Progress on the 17 UFO's

Last week saw me with the quilt top finish of Chunky Crossroads. This week Gather Ye Roses and My Quilty 365 got crossed off of the 17 in 2017 list as well. I only committed to quilt top finishes with these particular projects as Meredithe assured us that progress was the point!

The three latest quilt top finishes!

Gather Ye Roses started out as tumbler block leftovers and then eventually morphed into a large tumbler basket after one day of play. At that point, I knew it needed more, but wasn't sure where to go from the over-large basket piece. Medallion style quilt? Pieced blocks? More flowers? There are so... many options you know!

Gather Ye Rosebuds looking a little washed out..

Finally I settled on a very rough draft that included smaller basket blocks, a flowing vine and space for some appliqued words. The baskets were easy, just took some time for the details. Then for the rest? Hmmm... In the drawing, my vine had what looked to be fat berries on the vines, but when I settled on 'Gather Ye Rosebuds' for the saying, the berries looked extremely wrong. Not that I'm a purist, but seriously, mentioning the word 'rosebuds' might, just maybe? create an expectation of buds on the vine as well as in the occasional basket.*sigh  These quilts, so demanding!

A look at the bottom of the quilt

However, the flowers are all just a mishmash of whatever blooms I decided to cut out at the time. Tulip shapes and other assorted floral shapes that made sense to me. I refuse to get too worked up over making sure every single detail is just 'so', and I do so love the primitive look to this asymmetrical quilt. Especially done up in the classic, traditional colors that I'm seemingly drawn to, over and over and over again through the years. I will say though, that the applique was a bit brutal at times in the overall effort of making this quilt. Hardly any machine piecing at all which means progress always comes along at the speed of the turtle, not the hare....

The large tumbler basket centerpiece

And then there was the day I spent appliqueing the centerpiece for my dear Quilty 365 quilt. Nothing else quilty that day at all, just this deceptively simple addition to my circle quilt! Words are tricky, but oh, so fun looking on the occasional quilt.

And now it's a quilt top finish!

Surprisingly, I've also moved a very little bit forward with the make-piece triangles for Shattered. It's a quilt that is primarily going to be made out of the scrap bin and while I love the look, it does get a bit tedious at time. Just saying! 76 out of 208 triangles made so far, which by my calculations is just over a fourth the way through. Every time I think, 'This is it! I'm done making these forever!'. Then I take a couple days break, think about it and come back with fresh eyes. It may be a project that takes the entire year to plow through, but I know it will be worthwhile if I just stick with it long term.

Make-fabric triangles

The really exciting progress was finishing up the hand quilting for my Geese Tracks quilt. Yay! It needs binding of course, but it's always such a great motivator to get this close to a true-blue finish. I don't even have to put the binding on for a month and I already feel like it's amazing progress.*wink

Geese Tracks and Black Shadow Applique quilt

So far, it's been really good for me to have this list, reminding me every single time I walk in the quilt room, but the years' young! There's a whole long list of projects I still want to attack, most not even cut out yet. When there's time, I'll be checking out everyone else's progress over at Meredithe's 17 UFO's in 2017. Right now, my youngest son thinks dinner is much more important that mom's quilting stuff and you know how hungry teenagers get when their stomach is empty!