UFO's Part One

Since one of my goals this year is to purge my UFO's, I got busy between Christmas and New Year's and went through the sewing room. And I discovered even more UFO's than I thought possible of one person!

First, let's define the term UFO......first time I heard that term used, I thought someone was talking about making a space themed quilt! But then I got wise and learned it stands for "Unidentifed Fabric Object". Whoever came up with that one is pretty clever!!! Since my goal for the year is to either finish, get rid of, or disassemble all my UFO's by the end of March, I need to set up some guidelines.

First, a UFO is any project I have not worked on in over a year. Now I quilt ALOT and tend to finish stuff up. If I have not done anything in a year, it's a UFO. If it's been under a year, then its a WIP (work in progress).

Second, I don't count completed quilt tops as UFO's because if I don't like how something turned out, I sometimes use the top for the back of another quilt. Sometimes I combine two quilt tops I don't like into a brand new quilt top. Sometimes I use the quilt top for a whole brand new project. And sometimes I'm still debating how I want to quilt it.

Now with these things in mind, and only three months until my deadline. I started putting stuff in one of the three piles:

Discard- these are going to my Wild Threads group UFO swap
Disassemble- finished blocks go into the orphan block box and fabric goes back on the shelf
Finish up- pedal to the metal!! Rev up the machine!

Here I go! First up is the Storm at Sea......I was originally going to make this for my bachelor brother. But then I thought, he's is not going to appreciate it. So I bought some black, yellow, and Pittsburg Steelers fabric. Then I stitched it up into columns. He was overjoyed and sleeps with it every night. Now I love this fabric.....I love imagining how it would look.....so let's put this in the FINISH IT UP pile. Did I mention this has been sitting around for 2 years?
Then there are the Pigs of Life. I thought the appliques were so cute and I wanted to put them inside the setting squares of an Irish Chain. I started cutting the strips, found a piggy book, found some cute celebration fabric....and that's it. This has been lingering in my life for about 3 years.....the verdict??? DISASSEMBLE PILE!

Then there's the result of a challenge with my small group called the Wild Threads. The challenge was to research some fruit or vegtable and make quilt. I chose olives for my theme due to some questions raised at my guild's retreat....questions such as "olives, fruit or vegtable?" and "what exactly is a pimento?". These are the kinds of things we talk about at 3am after sewing for 24 hours non stop. Scary huh? Anyway, this is probably two years ago and I make a couple of blocks and then stopped. What's the verdict?? DISASSEMBLE!

Next up are the cats!!!! Yes, more cats!!! I made this pattern three times and this was the fourth time. I love these cats. I wanted Ghost Cats so I went with a white on white combo. I finished up the cats but then decided I did not want to do the flowers that were in the pattern. I wanted to be creative and make tombstomes, lilies of the valley etc. And here it sits, three years later.....what should I do??? The verdict......FINISH IT UP! But what should I do? Follow the pattern and get it done with or go back to the graveyard theme?? Time and deadlines will tell...

This next one......its embarrassing......I started this when my youngest son was not even a year old. He's 6 now......and that's not the embarrassing part. The top is done! It only took about a year to do that....but I did all these reverse cut out embrodery flowers on the top. And once I started cutting the top layer of fabric away to reveal the pretty fabric underneath, I realized how much I HATE doing that! So for five years I have procrasinated....started and stopped....and now I only have this tiny section left to do!! Then I can quilt it! So you know the goal here! FINISH IT UP!!

See the small section left to do???? I am so ashamed.....

Here's what the whole thing looks likes.....I already how I want to quilt it....I already have the threads.....and the backing and the binding. I bought them years ago BEFORE I started cutting out the little flowers. Sad huh.

Finally there's the chickens which were a group project with the Wild Threads last year. Time for another secret......I don't like birds. So I have no idea why I agreed to do a chicken sew along. It was option but there's recipes in the book and that kinda won me over. I managed to fuse down four out of the twelve blocks and that's it. What to do????? DISCARD!

Guess what? This is only part one of my UFO's!!! I have more!!!! Scary huh? And I know there's no way I get all my keepers done in time.....so when March gets closer there will have to be another purge. Stay tuned for my progress and Part Two of How the UFO Flies.

kathy