I think the UFOs were and are having babies while I am out of the room. I am drowning in quilt projects. It is no one’s fault but mine, but I would like to blame quilt gremlins, or gnomes, or fairy godmothers, or anything but me. But in my own defense, during the last 10 days I have bound and made tags (counted cross stitch) for two wall hangings. Yes, happy dance! Two projects completed!

I know many of these UFOs started during the stay-at-home orders for COVID. However, I was determined to use what was on hand and cut clear shoeboxes full of shapes/pieces I routinely use: tumblers, 2.5″ strips, 3″ squares, 6.5″ squares, and the 5″ squares to make into HST which turn in Flying Geese.

I just kept stacking these boxes on the floor under the cutting table, or on two shelves out of the way. Honestly, I had no idea how many pieces I cut at the time. I was simply utilizing the time at home productively.

The personal hope being that the four scrap bins would shrink down to one. Well, no shrinking occurred, in fact I think the more I cut, the more scraps showed up in the bins.

Am I speaking to the choir out there? Or is this just my personal problem.

First of Two Projects Completed

This strip quilt started as quick project back in 2019. It was intended as a demo quilt that anyone who wanted to learn how to hand quilt could stitch on. I have a personal rule for demo quilts that unless the stitches are “toe catchers” they remain in the quilt. After all, those stitches are part of the story of the quilt.

I needed something that would look historical (say c. 1820) and I could put together super quick. Off to the stash. The fabric had what appeared to be pieced trees, and paisley fabric between the strips of trees. Add a narrow blue border. The outside border used a dark red with small white print. Iron. The size was 50″ x 60″.

It turned out not to be quick. Since the only time I worked on it was as a demo quilt at historical re-enactments, weeks or months could go by without it being quilted on. The last stitches were put in during May 2023.

The quilting was thru part of the trees, along both sides of the paisley strips, and on both sides of the blue border. The original plan was to do some sort of curve design in the red border. I decided to not bother and bound it with a brown linen that matched both the front and back in color.

No, the backing does not really match the front, but I had it on hand. The batting was pieced together from cotton/poly, poly, and wool pieces. Waste not, want not.

I am so glad the strip quilt is complete. It actually turned out much better than I anticipated, and I will be displaying it here at home. Probably at re-enactments too.

Second of Two Projects Completed

This wall hanging was fun to make and lots more fun than the previous one.

I found the border print at a quilt shop and thought it was too cute to pass up.

Back home to the scrap bins. Pulled out a tannish “grunge” fabric for the alternate blocks. Went to the precut 3″ squares (remember all those plastic shoeboxes from during COVID?) and pulled out red and blue squares.

Pieced the nine patches together – all 15 of them over two days in Maine. The rows of nine patch blocks and alternate blocks went together in another week.

Back to the scrap bins for something that was a red that would make a narrow border. I also found some left over word strips from some previous project and added them top and bottom. The word strips were the right width for the narrow border, so I worked the red fabric with the word strips and had an inside border.

Now for the outside border. I had to cut the purchased fabric carefully as it was (and is) directional. Added it and the fun wall hanging top is complete.

Size: 44″ x 52″.

The top was sewn in September 2020 in both Maine and Indiana.

The backing is 2 patriotic fabrics sewn together to make a big enough backing for this project.

I named this quilt “Patriotic”, and it was machine quilted by RLM during July 2022. The stipple quilting is perfect for this lovely wall hanging.

Moral to the story:

Keep plugging away at those UFOs that reside at your home. It is so easy to move on and leave the UFOs behind for “another day”, but they deserve to be finished and enjoyed.

Have a wonderful week, and happy quilting.

PLEASE NOTE: 
ALL PHOTOS AND WRITTEN CONTENT ARE THE PROPERTY OF INDIANAQUILTER40 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

FB 06-16-23/P/I 06-19-23