Trying Again!?! 2nd Quarter Finishing Goals!

As someone said to me last week, if we don't set goals, nothing gets done.

 I managed to avoid most of my "announced" goals during the first quarter of 2015, but I'm back to give it another try!!  Adrianne at On the Windy Side is combing through 549 finishes for the first quarter -- wow, that's a lot of finishing!!

I balk when it comes to "quilting" a top -- can't think what to do and just freeze up -- having a concrete deadline will break the freeze but just wanting to finish something isn't enough incentive as I proved during the past 3 months.   So I'm rolling over the two UFO's from last quarter to the top of this quarter's list and feeling very confident!!

The teacup quilt is about half quilted already and the "design" freeze is over.

The polka dot sampler is layered up and that's a good first step.

You can see them HERE.

To that I'm adding the following.

I want to finish hand quilting a Baltimore Album sampler for my younger daughter.  I appliqued the blocks over 20 years ago and finally set them together a couple years ago.  There are 9 blocks and last fall I did get 3 of the blocks quilted -- then I got distracted by EPP and knitting during my daily hand stitching hour.  Too nice not to finish so back to it!!

Making the name pillows for Easter gave me the idea of making some "letter" pillow covers for my summer living room (the front porch).  And just for fun, I'm going to use my stash of fruit and veggie prints so they will go with the quilt I finished in February.  And while I've got that stack out, I'm going to make a set of 8 Fat Quarter Placemats for summer patio suppers!!  

I'm going to finish the "sunflower" quilt I started in January as part of Nathalie's "not a mystery" follow-along -- visit her blog HERE -- yes, it's in French but just tell your computer to translate it!!  It uses Marti Michell's 2" Kite and Crown template set and I'd like to offer it as a workshop during the summer, so a charming finished sample is needed!!

I participated in a round robin with 5 other gals during the winter -- I wrote about my starting block HERE!  It's back home and I'm sprucing it up with rickrack and more bugs for a mid-April group reveal.  It won't be completely finished by then but I'd like to be able to hang it during the summer, so I'm adding it to the list, too. 

(Check back next week for a full look at this quilt -- it is so stinking cute!!)

Finally, I have been making a charity quilt top each month to "sew my stash" -- i.e., thin it out a bit.

We make a donation of a dozen quilts mid-summer to a local mission team that participates annually in the Appalachia Service Project.  So the March quilt (about 9 yards off the green shelf) is going with them!!  It's layered up and ready to encounter me and George (my APQS quilting machine).  I'm doing it in two sections (ala Marti Michell's book, Machine Quilting in Sections).

(January's quilt top is HERE and February's is HERE.)

It feels ambitious especially with spring birding (it's spring migration you know) and gardening starting to gear up in my life, but I'll get some of it done if not all of it and that will be more than might have happened otherwise!!

Are you making a list?

I'm headed over to On the Windy Side and see what everyone else is putting on their "to-finish" lists!!  Mine will be list #68?!?

Mary Huey