Basics of a Successful UFO Assault Strategy

 It's that time of year again when I'm torn between reaching my annual goals and creating gifts.  This produces an element of self-inflicted stress so I was happy to run across a little handout I created perhaps 15 years ago as part of my curriculum for lectures and workshops helping quilters deal with UFO's.  I listed three points that made a difference in my personal quest and as I read through my handout, I realized that, thank goodness, these are now regular habits for me.  So I decided to review them with you in this month's post with some illustrations of how I am currently deploying these strategies.  

Perhaps one of them will strike a chord for you?

First, change your viewpoint about your UFO's -- think of them as a resource instead of a burden.  If you haven't already noticed in reading my posts, I know what UFO's I have and they are organized for easy access.  As I review my UFO stock regularly, I have found that the older something gets, the easier it is for me to redirect it!  So let's repurpose!!

Case in point -- that 5" charm pak of Christmas fabric that has been laying on the "reserved-for-something-wonderful" shelf (since 2019) has lost it's inspiration -- what was I going to do with it?

Since I had no clue, last week it became 5 potholders -- quick and easy project -- 4 squares for the backs, 4 more squares cut into 2 1/2" squares for the fronts.  They will be offered for sale at a little holiday boutique next week and if they don't sell -- they will become holiday gifts. (Or worse case scenario, they will refresh my kitchen's supply.)  And that charm pak can never trigger guilt again!!

Second, figure out why you stopped working on it!  Understanding that helps me get back to work on a project.  It has become an avenue for perfecting my skills and expanding my creativity, especially when I'm able to repurpose a UFO into something easier to finish while still being useful.

Case in point -- I'm currently tidying up flat surfaces all around the house and in the process of dealing with a small tabletop behind my sewing machine I found a few blocks of a forgotten teaching sample with a stack of matching fabric (to make a bigger quilt?).  

 Realizing how little progress I've made on that goal (the bigger quilt) in 15 years, I spent an afternoon piecing the blocks that were already cut and playing with them until I found an arrangement I like for a small quilt top that will be a quick finish.  And bonus!!  The stack of fabric is back on the stash shelves where it has a better chance of being used!!

Confession -- this is also a fine example of "productive procrastination" as I was suppose to be doing "something else"? . . . . but gosh, it's going to be cute and those blocks have moved OUT of the UFO stash.

Third, work at your craft every day!  20 minutes a day equals 2 hours a week and 30 minutes a day equals 3 1/2 hours a week!  Daily bursts of work were critical when I was working full time and that habit continues to move me forward faster than trying to find big blocks of time.

  (Plus now that I'm retired, 20 minutes usually stretches into 45 minutes.)

How do you think I get so many quilts finished in the course of a year?  Not by spending long hours at the machine.  Currently, I'm trying to knock-off a few tops I've pieced this year so they don't become UFO's!    Most mornings, I begin with 30 minutes of machine quilting.  That's about 15 minutes less time than it takes for my shoulders or neck to start aching.  

The Dresden Stars quilt top I made this summer for the sew-along is my current project and coming along nicely.  Tomorrow I'll start quilting the borders and it should be ready to bind in three or four days.   That means it is time to revisit the "to be quilted" stack and layer up a couple more tops so I don't lose momentum!?! 

Since my current focus is on finishing (no new piecing projects until I get caught up with the quilting!) I did let myself whip up a few little gift items just so my sewing machine didn't forget who I was?!?  Mug cozies (that used up some crazy scrap piecing blocks), little change purses, and some tea wallets for my club sale next week!!

Post script -- diving into my UFO's also seems to be a way to energize myself.  Not only do I "accomplish" something but I reduce the burden of "so much to do".  Taking a break from the excited frenzy of starting new projects and clearing out a few old projects has become a good cleansing activity for me.  But don't worry, a couple new projects are in the wings as I write this!!

I must do something fabulous with these two fabrics!!  Are they one project or two??

Now back to the sewing machine!!

Mary

 

Big Finish for May!!

 Welcome to June!

In spite of feeling like I've been dragged through the last few days (too much heat, not enough levothyroxine in my opinion), I've finished off the month by reaching my quilting goals!

Two quilt tops have been finished for gifting and I eliminated three projects that have never gotten off the ground.

This sweet laprobe size quilt was pieced perhaps 20 years ago by one of my staff as a shop model.  I chose the fabrics and gave the top to her when I closed the shop.  She in turn gave it back to our charity quilt making group and we made a backing and layered it up and then I sat on it for several years. I didn't want it to go to just anyone.  Monday, because it was already layered, I pulled it off the shelf, threaded my machine and quilted it with simple diagonal lines following the design.  As I was quilting it, I thought of a friend who is coming up to the first anniversary of the death of one of her sons.  It's not hard to imagine what a tough year it's been for her and I hope this quilt will lift her spirits just a little.  Knowing that someone remembers the death of a loved one is a blessing.

This cutie is destined for a grand-nephew who will be arriving in August.  He will be growing up in a rural area and while the color scheme definitely does not blend with his mom's preferences,  I hope she will forgive me.  Rural boys need to see Holstein cows and pigs!!

Those of you who have attended one of my many UFO Assault Tactics lectures might recognize the center group of pineapple blocks as my much (maligned) opening UFO.  All those years, I used it to express my dislike for paper piecing which I've avoided steadily ever since making these blocks.  Many of you offered to remove the paper from the back (my main hang-up) but then I would not have had it to fuss about.  It was malingering in a stack of unfinished projects to be donated to my charity group but never quite made it out of the stack.  Then this delightful farm scene print appears and it was perfect!!  I quilted it with the Baptist fan which I think is an excellent choice for pineapple quilts.

Given the amount of time I've spent birding and gardening during May, I'm surprised I was able to stay on goal!!  

Do you see that big tub of plants on the left of the quilts? It's kale and kohlrabi.

Check out that little cabbage white butterfly mobile!  I stumbled across the idea last week on Instagram and the author has a sheet you can download from her website to make your own.  Apparently, cabbage whites are territorial and this little mobile "repels" them?  Right now we don't seem to have any cabbage whites around as they must have been knocked back by the cold spell earlier this month but I hope I'm ready for their return!

You can find it at simplelivingcollective.com and make your own if you want to try it, too.

They work on me (I've started to "chase" it off more than once), so I hope they will work on cabbage whites, too!!

Now if I could just find a simple way to repel chipmunks and deer!?!

Last fall, a friend brought me a large caterpillar which went into a cocoon almost immediately.  Over the winter, it "lived" between a window and a screen so it was outside but safe from predators.  I was beginning to get concerned since it had not emerged but then a couple days ago -- there she was!!

Not a luna moth as I originally thought, but a polyphemus moth.

None of my photos do her justice.  What appears to be a white margin along the black border at first glance is actually a light pink.

Those center circles in each "dot" are clear like cellophane.

Below is an underside view and look how beautifully she blends into the leaf litter.

(Look for the "dots".)

I hope she has found a mate -- I looked up the trees used as larval food by this moth's caterpillars and took to a woodland filled with those trees.

The spring woodland wildflowers are winding down here and it's time to explore meadows and fields to find summer wildflower beauties.  This is one of the most dramatic jack-in-the-pulpit blossoms I've seen this year.

Today, my friends and I are setting up our group veggie garden to grow produce and flowers to share with our church shut-ins -- it will be like a CSA for them.  We doubled our plot size and I hope we haven't been too ambitious.  

Then tomorrow we'll be celebrating the triplets third birthday!!

Hard to believe.  Boy, are they fun!!

I'll close with a Zen saying that is good to keep in mind --

"You should sit in nature for 20 minutes a day . . . unless you're busy.  

Then you should sit for an hour."

Mary

 

#quilt21in2021 Parade!!

Let me start today's post with a big THANK YOU for all the encouragement and cheering you shared with me this past year as I pushed through #quilt21in2021 -- you kept me accountable!!

So here they are -- all in the order of finishing!  

No comments necessary as this parade is mostly for my benefit and memory.

#1 -- finished January 25 -- sent it out to be quilted as a "kickstarter" for the year.

Lap robe, pattern from Country Threads, gifted to a long time friend relocating to the south.

#2 -- finished February 3 -- quilted it myself.

Crib size version of my pattern, Mississippi Mud -- waiting for the right baby to come along!

#3 -- finished February 15 -- quilted it myself.

Lap size -- 8 point star blocks made with Marti Michell's Stripper Set*** -- added to my stack!

#4 -- finished February 25 -- quilted it myself

Crib size, another version of my Mississippi Mud pattern -- added to my stack!

#5 -- finished March 13 -- quilted by myself

Lap size -- a Trip Around the World variation from Blanche and Helen Young's classic book using the pink/teal version of the print I colored for King's Road Imports in the early 1990's.

Gifted to my oldest granddaughter for her birthday.

#6 -- finished March 26 -- quilted by myself

Large wall hanging, original "mash-up" of random blocks to merge and expand two UFO's into my birth year temperature quilt.

Just try to get this one away from me!?!

#7 -- finished April 11 -- quilted by myself.

Lap robe using a Mary Ellen Hopkins "spools" pattern variation and another of the colorways from my brief stint of fabric design for Kings Road Imports.

Gifted to my oldest grandson for his birthday (but it seems to have escaped without a proper picture?)

#8 -- finished May 7 -- quilted by myself.

Large lap rob -- a merger of two sets of hexagon/star blocks from two different "quilt alongs" that were happily the same size blocks!  

Love this one so much -- it's a keeper!

#9 -- finished June 2 -- quilted by myself.

A small wall hanging with 6" Bride's Bouquet blocks made using Marti Michell templates.***

In the stack!

#10 -- finished July 4 -- quilted by myself.

Lap robe -- the final color exercise from Gai Perry's Color From the Heart book.

In the stack!

#11 -- finished July 26 -- quilted by myself

Lap robe version of my pattern, Stars All Around, using Marti Michell Sashing Stars templates.***

In the stack!

#12 -- finished August 7 -- hand quilted by myself.

The long twin size quilt started with Marge Sampson George's English paper pieced Dodecagon blocks and ran amuck as I incorporated other design styles -- a medallion setting and fussy cut fabric motifs.  It took 7 months to hand quilt and it might be sold?  Special friends have asked to buy it!

#13 -- finished September 25 -- quilted by myself.

A small experimental version of a design from Quilters Companion magazine.

Waiting for the right baby!

#14 -- finished October 3 -- quilted by myself.

Large lap robe/wall hanging pieced using Marti Michell's Feathered Star Set P.***

This is my new Christmas quilt for the living room!

#15 -- finished October 31 -- quilted by myself.

Large crib size pieced using Marti Michell's Drunkard Path template set.***

Make me an offer!

#16 -- finished November 4 -- quilted by a professional machine quilter.

This is the double-size version of my pattern, Courthouse Stars, and has been gifted to a young friend to inspire her bedroom makeover!

#17 -- finished November 15 -- hand quilted by myself.

Large lap robe using six of the twelve blocks in the @lemonshark's BOM in 2019.

The other half are layered and being quilted in January.  Family members are muttering about this one so it may find it's way into one of their stacks.

#18 -- finished December 9 -- quilted by myself.

A twin size quilt made from antique blocks that I rescued from horrible green sashing.

(For the purists in the crowd, I believe the woman who pieced this would be happy to see it finished and used by quilt lovers.)

#19 -- finished December 10 -- quilted by a professional machine quilter.

Twin size sample of an old pattern that is no longer available.  I was going to let this one go, but now I'm not so sure -- it turned out so lovely!

#20 -- finished December 22 -- quilted by myself.

No pattern for this large wall hanging -- just combining hexie mosaic elements I liked.

The plan is to hang it in my home after some winter painting.

And last but not least #21 -- finished December 28 -- quilted by myself.

Crib size pieced from a panel of pre-prints by my mother and now waiting for the birth of her next great grandchild!

What a year!!!  

Not what I was expecting but with good bits just the same.

Not only did I eliminate a stack of quilt tops rendering them more useful but I also gained confidence about my ability to finish/quilt my own work.  

My quilting skills improved.  

I gained a new understanding of the productivity of daily work to make progress.   

I hope the future will see me moving through my projects all the way to the end instead of stopping and turning to something new.  

The satisfaction of finishing can't be overrated!!

For the past week, I've been returning to my studio every day for a few hours to sort and tidy up the chaos.  There are still UFO's up there to motivate me and keep me busy. 

 I'm making a new list and some new goals for 2022.

2021 has been a challenging year for all of us -- I've been lucky -- the hardships have been generally manageable for me.  2022 could be more of the same but it will also be what I make of it.

I've been looking back to find the good parts of the past year in search of insights into the possibilities for the new year.  I hope I'll find ways to pay attention and lift up the "exhausted" around me who are being crushed!

Onward to 2022!!

Mary

***EDIT April 2025

Marti Michel closed her business in late in 2024 and while some shops may still have a stock of her templates, you can also find them on Ebay and Etsy. 

 

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!

This afternoon, I finished the binding of #21 and boy, am I feeling amazed!!   I accomplished #quilt21in2021.  That shelf is empty (though I'm sure it will attract new stuff quickly)!! 

As I said a couple weeks ago, I saved the easiest quilting job for last -- I believed I could get it done in three days once I decided "raining hearts" would work for the quilting!  The edge-to-edge wavy lines with hearts inserted randomly went quickly and there were no thread ends to bury!!  I've used the same  idea on other quilts inserting snowflakes, stars, leaves and little flowers.

It's dreary and raining here today so I had to settle for draping it over the front porch railing for a photo.  This top was a shop model to sell the preprinted nursery rhyme panels and my mother pieced it for me -- as usual the fabric sold out before the top was quilted so it's been patiently waiting for it's day at the machine for about 20 years?!?  My plan is to give it to mom's next great-grandchild!!

And I need to share number 20!  It was another intimidating top!  First I had to let go of the "it's hand- pieced, it should be hand-quilted" notion.   If I was going to reach my goal, hand-quilting wasn't a good option.  I literally had no ideas about a quilting design but with time growing short, I pushed myself to "just start".   

I outline-quilted the central wreath and the large green wreath and happily, the inspiration began to appear, one piece at a time -- each aspect growing out of the previous quilting.  About half way through the quilt, I remembered that the piecing design occurred in the same fashion -- little by little, section by section.  While it probably would not be considered improvisation in "design", it was definitely a work of improvisation in "ideas". 

I found some inspiration by revisiting one of my blogposts from 2014 HERE and pulling out the quilt I did that winter as I experimented with machine quilting flower garden motifs.  Each of the six corners of the green wreath are quilted like a hexie flower motif.

A pencil sketch I found in my drawer 

and a practice piece provided the design for the balance of the green wreath.

Of course, it hardly shows up on the scrappy hexagons but it was fun to stitch through and a close up view will reveal it's details.

My "go-to" background quilting design for hexagons is an equilateral triangle grid but with English paper pieced hexagons, it need to shift a bit  as the opened seams of English paper piecing are too weak for stitch-in-the-ditch quilting so the grid is based on the centers of each hexagon edge as in the photograph below.  

The motifs that are appliqued around the wide border are not as perfectly aligned as I intended (what is??), so after an afternoon of gridlock -- drawing chalk lines, erasing chalk lines, etc. -- I settled on arcs  in the hexagons and straight lines connecting the motifs that camouflaged the imperfect alignment and spacing. 

I did have one challenge with quilting this top -- occasional crappy bobbin thread tension!?!  There are three possible reasons for this -- an un-balanced tension setting for the threads I'm using which is the easiest to correct in my opinion.  Then there is un-balanced speed when I'm moving the quilt through the machine too fast for the speed the machine is running -- I have to constantly remind myself to slow down my feeding speed.  And finally, it happens when I quilt to the "northeast".  My machine behaves badly when I move the quilt through heading in that direction.  There is no option but to stop and adjust the quilt so I'm not quilting "northeast".

Happily, I've figured out a fix that works 90% of the time!

Working on the topside of the quilt, I lift each individual stitch to pull the excess top thread up until the stitching on the back looks normal.  This creates a "loop" of extra thread on the top.

Then I insert a self-threading needle at one end of the loop and carefully "grab" that loop and pull it under the surface of the quilt top.  It's much like burying a thread end.

It's also rather tedious and I find that doing it a few times reinforces the idea with my brain that I need to slow down the hands to mesh better with the speed at which I'm running the machine.

Of course, you can also take the stitching completely out and start over again -- equally annoying, so take your pick.

My purpose for finishing all these tops into usable quilts this year is to make it easier for my family to deal with them when the time comes to downsize or disperse -- in theory, a finished quilt should be easier to rehome than a quilt top.   The "master plan" is to let my family put their names on quilts they want, then gradual disperse ones they don't want as opportunities present -- I've already rehomed 8 quilts in the past five months!!  At 44" by 48", this one is a little small for a lap robe, but a little large for a wall hanging . . . . . and then on my way down the stairs after binding it, I made the instant decision to keep this one for now as it will fit perfectly on the stair wall!!

(We'll see how long it takes to add a casing?!?)

We sort of missed Christmas here (thanks, Covid) and it appears New Year's will be the same.  The options are limited again and the challenge once more is to push away "fatalism" and find that corner of contentment where hours drift past more easily.  I'm already weary of our dreary weather (no snow) and aside from the lettuce in the cold frame and invasive ivy to pull, the garden offers no respite.  Luckily, I have a messy studio with an empty shelf to occupy my time -- I'm sure I can fill that shelf back up.

The past couple afternoons have seen tidy-up progress already and a list is emerging of stuff to do.

Next week starts another year with new goals for me.

Blessings to each of you in the New Year and thank you for encouraging me to achieve

#quilt21in2021!!

Mary

And That Makes Nineteen!!

Real quick today -- one more FINISH thanks to the work of a local professional machine quilter!

This was an unfinished pattern model from my shop (laying around for 15+ years).  I chose the fabric and did the piecing, but I didn't do the applique work.  Chris did that and those of you who were customers know what a skilled seamstress she is!!

The large floral print in the alternate blocks and the wide border is gorgeous and if I keep this quilt it will be for that print!

The backing is pretty gorgeous, too!!

To keep the cost of the quilting reasonable I chose an overall pattern -- it was an instinctive choice, soft curves but not random looking.  I think it provides a nice contrast with the angular piecing while complementing the curves of the appliqued flowers and leaves.

This is the third quilt I sent out this year.  I'm glad I chose this method of finishing because I would have agonized too much over the "how to quilt" decisions.

Now it's finished and it's beautiful!!

In other news, I finished up two little doll cradle quilts so now I have three to go along with the refurbished doll cradle for a triplet Christmas gift.  The cradle was built by my father-in-law for my oldest (his first grandchild) and needed some TLC since I'm pretty sure the girls convinced their younger brother (the triplets' father) to lay in it one time too many.  Happily, a friend of mine who makes stringed instruments (think mandolins) took the repairs in hand and it's like new (with braces).

The upper left quilt (pink border) and the upper right (greens and rust) are retired teaching samples and the blue/yellow one is a mash-up of leftover step samples from teaching Storm at Sea.  The new mattress and pillows are done, now to make some "linens" -- sheets and pillowcases.

(And yes, the boy is getting a "stuffed animal" quilt so no one feels left out!)

Number 20 is under the needle and about to the halfway point -- trying for a before-Christmas finish!?!

Number 21 is layered and ready for a quick turn around.

I'm going to make it!!

#quilt21in2021

Now go bake another batch of cookies!!

Mary

P.S. -- send cookies because I don't think I'll have time to bake my own!?!