Attack of the killer UFO's...

Nothing kills my creativity like quilt guilt.  And nothing gives me quilt guilt like nagging UFO's.

There they are...on a shelf in the quilt cave, right above my daughter's head.  When I am sitting near her sewing, I can hear them nagging at me.  I stop and ask her if she hears anything, like nagging voices...she just looks at me and shakes her head.  Mom's hearing voices again...

I shut up the scrappy bowtie quilt this week by taking a whole 30 minutes to finish quilting it.  Fortified by my feeble success, I have picked the next two to attack.

These are the blocks from Bunny Hill's "Bunnies Prefer Chocolate" - started in 2006, I think.  I bought the whole set of Block-of-the-Month patterns from Jennifer's Quilt Shop in Pinckney, Michigan.  I just need to assemble the chunks and do borders.  I started out following the pattern to the letter like a good girl, then I started going rogue (I just can't stop myself sometimes...), "tweaking" a couple of blocks with my twisted personality.  I think the reason I never finished it was that I was sort of bored with the proposed border treatment.

 

Now I want to incorporate some words in the border.  As enchanted as I am with Tonya's free-pieced letters (Lazy Gal Quilting), I think the style of this quilt calls for some lowercase appliqued words.  I need some inspiration on that (feel free to comment with suggestions!).  All I have come up with so far is:

1) Bunnies prefer chocolate...and so do I!
2) Chocolate...it's not just for breakfast anymore!

And because this quilt is destined to hang over our bed, I made the mistake of asking my husband for his input...he came up with something about "getting your chick's tu-lips off his chocolate bunny" - why do I even ask him anymore...

See why I need help??

OK...enough said...project number 2.  I only lack the the last 3 blocks finishing the center of Sue Garmon's "All Around the Town" that I started in 2010 after ordering the pattern set from Quakertown Quilts in Houston, Texas.

Here's the pattern front.

I've mostly been behaving myself about following this one faithfully, except for a couple of additions.  The last 3 blocks leave me a little cold, which is why I think I have had a mental block about finishing them. 

Cathy of Cabbage Quilts is also working on this top, and her version has filled me with fresh inspiration about how to finish mine.  She did a little off-roading herself, and I love her results!  Here's her top.

I am designing some subtle changes on my last 3 blocks and some additional little things in other finished blocks to make the town my own.  My friend Ola is doing this project as well, and we are having fun discussing our planned deviations and having some good giggles (remember the Gorton's fisherman?  Ola also thinks my town needs a whore house...why does she suggest that for my town and not hers?!?).  Giggles are good.

So, these are my next areas of attack.  I am not making a pledge to finish all UFO's before jumping in on some new projects...I just want to reduce the volume of those nagging, old, unfinished voices so that I can drown them out with the TV or a good movie.  I have also found a great new pattern for reducing my scrap pile, which I will share next time.

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

First finish of 2011 (this UFO was started in 1994)...

Yippee!  The first finish of 2011!  And the embarrassing thing is that it only took 30 minutes to finish...I only needed to quilt something simple on the four corners.  Why I couldn't "inconvenience" myself to finish it sooner is beyond me.   

I stumbled on some notes and found that I started this project in 1994...I wanted a hand piecing baggie project at the time and thought that it would be fun to go through my scraps and cut one bowtie from each thing that caught my fancy.  I hand pieced the bowties over the next few years.  Then the stack of finished bowties sat around for a while.  Then I assembled them without borders and THAT lanquished for a while.

   

Then I was trimming my stash and found enough fabric to border the bowties, which then sat some more before it was basted and finally hand quilted.  Well, you get the idea.  This quilt just wasn't in any hurry to be finished.

Each bowtie block is 6 inches, finished.  I just love scrappy quilts, and especially love a "charm" scrappy quilt where every fabric is only used once.  This kind of project shows my love of the quilting process...each step was therapy...fabric therapy.  Each block is a record that a particular fabric existed in time.  My husband and I were newly married and he used to read aloud to me while I worked.  I can look at some of these blocks and remember snatches of stories.

It was slowly cut out by tracing plastic templates and cutting with good scissors after pressing each large scrap as it emerged from the jumble bag of scraps that I used at the time.  Just like some people like to peel an apple with the peel snaking down in one long, curly, unbroken ribbon, when I use scissors to cut fabric pieces apart, I try to keep the mimimal fabric waste in one unbroken piece.  Isn't that weird?

Then each block was slowly, individually hand pieced...just whenever I had a spare moment.  Lots of time for petting and loving each fabric. 

I'm such a freakin' fabric addict!

It's not a quilt to be entered into a show, not a particular prize, just part of our family inventory of quilts that we will use.  Then maybe it will be part of my daughter's household some day.  I love the old historic practice of a girl entering into a marriage with a collection of homemade quilts...part of her dowry and responsibility upon entering the partnership or just a part of her first home by herself.

OK...what UFO with it's own history will I attack next?

In stitches,

Teresa  :o)

Another binding and U.F.O. bites the dust...

I got another binding U.F.O. completed...this pattern is called "BAKER'S SQUARE" and it is made with a Moda Christmas 2008 layer cake from the line called "S'Mores."  The fabric depicts an adorable snowman that looks like marshmallows on a graham cracker...too cute.

The original pattern had no outer border, but I wanted it a little larger so I added one.  Rhonda Loy, of Dexter, MI, machine-quilted it with a close, allover stipple pattern.

My quilting buddy, Ola, made my buy the kit at the end of the season (quilting peer pressure), which contained the layer cake and inner border and binding fabrics.  I am still a little freaked out by the precuts...I am normally a washer, but I didn't wash these layer cake pieces due to the nature of the pattern (I was supposed to cut the 10 inch squares in half, then sub-cut further.  I decided to cut off the pinked edges before cutting out the pieces, and reduce the size of all pieces accordingly because I was afraid my piecing would lose accuracy by trying to deal with the edges. 

Since I knocked out another U.F.O. (and possible Christmas gift), now maybe I won't feel so guilty working on a Civil War Bride block!

In stitches,

Teresa   :o)

Binding finished on my favorite U.F.O.!

This is BABY BUNTING...the quilt pattern was presented in pink, white, and pastel scraps a few years ago in either Quiltmaker or Quilter's Newsletter Magazine.  I knew at once from the size of the scrappy wedgies that it would be perfect for using up some small scraps.

Each of the 16 big blocks (finishing 19.75 inches square) is made up of 16 smaller block units. I both hand and machine-pieced the curved seams after chain machine piecing all the little wedgies together (I cut out all those 1280 little suckers with scissors!).

I chose the two green fabrics very carefully because I felt the need to calm down the "noise" of the scraps a bit, and I chose the white tone-on-tone background because I thought it would make the brightness of the scraps "pop."

When piecing this quilt, I always dreamed that I would hand-quilt it...that's how it ended up on the missing projects list.  But I am a woman on a mission to clean up as many U.F.O.'s as possible before 2010.  Thanks to Rhonda Loy of Dexter, Michigan for the machine-quilting.

In stitches,
Teresa  :o)