Help…..I can’t decide what to do with this piece……
I purchased it at an outdoor market when we were in Chiang Mai Thailand back in 2011. It is 37 x 20 inches in size.
The applique is wonderful……
….with TINY stitches and fun embroidery touches as well.
Now the question is……what do I do with this? I could just stretch it and frame it, but I am also thinking about layering it up and doing some quilting on it.
What do you think???
When Qingru and Luhan arrived at our house, they were SO enamored with all of my quilts. As this excitement continued over the next few days I decided that I wanted to give both girls a lap quilt when they moved into their apartments…..in 10 days!!!!
I knew that I couldn’t make two quilts from scratch, but as I sat looking at the big quilt that I had in my UFO bin…….
I got the idea to split it into smaller quilts……
I played around with border colors a little bit and quickly decided to use similar colors for both quilts.
I madly quilted both of them, using a lot of straight lines and adding a bit of free-motion once I was sure that I could get them finished on time.
They ended up looking great……
The girls were moving in on Saturday morning so on Friday evening I finally got the quilts washed and dried. Just before the girls were going up to start packing, Michael and I presented their gifts.
THEY WERE THRILLED!!!!!
It was such fun to see them so excited and I hope that these will keep both girls warm on many nights!!!
Two weeks ago I found myself in my studio, looking at this…..
A completely empty table just doesn’t happen that often!!!
So, I decided to rummage in my closet and have a look thru my “UFO” box…..
First out of the box was a quilt top that I started during a Pat Speth workshop….
I spent a bit of time on EQ trying to figure out what borders to add to it and put it away for another day.
Next out was a top that I made MANY years ago as part of a guild workshop…..
I have never been that excited about his pattern or top and was NOT looking forward to working on it. Then I had the brilliant idea to give it to the Guild Charity Bee so that it could become a lap quilt for one of our charities……ONE GONE!!!
Next was a thread painting that I did in a Susan Brubaker Knapp workshop…..
I took it to the Bee as well, and someone else is putting borders around it and making it into a Lap quilt also.
Next, was a series of blocks that I made during a piecing workshop a long time ago……
I have NO idea what can be done with all of this, but one of our Charity Bee members has taken it home to play with.
Next in the pile were these blocks from a quilt that I started back in 1997…..
I did a bit of machine applique on the lion and happily handed it off to a guild member too.
Next was a piece that I started when we were in Rome in 2010…..
OK….here is one that I am looking forward to finishing…..sometime!!!!
The rest of the box contained UFO’s that my Mother has sent to me….those can easily wait for another time!!!!
I know that I didn’t actually FINISH anything, but it feels good to pass some on and remind myself of what there is still to do!!
From me and my family to you and yours…………
MERRY
CHRISTMAS!!!!
Yesterday, I had an entire day in my studio and my goal was to finish a UFO that I started about 15 or so years ago. I posted about this on 12/29 of LAST year, and here is a recap from that post…..
It started out as a full size Christmas quilt for my bed. It was in the days where I hadn’t done a lot of machine quilting and had never tried quilting anything as large as this one, so I decided to hand quilt it…..GULP!! I used a “quilt-as-you-go” technique where you put sets of blocks together, baste and quilt them and then put all of the sets together to form the final quilt.
I had made the first two strips, each consisting of three blocks. Life then got in the way, and I lost interest in the project. It was relegated to the top shelf of my bedroom closet….in my mind, it didn’t even qualify for placement in my studio. I had even thought several times about throwing it away.
In 2009, I made a list of my UFO’s and suddenly remembered this one so I added it to the list. This was how it looked at that time……
As I looked at it, I decided to turn it into a lap quilt of three rows of 2 blocks each. I have thought about this project over the last few days and kept trying to come up with a grand plan for doing this, but finally decided to just START the project and let it take me where it would.
It has taken several “finagles” to make the design work, but I am pleased with the overall results. There is still some quilting to be done on it (by machine) and a bit of hand quilting to be taken out, but that can happen later when I am looking for a quick project to fill a few hours.
OK…fast forward for almost a year and you will see that my “few hours” never materialized. I REALLY wanted to get some use out of it in the few days before Christmas, so I pulled it out and finished the quilting. I even put the binding on by machine….that is how badly I wanted to get it finished today!!!!
As I said in the previous post, technically it is not a great quilt, but I LOVED being able to snuggle under while watching “Muppet Christmas Carol”.
AND….I can mark it off that I completed ONE ufo in 2010!!!!