Happy Wednesday! I’m really making an effort this year to get some of my unfinished projects finished up. Of course I have several projects that are meant to be long-term projects, but I also have several I thought I would have finished up a long time ago!
I’ll be starting market sewing for our next fabric collection in February, so I’m
focusing on finishing things up until fabric arrives! I’ve been doing a lot of sorting, cleaning, and organizing in the studio as well (photos of some of my progress coming soon), and the other day I found that a pretty large drawer was filled only with a mostly cut out quilt and two finished blocks. The quilt is the Fig Tree “County Fair” pattern; I sewed the market sample for Joanna almost two years ago and immediately cut one out for myself. The two finished blocks were left overs that didn’t go into Joanna’s quilt.
The picture below is pretty much what I started with…rectangles and squares of Farmhouse fabrics and background strips cut but not yet sub-divided into squares. The great thing about this project is that it’s easy to use strip-piecing to speed things up since it is made with 30 blocks of the same design.
I set to work for a few hours Friday evening and pretty soon my two blocks had grown to nine. I started wondering why this project had been sitting in a drawer for a year and half or more…and truthfully, why I had to talk myself into beginning again. I told myself I would just make two blocks…and those two happily turned into seven.
My plan is to have the rest of the blocks finished up in a week or so and to have the quilt top ready for quilting by the end of the month. If I can just finish up one work in progress each month I should be caught up by the end of the year!
Have you made a plan for sewing your works in progress this year? If you’re looking for ideas to get started, my post on 5 Tips for Setting Quilting Goals might give you a little inspiration.
Happy quilting…and thanks so much for stopping by!
Tracey Holzer says
I think I'm opposite to the norm of the quilting world! I don't have many unfinished projects, I believe I have 3 right now, but for me, starting new projects is definitely harder than completing what I'm working on. Strange, heh?? I am signed up for the APQ UFO project and I'm getting one of my UFO's done, but its riddled with stupid mistakes, so its been a challenge to stick with it. Thanks for this post, Sherri, because it's just another reminder to stay on track and get it done!! Have a great day.
Hildy says
Love your beautiful blocks! I'm working right now on my Tula Pink sampler and gave mysself the challenge to finish at least one UFO every two month. Mostly my UFOs are unquilted tops and since I quilt them all myself I think one every two month sounds good and doable, don't you think?
Karen says
I intend for 2017 to be the year of finishing UFOs and projects I already have on hand. I've completed 3 quilt tops so far and have to add a border to another for that top to be complete. I also have another top partially assembled — that could be finished in an evening. January has been productive, so I'm off to a good start.
Cass Cusack says
It's really lovely Sherri
Quilting Nonnie says
I like the UFO you are working on; it is such pretty fabric with lovely colors. My year is dedicated to finishing UFOs. I wish I could say that if I finished a UFO a month that I'd be done. Alas, that is not true. But since money is a little tighter since I retired, it's fortunate I have lots of UFOs to finish that pretty much have all the fabrics needed.
Terry says
a very nice block with nice colors. It sure is nice to finally finish a quilt. I have a few UFO's myself!
Afton Warrick says
Your blocks are looking very nice. I'm impressed that you'll catch up by the end of the year if you do one UFO a month. If I do that, I'll be caught up by the end of my life, with an optimistic outlook on my longevity! Oh well, I'm trying anyway. If I could just slow up my rate of starting new things just a tad, that'd help. Looking forward to you Gridster block next month.