WIP Wednesday - Dreams Dreams Dreams

Moving into my new studio led to the discovery of many UFOs, WIPs and PIGS. My goal for 2017 is to finish some stuff.

Having a design wall is amazingly helpful for seeing what I'm working on and what the next step is. Even if I only have a few minutes to sew, it's easy to pick a pair of blocks off the wall and stitch them together.

I was also lucky enough to score a free whiteboard that someone was giving away on my neighborhood message board. I've always wanted one, and now can make lists to my heart's content. I'm trying to figure out the best way to organize it, but I love crossing stuff out! (I have no earthly idea what YTF stands for. Any guesses?)

I've taken Jaye's fabulous advice to have some mindless sewing at the ready for those days when I'm just too far gone for math. Or pins. Or anything requiring accuracy. For a while it was some nine patches out of three charm packs of Sweet Hearts by Benartex. Now I've cut them up and reassembled them for a Disappearing Nine Patch.

Side note: I really need to get this quilt done so it will stop haunting me. I had a dream last week that I was frantically trying to finish it so that my son could take it to a friend's baby. Fun fact: this couple is not expecting and has never even mentioned having children in my presence. What is wrong with me? 

While I do that, I've pulled out my scrap bins and am working on the strata for Stripper's Knot, one of The Stitch TV Show's patterns.




I hope to clear my mind and my sewing room this year! What are you working on?

State of the Stash

Happy New Year!

This seems like as good a time as any to reboot the blog and my quilting habits in general.

In 2016 I was thrilled to get a sewing space all to myself, thanks to a couple of kids moving to their college towns. Don't get me wrong; I'd give it up and take them back in a minute, but it is really nice to have all that room. Just the design wall is a game changer!

While moving into this new space, though, I found lots of UFOs, plenty of fabric that is, well, not to my taste anymore (to put it nicely) and some gadgets I'd completely forgotten about. My goal is to get rid of what I definitely won't use and finish up the rest.

I did manage to finish some projects last year. In addition to the quilt for my father-in-law, I also completed a Turning Twenty for My Middle Child's twentieth birthday. I'm not sure I mentioned it, but he transferred from University of Kentucky to University of Georgia this year, and it was so wonderful to be able to drive over to Athens to celebrate his birthday with him.

I also finished my Twilters in the Air quilt, which was made up of the Birds in the Air blocks that we swapped among the #twilters in honor of the release of Frances Dowell's novel, Birds in the Air. It was so fantastic to have so many of the Twilters attend our guild's quilt show to see Frances do a reading and to have Pam and Lynn from The Stitch TV Show tape two episodes in front of our live quilt show audience. This quilt won third place for group quilts.

Alas, those were the only two quilts I finished this year, other than the mug rug above. I hope 2017 is better. To help achieve that goal, I hope to get back to blogging, which gives me some accountability, and to track my stash usage. I'm going to link up with Patchwork Times each Sunday and post my stats.

Let's wipe the slate clean and see how we do:

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