Design Wall Monday

This probably doesn't look much different but the slip of paper pinned on the left marks row 4. I had to fold down the finished areas to make more room to work. It's taking me about one hour to put together an 8 x 8 square. The top row in the finished area contains two 8 x 8 squares. I also need to cut more fabric to finish this row. Due to holidays and furlough days I don't have to be back at work until January 3. I should be able to make a lot of progress on this, though I have a lot of longarming to do also.

Christmas day was great. My daughter and I joined our extended family at Dillon Beach. It's the first time we have been able to get everyone all together at the beach house in four years. The photo below is from the porch, although not taken yesterday. It was sunny and the parking lot was packed.

UFO Challenge 2012

I will be participating in Judy Laquidara's UFO Challenge again next year. Looking back, I can’t believe how many quilts I finished this year. My goal was to get 12 UFOs to stage one (top completed) and 12 to stage two (quilted and bound). I completely finished 20 quilts! I think having some accountability helped me meet this goal.

I had 27 UFOs and 24 Ready to Quilt projects a year ago. Now I have 22 UFOs and 32 Ready to Quilt. Some of my numbers seem to be going in the wrong direction!

Of the quilts on my list, these are the ones I really want to get to the “ready to be quilted” stage this year. All of them have some kind of problem, which is why they aren't finished. I chose six so it would be a reasonable amount of work to accomplish:
2006 2nd Saturday
Arctic Appliqué
Buffalo Ridge
Farm Appliqué
Gram’s Memorial Quilt
Hand-dyed Log Cabin

I never made a master list last year, only the sidebar list, which I changed as I went along. Here's all the UFOs:
2006 2nd Saturday
2010 BOM Drunkard’s Path Variations
African Animals II (donation)
Antique Postage Stamp
Arctic Appliqué, Roxy Appliqué, Farm Appliqué, Yosemite Appliqué
Buffalo Jewels
Buffalo Ridge
Carpenter’s Square
Chicken a la Carte (kit)
Dinosaurs (donation)
Gordian Knot IIII
Gram’s Memorial Quilt
Green Millwheel
Hand-dyed Log Cabin
Hot Cross Buns
Houston Quilted Jacket
Keryn’s Stars
Ranch Hand’s Challenge 2012
Scrappy Irish Chain III

And this is the Ready to Quilt list. I would like to finish 12 on this list:
2003 Pumpkin Seed BOM
2009 Tamara’s BOM
4 strip quilts (donations)
2 Dog themed quilts (donations)
Aqua flowers (donation)
Bali Stars
Bear Paw (donation)
Bright Scrappy Stars (donation)
Bug quilt (donation)
Circles
Cow puzzle (donation)
Fabulous Blues
Funny Monsters (donation)
Giraffe Appliqué
Gordian Knot I & II
Guitar quilt (donation)
Jacks on Six
Making Ends Meet (civil war style)
Making Ends Meet (purple and green)
Michigan Crossroads
Millennium Stars
Minnesota Stars
Petaluma Quilt Guild Challenge 2011
Scrappy Irish Chain II
Spring Baby Quilt
Spring Tile Quilt
Violaceous!

Design Wall Monday

I have made a lot of progress on this in the last week. The lower portion is sewn together in three large rows. Then I folded it down after the photo so I would have room to work. I was having to stand up from my chair to reach the upper squares. Now my workspace in down at a more comfortable level.

Design Wall Monday

I have made a lot of progress this week. Unfortunatly, I have been working on this instead of other important things.

Design Wall Monday

I started working on this quilt last spring. The pattern is from an antique quilt. The squares have to be laid out and carefully sewn together. It's very slow going, however, I find it relaxing and meditative. I will keep going until I run out of the red I am using for the chains between the blocks. The squares are cut at 1 1/2 inches, so 1/3 of this quilt is disappearing into the seam allowances. I'm thinking of using wool batting because the top will be so heavy.

Here's a closeup of some of the blocks.