joined a BlockBuilders Bee with Greater Houston Guild. They do 4 block exchanges each year. My Thursday Bee (original name huh- we meet on Thursdays!!) will probably do several exchanges and quite a few charity projects, not to mention road trips and retreats!

So, the question really comes down to, do I WANT to finish those UFO's? Do I just need to prioritize the list? Do I just need to cull out that list and just give in to the fact that I may never get them done?

With the new studio, I actually have room to get projects out. The ones that I really want to complete, I will set up a 15 minutes a day type of commitment to work on them. I find that actually works, and it is amazing what you can complete.