Hat on Top, Coat Below
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UFOs
December 22, 2007
Earlier today, when I probably should have been sewing on the quilt that’s on my felt wall, the one meant for the baby that turned one at Thanksgiving, I took an inventory of the unfinished objects in my quilting stash. Some I’ve already written about here: the Treehouse quilt for the Modern Quilt-Along, the strip pieced blocks I’ve done on retreat the last couple years, the calendar quilt that’s been on my quilt to do lists since I started writing this journal (that’s one block for it over there to the left), the colorwash pieces left undone when my fascination with that style waned. Others, though, are so long unfinished that I’d sort of forgotten about them. When I looked closely at one of the stash storage pictures I posted the other day, I saw one of these lost projects peeking out and wondered what else I’d find if I did a little digging.
This is the UFO that started me digging. It’s one block of the quilt design Erica and I chose for the mystery quilt day we did at my house. I thought it only fair that I try it myself to make sure the pattern worked. I chose the fabrics to coordinate with my sofa, thinking I’d hang the finished quilt in the living room to give the star quitl a rest now and the. But I forgot that one of the things I like about my sofa is the black background, and there’s very little black in these fabrics. I wasn’t motivated to do any more after I finished this first block. I’m not sure when I ever will be.
These blocks are one of my early experiements with paper piecing. Using a Margaret Rolfe book for the patterns, I had the idea I’d make a quilt with animals I saw in my yard. Represented here are a cardinal, raccoon, squirrel, and robin. They’ll look more like the animals once I get around to adding the embroidery for eyes and legs and such. Should I ever get around to it; I found I wasn’t that keen on doing that sort of work anymore. Also, I had trouble cutting the pieces and so the paper foundation is not always covered to the edges the way it should be and that’s tedious to fix.
I have a whole box of leftovers from a workshop I took with Nancy Crow. Most of it is filled with strips and scraps and fabric assembled from other fabric (like this, but there are these four blocks which resulted from an exercise in cutting and reassembling squares multiple times. One of the other students sewed her blocks from this exercise together and quilted and embellished them and entered them in our guild show. Mine are still folded up in the box. Maybe someday I’ll be inspired to work improvisationally again and will already have this box of raw materials to get me started.
One year ago today, I had a new desktop background and was obsessed with Google Image Labeler.
Two years ago, I mused about goodwill.
Three years ago, I wrote about work.
Four years ago, I was not happy in my new office.
Five years ago, I was weighing the merits of two binders. I have pretty much given up using a paper calendar (I schedule my appointments online) but I still carry the binder for lists and notes.
