One of my clients has had an amazing office manager who made my life so much easier. Sadly, she is moving this week, and I wanted to make something for her as a goodbye and thank-you present.
Since time was of the essence, I needed to start with something partially made….think UFO!!
Several years ago, I appliquéd two funky flowers as practice to see if I wanted to make more…
That particular project didn’t get any further, but these two flowers looked to be the perfect start for a mug rug!
I started out by squaring up the block, then spent some time deciding how large I wanted it to be and how big I wanted the corner triangles to be…
Once decided, I quickly sewed them in place and squared it up one more time….
I decided I didn’t want to have to apply binding, so I planned to “burp” the quilt instead. Come back next Tuesday, and I will show you my method for doing this!!
I sat down to start quilting, but thought the machine was making a strange sound…..
YEP….that isn’t right!!
A bit of re-threading, and I ended up with a good quilting stitch. After that, the quilting was fast and easy….
….just an outline and a swoop!!
So, within about an hour, I had a quick gift ready to go…..
….AND, I got rid of another UFO at the same time.
A WIN-WIN!!
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“Let’s Get Scrappy is about how to decide, not about what to make.”
Let’s Get Scrappy is an on-demand online course that helps quilters overcome decision fatigue and finally make sense of their overflowing scrap bins. With four hours of step-by-step video instruction, you’ll learn simple systems for organizing, piecing, and pressing your scraps—so you can stop overthinking and start sewing beautiful, coordinated quilts with confidence and joy.
Well, I lied last week when I said I had shown you the last of Mom’s UFO stash I found while cleaning out her house some 10 years ago.
I had forgotten about these….
I recognize the pineapple from a Christmas quilt that she made, and the butterfly was left over from a couple of Butterfly Quilts, but the rest are a mystery.
And an equal mystery is what I want to do with them!!
This pieced-and-embroidered block is sweet…
….and it would be fun to add some borders and turn it into a pillow.
I think that I might just frame this small embroidery piece….
It would be a great addition to my spring decorating….
HMMM… since I will be doing that decorating in the next two weeks, maybe I need to get on this right now!!
Then there is this block…..
I have no idea whether this was something Mom made or Granny made.
But, I have an idea of what to do with it.
A few years ago, Kathleen Rountree spoke at our guild. Her specialty was making whole-cloth quilts from vintage linens…. something like this…
Wouldn’t it be fun to use that block as the centerpiece of a whole-cloth quilt and add tons of quilting around it?
It would take some thinking and time to design, but it is definitely going on the “to-be-done” list!!
So, I think that is about it for Mom’s UFO’s.
I have found it super helpful to write about them here and am thankful for all of your comments and suggestions.
What this series REALLY means is that I have a few more items to add to my To-Do list and a few items that no long exist in my UFO box!!
One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.
As you have seen from earlier posts about the UFOs I inherited from my Mom, she often found one design or pattern and made TONS of blocks from it.
That is the case with these blue-and-white stars…
She had one finished quilt top…..
I think that I will donate this to my guild charity group, but I may re-do the borders a bit first. Maybe make the inner border smaller by cutting it down and then adding a darker outer border. We will see….I may just hand it off.
But then, there are all of these…..
At one point, I decided to take these apart to set them differently….
…but they were REALLY hard to unpick. Apparently, she had used a tiny stitch length.
Now, some of you may be wondering why I am willing to give away so many of her UFO’s.
The truth is that I already own more than 25 of her finished quilts, so I really don’t need to add more to my collection.
At this point, I am excited to see them being sent out into the world to do good!!
