Monday 3 September 2018

UFO report!

OK, it's finally time to report on my UFO list.  A UFO is an "unfinished object" in the quilting world.  There are many other acronyms such as PIG "Projects in grocery bag" and PNYS "projects not yet started".  When my sister was visiting from BC in January two and a half years ago, she came along with me to a trunk show that I had to do locally.  She was a great help in setting up and packing up. 

When we came home, we unpacked everything and she asked a lot of questions about what I was going to do with these quilts and tops.  I was turning 60 that year and that was kind of a 'year of reckoning' and I was getting to the point where my UFO's were starting to bother me LOL.  So, she grabbed a piece of paper and pencil and started a list....  We had a great time rooting through all my drawers and bringing everything into the light of day and recording it on a list.  I entered everything into a spreadsheet, and organized my drawers by number so that I could also record that and find a project quickly.  Now when I need a baby quilt, I just sort my spreadsheet by "baby quilts" and see what I have on the go.  Works slick.  

I worked really hard over the spring and summer and tackled a few projects....I am happy to report that I have 25 of them finished and could check them off!  I finally dared to actually total up the list and look at the final number!  There were 118 projects on the list and with the 25 done, I have 85 left!  So, I will persevere over the fall and winter and work away on these til they are down to a manageable number.  I'm not one to work on one project at a time...I need variety so will allow myself to work on multiple projects.  I am also sending off some tops to a long arm quilter to help in the process. 

So, I found this post in my draft box from 2016!!  Yikes.  Meanwhile, I found quite a few more projects that I had in nooks and crannies and also started a number of new projects (but finished most of them :-).  I have to sort my table runners on my list of 85 yet as I have finished a bunch of those and hope to blog them soon and remove them from the list as well.   So progress is being made!  

Here are two projects that I've had unfinished for a loooong time.

This was a small quilt that I had started for my youngest son after I made him a quilt for his bed.  It was supposed to be a cushion for his chair?  Or a little quilt for his teddy??  I finally finished it and gave it to his children (!) to play with.  The quilt is still being used so the kids were excited to have a matching quilt :-).
This was a sample for a Simple Splendid Stars Workshop I took in September of 1992 taught by Kay Phillips.  The fabrics are cheap and batting is polyester.  I hand quilted it many years ago and it just got uglier and uglier LOL.  I finally put the binding on and it's in the playroom to be used as a doll quilt.
The history was documented on the label :-).


 

4 comments:

lil red hen said...

Congratulations on some "finishes"! I find if I have UFOs, the thoughts of them hang over my head until something is done with them. I love the first little quilt!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

I have so many UFO's, some are mine, and some have been given to me. My large quilt guild challenged us to list all our UFO's that had at least 100 inches of binding (no table runners, etc). I had 3 full pages of UFO's listed. Most still aren't done.

Quilter Kathy said...

I need your sister to come over to my house and make me do the same thing!! LOL
Great progress!

Rose Marie said...

Yeah you for getting so much done! I take photos of all my ufo's and have them on the computer (there is also a journal for all my ufo's in case my computer dies). It is so nice to transfer a photo from my ufo file to a top (flimsy) file and then finally delete that photo when it is finally a quilt. If your way works for you, then what a bonus you have. Very smart of your sister to start the list in the first place.