UFOs and NSYs

I've been listening to Annie Smith's Quilting Stash podcast over the past few weeks, and recently listened to a programme she did back in February 2008 about UFOs, referencing Nadine Ruggles' Driven to Quilt podcast on the same subject.

Both programmes were really interesting, and got me thinking about my stacks of UFOs, and what Annie mentioned in her podcast from another blog she read, NSYs = Not Started Yets. Got plenty of those, too - both projects for which I have acquired fabric, but not started, and also projects I have planned, or just ideas, but not any further than that.

In fact, for someone who now co-owns a quilt-store, I have pathetically few finished projects to show for myself - only 6 completely finished quilts, OK, 7 if I count Mum's mystery quilt I finished for AC, and a few cushions and bags. In 5 years. Plus now a couple of joint efforts with Birgit. UFOs in double figures, though. Plus all the UFOs I inherited from Mum.

So, here, publicly, my list of UFOs to-date, with the commitment to finish at least one a month, starting next month. Not this month, because what little there is left of this month is dedicated to an NSY which has exactly three more days to transform from a stack of flannel and a wool batting to a rag quilt for my DH, who just happens to have a birthday on Sunday (and the quilt is not going to be finished by then, because I discovered in cutting that I'd miscalculated and don't have enough background fabric, so had to order more...) There are also a couple of NSYs and UFOs with a deadline for the end of May, which is the date of the next exhibition by the Lichteneck Quilters, the quilting group Birgit and I belong to. And this is just personal projects, not anything for the shop. That's a whole other kettle of fish...

Inherited from Mum

6 Piece o' Cake "Thru Grandmother's Window" Applique Blocks - to be turned into wallhangings or cushions for me, my brother, aunt and uncle. It was the rash promise to finish these that got me started patchworking. And 6 years later, they're still waiting... partly, if I'm honest, because I'm scared of ruining them - they're so beautiful and well made.

The quilt which became known as "that bloody star quilt" - irregular five-pointed stars in rectangular blocks, all the blocks are made, a large chunk is all pieced together, but at some point things got muddled, and Mum could never figure out how to get all the blocks together, no matter how hard she and Mandy tried.

Another star quilt, this one with hexagonal stars, this just needs the outside border attaching, and quilting. I'd like to finish this for the exhibition in May.

Foundation pieced Santas, one Santa complete, can't remember off-hand how many there were supposed to be. This may just end up being a new small door-hanging with just the one Santa.

My own UFOs, oldest first

Cathedral Star block from a course in April 2005. This one keeps hanging up on the hand sewing.

North Carolina Lily - one of my first projects, it needs the quilting removed (bad thread choice, I used a multicoloured polyester thread meant for machine quilting, not hand, and the quilting is boring, and also certain tabby-and-white cats ripped half of the batting out...), re-basting and re-quilting, this time on the longarm.

Trip to New England by Kathleen Starr Designs - needs quilting and binding, I'd like to get this in the exhibition in May.

Stars over Bali Skies, by Charlotte Humphrey - purchased as a BOM from a German quilt store in 2007, slightly less than a quarter done, I stopped part way in order to have all the fabrics for the 2" background patches to be more flexible in arranging. This is one I really need a design wall for. Laying it out on the floor is difficult - nosy dogs and cats want to help :-)

Advent, Advent BOM by Sulky - also started in 2007, all the patterns saved, and the blocks from the first three months completed

Quiltfriends Ohio Star swap - no idea yet what I'm going to do with these blocks. I might sew them together for a practice quilt for the longarm.


A wall hanging in brown batiks, from a design by Jessamy Thompson. About 1/4 quilted, I can't shift this to the longarm.

Another small wallhanging in rainbow batiks, needs the top right corner block adding, borders and quilting.

Flicflac cushions for a friend, like most of the UFOs, they *just* need quilting... :-)

Frostie's bed - in a fit of temporary insanity, I decided that the dog should have a patchwork cover for his bed at the quilt store. The outside is supposed to be made of 8 blocks, four are finished, plus his name embroidered on the front. If I continue the temporary insanity then the top edge will be Flying Geese, paper pieced because of the oval shape. The inside will be plain black, freehand quilted with a loop-and-bone pattern, if I manage it.

4 irregular log cabin table mats for our group exhibit for the Lichteneck exhibition. Blocks for three are made, this has to be finished by May.

Miniature Storm at Sea, paper-pieced, the finished quilt is 16" x 16". I'm making it with beautiful hand-dyed cotton satteen. The pattern is from an age-old copy of the magazine "Miniature Quilts". Another one I'd like to put in the exhibition, but I'm not sure I'll make it in time.

3D Flying Geese wall hanging. This has to go in the exhibition, as the fabric is from a rectangle-exchange we did within the group. I made it last weekend, it needs to be quilted and finished.


NSYs (only projects for which fabric has been bought specifically or with a deadline this year)

Rag quilt for DH
Rag quilt for me

Les Teinturires de Sophie et Maria - Kit bought at the European Patchwork Festival in Ste-Marie-aux-Mines 3 years ago. The Wild Geese blocks are 2 1/2" finished size, and there are 36 of them... I was seduced by the hand-dyed fabrics...

At least 10 tombola prizes for the Lichteneck exhibition. I have two pieces started, and they all have to be completed by March 17.

Then there's the enormous stack of Makower Fancy Cats fabrics (the first series) waiting to be turned into several somethings...

And the dog-bone fabrics I got especially to make bum-bags for carrying around dog treats and necessary accessories when walking the dog.

And all that fabric I bought just because it was so pretty...

And now I'm going to publish this before this post also turns into a UFO - I've been writing it since Sunday!

Time to kick-start the blog again!

Like I really need another committment, I just insanely signed up for the Pinwheel Sampler Quilt-Along at Rachel Griffith's blog p.s. i quilt. I discovered Rachel's blog (along with many other fantastic quilting blogs!) via one of her tutorials at the Mode Bakeshop, and I'm hooked. Rachel writes excellent tutorials, and designs fun, bright quilts. So when she announced the quilt-along last week, I was immediately tempted to join in - I love pinwheels, and this would be a great quilt to use up some of my 100+ batik fat quarters. I don't have time, I have a million UFOs already (okay, maybe not a million, but definitely double figures) and wasn't going to start anything new this year except stuff for the shop, but... this quilt just looks like so much fun, and I love the idea of a quilt-along. And really... how much time can it take to sew one block a week? :-)

And deciding to join in the quilt-along made me also decide that it is long past time to dust off the blog again, and try and get into a more regular blogging habit.

Soooooooooooo...

What's been going on in my quilting-and-otherwise life since I last posted? A Lot. An Awful Lot.

Not long after my last post, in October 2007, I decided to quit the office job, and give up working entirely for a while (big thank you here to my Lovely Hubby for making this possible for me). The company I worked for got assimilated by its biggest competitor, and I concluded, once again, that I do not like working for big companies. And that really, being a secretary was not what I saw myself doing for the rest of my working life. It was something I kind of drifted into when I moved to Germany, and had stuck with for lack of any other opportunity. So I gave notice, and at the end of December 2007 I hung up my secretarial/office manager hat for good. I spent 3 months being a good little German housewife, reading, sleeping, and just generally enjoying life again.

Then in March 2008, Kio arrived and turned our life upside-down. I'd always wanted a dog, but just didn't think it was fair to the dog to have one while I was working full-time. I won't go into the long story of how we came to the decision to get an Australian Shepherd, or found his breeder. Kio was such a wonderful dog, and it broke our hearts when he died aged just 13 months after a tragic accident in March 2009. We still both have a big Kio-shaped scar on our hearts, but the hole he left has been filled by his cousin, Frostie.

Anyway... while I was claiming unemployment benefit and trying to avoid having to take another office job, my quilting friend Birgit opened a quilt store. She started the business as a purely internet based shop around the end of 2005, and decided in early 2008 that it was time to move the business into a real bricks-and-mortar store. Since I had nothing better to do ;-) I spent a lot of time helping her to redecorate the premises she'd rented, and getting the store set up and open. After that I helped out when she needed me, and in October she asked me if I would be interested in joining her as a partner in the business. Guess what my answer was? ;-)

So here I am, co-owner of a small but expanding quilt store and I love it :-). It's a lot of work, but I love working with the fabrics, the customer contact, and working with Birgit. We think alike about most things, and complement each other in so many ways, and it's working out perfectly so far. We moved into new, larger premises last year in March, and acquired a second-hand longarm quilt machine from Gammill. She's my baby, and named Jenny, after my Mum, whose fault it is I've turned into a quilter. This is me and her, at our Open Day in July:



and Birgit, me and Frostie (the best thing about being my own boss is I can take my dog to work with me!!)



At about the same time as I started working with Birgit, I got offered a contract as freelance proofreader for a series of patchwork magazines published by a German publisher (thank you, Annie!). That involves about two weeks of part-time work every six weeks or so, all done here at home, proofreading the magazine and the instructions for all the quilts, etc. It's intensive but interesting work, and it pays for the dog food :-) The shop pays its own way pretty much so far, but at the moment all available income is being reinvested in stock, so we're not either of us actually pulling any kind of salary from it. But we are confident that we'll be able to in the not-too-incredibly-dim-and-distant future!

So there you go, somehow or other I've turned into something vaguely like a professional quilter - not something I imagined when I handed in my notice just over two years ago, or when I started the patchwork classes just over five years ago!

Cleaning out the cobwebs...

Gosh! 18 months since I posted anything. I never was much good at keeping a diary.

I haven't been entirely unproductive in these 18 months, even if I haven't written anything here. I didn't get a great deal done in most of 2006, but some time last year I finally managed to convince my boss that the company would survive if I only worked 32 hours a week instead of 40 (heavy hints that otherwise the company would have to survive without me entirely probably helped ;-)) and since January of this year I've had Wednesday and Friday afternoons to sew.

In my usual way, I promptly started work on far more projects than I could handle...

1) I signed up for a block swap at the German quilters' forum I belong to. Never again. I put a lot of time and effort into producing 30 blocks that I was really pleased with, and if they weren't 100% perfect, I'm not boasting too much to say that they were at least 90% perfect. I was so incredibly disappointed with what I got in exchange. Of the 30 I got back, I like the fabrics of about 5, the rest are just horrendous. And some of them are so badly made - corners nowhere near matching, etc., etc. At the moment, they're sitting in a ziploc bag in my "Works in Progress" collection, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with them.

2) I signed up for a Block of the Month (BOM) quilt project from a German quilt store. You get the patterns and fabrics sent each month for 10 months. I'm about a third of the way through, as other projects got in the way... It's a big quilt of all different types of stars, all in batik fabrics. I loooove batiks. I'm really enjoying working on it, when I do.

3) Our quilt group had its exhibition in May this year, and I swore that I would finish my sampler, which I started in April 2005. In January of this year, I had made only 6 of 12 blocks, and had only quilted 4. I finished the quilt the day of the exhibition hanging, on May 26:



4) I started on a free BOM for a small Advent wallhanging, from Sulky International. I think I've got January and February done so far. I think this might end up hanging on the wall next Advent...

5) Two female colleagues announced they were pregnant, so of course they each have to get a baby quilt. One of them gets two quilts in fact, since she's had twin boys. I've just finished the first quilt for the colleague whose baby girl arrived at the end of July. I'll start the second quilt later this week, I still have to get fabric for the third. This is the quilt for little Zoe:



I managed to start and finish a few small things, mostly bags, a mini quilt for my un-godson:



and a table runner for a good friend's 40th birthday:

Baggy Weekend

I had a "baggy" weekend. I've had the past two weeks off work, partly with the aim of getting some work done on my sampler quilt. I did, just about :-) Finally put an outside edge on the Log Cabin block, made a Honey Bee block, which just needs the bees adding, and made a Rolling Stone block. That was this month's class - Baby Blocks, Rolling Stone and Carpenter's Wheel. I started the block in class on Wednesday evening, and finished it on Thursday.

Friday saw the start of the baggy weekend. I spent most of the day making myself a bag for my 18" x 24" cutting board, to make it easier to carry to classes. With pockets for all my rulers. I made it out of plain calico, and embellished it using some of the fancy stitches that my Bernina can do (first time I've tried those out - ooh, fun!)

This weekend was the winter UFO weekend. There were nine of us, including Annie (my teacher), all working on different projects. I finally finished the Sunny Windows tote I started in April. I love the colours, and the contrast with the black. Then I made the X-Bag - I bought the pattern and fabrics in Massachusetts in July.

So now I have a snazzy new handbag and a big bag for toting stuff around in. :-)





The other thing I made this weekend was a cute little pincushion box that Annie showed us at the Cathedral Stars / Sunny Windows class in April. I've made it for my beading colleague.

Knitting again

My first attempt at a knitting pattern with "holes" in - a practice run before making the real thing for Caroline for Christmas.

The pattern's from Knitty's Fall Surprise issue from last year.

Flic Flac 

I went shopping again...

I took an empty suitcase with me on our vacation to the USA. Needless to say, it did not return empty...

First I went shopping on Cape Cod at Tumbleweed Quilts in West Barnstable - a very nice store, with lots of nooks and crannies. I was pretty restrained here, just picked up four fat quarters, two half yards, a couple of copies of Quiltmaker, a Q-Clip frame, and The X Bag pattern, which is for a very nifty shoulder bag.


loot  

(The flower-thing is a magnetic pin cushion, which I thought would be useful to attach to my sewing machine. Then I discovered when I got home that my sewing machine is not metal...)

I decided not to buy too much here, because on my teacher's advice, I planned to visit a Joann's store. I checked on the web before we went, and found that there was one in the town where Otto had to go for his business meeting, so he dropped me there, and disappeared off to his meeting for the next four hours...

And this is the result:



One hundred and thirty fat quarters, three full yards, two books and lots and lots of notions and knick-knacks.

The two women at the checkout were stunned at how full my shopping cart was - and even more so when I explained that I would pay three times as much to buy all this stuff here in Germany.

As each fat quarter was scanned individually, it took a couple of minutes for the receipt to print out:



Soooooooooo... this should all keep me busy for a wee while :-)

Learning by doing...

I finished piecing block three of the sampler quilt last night - a simple log cabin.

It was actually a pretty useful exercise for getting to know my sewing machine. I have a Bernina, which I inherited along with everything else from my mother. Because she was already bedridden by the time she gave it to me, she wasn't able to show me much about using it, so I've been finding things out as I go along.

One thing I just couldn't figure out was why, although my seams seemed to be the regulation 1/4", and all my strips were the right width, my blocks finished up about a 1/4" too small... It would seem that the patchwork foot I have, if I line the fabric up with the outer edge, actually makes the seam about 9/32" wide instead of 1/4", and over a couple of pieces, that adds up... Soooooo... if I move the fabric in just a tad, I get my 1/4" seam, and my block's the right size. :-)

And this is how my first quilt turned out :-) 

My "quilting studio" (a.k.a. the dining room table) 

Quilt-As-You-Go Sampler course

At the moment I'm taking a monthly "quilt-as-you-go" sampler course. Life's been pretty busy, so I'm lagging behind on getting things done, and have only completely finished one block, and am quilting the second. The fabric's cut for block three (Log Cabin) and we only had the fourth class on Wednesday, so I've got a bit of time to think about that one ;-)

The first class was hexagons - Grandmother's Flower Garden. A very old and traditional pattern. However, hexagons, I have decided, do Nothing For Me. Nothing. Zilch. Boring. Boring. Boring. I decided the only way I could cope with hexagons in my quilt was to do the Inner City variation:


Second class was piecing again. What Annie is doing is giving us three variations on similar kinds of patterns which vary in difficulty. The basic pattern was Card Trick, which I quite like, and the more complicated was a Six Point Compass. I like compass patterns, don't know why particularly. So this is my second block:


I won't tell you how many times I had to unstitch various parts of it to get the danged points to meet in the middle...

Work in progress...

Yes, still plenty of work in progress, just haven't got around to taking photos and posting them until now.

At the end of April I took a weekend class based on this book. There were only four of us taking the class and it was a lot of fun, and very interesting to do. I ended up with three UFOs:


This tote bag, which uses a pattern called 'Sunny Windows' 

and this Cathedral Star, which will be made into a cushion cover when it's finished. All of the white pieces get an ochre centre like the two already done.


and a small practice piece of a pattern called Floating Windows, as preparation for the Cathedral Stars.

The Cathedral Stars was pretty complicated to do, but it was fun, and very satisfying to be able to do something like that.

I'm also quite pleased with the tote - I like the colours I ended up using. And I will finish it before the end of this month...

Patchworking - the world's best kept keep-fit secret

I have the most incredible muscle ache in the back of my thighs. I can only suppose that it's from all the crouching yesterday to lay out the quilt blocks and then pick them all up again to sew. Ow. Ow. Ow.

My very first quilt!

I just spent the weekend at a quilting workshop - no specific theme, just a chance for people to work on projects together.

And this is what I have to show for it:



My very first quilt! It's for my un-godson, who will be two in a week. I have to tie it, and put on the binding, and it's done. I'm thinking of quilting his name into the plain blocks. I'm going to call it Whizzy B - "Whizzy" is the name his Mum gave him while she was still carrying him, because he spent most of his time in the womb whizzing about all over the place. And B is his last initial. I'm really pleased with the bright colours - I wasn't completely sure about them when I bought the fabrics, but it's turned out just how I wanted it. It's funny - there are combinations of colours in it (bright green, orange, dark pink), that I wouldn't normally dream of putting together, but here they work.

My North Carolina Lily project

This North Carolina Lily is my third project since starting the course in October. I'm quite pleased with it. The corners are a tad squiffy, but not tooooooo obviously so... and I really like the braided border - which Hobbes helped me to attach:



It's now basted together, ready for quilting. I'm going to try quilting in a hoop this time. I quilted my Square in A Square cat cushion cover without a frame or hoop, and didn't baste enough, so it slipped quite a bit during quilting:



That just needs a back, and binding, and it's done. And even if the quilting's uneven, I like the colours :-)

So I went shopping today...

And I was pretty restrained... well, reasonably so.

This patchworking business is going to be addictive, I can tell. It's just too easy to stand in the fabric store and say, hmm, well, I could do something with that, and that, and ooooh, isn't that pretty, I can use that...

But I was good... I only got fabrics for two definite projects. A quilt for my un-godchild, Ciaran, which is going to be bright and colourful... There's a weekend course 19th and 20th February, which is when I'm going to make that. The pattern I'm going to use is a pretty basic nine-patch variation, and it's tied instead of quilted, so I should get in done in time.

Then I also got this small selection:


in preparation for the sampler course which starts next month.

What got me started

Cactus Blaze

My Mum started patchworking when she was around the age I am now. She'd always been great at needlework, mostly embroidery and dressmaking, but she did knit and crochet some as well. She made all my dresses when I was small, and a lot of her own clothes as well. I never actually asked her what got her started on patchworking, but she started in around 1987, and made quilts for a friend's twin daughters. And she went on making quilts and cushions and wallhangings and... until she finally had to stop because her cancer prevented her from sitting at her sewing table.

She died in July 2003. She left a number of projects unfinished, including a series of appliqué blocks from a pattern called "Thru Grandmother's Window". It was a block-a-month series by Piece o' Cake Designs. She finished 10 of the blocks. Rather than having the blocks made up into a quilt, which was her original plan, we decided to share them between us, so my stepdad, my 2 brothers and I each have two blocks, and my aunt and uncle, Mum's sister and brother, have one each. Aaaaanyway, in a fit of I don't know what, I boldly, rashly, declared that I would make the blocks up into wall hangings or cushions - whatever was required...

And then Mum's good friend, to whom she'd actually left all her quilting stuff, and I sorted through Mum's stash. And Mandy kept thrusting things at me, saying "oh, this is easy, you can finish this..."

I'd vaguely sort of toyed with the idea of taking up patchworking, but never really seriously. And suddenly, I had this rash promise, and a small stash of fabrics and a couple of unfinished projects...

So when I saw a Beginner's Patchwork and Quilting course advertised in the local evening class association, I figured it was about time I started doing something.

And now I'm hooked. ;)