Found in Moms Closet

Every once in a while, I pull out my UFO’s and try to get a handle on what is finishable and what is not!

In actuality, I only have FOUR that are mine, a new record!!

BUT, I have a whole TUB full of UFO’s that have come to me from other people, mostly from my Mom. I have pulled these unfinished quilts out numerous times, but can’t get motivated to work on them, mostly because I don’t know what I will do with them when they are finished.

So, over the next 12 or so Wednesdays, I will show you one UFO or project, describe its origins, and ask for your help.

Let’s start with something fun…..

This actually isn’t a UFO but a skirt that I found in my Mom’s closet when I cleaned out her house back in 2017…..

I feel sure that it was made in the late 1970’s, and I am in awe of her waist size!!

The flowers go all the way around the skirt….

….and there is even a smiling caterpillar on the back….

Each of the flowers was made from Dresden plate blocks, with a Yo-Yo for the center. They were pieced on the machine and then blanket-stitched (by hand) onto the skirt….

I really want to honor the work that Mom put into the skirt, but I would never wear it.

Any thoughts?

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Never Mind!!

Back in January, I talked about clearing my “To-Do” list using the mantra…..”Now, Soon, Later & Never mind!”….

My TO-DO List is TOO long!!

This past week I decided to make use of the last item in the mantra…..

It all stems back to two color challenges that I did in 2021 and 2022.

Untitled design – 1

I had so much fun playing with the colors, matching them to the food and spice inspirations, and it was a great way to explore my fabric stash.

At the end of the first year, I decided to do the second year before I turned it into a quilt. In retrospect, they may have been a bad idea!!

So….here we are in 2024, and I still haven’t made the quilt although it is weighing heavily on my mind!

I pulled out the 6-inch blocks and put them up on my design wall…..

OKAY….that isn’t very inspiring!!

What if I change the format….maybe this…..

NOPE!

Maybe on-point will be better….

I did like that better, but honestly had NO enthusiasm for the project.

I looked at the wall for about 30 minutes and then made a decision…..

GET RID OF IT!!!

My guild charity bee has several people who have the gift of turning orphan blocks into quilts so I packaged up the blocks, along with a bit of background fabric that I had left over, and GIFTED it to them!!

It is now off of my list and OUT of my mind!!!

LIFE IS GOOD!!!

So, are there projects that you need to move to the NEVER MIND list?

Don’t wait…..just DO it!!

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Just “Let It Go”!!

This is a story about a UFO….. one that had been around for 11 years!!

It started back in 2007 when Michael and I spent two months in Oxford, England while he was a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University. London was a mere 45 minutes by train so we spent as much time there as we could.

As we rode the London Underground, I became aware of how the people sitting across from me changed as the ride went on. At every stop someone would get off and someone else would take his/her place.

In October of 2009 these thoughts rose to the top of my brain and I decided to make a quilt with this idea. I spent a long time searching the internet for pictures of people to add to my train car and, using Photoshop, I was able to get an idea of what I wanted…..

Note….my proudest part of this photo is that I took another person’s legs and feet and added them to the young man on the left!!!

I started out using a machine applique technique where you prepare the piece for applique, glue it to the next piece and then zig-zag over the intersection with a mono-filament thread. After doing the first person using this technique I decided to switch to fusible applique.

Anyway….here is where it stood when I stopped working on it…..

And it has been weighing on my mind ever since!!!

Today, I pulled it out for the last time….determined to either finish it or scrap it…..and SCRAP IT won!!

These were my thoughts…..

My skills have progressed far beyond this first attempt
It is larger in format than I typically work on now.
There is too much difference in technique in the faces. The boy has very few shades while the woman (actually based on a photo of me) has too many shades and the little girl doesn’t work at all…..

The only part that I was REALLY happy with were the child’s hands…..

I would basically need to start over and I am not interested in doing that

As I thought further, I remember that I learned SO much when I started this project….first about using Photoshop and then about designing faces. I also over-dyed a bunch of the fabrics which was a first for me.

The bottom line is that it was a great project for it’s time but that time is past and it is time to….

So….all of the fabric came off of the wall and out of the project box and added back into my stash.

It was exciting to find all of the skin-tone fabrics that I had collected those many years ago…..

Many of these were hand-dyed by my friend Anita and it was fun to see all of her tags reminding her of the recipe for each of the pieces…..

Now that this project is out of my head, I need to figure out exactly what big project I want to work on next!!!!

Quilt redemption….or The Case of The Boring Bamboo!

Back in 2011, we spent several weeks in China and I found a type of Bamboo that sparked my creative juices. I came home and turned the spark into a quilt top that ended up being REALLY boring…..

To read more about the making of this top, check out the blog post from 2011…..https://francesquilts.com/2011/08/16/congratulations-mrs-arnold-its-a-boring-quilt/

So for years and years (8 to be exact), it has been on my UFO To-Do list and I have managed to ignore it!! But, since I am trying to make myself do new and different things, I figured that it was time to tackle the “boring bamboo”.

The first thing that I did was pull out my rotary cutter and CUT IT INTO STRIPS!!! Yes, it was a bit scary, but it felt good to actually be doing something with it!! I added a few colored strips ……

…..and IMMEDIATELY liked it better!!

But, I didn’t want to stop there!! When I was at the Houston quilt show, I purchased a starter set of Tsukiniko Inks….

…..and a couple of stencils, including this bamboo design…..

I was intrigued with the pouncers that I bought and found that they worked beautifully for inking the stencil…..

Next, I got one of the “Fantastix” brushes and dipped the tip in a brighter color of ink…….

and used it to add some highlights to the bamboo leaves…..

Okay….that worked fairly well……

So now I was ready to do it on the real fabric that I wanted to use. I had learned two things during the test. First, I needed to mask the edges of the stencil so that I didn’t end up with “overflow”, and secondly, I needed to tape the stencil to the fabric so that it didn’t slip around as I “pounced”. I ended up taking care of both of these issues at one time by simply taping all around the edge of the stencil……

I was pleased with the final print and ready to move on to the next step….adding the old, ugly strips. It was like working a weird jigsaw puzzle…..

. I started adding strips and ended up with a hodge-podge mess…..

So I backed up, ignored all of the outside bits and pieced the inside part that I did like…..

…..and then continued on with the next set of borders…..

….and then finished it up with a new outside border…..

Even though I didn’t use ALL of the parts of the original quilt, I am pleased with this “new” bamboo quilt top….much happier than with the original. Now I just need to think about how to quilt it and then get it FINISHED and out of my UFO box!!!

UFO Finish

WOW….I have come up with a way of finishing UFO’s without even stepping foot in my studio….want to know my secret?

Last summer, I wrote about going thru my UFO’s and getting rid of some of those that I thought I would never finish. As a result, I gave this square…..