WIPs

 

            
 I am determined to finish up these WIPs this year.   In addition, I have some other projects that I want to get going, but I refuse to start something else until these are out of the hopper.  A couple have been in that bin for over two years.  Does anyone else get started  excitedly on something new, then something immediate, like Fall Bazaare or Christmas cards or a new commissioned portrait takes you off-track, then you can't quite get back to finishing up what you wanted to do or began earlier?

        

I started this one last fall.  It's part of my WV Hills Series and I'd planned to enter it this year in Sacred Threads, but alas, it wasn't finished in time.  I'd changed name from Mountain Mama's Garden to PEACE IN THE VALLEY.  The sun looks like a bird, so I'm going to have to edit that some and I want to hand quilt the rest of it also.   I love hand quilting, so I'm not worried really about finishing this one.

This quilt is made up of African themed fabrics and originally (in 2007) I had decided to make it out of strips.  When I put it up on the wall, I felt the strips looked terrible so I let it set a year as I pondered what to do with it.
 A year or so later, I cut up the strips (with trepidation) and began a mandala or medallion like design.  I like it better, but again I got so far and didn't quite know where to go next.  Now I'm determined to finish this up.   The fabrics are beautiful and I hate it just laying around unfinished.


My sister retired from teaching in 2008.   I told her I would make her a bed quilt for her retirement and asked what she wanted.  Sometime in 2009, she brought me a huge bag of T-Shirts,  her favorites and requested I make her quilt from those shirts.   I'd never made a T-Shirt quilt.   Got me a book, read it,  and cut out all the logos. Somehow I missed the part about ironing them to a stabilizer. Then came the hard part of arranging the logos and figuring out how to size them so they'd work out in blocks I could sew together.   Whew, finally figured out sizes and  numbers of sashings I would need.   Now to just get started with that step.

While visiting my daughter in Michigan, she took me to Haberman's fabric shop.  Lord, Fabric to die for.   I brought this piece of Merrimako and decided to quilt it and practice using my Handi-quilter.
It started off fine, but then, the thread started breaking and I became quite frustrated.  Working through a machine problem takes patience and time and I didn't have much of either then, so I hung it up to keep it in sight, and forgot about it for the past six or seven months ( maybe 9 or 10 months).   It's such a gorgeous piece.

 In the fall, I took a class at a local quilt shop called Quilt-as-you-go-Crazy-Quilt.   It was fun.   I loved it and was asked to teach the technique to our local quilt group.   In the process, I made quite a few blocks and decided to start sewing them together into a quilt.  After teaching the technique though, I became a little tired of flip and sew and put it down.  The  PEACE IN THE VALLEY quilt uses the CQ design for the blocks and I was finishing up that landscape about the same time.   I'll get back to this, because it does move fast and I've a ton of scrap fabric I want to use up, plus I get to practice quilting by machine with these blocks.

     And finally,  my good friend Beth's son got married in April, or May of last year and she asked that I do a fabric portrait of the new couple as her wedding present to them.  Wellllllll, that didn't happen.  It's almost done and will be done by the time of their first anniversary (God Willing).   What I learned is that it is difficult for me to do a portrait without having four or five pictures of the person or either knowing them very well.  I discovered different pictures present key features and characteristics quite differently from a real life view.  I'm working on compleitng this one now.

       And then there are all the quilts in my head, . . . . . . just waiting in line.

Fairy Godmother

Bless our WIPs and U.F.Os

  to sweet completion!