You have heard the saying “Time flies when you are having fun!” I can attest to the truthfulness of that statement as I can’t believe that it is already time for a quarterly update on the progress of my Unfinished Objects (UFO’s). How is it possible that the first three months of 2019 are already past?
January and February tend to be slower months for the quilting business so I made use of my extra time by getting half - yes half!! - of the UFO’s on my list finished. I have to admit, though, that they were the easiest ones on the list! Now that I have more customer quilts to do I’m thinking that I probably should have worked on some of the more challenging projects too.
In December I made an Iowa quilt for Lindsay’s boyfriend out of a pattern called Limelight. It makes a fun quilt using twelve fat quarters (18”x24”) and one yard of fabric. It was so quick and fun to make that I made three others! The Iowa quilt naturally led to the making of a Nebraska quilt which I gifted to Lindsay for her birthday last week.
I also made a Michigan quilt for Kevin, our son-in-law-to-be, for his birthday at the end of March. Since there is not a fabric store in our area with Michigan fabric I found collegefabricstore.com. and they had a wide selection from which to choose. The only downside was that I had to buy one yard of each of the four Michigan fabrics that I wanted instead of the fat quarters that I needed. I made use of the extra fabric though by putting it on the back which now looks just as good as the front!
Another Limelight quilt was made with a fabric bundle that I purchased from the Cut Up & Quilt fabric store in Council Bluffs, Iowa when they did the program for the Panama Quilt Guild meeting last fall. It is a brightly colored quilt that was fun to work on when the snow was flying in January. I quilted each of these Limelight quilts using an all over geometric design.
Another brightly colored quilt that I worked on during the snowy days this winter was a kit that I purchased from Needles I in Auburn - a stop on the Panama Quilt Guild’s bus trip last summer. I really enjoyed doing some free motion quilting on this project which included paisleys, continuous curves, and wishbones.
I was also able to finish my 2018 Row By Row quilt. All of the Rows were completed last fall but I had not yet put it all together. It was a fun quilt to design this time because the Rows were different sizes. In the past they had all been 9”x36” -- not a lot of options in how to place them. I finished this quilt with an all over swirl design. Since this is the third Row By Row that I have done I think it will probably be my last. But I would highly recommend making one if you haven’t. I enjoyed collecting the Rows on our travels and it is a fun project by which to remember those trips.
So overall it was a productive first three months of 2019. In addition to polishing off five quilts on my UFO list I did 16 customer quilts and five Quilts of Valor. Now I can’t wait to see what I can accomplish in the next three months!