Cleaning the Quilt Room

Having been out of town and then sick for a week, my house is desperately in need of cleaning.  I started off OK- doing general cleanup, loading the dishwasher and the like but soon meandered off the path and started cleaning the sewing room.  (My justification being that tomorrow for Halloween the front door will be open and everybody will be able to see in there...). Soon I started opening drawers and peering into boxes, which is always a big mistake.  I have so many UFOs that I can’t even begin to count them.  It is fortunate (or maybe not) that there is an IKEA opening in Jacksonville next month- I have already planned on adding a couple of bookcases for more storage.  When the longarm arrived last year, the Pod was filled with boxes of attachements and supplies and I have still not managed to integrate it all into my sewing space.  

Maybe I can eventually get all of it into one room.  

Anyway, one of the things I discovered was a “miscellaneous” box.  Apparently I have been saving all sorts of test and blocks that I have accumulated from different places.  I thought I would paste them up on the wall to see if I had any ideas about using them come to mind.

Stationary Blue Streak

Most of my quilting so far has been "custom" quilting...I have been pondering going into business with my long arm, so I thought I should practice some pantos.  So on this quilt I am practicing putting the rows together and nesting them together.

Soggy Sunday

Woke up this morning and it was raining heavily- my perfect kind of Sunday.  Given a choice, I would have rolled over and gone back to sleep but the puppy had other ideas... He was bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00 am.  Sunday is usually our beach day and then we work on the weeds in the garden, but clearly neither of those things are going to work out today.  So off to the quilt room we go...

 My quilt guild has the usual "get your UFOs done" going on right now.  I started to make a current list of all the quilts I have in process but every time I opened a drawer, I found another project.  (And by the way, what is the technical definition of a UFO?  Does that mean only the projects I have started, or the projects that I have purchased all the fabric for?  What about patterns that I intend to make- do those count?!)  I started making a list but then forgot what I was calling some of the quilts and they ended up on the list twice.  Then I started taking pictures (you can see on the corkboard) but that seemed to be a lot of extra work.  Anyway, I started a new policy- open a drawer and pick up the first unfinished project you find.  Get that one done! 

This started out as as Blue Streak from Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting (Nov/Dec 2006).  (Yes, this is a quilt from 11 years ago.  Does that tell you how far behind I am?) At some point along the line I apparently decided to change all the blocks around.  The top is finally together so I think I will be doing some longarm planning today!