UFO's

The sun is shining outside, and its 62 degrees. A beautiful day in the neighborhood! I've just finished lesson 4 on EQ6. I have a quilt group meeting to go to tonight and I'm taking it for show and tell. I haven't been able to do any sewing for awhile, although I did do about 25 green-and-red quilt blocks in the weeks before Christmas. I intend to make enough for a king-sized quilt and hopefully have it done by next Christmas! They are traditional pieced blocks done with holiday fabrics on a cream-on-white background. I found the patterns in different places on the net, all for 12" blocks. Some I like and some I'm not really happy with, but I can use them as orphan blocks somewhere else. I will print out some more patterns from EQ6 when I'm finished with lessons 5 and 6. I have lots of fabric left over, since I save all but the smallest scrap (and agonize over whether I should keep those 1" x 2" pieces!)

I would also like to do an applique Christmas quilt someday, using the large designs that were popular in red blocks during the early 1900's, although I would use machine applique instead of hand-applique. I started a wall-hanging about 4 years ago of old-world Santas in hand applique, I only got half of them finished. I suppose I could mix them with traditional pieced blocks to finish up the wall-hanging, but they're in storage right now anyway, and would take some searching through boxes and bins to find them. They're mostly rectangular blocks, maybe 6" x 8" and 8" x 10".

My quilt group has a contest to see who can finish the most UFO's (unfinished objects) in the next year. For each project I finish that was started before 2007, I get a ticket. The more tickets I get, the more chances to win a prize. The prize winner didn't necessarily finish the most projects, but that person gets a prize, too. I finished only two projects for last years' contest, I hope to do better this year.

I will try to post some pictures of my quilt blocks in a day or so.