Hi everyone - I know, mid-month updates are rare, but thought I would pop in to share a couple finishes that started off my year. I always start the year with the best laid plans to blog a few times a month and then life gets busy and I only seem to get around to it for the month end reports and summary. Let's see if I can do a little better, at least for the start of this year.
I had a great start to January with New Year's Day on a Saturday. I don't know why, but it felt like a much longer weekend than normal, maybe because there was nothing we had to do and no where we had to go that day. It turned out working out well for me, as I took some time to pull out a UFO. I am starting the year with 13 quilt UFOs - my definition of a quilt UFO is something that I have previously started but then stopped making progress on. Some of my UFOs are only a few months old and others are several years old, but I am glad to say as I worked through my list that I still like all of them and want to finish them. I participate in two UFO challenges - one on a facebook group organized by a friend from quilt guild, and the other is the American Patchwork and Quilting (AP&Q) UFO challenge, which is hosted each year for the magazine. You can see in the sidebar my list for the AP&Q UFO Challenge, which I generated with a random list generator. I've used this list and challenge for several years and have enjoyed whittling down the number of UFOs I have at the end of each year. I've never finished 12 in a year, but I always get a few done, and usually I am pretty motivated at the start of the year.
Let's start with my friend's challenge group, because that drove what I picked out to work on the first weekend of the year. She told us to pick something with a Christmas or Winter theme - I knew exactly which one this would be! I just made this top last year and had planned to finish it before the holidays, but then got distracted by other things. I pulled it out, found the perfect backing fabric that had been in my stash for many years, and loaded and quilted it in a day! I put the binding on it the next weekend, so by Jan 8th, I had my first UFO of the year finished. I quilted it with a simple meander, which looks like a wandering line across the quilt top. I used the meander to make sure all the little pieces (stars, snowflakes and the pieces in the middle section) had thread to hold them down. I will get the hanging sleeve sewn down and slap a label on it and this one will go into my gift basket for next year. First project for handmade holidays done, yay!
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| Simply Snowmen Quilt - finished! |
For the AP&Q UFO Challenge, a number is pulled each month and you work on that quilt. This month's pull was #12, and that is my oldest UFO, called the Fat Quarter Quilt. I made this quilt top over the course of a few years based on a workshop that I took when my daughter was still a baby (she's a junior in high school now)! I remember because my husband brought her to visit over the lunch break. The quilt top was HARD to make and was way beyond my skill level at the time, but I persisted with partial seams and an intricate pattern - here it is in progress in 2009. And then later in 2009, I got it to a finished top. It has been waiting since then for a quilt back and quilting inspiration. I decided to get it going, and made the back and it is now on the quilt frame with the top border quilted. I am still trying to decide exactly how to quilt it, but I know from prior experience that the thing that gets me moving the best is to actually load the quilt to the frame. I am not sure if I will finish it this month, but I am glad to have it moving along well.
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| Quilt back for Fat Quarter Quilt (don't worry, it isn't as crooked as it looks in this photo!) |
I also thought I'd take a moment here to share my final stitched FFO for 2021. In the last days of the year, I pulled out this piece that I stitched during Stitch Maynia 2021 and finished it into a pillow with chenille trim around the edge. I love this little finish and look forward to displaying it with my spring decor. The pattern is Spring Smalls by Lizzie Kate and you can read more about the specifics from my post here when I finished the stitching.
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| Spring Smalls by Lizzie Kate - Pillow Finish |
I have a few other things I've been working on in January but think I will save them for my month-end post. Hope you enjoyed seeing what I've started the year working on. How about you? Do you get a burst of energy with the new year? Do you do more crafting or does something else call your name? Let me know and I'll see you again soon.
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