Craftsy sale is on now!!

I just found out that all Craftsy supplies are up to 75% off now through 12/31!

Check it out to see if there is anything that YOU need for your UFO Challenge!

A year's worth of unfinished projects!

Happy Boxing Day!!

In the midst of holiday preparations I found a couple hours to clean and tidy up my sewing room. The wrapping paper was put away for another year and the remains of my pre-Christmas projects were tidied up. 

While I was doing this I found a staggering number of projects that were in the throws of being finished - my UFO's. They aren't all big projects (one is a pincushion) but they are all started and not finished. Some are extra blocks from a quilt that has already been made, but I couldn't bring myself to throw away - these I'm going to use to make table runners, book covers or bags. Some are punchneedle pieces that I did for demonstration purposes at quilt shows or in a class I was teaching, but never finished into a wall hanging or pillow. Some are are quilts that have been put aside while I quilted for customers and some are actual projects that I intentionally started and have yet to finish.

 For each project I found I put the blocks/pieces and corresponding fabrics together in either a large zip-loc bag or a basket.

All of the projects neatly stacked and ready to finish!!

I then got out my new Passion Planner and wrote out the list on a blank page at the back. After I had written them all down, I realized that I had 26 projects that I should finish up. I also realized that this number conveniently divides into 52 weeks, so I now have given myself a challenge - to complete one of these projects every 2 weeks for all of next year!!

I LOVE making lists - it's so satisfying to check things off as you finish them!

One of my new year's resolutions each year is to blog on a more consistent basis, soooo...part two of this challenge is to document all of these projects in my blog. Maybe this will inspire others to take a fresh look at their unfinished projects and maybe complete a few!!

So here's to 2016 and the "52 week UFO challenge"!!

It's always a good day when I can use lime green thread!

 Today I got to do the quilting on our sample of one of our new patterns - Modern Vibe. This fun and colourful quilt was made using Northcott's Colorworks Concepts fabric line and I just LOVE how it turned out. How fun would this be to make for a kids room - you could get one of the co-ordinates to make curtains and pillows!!

I used a few of my favourite "modern" quilting designs to do the quilting using my lime green thread!!

I just LOVE this stripe that we used for the inner border!

Simple quilting designs always look great on modern quilts.

One of my favourite designs - modern boxes.

Our sample is heading to Houston to be displayed in the Northcott booth at International Quilt Market. I wish I was going too!!

Here it is the finished quilt!!

Quilting straight lines

Do you ever find yourself procrastinating with a project that you aren't sure how to finish? This happens to me too, and this month I had one that I've been postponing for WEEKS!!

Sometimes with a customer quilt I have to look at it for a few days before I get inspired by an idea for the quilting. With THIS quilt the customer specified that she wanted straight lines quilted in two of the borders, so I just had to decide how to quilt the third border and the centre of the quilt. 

I came up with some ideas, but even though I knew how I would quilt it, I STILL kept finding other things to do first. My customer went on vacation for 3 weeks and I knew she would be home soon, so this week I FINALLY got it loaded on the machine, took a deep breath and started to quilt!!

It was the straight lines that were terrifying me - if they are done right, they look great, but if things aren't lined up perfectly, it could go terribly wrong!!

Once I got started, I settled into a good rhythm. My machine has vertical and horizontal locks, so I could easily quilt the straight lines in the pieced border, and I decided to mimic the log cabin design in the blocks to make a square spiral quilting design.

The outer border had a bold design, that I decided to follow with a freehand quilting design, the only lines that weren't straight.

The long straight quilting in the black border was impossible to quilt on my Gammill, so I decided to take it off and quilt it on my home machine with a walking foot.

The finished quilt is quite stunning and the back looks amazing with all of the straight line quilting!!

A quilt of another colour

One of the BEST things about designing in quilt patterns is getting to see the quilt made in a different selection of fabrics! This pattern is called "Stella Violet", after Nellie's cute little grand daughter, and last week I got to quilt Donna Taylor's version of our pattern.

Not for the faint of heart, this quilt pattern has blocks that have 49 pieces in them, but Donna likes a challenge, so not only did she make the quilt, but she made it twice as big!! And for her colour palette she used white as a background with dusty blue, rose, pink and grey fabrics. It turned out just beautiful!!

The first challenge for me was to select the thread. This one is a very light grey which I decided would blend in with the pieced blocks but stand out nicely on the dark grey borders.

I decided to do some feathers and swirls in the pieced centre with different designs in each of the borders.

The Feather and Swirl design.

A different design for each border.

I always love it when I can take the quilt of the frame of the Gammill and have a look at the whole thing quilted. Here it is! I hope she likes it :)