Category: 2022 UFO Challenge

Finishes and Updates

I have finally finished something! I started quilting this awhile ago, got frustrated and pushed it to the side of my sewing table. A couple of weeks ago I decided I just needed to bite the bullet and get it done. While I was quilting it, just one block left to quilt, my machine froze up and wouldn’t make another stitch. So emergency trip the next day, 90 minute drive south, to a quilt shop that I trust to work on my machine and do it while I’m there. I was gone all morning, did some retail therapy, and got my machine fixed up. So that meant this week I was able to get the last block quilted, binding machine sewn on and then was able to hand stitch the binding at night while watching tv.

This quilt is my OLDEST UFO and is now complete! Back in 2007 I was a member of the Quilting Stash Podcast Yahoo Group and we decided to do a block swap. We used the 2007 Hoffman Challenge Fabric (the butterfly fabric) and made blocks – if I remember we each made 2 – and sent them to Annie Smith (Quilting Stash Podcast host) and they were sorted and sent back to us. I finished my top in January 2009, but didn’t get around to the quilting part until this year when I wanted to get something done. I started working on the black sashing, then was going to do ruler work on the blocks and was having problems, hence the reason it got pushed to the side of the sewing table. While I want to do different quilting, sometimes you just have to do the best you can to get things done. Cassie has already stolen it for her bed, since mommy still hasn’t finished her bed quilt!

So WAY back in October 2020 I mentioned that I found some cigar boxes with pieces that were possibly meant for a double wedding ring quilt and that there was no way I was going to hand piece one of those. Fast forward 2 years and now I’m doing one via EPP. We are only doing 2 a month and it’s really hard for me to not keep going and do more at a time. But I have so many other projects to work on, I need to try and stick to the 2 a month rule. Now that I have a ScanNCut, I can cut out all my EPP papers instead of buying them, saves me some time and money. I’m using all my 2.5″ squares in the scrap bin, so I didn’t have to buy any additional fabric for this yet. Not sure yet what I’ll be using for the background or backing, we’ll see once I get the whole thing put together next year.

I’m working on getting my blocks completed for our guild block exchange, I finished my first block a little while ago, I need to work on the other set tonight while I watch Ohio State kick some butt. 🙂

March OMG Projects

I finished last months projects pretty quickly and started working on quilting the pentagon quilt. I just have the border left to quilt and then get binding on it.

That was the easy project this month! I also want to get the backing made for my daughter’s bed quilt and get it basted. I’m hoping to get more done than that – but I will consider my goal met if I can do the backing and basting. It’s larger than the pentagon quilt so it will take longer to quilt. I also have a little girl’s birthday to get ready for, which means party bags and possibly a few presents if I have time to make them. She’s turning 8 this month and is now into Harry Potter which makes mama’s heart sing!

Off to work on a hat order so I can get to quilting! Linking up to Elm Street Quilts OMG.

February OMG Results

I knew I’d be able to finish these small projects this month, but I didn’t think I’d finish them so quickly! The first one is a runner for my sister’s makeup table and since there were extra pieces we didn’t need for the runner length, I made a small pillow for her that matches. I even put a zipper in the side – first time for me! – and the pillow insert is a little small, but that’s ok, I think she’ll like it anyway.

The other project was the Valentine’s runner for my island. I’ve made Cathedral Window things before, using the Missouri Star method. The first one I ever made was using 2.5″ squares and that was difficult. It’s pretty easy when you use charm packs. I have 3 more of these runners to make with holiday fabrics, we’ll see if I can fit them in soon.

Since I finished these projects, I basted and started quilting another project, I posted about that last week. House is empty today, I only have a few household chores to do, so I’m hoping to get a lot of the quilting done today. It’s 2/22/22 and my little 2nd grader was so excited to wear 2 different shoes, a tie and I did 2 braids in her hair today. It’s so cool the things they do at school to celebrate these special days during the school year.

I’m determined to get things off my UFO list this year, no matter how small they are! Linking up to OMG finishes at Elm Creek Quilts.

Pentagon EPP Quilt Update

I finished this quilt top last month and wasn’t planning on quilting this this month. But since I’ve finished my OMG projects for the month (post to come soon) I decided I needed to work on something. I just spent the last couple of hours cutting the batting – of course that had to be done twice because the first time I wasn’t thinking and had it folded in half when I cut for the width and only had half of what I needed! – and then doing the basting with the Free Fuse Powder that I talked about in my last post.

I’m planning on quilting around each pentagon after I stitch in the ditch on the sashing. Not sure what I’ll do in the wider border yet, but it will be something simple. Hoping to get as much of it quilted as I can this weekend, but I’m taking Cassie to the gym tomorrow for a makeup session, and then I’ve promised her we can watch the first Harry Potter movie since we finished the book last night. She’s so excited to watch the movie and she loved reading the book together every night before bed. I think we are starting book 2 tonight, I’ll have to check with her and go find it in the basement. Good thing about watching the movie tomorrow is I’ll have extra time for cross stitch, I’m still working on the Table of Elements SAL plus I started the Heartfelt SAL from Fat Quarter Shop. I’m probably going to be behind on that project since I’m almost halfway done on the ToE SAL for the month.

Whew!

I have finally completed the top for Cassie’s bed quilt. I started this February 3, 2019 while we watched the Super Bowl and 3 years later I get the borders added to the top on Super Bowl day! I have a plan for the back, which requires ordering some fabric – which hubby might not be happy about. I wasn’t too thrilled about how much I had to add for borders, 9″ for 3 sides and 18″ on the bottom, just to get it to the right size for her bed. The pattern says it finishes 60″ x 72″ and if I had been paying attention to that I would have added at least 3-4 rows to the EPP part before adding borders. I have been trying to find the designer but it looks like her site is gone, email doesn’t work and she’s not even on Instagram anymore which is where I originally found the pattern. Cassie thought when I put it on her bed that it was totally finished, she’s not very patient and really wants it done!

I’ve been working hard this weekend to get things accomplished, and I just found out about something really cool at guild last week. There is a product called Free Fuse Powder that you can sprinkle on your top/batting/backing and press it all together. It’s easy to quilt through, there’s no basting pins, and it’s so quick! I used it on a runner I was working on yesterday and fell in love with it! Took me a couple of hours to baste the runner (4.5′ long and 1.5′ wide) and then quilt it. Now I need to make some binding and I can get another UFO off my list! I did finish one of my OMG projects, I’ll be writing about that soon, the table runner will be part of that post too.

Time to get dinner ready so we can watch the Super Bowl. I don’t like them, but since it’s an Ohio team we are rooting for Cincinnati this year.

Snow Day!

The kids had a snow day yesterday thanks to Winter Storm Landon. I was pulling fabrics for backings for this month’s OMG projects and borders on Cassie’s quilt and found a bunch of fabrics that were too small to do much with. Scraps from previous projects that just got thrown in the big tub of fabrics that I still need to get put on mini bolts and put away. So I spent some time pressing them and getting them cut into squares – from left to right, 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″. They are now in the tubs and ready to be used in projects instead of buried in a bin.

Hard to really tell from the picture, but we got a bunch of snow. We have a 650′ driveway and I only went out yesterday long enough to drive Alex to his friends house around the corner and pick him back up later. The roads were bad, but I think our driveway is worse 🙂 We are currently waiting for someone to come and plow the driveway, unfortunately the snow blower won’t work very well on this wet snow. Hubby has major issues with the snow blower when it’s wet since it just clogs up everything.

We got the new month’s pattern for the Table of Elements SAL on Monday and I’ve been working hard this week on it. I’m getting about 200 stitches done a day, might get more done this weekend since the kids are going to my sister’s for some fun and we’ll be catching up on some movies that we’ve been meaning to watch. During the day I’m planning on working on some quilting for this months OMG projects.

February OMG Projects

So I have 2 items on my 2022 UFO Challenge list that I want to complete this month. The bottom runner is going to be a Valentine’s cathedral window runner for the island that just needs backing and batting. I will find that somewhere in my stash as I’m not buying any fabric this month! I have a total of 4 of these holiday runners I want to get done this year, this one is made with a white Bella Solids charm pack and a charm pack of Holiday Essentials Love by Stacy Iest Hsu. It will be quilted while I finish putting it together and I’d love to have it done for Valentine’s Day.

The second item is a runner for my sister which includes a pillow since there were some extra pieces that we didn’t need for the length. This has been waiting for a LONG time to be finished and I’m sure at this point she’s forgotten all about it.

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.

January OMG – Completed!

Wow, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it this month! I was so close last night after working on it all afternoon and evening yesterday, that I decided that this morning I was working on it until I got it done. Now I need to figure out what size borders are going on this to fit Cassie’s bed. She thought it was going to be 100% done and she’d be able to use it already, she was so very sad when I said it wasn’t done yet. Guess I’ll need to work on it when I’m done with some other items next month.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts and will be back soon with February plans.

Lots of updates!

I finished this months Table of Elements section with plenty of time to spare. It was getting difficult to hold the scroll frame while trying to stitch so I ordered a stand with an Amazon gift card I received. It’s taken some getting used to using both hands for stitching, but it’s made me actually stitch faster since my right hand isn’t going under the frame for each stitch. Right hand now stays on top and left hand stays on the bottom. Now I’m looking to see if I can put some of my other projects in a scroll frame so I can work on them faster. I’ll be able to just switch out the frame on the stand when needed. Can’t wait for Monday to get the next piece of the design, we had 13 elements for the first month and for February we get 20 elements! Since I’m hoping to have other projects done before then, I might actually be able to stay on target with this.

I had to order way too many fabrics to try and get what I wanted for the last border on this quilt and still didn’t get the one I wanted. But after a couple of guild meetings where I asked advice from friends, I picked a fabric and got the borders on this and now it’s ready to be quilted. I talked about finding the pieces for this quilt back in 2020, the post is here. This was a fun quilt to do, and used a ton of my 1.5″ squares, but somehow there’s still a ton of them in the bin. I have another quilt that will use a bunch of those, that will be another post though!

Wow, this 2017 Hexagon Temperature Quilt took 5 years to complete the top! I started part way the year in 2017 and just totally lost the urge to work on it for awhile. The hexagon blocks were done for a long time, I just needed all the sashing pieces completed. I even had the 4 border pieces completed way before I needed them. Thankfully EQ allows me to see how many pieces are used in a quilt, 1,415 2.5″ squares in this quilt. Yet somehow the bin is just as full as it was before! I have 1 little lone hexagon that needs appliqued on and it’s ready for quilting. I have so many ready for quilting!!

So while I was doing some cleaning and putting things away I found a bin of already cut HST pieces that finish at 2.5″. So I decided that would be perfect to use as a leader/ender project while I work on other things. I matched up everything I had already cut – 1 white with 1 color and then found that I had a TON of colored triangles that needed a white to match. Ended up spending an afternoon cutting white-on-white fabrics with the Studio, I needed 356 white triangles cut and then spent time during Cassie’s gymnastics class pinning them together so they are ready to stitch when I need them. Have no clue what pattern I’ll use for these yet, I have plenty of time before that needs to be figured out!

I finally finished the Harry Potter quilt top!!! Well I need to do a border still, but the fabric is sitting here waiting to be cut and sewn on. I am only going to do a small border on the top and bottom since it’s already the right size for our bed. I need a little bit more on the sides though. I have no clue what to do about the backing yet, I have a bunch of different Harry Potter fabrics I’m thinking about putting together for the back, I just don’t know if I have enough or not though.

I’m very excited that I’m making progress on so many things this month. I currently have 46 items on my 2022 UFO Challenge list, and I think about 20 of them JUST need quilted. I’m still saving up to get a long arm and I’m hoping there are some good deals at the sewing expo this year that will allow me to get the one I want for less money. Still not 100% sure where it’d go if I do get one, but man I’d be able to get so many quilts completely finished if I had one! I’ll be back in a few days with more, I have an OMG post to do as soon as I finish the EPP work on Cassie’s quilt and I have a new project to let you know about.

Table of Elements Update

I think I mentioned in my last post that I was going to be starting a new cross stitch piece, and I did start it on Monday. I gotten a few patterns from Pixel Patterns, and found out she was doing another SAL that I wanted to do too, the last one was a crochet SAL and I don’t do that anymore. Details are here, it is the Table of Elements and I’ve gotten some good work in the last few nights. I really haven’t worked with a scroll frame very much so this is definitely new for me. I’m trying to make myself use both hands to stitch and when I do it goes much faster. I think the app said I was just over 25% done with it. This first month we have 13 blocks to do so it’s not too much work. The picture is from last night when I was working on it, Raven is the lap puppy (at 5 years old) and refused to move so I could stitch. I might have gotten a little more done after the picture was taken and I’ll get more done tonight. The next section doesn’t come out until January 31st, so I have plenty of time to get this section done. I’ve already added this to my 2022 UFO Challenge list, I’ll be putting that up soon.

Linking to Slow Sunday Stitching and I know I’ll be working on this tonight!