One Week Down! Fifty-one To Go

 It's Saturday afternoon and the first week of 2022 has come and is almost gone.  What's that old adage -- start the year the way you mean to go?  I might have set the mark a little too high?

On Monday/Tuesday I pulled out the folding table and layered up three small quilt tops and two table runners (with Harry's help, of course).  

Two of the quilts were lurking in a bin of UFO's I had set aside for my charity group over the course of the past year, but when I re-homed all those supplies during the fall they must have been hiding?!?  Since I'm not going to lead a charity quilt making group any longer, I was peeved with myself for overlooking the projects, but on second thought, I'll still make charity quilts on my own.  So as a kick-start for the year, I finished piecing the easiest one (took an entire afternoon?!?) and organized backing for it and a second top that was already finished.

The third quilt top was the only top I pieced in 2021.  I used a newish pattern, Vanity Flair, from Karen Ackva at www.easypatchwork.de who quilts and teaches in Germany. You can find it in her ETSY shop HERE.  It's a sweet little quilt and I used up most of one of the (irresistible) layer cakes in my stash.  I cut it out in July . . . . 

. . . . . and then used it as "leaders and enders" whenever I needed a piecing break from all the quilting.

Isn't it sweet?  I'm stuck (as usual) about how to quilt it but something will come to me!?!

I think it will go onto the stack of quilts ready-to-gift.

Today, I finished quilting this one -- a teaching sample from Marti Michell's Volume Six patchwork book using her large Multi-size Hexagon Ruler.  I kept the quilting simple to complement the piecing.  

Complex quilting would not only take longer but it would disappear into all the lovely Oriental theme prints which carry the show on this quilt.

The second one is a sweet little 9-patch single Irish chain quilt that will be a delightful charity quilt.

So two little quilts ready to bind this coming week!

Over the past couple weeks I've done lots of tidying in my sewing room -- putting fabric away, cutting  scraps into 2 1/2" strips and squares, unearthing UFO's, sorting through leftover batting, "finding" lost tools -- and as usual the UFO list is longer than I expected.  BUT for the first time in many years, it's under 50 projects.  I haven't set any hard and  fast goals for 2022 but I do want to eliminate as many of those UFO's as possible.  Many of them are small projects that started out as teaching samples (and they won't get bigger) but a few are just stacks of wishful thinking -- pattern/book and fabric. 

 I'm thinking I'll aim for finishing two a month and eliminating one a month but that's not written in stone because the idea of eliminating 12 projects this year that I thought I wanted to make is a bit . . . . . I don't know -- intimidating?   I think the key will be to decide if after laying on the "to-do" pile for years, what will I do with it if I make it?   

And eliminating something old will give me time to try something new that is more appealing at the moment!!  Must remember that!!

Now back to editing and revising one of my birding presentations -- being all bird nerd and dropping down into every rabbit-hole I encounter.

Hope your New Year is starting off as you'd like!!

Mary