My quilting WIPs and UFOs in August 2019

The semi-official theme I've kinda chosen for my focus this year is hand-sewing.

Lots of American bloggers seem hard on having these "words of the year", but I think I'm gonna stick to my "crafting themes of the year" instead ;)

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August was both productive and stressful. There, I've written/said it, and it is true. Between my husband going on a short trip to Turku to meet friends, him going on business trip, the kids being at home because of the summer break from daycare and then us all going to a weekend holiday to Umeå in Sweden....and me trying to get as much preparatory school work and stuff done before September 1st - yeah, stressful at the least.

I've been packing moving boxes with stuff for my study apartment i Turku, because I managed to get one. So our home office room is sporting an installation of brown cardboard boxes filled and half-filled. It stresses out my husband far more than me - because I decided I will fret about it all come the weekend before September starts.

I managed to get the Bubbles quilt (for my daughter primary caregiver at daycare in her "old" group) finished on August 14th. And I made a quilt top and back from a fabric I found in Umeå at IKEA, using a pattern from the book Stripe Quilts Made Modern by Lauren S. Palmer. That one I had as an inter-library loan from one of the libraries in Helsinki.

But, let's review the list of my projects instead, it's easier that way.

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These are my WIPs

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1. Violet and Orange Sawtooth Stars (aka the Odd blocks color quilt nr 2)

• Based on a pattern by Rachel Tillman-Petersen of Quilted Twins, this one will become a reversible QAYG quilt.
• Progress: No progress this month; Bubbles and me handquilting on Discovery has been more pressing.
• Schedule: I'm going to finish Violet and Orange before September 1st. Because I have to.

2. Violet Evergarden

• A quilt that started out as the backing of another quilt, but which I then decided was too pretty to be used as a back. I made it using Jacquie Gering's tutorial on how to machine-piece hexagons.
• Progress: no progress this month either.
• Schedule: it needs more embroidery, a label, finished photos taken, and being blogged about.

4. the 12 Color blocks quilts

• My first own project; a series of 12 color block quilts pieced identically but free motion quilted differently.  There is now a whole gallery page for the project so you can see the quilts in the series so far.
• Progress: I know who to make the last two quilts for, but I've been concentrating on the other things I mentioned above.
• Schedule: Two needs to be quilted and finished, and they already have recipients. Just think about it: soon 12 children will have gotten nearly identical quilts and this project will be over and done with.

5. the Second Christmas quilt (an EPP hexagon quilt)

• This one is an EPP project that got started kind of by accident. As in, I got bored and wanted to use up the rest of the Christmas fabric I had lying around since I finished my first Christmas quilt "God Jul".
• Progress: No progress this month.
• Schedule: I've picked this to be one of the help-me-stay-sane-in-Turku projects.

7. my quilts in the Hand Pieced QAL (quilt along): Discovery and Defiant

• Arranged by Kristin Esser of Simple Handmade Everyday and Patty Dudek of Elm Street Quilts. This QAL ended on the 30.04.2019. My entries are nr 9 and nr 10 in the link-up. The QAL started in January, and ended on April 30th. I have made two (!) very different quilt tops from two separate sets of the blocks; I named them Discovery and Defiant.
• Progress! Defiant has already been finished months ago, and you can read about it here. Discovery has so far gotten: one border quilted, and quilting motifs chosen for the pink background as well as the center blocks. I'm quilting four schematic of the Star Trek star ship Discovery on the background, surrounded by kantha stitched stars.
• Oh, and this quilt was mentioned on Kristn Esser's podcast nr 31 (scroll to 26 minutes and listen, she mentions my quilt at about 26:50).
• Schedule: Discovery is loaded on the hand-quilting frame, and just needs to be hand-quilted. Preferably before September 1st, because I want to use the frame's legs for my study desk in Turku. (Or maybe I'll just buy a pair of new ones, we'll see.)

8. R is for Rita (or R(ed) is for Rita)

• Based on a classical hexagon quilt pattern from a blog post that Rita Hodge (of Red Pepper quilts) had written about her"B is for Blues" quilt.
• Progress: Finished so far are all the white background blocks, as well as some of the white and red ones. Progress report since the project started is now (in order of sewn/prepped/needed)
• Corner blocks : 4/4/4
• White blocks: 36/36/36
• Dark red blocks: 7/25/25
• Light red blocks : 8/24/24
• Schedule: It's on "the hand-sewing queue" together with Discovery and all the others. I have picked this to be one of the help-me-stay-sane-in-Turku projects.

9. my secret Hearts 2019 birthday quilt

• My secret-sewing birthday quilt for 2019. 
• Progress: no real progress this month, although I did consolidate it so that all the blocks and pieces are together in one little plastic box. I'm also actively contemplating if I should add some soft woven stabilizer on the back of all the blocks with the really loose grain, just to get them to hold up to washing.
• Schedule: I have picked this to be one of the help-me-stay-sane-in-Turku projects.

10. IKEA Firecracker

• I made a quilt top and matching backing in one day, in fact on the Sunday after our Umeå Friday-Saturday trip. The quilt top and back uses the same two IKEA fabrics (dark blue ditte and one unknown I found at the As-is section in Umeå's IKEA). I used a pattern from the book Stripe Quilts Made Modern by Lauren S. Palmer.
• Progress/Schedule: I just need to get this one quilted.

11. Bubbles

• This quilt was finished on August 14th, and when I blog about it you can find it here.

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And these are my NYS:s

(not-yet-started ones)

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1. The ”Lucy’s Terrace”-quilt: "Lucy"

• a Lucy Boston ”Patchwork of the Crosses” variant by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.
• Progress/Schedule: all the templates are cut, and some fabrics have been chosen. I just need to finish something in the WIP:s to be able to start on this one. 

2. A spring/summer version of the Kingfisher quilt: "Summer Kingfisher"

• A spring/summer companion quilt to my Autumn Kingfisher quilt.
• Progress/Schedule: One bright yellow hexie flower has been prepped! And all of the background diamonds and border fabrics have been cut out a long while ago. I will need to go through my scraps and find bright and colorful fabrics to make the matching 46 hexie flowers. But other projects, in the WIP category, need to be finished before I can start on this one.

3. Tula Pink’s ”City Sampler”-quilt: "Denim City"

• I want to make it in denim. With sashiko details, and maybe also some boro details too. Gnome Angel will be hosting another "100 blocks 100 days"-event in 2019 (her own Kinship Sampler), so I can’t take part in that with this. I have to just make it on my own.
• Progress: I already made up a plan for how I want the quilt top to look. But I'm not so sure I want to have a huge quilt made up with all the blocks (finished) at 6 x 6 inches. I think I'd rather want to do them smaller, so I will have to make some quilt math to make it work.
• Schedule: Other projects, in the WIP category, need to be finished before I can start on this one.

4. a Japanese sashiko-themed quilt: "Sashiko"

• With sashiko, EPP and applique. In parts with designs taken from Susan Briscoe’s books.
• all of the background diamonds have been cut, and most of the borders already thought out. The applique and EPP pieces and sashiko motifs still need to be chosen out of the books.
• Progress: no progress this month.
• Schedule: Other projects, in the WIP category, need to be finished before I can start on this one.

5. some kind of scrap quilt with 15 x 30 cm ticker tile blocks

• These blocks are scrap blocks that I want to make to reduce the fabric amount in my scrap folders. 
• Progress/Schedule: Two blocks have been made (orange 1, violet 1). There's at least 10 blank background blocks that can be filled with ticker tape tiles and sewn, so there's materials ready for when I want to do some scrap work. But other projects need to be finished before I can really start on this one.

6. the Farmer's Wife 1920 quilt

• Originally, I meant to take part in the QAL hosted by GnomeAngel. That event started on August 24th 2018 and will end on October 25th 2019. Meaning, as it looks now, I won't be able to start on this one and get school things done at the same time, so it'll be for next year, and as a personal thing instead of  a QAL thing.
• Progress! The book I borrowed for it got returned on time, and I have a design plan in place. I will be doing it in EPP, but where the original blocks finish at 6 x 6 inches, I'm making them come out at 9 x 9 cm instead, with a 3 cm wide sashing around the blocks. And I now have  cut out (finally!) all the card stock template pieces I need. So as soon as I'm able to, probably next year, I can start choosing fabrics for this one.
• Schedule: I think I will have to leave it until next year, when the other handsewn EPP blocks for the other quilts have been finished.

7. My version of the Jolly Bar Meringue-quilt

• No progress yet, but all the fabric pieces were prepped already during November 2018! Because, while reading the (then newest) blog post that Kristin Esser (of Simple Handmade Everyday) wrote about her making her version of this Fat Quarter Shop pattern, I just got so inspired that I went through my stash and pulled out old thrifted pillow cases, odd whites, old thrifted and gifted sheets, and odd neutral scraps from my neutral scrap folder. While I was doing that, I found a panel with bunnies and some sheets that had embroidered motifs on them. Not sure if those will be added somehow, but I did cut up all the neutrals into 10 x 15 cm pieces (which isn't the 5 x 10 inches that the pattern has, but I didn't have scraps that large, so I just made them as large as I could).
• Somehow, these neutrals and warm browns remind me of "taupe", a color used frequently in traditional Japanese quilts together with indigo and whites.
• Progress/Schedule: no progress this month, and other projects need to be finished before I can start on this one.

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And these are now my poor UFO:s

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1. English Teatime (moved from WIP)

• Hasn't been touched.
• Schedule: I need to plan out how I want the blocks to be, and then decide upon a layout. I have so much going on, this one will have to wait a bit.

2. the Jeans 10/10 cm quilt

• Hasn't been touched, and still needs 80 more 10 x 10 cm block to be cut out.

3. the Pecking Order quilt, nr 1

• Hasn't been touched.

4. Pecking Order nr 2

• Hasn't been touched.

5. Peking Order nr 3

• Hasn't been touched.

6. the Odd blocks color quilt nr 1

• Is going to be all the odd 5 x 5 cm pieces left over from the color block quilts, sewn together into 16-patches. So far, I have just a few done, and I have no real idea what to make them into, because they don't with together color wise all that well. Maybe it could be made into an Irish chain-block variant? Or the centers of Sawtooth Stars-blocks?

7. the Odd blocks color quilt nr 3

• Hasn't been touched.
• The quilt top is done, and I have a backing fabric waiting for it. It needs to be basted, so I’m still stuck on this one. Also, it needs a quilting plan and binding.

8. Wanta Fanta

• Hasn't been touched.
• This one is a paper piecing pattern I wanted to try my sewing skills on. I have a few blocks done. At this point, I’m not terribly enamored with this project anymore.

9. Circles of color quilt

• Hasn't been touched.
• inspired by Jessica Skultety's quilt "Bubble trail", but my circles will be sewn via this method to the background instead of raw edge applique.

10. Three free motion quilting projects

• Hasn't been touched.
• these involve fleece blankets and my maternal grandmother's doilies.

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And that, as they say, was that :)

Another update is coming in one month. Until then - have a great start on the new school year in September and enjoy the end of summer (if you live on the northern hemisphere)!

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