One Monthly Goal – Chopin – A Passionate Quilter From Texas

Welcome to the deep freeze in South Texas. I am enjoying this winter and so glad to be retired!!!! So far the month is going fairly well (as soon as I quit coughing) and the only unforeseen requirement that came up was a phone call from my house cleaner who quit for a full-time job! Yesterday Clay and I took care of this week’s work. Think I am going to continue to find a replacement! Wish I were 55 again!!!

My goal has been for the last two months was to have all of Aunt Bea’s Parlor blocks traced and ready to work on this month! Well, I have met that goal yesterday only to have to start over because AGAIN because I did not listen to that stupid Little Quilt Fairy in my head who was telling me that I had selected (again) the wrong background fabric for this quilt. So after finishing the tracing all 20 blocks yesterday I looked at them and had a sinking feeling that I should have listed to the Little Quilt Fairy! In order to prove her correct and me wrong, I took a piece of the background fabric, put the needle and thread test to it and knew immediately that I, AGAIN, have screwed up!

This is why I am NOT starting anything of importance until 1 February 2018! This is when my quilting New Year will begin. I attribute the last 7 months as a learning curve for anyone over the age of 70! Do not have hand surgery EVER if you are a quilter over that age, and DO NOT get the H3N2 Flu! You will become one extremely frustrated quilter!!!

Now to the fix. As I tracing each pattern, I realized that the blocks at 5″ were not going to be fun to embroidery and this project may die on the vine. So I spent the time to call Canon to seek advice on how to enlarge pattern through the software. (I was advised that the one I purchased last year is a cheap model – no wonder I miss my Canon 480 and 490 printers). The young man was very helpful and I learned a lot from him in a short time! Great support.

This afternoon I have scanned in all the blocks, resized them, printed out paper copies, and copies onto my pre-cut freezer paper. YEA! Ready to go, but wait which background fabric will I use (I asked myself) I had already purchased 7 yards of the “wrong” background fabric (it will be used in other projects) specifically for this project and I do not have a lot of plain ‘white’ background fabric – plenty of muslin – but I did not want to use that! So it was between ordering white Bella Solid, Kona Cotton White, or Kona Premium Cotton White. At this point in life I did not feel like taking the time to shop for the best price for the fabric so I called the Fat Quarter Shop and ordered a bolt of it! In the future, if I need a good plain white for background for my embroidery projects I have plenty of Beige, White, and Snow of Kona Cotton fabric! Heck, I am becoming a regular fabric store! LOL.

Tomorrow I will take the time to work on my 2018 projects and UFO’s from 2017 and try to become more organized (if my body will cooperate). I hope my brain will be up to all that hard work! I have joined a few QALs – Squared Away BOM, a new one Stars Over Baltimore , to assist me in attaining some of my goals for 2018 I am using One Monthly Goal and 6 & 6 in 2018, and the APQ 2018 UFO Challenge! Good luck to me huh?

I am still going to try to meet January goals of ‘looking’ at Mountmellick (do not trust myself to start this one yet), finishing the 42 Mini Dresden’s, complete tracing for Aunt Bea’s Parlor, and Regatta. I have a neat idea going for the Regatta, but the way things are going it may not turn out but worth the time to play with it, after all I have 2 full weeks – 14 days to finish SOMETHING!

Have a wonderful evening and enjoy stitching!

As I read my favorite Blogs this last week, it appear that a lot of quilters are dedicating themselves to a list of monthly goals that just might help all of us finish a lot of UFO’s. Most of my projects are hand applique and tend to take longer, so I measure them by the number of blocks I have completed. As I sit here on the 7th day of January 2017 I wonder “actually what did you do this past year?” I have felt the last two months that I have accomplished nothing, but then I started looking at my posts and realized that I had accomplished quite a lot. Here is a recap.

I started the year making Baskets of Scraps only to have problems with the pattern – delay time. The top is finished EXCEPT I need to applique something in the baskets – It is a purple quilt and needs something but I became so discouraged and not sure what it needs that it has been hanging on the “ready to quilt” rack for a while. Then I started Handfuls of Scraps and have one of the diamonds completed but all the hexies are ready to be sewn together…..sometime in 2017! Moving right along, Brinton Hall was started and I finally finished laying out the outlining hexagons to be sewn together to make the medallion center complete so I could finish the other blocks – that was in late August and no progress on this project – in the wings waiting to go. In March I started working on A Bountiful Life and have 4 blocks completed, 4 more in the “fabric selection” stage and then cutting freezer paper pieces and pressing onto the fabrics! Then BAS came along in May and had a monthly block quilt along for Ms Potts Baltimore Album quilt. I have 9 blocks finished with 4 ready to applique! I started Stonefields in late 2015 or early 2016 and am currently working on completing Section 4. These projects are still ongoing and hopefully by the end of the year all completed! I joined in on Circa 2016 in April and finished all the blocks in October! I had decided that I would finish 2016 in 2016 – and I did! The problem is that there were problems with the quilt – it was out of square and other issues, so the ripping began. Eventually the entire quilt was ripped and all blocks put in a bag to be given away. Then I decided that I could not let that little project get the best of me so I started it up again only to realize that the problem was with the center medallion – the only part of the quilt I had not ripped. This last Tuesday I made the decision to start the project again. Long Story short – I made a nice wall hanging from the center medallion and sent the rest of the blocks packing to a new friend, Carole, who is now the proud owner of the Circa 2016! Can I say that is a finished project – you BET! But I paid a price on that one, 2 major projects (piecing) completed in 2016 and both caused me to hit the wall with quilting for awhile. I completed a Colonel Ladies quilt top for Wanda, Threads of Memory, and Enduring Legacy quilt tops – ready to be quilted! Well maybe I did accomplish more than I thought in 2016.

So for 2017, I will continue on with my “applique” projects, and start a list of piecing projects. I think I have found my passion for quilting again (especially after the massive week-long un-clutter project) and have now started up the long arm with a project loaded and already started, so getting some quilts quilted and binding completed on some other quilts will be included. I hope to have this list posted in a few days with pictures of where I am in the projects now so I can see my progress each month. I also plan on taking some “refresher” knitting classes and want to work on an embroidery quilt, so it will be a busy year, just need that added incentive to get with the program.

PS – forgot to mention that life got in the way this year too, maybe I can get rid of some unforeseen and seen requirements out of my life and get more accomplished in 2017. Oops – today no quilting just had 2 nice long unforeseen requirements come up. I will post my 12 – 2017 Projects list tomorrow.

Have a great evening.