The first three months of 2024 have flown by which means it is time to revisit my to-do list to see if I have accomplished anything in the sewing room. And the answer to that question is “not much!” - at least not much from my list. I have finished 13 customer quilts - three custom designs, nine all-over designs, and one from start to finish - as well as nine Quilts of Valor. So I have spent quite a bit of time in my sewing room. I have also judged a couple of middle school instrumental music contests, spent some time in Omaha helping my parents, and cheered on the Husker baseball team at a few games. We also took a two-week trip to a fabulous destination at the end of February into the first part of March - more about that in an upcoming blog.
Of the nine projects that started the year on my list I have made good progress on three of them and a little bit of progress on three others. I made the most progress on the swoon quilt that I am making for Ruby. I finished six more blocks so I now have a total of fourteen blocks finished with six more to go. Each block is fairly large measuring 16” square and takes about two hours to make. Then I’ll have to add sashing before it is ready to quilt. So that project will be a work-in-progress for a while yet.
I also added 28 hexagons to my English Paper-Piecing Trip Around The World quilt which equals one half of that row. I really need to get more serious about working on this project in the evenings if I am going to reach my goal of adding three more rows by the end of the year. And even with the addition of three more rows it won’t be close to being finished. Ugh! Looks like this quilt could turn into a ten-year project. Good thing I don’t have a deadline for its completion.
The third project that I made progress on - and am the closest to finishing - is my Super Secret project. The top is finished, the batting is cut, and the backing is made. All I need to do is make the binding and then load the first three parts onto my frame and stitch out the quilting. Once the binding is hand stitched it will be ready for the big reveal! And then I will be able to check one project off of the to-do list by the time the second quarter assessment comes around in July.
The three projects that I made a very little bit of progress on are the quilts that I purchased as kits from Connecting Threads. The kits came with all of the fabric to make the top but do not include fabric for the backing. In addition, since I will probably make these for my quilt guild’s charity, one of the three also needed border fabric added to make it the required size. So I assessed the quilts to see how much fabric and in what colors I needed so that I would be more prepared to finish these projects when I found the time to stitch them. I logged onto the Connecting Threads website to see if I could find coordinating fabric and found the backing fabric that I needed. I still need to find border fabric for the one quilt that needs to be made larger.
At first glance it did not seem like I had accomplished much on my to-do list but in fact I didn’t do too bad. I think I just wish I could do more. We’ll just have to see what the next three months bring!