October 2018 OMG Completion

Why do I so often set tough or impossible goals? It might have been easier to just say I will make one block. My October OMG  was to post about 15 unfinished quilts that I had not ever posted about before. I thought I had written up most of the 15 posts back in June but, alas, I had far more work to do than I had realized. I looked up 7 ufos and photographed them. A couple were still awol but eventually found. 

At the beginning of the month, my Sweet Farmer went away for 5 days to a big cattle show in Madison Wisconsin. Kind of nice to see one of the cows he sold a couple of years ago. She placed well in her age class.
The little girls were at their mom's and I was home alone most of the day so I took the whole day and got the posts completed and even scheduled them to post throughout the month. Now if I can only put this kind of effort into writing my book or doing school work. 

I finally figured out how to schedule a post. 

• write up the post 
• save it
• find schedule option on right under post setting
• click it open
• choose set date and time
• pick a date  (Oct 24)
• looks like we can pick a time also
• click done
• click save 
• not done yet
• now click publish 
• if you go back and edit the post you have to click save and publish again
• now it is sitting in posts scheduled 

My intent for this was not to actually start working on any of them, but to chronicle part of my life journey through some of my quilt starts and why they did not get done. Fact is, I am way ahead of the game for next year's ufo challenges.  Gretchen tells me to pick the one closest to completion to work on. Good advice. But I will be leaving for India in 12 days. My plan will be to take along a few blocks for hand applique. 

Blessings,
Chris

UFOs #26 Midget Blocks 2012

Since I was all finished school, I thought I had lots of time to play. I discovered the Midget Blocks at sentimental stitches in 2012. I was still trying to figure out the on-line free block of the week and month process. I bought the first 50 patterns then started saving the free weekly ones and any that had already been available prior to that. I also bought the  midget applique blocks .  Then I found the extra 4 1/2 inch blocks over at dearjane.com/bom. So I have them all. A lot of them. Maybe 250 or so. Somewhere along the way, I printed off ALL the patterns and put them into a binder. Then I started printing the foundation patterns onto foundation paper. I was on a roll with my preparations. 

Years earlier I had started collecting 1930's reproduction fabrics in anticipation of making an old fashioned Double Wedding Ring Quilt. But, I found an original top in excellent condition so never actually started it but had hundreds of small fabrics. I even bought a bunch of solids. I thought I would use these for the Midget Blocks when I ever got around to making them.

I had completed my Master's degree and had not yet jumped into the doctorate so I spent a lot of time on the computer downloading patterns, printing them off and filing them away to make up some day. I was now retired and no longer milking cows but still drove tractor. A lot. Because I could. I did not start blogging until a whole year later.

This brings to an end the ufo's in my quilt cupboard that I have been writing about. All my other ufos have been chronicled here on my blog that I started in 2013. I have at least a dozen kits I bought and did not make. Yet. I also have piles of fabric I bought for specific quilts not yet started. I had intended to eventually make scrap quilts, but I do not really have scraps left over from quilts that are not finished. So I have not actually started this one but am ready. One of these days. 

What I do have now is a great recollection of memories through some difficult years in my life that will be very helpful for the second book that I am writing. It is about menopause and anger and depression. Spoiler alert! It ends well because I am still here to tell about it.

Blessings,
Chris

UFO # 25 Farmer's Wife 2012

I did not actually start this quilt. What I did do was buy the book. Then read it. After that, I considered making it. There were no applique blocks and I was okay with that. But the patterns were a nightmare of some 80 templates that had to be printed off the CD, sized correctly, then created out of something. 
However, I was in possession of EQ6 at the time so I found many of the patterns in the library and drafted out all the rest. The one smart thing I did was to print off all the patterns. Then my laptop crashed. Yup.

But, the laptop still had 2 weeks of warranty and they put in a new hard drive. It almost appeared that I had lost 5 years of research papers, 10 thousand photos and a lot of other stuff. Then I remembered that I had backed up everything the end of March so everything was on my fancy-dancy external hard drive. All I really lost were the 120 Farmer's Wife patterns. But I did print them all off so I was good. And the one research paper that was not backed up, well I had emailed a copy to my doctoral facilitator so I was able to retrieve a copy. Then didn't I misplace my external hard drive a couple of years later but eventually found it in a box of left over bits marked Dear Jane leftovers. That thing had my entire  Denine manuscript on it. Good thing  I had a floppy disc with it from ten years earlier that we got put into a jump drive. But I digress.  

That summer I started my doctorate in Christian counseling and finally changed internet servers so I could stream lectures and I took a team to India. I had no idea how much time is involved equipping 10 people to join me on one of my adventurous ministry trips. Also, that summer another nephew was getting married so I made them a 10 day quilt with 2 dislocated ribs and how in the world a massage therapist's business card ended up on my desk I have no idea, but she was amazing. Too bad she moved away.  

So, in case I forget what other things I am not working on, I am ready to start this one. I love being a farmer's wife.

Blessings,
Chris 

UFO # 24 GO Not So Fast 2012

May 2012 I graduated with a Masters in Theological Studies. It took me 4 years. I had taken a year off for health reasons. In May of that year, I flew out to New Brunswick to visit my daughter and this time  took my new toy - a GO Baby cutter and a couple of dies and some fabric named Bread and Butter. We were going to make a quilt quickly. Well, we got 16 twelve inch squares cut and sewn together. I brought them home in my carry on bag and put them in a box. We talked about the possibilities often. But that is all. 

It was much later that I found the Winterthur panels for my Morrell and thought they might just play nicely here. However, the panels are all rectangular not square. Until I put these all up on the big design wall, I had no idea how good they looked. Much different than in a box in the closet with a pile of other fabrics. Now to calculate how to make that middle section square.

Blessings,
Chris 

UFOs #23 Blue and White $10 Quilt 2009

My local quilt shop has been running a $10 Quilt Class for quite a few years. The rules are simple. 

• To join you pay $10
• If you miss a class you pay $10 
• If you are late you pay $10 
• If your block is not done you pay $10

I participated for five years. The best I ever did was pay $20 and the most was $30. We met once month for half an hour. There would be choice of a hard or easy block and often two different colourways to choose from. 

It wasn't that I did not get one of the blocks done. I missed a month and the block was not done so I never finished it. So often I would be sitting up late the night before to get it done. I did  not always get it pressed. On the final month, we were given our pattern and fabric packet, but there was no pressure to get it made since the next year's class began the following month. I did complete two. And why did I stop going to the class? I joined  just-takes-2 block of the month with Sentimental Stitches and Dear Jane. 

Blessings,
Chris

UFOs #22 Sense and Sensibilities 2007

I had often read about quilt challenges and when one was offered at a local quilt shop I could not resist joining the fun. That year there were several fabric collections from the Jane Austin Era. I bought fat quarters, fat eighths and a bit of yardages. Radiant Stars were popular in the early 1800's so I decided to use that as a starting place. This was to be a mini sized quilt and I started sewing up one inch diamonds. 

In the summer of 2007 I was doing 2 distance ed courses for school, mentoring a couple of 20 somethings, doing peer counseling at a pregnancy and resource center and of course, milking cows. And, I had started no less than 6 quilts that year. I did not get it done in time for the challenge deadline so into a box it went.  I have a whole bin of Jane Austin reproduction fabrics. Maybe I could pull these out for Mrs Billings to keep the historicity of the era. The quilt shop closed. 

Blessings,
Chris 

UFO #21 Reminiscence 2007

In August 2005 my Sweet Farmer and I went to the Ohio State Fair. He went to see Guernsey Cows and I went to see quilts. Two quilts caught my attention. One of them was Reminiscence by The Rabbit Factory. A couple of years later, I found the pattern and entire quilt kit for half price at a closeout sale at a local quilt shop. I did not need to think twice about buying the thing.

I had just enough of a white tone on tone fabric for the background. I started it Dec 2007.

I was in the final year of my undergrad and I was doing an internship, 2 distance ed courses, individual counseling, I was still milking cows every day AND my first grand baby came into my life. I started spending a lot more time with my son who was not willing to give up all his nights playing yet and his wife went back to work waitressing 3-4-5 nights a week.  So, I started Reminiscence. All those little freezer paper bits in the box. I found a portable lamp and spent many evenings tracing and cutting. This was the fifth quilt I started that year. I completed one 2 years later. 

I even took one block with me to India Feb 2009. That was the last block I worked on. How I hated pushing the needle through all that dried glue with the freezer paper still inside, and tone on tone fabric is not so easy to hand stitch through. This was before I discovered needle turned hand applique. But then, I started my first Dear Jane quilt and this changed the direction of my quilting journey.  Machine applique just might be the solution here. 

Blessings,
Chris

UFOs #20 Stack-N-Whack Hexies 2007

(This will be my hand piecing project for 2019. I have it right here ready to go when I want to avoid doing something else.) 

This was a fascinating year. I started no less than 5 quilts. Had the good sense to take a few scraps for some of the workshops I attended. I also went to India on my second ministry trip and got to speak to an audience of about 10,000 at a crusade. That was fun. Actually, it was terrifying. But I had a very good translator. And then met my sister and niece in Thailand for a weekend after. 

Attended my first AQS in Columbus Ohio. Here is where I saw one of those one-block-wonders so bought some fabric and cut half of it for stack-n-whack since I knew how to do it now. Sort of. After I had hand pieced a lot of them. 

I realized that if I made half the hexie, I could sew them together in rows really quickly without any Y seams. My cleverness can be so intoxicating. 

Sometimes. These ended up in a bag on a shelf somewhere and I lost sight of it until today. 

Blessings,
Chris

Slow Stitching This Sunday

Three more Dear Daughter blocks done. 

The two on the outside are alternate blocks.

These are all hand appliqued. 

Linking up with Kathy at slow-sunday-stitching.

Blessings,

Chris

UFO #19 Stack-N-Whack Butterflies 2007

As I was rummaging in a random box, I found the missing Disappearing 4-patch blocks and yet another ufo. I took a stack-n-whack workshop way back in the spring 2007. It was a bit advanced for a first time project.  We were to find a bold print that showed through to the back so we could do some mirror imaging. 

When I taught this later I had them do a 4 block repeat. That way they got the technique easily and could complete something quickly. 

It was incredible how the butterfly wings all came together.

There were 13 points coming together on the center.

So why did I not finish this thing? It was a lot of work. But why not complete it? I did not have the pattern piece for the butterfly bodies. And I started 5 other quilts that year. 
When everyone else used black for a bold background, I chose to be different and used a crisp white. Those butterfly wings would have sparkled against black. 

Blessings,
Chris

UFO # 18 Black and White Something or Other 2006

A girl that was working for us was leaving for collage and I decided to make her a quilt. For her birthday I gave her a box of fabrics and a pattern I found in a magazine. It was a simplified carpenters wheel in burnt orange and random scraps.  It took me a few months but I got the quilt made and machine quilted with that wretched monofiliment thread. She loved it and dragged it off to college every week and back home on weekends.

I thought I would make my son one but in blacks and whites with a touch of red. So I started collecting fat quarters then cut hundreds of squares getting ready to make hundreds of 3 inch half square triangles. 

I never actually got any stitches sewn but am ready if a mystery quilt comes along that needs hundreds of 3 inch half square triangles. 

Blessings,
Chris

UFOs #17 Ladies of the Night Mystery Quilt 2006

This was a fun evening. 

We met at the quilt shop at 7 pm 

probably on a Friday night in March. 

The group got locked in and worked on the mystery quilt 

until 2 in the morning. 

I think we lasted until about midnight 

considering we had an hour drive home after. 

The fabric above. Now that is interesting. 

I bought not one but all the fat quarter bundles 

of solids at Walmart when they still sold fabric long before this class.
I do believe that I used this same solid for the crazy quilt I completed
last year and gave to a cousin in Poland. 

Then I bought some cute yardage with bright sewing stuff

 on a black background. 

The pre cutting instructions told us to cut fabrics a specific size. 

So I cut a lot of pieces that size. 

I mean, a lot. This was going to be at least 72 x 90. 

Then when we got there,

we were given further instructions to cut 

all those pieces again to the actual required size. 

So, I proceeded to re cut a lot of pieces. 

Eventually, we were given instructions to sew together 

a lot of squares then cut half square triangles. 

Then,

we were given yet more instructions 

to trim all those half square triangles

to the exact size. 

Needless to day, this ended up in a box. 

We had pizza at 11 pm. 

And we could shop. Imagine that.

I bought a whole lot of fat eights just because I could. 

And some border yardage. A lot. 

This is all prewashed sitting in a project box 

labeled "Stonefields".  

Blessings,
Chris

This might just be a good project for next year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I will have to give that some thought. And most of the pieces are already cut. 

UFO # 16 Biblical Blocks Three 2006

In 2006 I had 6 quilt starts with 2 completions. 
This is the third Biblical Blocks quilt I have started. You can read about the first two here. The floral border is all hand appliqued except for some of the  flowers. I will add these after the border is sewn on so I can center them over the seams and mitered corners. There is a lot of freezer paper to remove. Not looking forward to that.

Also, there are quite a few more nine inch blocks to make. These will be fun fussy cutting into that wonderful Jinny Beyer border print. I have since learned other ways to do half square triangles. 

I loaned the pattern book to a friend a lot of years and 2 moves ago. I wonder if I can get it back? If not, I am sure I have the skills and resources to figure the rest out since I have already made one and a half.

I cut all the borders out first. Lots more applique bits ready. I sure hope that red flower does not run. All the setting triangles are cut and labeled. 

I took a class with Rosemary Makhan 2003-2004 when she was writing her More Biblical Blocks book. She taught us to draft our own patterns. This gave me the most amazing freedom to change the block size without panic or stress. I think that may be why I started 2 more. 

Blessings,
Chris 

UFO #15 Floral Abundance 2006

In 2004, I bought the book written by Rosemary Makhan at one of the shop hops I went to. Those were a lot of fun. Visiting all the shops on the list in one day. I usually spent close to a thousand dollars each time by the time I bought all the fabric to make at least 2 new quilts, some books and fat quarters all on sale. Fabric prices were at $15-20 per meter. Problem is, I never got around to making any of the quilts. And yes, we were taught to take the book apart, punch holes and put it in a binder. I have a lot of binders on one of my book shelves.  

I was determined to make this one. One of the shops offered a series of classes with Rosemary so I signed up, pulled some fabrics from my hoard stash and bought an interesting upholstery fabric for the borders. I started tracing and cutting out ALL the many freezer paper applique shapes. Then horrors!! The class was cancelled! So it ended up in a box. Did I ever mention that if I do not see something, it does not exist? Then the shop was closed. Sigh.

Rosemary based this pattern on William Morris designs. I knew so little of that stuff, even though  I had studied textiles at college before I was married. This is a simplified version of the now popular medallion quilts. I would love to revisit this one and see what I can do with it. 

Blessings,
Chris 

UFOs #14 Underground Railroad 2005

How was I to know that summer in 2005, that the simple purchase of one fat quarter bundle of Civil War reproduction fabrics was going to change my life and my approach to quilting? My local quilt shop was running a summer class on Quilt in a Day's Underground Railroad and for some reason, I was unable to take the class. I heard it was fun. I decided to do the quilt and one of my quilting friends joined me in starting this journey.

I got 10 of the blocks done and stalled because of some weirdness in a technique used to make the Dresdan Plate block and the whole thing ended up in a pizza box on a shelf never to be touched again until now.

Oh, and I started 3 other quilts that month, non of which are completed yet. I am sure that had nothing to do with it. One of them was the Biblical Blocks. Come to think of it, I was finishing up my first Biblical Blocks quilt and doing an internship because I had gone back to school after my kids were gone and I recall going to Scotland on a class trip studying Celtic Christianity as well as doing Developmental Psychology and a distance ed course on the Gospel of John and then, I went to India for the first time. I remember that because I was trying to do some of the coursework on some of the 8 flights and 2 train rides we took and swollen feet. I guess I was a bit busy because I was also milking cows every day back then as well as doing all the bookkeeping and paying all the bills. Nice to be retired from all that now.

Blessings, 
Chris

UFOs #13 Almost Amish Double Irish Chain 2004

Winter 2004 I was beginning the healing process from the anger and depression. 

I was at a family wedding and discovered 

that a nephew had suddenly gotten married 

and just had to make a quilt for the newlyweds. 

This is as far as I got before their short marriage ended. 

Sad. 

I was using yet another fat quarter bundle of a line called "Almost Amish". 

I found a bit of yardage for a border and a tone on tone white. 

I even had all the hearts ironed onto freezer paper and glued under. 

I think I was planning to machine applique them on. 

I know it would not take long to put this all together 

then I would have something to practice machine quilting. 

But that is what I have been thinking about every one of the ufos. 

Blessings,

Chris

UFO # 12 Heavenly Stars 2004

The anger, depression and suicide part of my menopause journey was beginning to change into peace and joy. This was the year I had 2 of my completed quilts photographed and published in Rosemary's latest book More Biblical Quilts. I was on a header and decided that I should try to design my own quilt since I had learned how to draft patterns from a photograph. 

I decided to use one of Jinny Beyer's border prints and the Radiant Star layout. My challenge then was to find fabrics to go with the turquoise, gold and black border print that I chose. They all had to match. I did not yet know how to pull in other colours. I made plastic templates and a few test diamonds that I hand pieced. I got stuck, to say the least. I started no less than 7 quilts that year and completed 3 of them right away. Actually, I cut out, sewed up and machine quilted 2 of them in just 3 weeks each all the while milking cows, driving tractor and writing research papers. Goes to show what can be accomplished with a deadline and incentive. 

Blessings,

Chris

October 2018 OMG

My printer quit. This is the second one that quits when the black ink runs out. I got it replaced on warranty last time but will see what they say this time. I bought it for half price and have new ink cartridges in it that cost a lot. How did we ever quilt without a printer and photocopier? This one is special. It prints 11 x 17 ledger size pages. 

October is here and I am not ready. Oh, I put on socks today and the furnace kicked in the middle of the night. How can weather go from 33C one day and 6C the next? Oh yes, it is fall here in Canada. At least we do not have snow. Yet. 

I have been posting about many of my ufos. I am slowed down right now because I want to take pictures but my quilt room is so stinkin' cluttered, first with my stuff, then with the little girls ipads, crafts, toys, paper for drawing, paper for colouring, paper for painting, paper for cutting, paper, paper, paper. I brought a recycle bin in here so I could begin to declutter. We are still trying to figure things out since the girls moved in half-time a month ago. I like that they are here some of the time. I do not pack lunches or do their laundry, and their dad cooks supper the nights they are here. I like that too. But there is extra furniture and boxes with toys and winter gear and other stuff. 

I have decided that my one-monthly-goal-october-goal will be to continue the ufo posts . This means taking a few more pictures. So far I have done 11 posts. However, I am having difficulty locating a few of them. They will show sometime when I am not looking for them. And I really want to post them in the order they were started. But I could skip ahead then come back. Most of the posts are already written. I did that back in June. I will aim for 15 more. 

Turns out there is a clean function on the printer. If only I had known. This bit of information cost me $22. It could have been more. I might have had to buy a new printer/copier. And the recycle bin is now full and I can see the floor again. And I can access the design wall again. At least until the little girls return tonight. 

Blessings,
Chris