Very Belated Look at Finished Quilts From 2022

It's way late to do a end of the year wrap up post so if this isn't your thing, please feel free to move along. It's mostly for my own records anyway, since quilts tend to get lost in the shuffle if I don't keep track. Last year ended with a respectable 15 quilts totally finished up. Not my best number, but definitely nothing to sneeze at. If I wouldn't have gotten so sick, there would possibly have been another to add to the list. Apparently it wasn't meant to be!

2022 Finishes (1)

As per usual, I find myself reaching for a mix of applique quilts to put in the hoop and then, maybe a totally machine pieced quilt just to change things up. As the years go by, there seems to be less and less quilts without some form of applique involved in the making. Hmm... I wonder what that says about me?

2022 Finishes (2)

I always keep a master list of completed quilt tops which is supposed to have the projects listed in order of completion. This helps ensure that I don't end up neglecting a quilt top well beyond the point of being impossible to drum up interest in quilting on it. This list is, of course, cheerfully ignored at whim. Mostly tops are pulled out of the drawers depending on whatever color and mood {or vibe} that I'm currently searching for. Or if a quilt is destined to be gifted. Sometimes that moves a quilt top up to the top of the list in a hurry!

2022 Finishes (3)

Quite to my surprise, the quilt top list shrunk last year--down to 20 unfinished quilt tops! And two of those tops were given to me by my sister a couple years ago, so really. They don't even hardly count.

So..., the 2022 Finished Quilt details:

• 7 Lap Quilts
• 7 Bed Quilts
• 1 Comfort Quilt
• 9 Quilts completely hand quilted
• 5 Quilts mixed hand quilting and machine quilting
• 1 Quilt completely machine quilted
• 8 Quilts gifted, gently used or newly finished

Towards the end of the year I had quite a few ideas and goals for the winter quilting efforts and going into this year. All of that has been turned upside down and now I really don't know if I'm coming or going. I had to cancel the winter quilting meetings at our church after losing the entire month of January. Thankfully, everyone seemed very understanding. Am finally starting to feel somewhat normal again, but am still not at 100%. Have only left the house five times in fact since this all started, but I'm getting there! Which, frankly, is a huge relief. I'm asking everyone to please give comment amnesty for past posts. Have so appreciated the kind comments, but did not have the energy most days to try and 'catch up'. 

Cheddar fabric

I also wanted to give a shout-out to Lizzy at Gone to the Beach blog. She has a very charming blog that I have followed for years and years. At some point this winter, she had offered to send me some pieces of cheddar colored fabric to help out with a specific project where the stash totes were seemingly lacking. By the time we had made proper connection, I tried to tell her that I was actually currently too sick to be working on any quilt project. She insisted, I couldn't resist and these fabrics have been such a joy to me just to look at, even if only wistfully in passing. Really, really sweet of her to share fabric so generously! 

Still haven't done anything meaningful with that project yet, but you know me. It's only a matter of proper time and focus. If I have any big plans for 2023, it's to take time, try and be mindful and not be in a big rush to check things off a list. Thanks to all who keep checking in with the blog. I'm not ditching it, I promise! {Though the posting might be slow for a bit.} I am reading and trying to catch up on quilting blogs now and finding myself missing some older blogs that have totally drifted away. There are a lot of things still needing my attention before I can dive into quilting at full throttle and well, guilt free? At least I am slowly starting to get in a bit of hand work most evenings. Have missed it so very much.... 

This is the Last of the Little Quilts

There are times we would rather be working creatively and yet other things pull at our time and attention. This isn't necessarily wasted time. It just is. We all prioritize and make decisions based on real life events and happenings. No need to apologize!

Another baby quilt finish!

Making baby quilts for friends and family is something that {most often} doesn't feel especially creative. It's fast, fun and sorta fluffy. Boom! The quilt is done and there's a sweet little rush. It's even sorta needful once in awhile, like eating a good piece of chocolate. But the process is neither intense or particularly {deeply} rewarding. I think you know what I mean.

Finding new use for the abandoned blocks...

The way that I make the most of the experience is to simplify things. Severely. It's called managing my expectations. No baby quilt made by me is ever going to mistaken for an 'heirloom quilt'! When I know that from the start, then I can loosen up enough to barely wince at any inevitable mistakes. Like switching the wider 'middle' dark green strip for the more narrow 'side' strips.*sigh  There's always something, right?

Didn't even notice this mistake until after it was quilted!

Though initially I had all sorts of intriguing ideas about ways to set the 9-patch blocks, in the end it came down to what made the most sense {at the time}. Stacking them end to end freed me up from trimming all the blocks down to a set size. Later, after quilting, I can see why it would always be wise to do that no matter the time it takes! As you can see, the quilting shoved the fabric here and there and makes it obvious that the original piecing was just a little bit too easy-breezy. 

These quilts are made fast and simple on purpose though. Very deliberately! Just digging in and trying to work instinctively is a great refresher. It could never happen with a much larger quilt without some serious anxiety hopping on board. What about fabric waste???

For these small quilts, I rather enjoy pawing through the stash, looking for a happy color palette that would be suitable for baby. Better yet is starting with orphan blocks and trying to lift that mood up, into a totally different direction than the original make. Which definitely happened here. Very similar, but still, completely different quilts. Love that! Neither quilt ended up with a particularly polished look and in fact, an experienced quilter might want to slap my hands for not taking proper time. So what. Will baby care?

Two similar light colored fat quarters work for the binding.
Not quite right colored fabric turned over for a backing....

No, and neither will the mother. And it will be used and then eventually washed, and then used and probably washed yet again. Until it's falling apart, though of course we never wish that for any of our quilts. The literally falling apart thing! Enough said. I have zero regrets!

The quilt below is only slightly larger than my average baby quilt-- 45" x 55". Made for a 5 year old nieces birthday, it was the result of said child wondering why she didn't ever get a baby quilt made specially for her. Older brother did and alas, her younger sister did too! Oops!

Why not start out with this? My niece thinks its the front of the quilt!

Little kids don't understand the dynamics of family gifting and how making a baby quilt for Every. Single. Birth. can quickly morph into the hundreds. But yes, I was most definitely beguiled by the wide-eyed questioning sincerity and set out to make a special little quilt. 

Quilters know that this is the 'front' of the quilt....

With this one, I started with the Raggedy Ann quilt backing fabric. It was given to me shortly after one of my aunts died a couple years ago. Sorting through a box of very low quality fabrics resulted in a grand total of three decent finds. So sad to ditch the other remaining fabrics, but I determined to do something special with these if at all possible, and now the day had arrived for at least one of them!

Is the blue floral print too much for the binding?

All the fabrics in the front of the quilt were chosen based directly from colors used in the vintage backing. While searching through the stash totes, I very carefully chose out some very large print fabrics too. Generally, these would be terribly difficult to incorporate into my regular quilting, but as I pointed out earlier, it greatly helps when we start out by 'managing our expectations'. Appealing to a 5 year old wanting a blanky made by A. Audrey absolutely helped to keep the tricky decision making dilemmas down to a very low ebb. You know she's never, ever going to question anything about the design!

It's busy, busy, but oh, so fun looking....

I tried to channel a little bit of Linda from KokaQuilts when finalizing the fabric selection. Reading her blog over the past couple years has tempted me to open up to the possibility of using busy and/or large print fabrics! The first thing that I did was to make two sets of four patch blocks. Next up was fussy cutting the larger print fabrics of which I only had fatquarters {or even less} starting out! I don't know if you can tell or not, but the large pink flower square in the bottom left corner is pieced with three different pieces of the same fabric. What exactly is a quilter supposed to do when the quilt obviously needs another focal point and all worthy fabric has been sadly depleted? Make do!

The sharp yellow fabric is something I've saved back and kept on the do-no-touch list until it feels absolutely ridiculous. What am I saving it for, pray tell? The smaller red and white floral fabric were leftover strips from a prior backing on another quilt. Feels so good to use up the last of it! And the larger polka dot fabric has been deflecting me for years. 'No! Don't use me in this quilt, I'm too loud and bossy!' 

Overall, it went together super fast after I settled on the 6" measurement for the squares. Once that was figured out, then it was full speed ahead. The only real problem was adding on one more row after the base look of the quilt was set. Why I ever thought it could work properly as a square quilt is a question that will haunt me, well..., not at all. It was actually just a little hiccup in forward progress and made me have to come back and finish on a different day, in a slightly different way than originally imagined. A five-year old needs a slightly longer quilt than a baby though she is very petite. The width matters not at all here.

They couldn't be more different....

In the sweetest of sweet coincidences, the birthday of my little niece and the aunt who indirectly gifted me the backing fabric, are the very same. Can you believe the coincidence? I did not remember for some reason as I am terrible about remembering birthday dates. You can be sure this news totally made my day. Perhaps this quilt was meant to be? The momma is pleased too so that is a good thing as well. You just never know about vintage fabrics. There are people out there who will never appreciate them, no matter the sentimentality involved.

So there you go. All three of my latest fast and easy 'baby' quilt makes finished up and/or gifted in the last several days. Every one has been made 100% from the stash and in another wonderful coincidence, all of the backing was recently gifted from a sister-in-law giving away the last bits of her quilting stuff. Life is very, very good when we have hobbies such as this. I've been quilting long enough to start taking it for granted, but I don't. I won't. It means entirely too much....

Time to See All Those 2018 Finishes Together in One Post

Some years there are more finishes than others. The last two years have been especially good ones for bumping the oldest quilts off the list . It's often difficult to want to work on the oldy moldy quilt projects, but they never get any easier to work on by just ignoring them!

2018 Finishes

It's always great fun to slip a baby quilt or two into the mix and have a fast finish. And this year I even made an oversize doll quilt {hmm... is that actually a baby quilt too?}

2018 Finishes

As usual, I kept my hand quilting hoop busy all throughout the year {both of them, if you want to know the truth of it!}. It's become an oh-so-important part of my quilting journey and I can't even imagine life without that little bit of stitching time late in the evenings. Those peaceful, meditative hand quilting minutes have become something I unabashedly crave at times. It positively grounds me in the best way possible and dare I say, nourishes me as well.

2018 Finishes

The program used to group my picture collages didn't have a good 4-picture setting, so I put my Quilty 365 in two different groupings. It's been on our bed for quite awhile now. I adore waking up to it and then later in the day, snuggling back into bed with it once again. Move over husband dear, I got a good quilt now. lol  Sometimes I think that all my quilting years have led up to this one quilt, in terms of making a quilt that resonates on almost every single level.

2018 Finishes

Overall, I'm not sure how much these quilts represent 'me' as a whole--the way I've mixed up the old quilting projects with the new. It's something that I always find very interesting though, these end of the year quilt reviews. You pop over to someones page and in one click, get to see an entire lineup of the years finishes! What fascinates me the most, is the quilting voice that is always so immediately apparent! There's rarely any doubt whose quilt page you're viewing and that's the very best thing about this time of year. I bet most of us could look at any of these picture groupings and immediately tell what quilter made each of those quilts. Love that!

So now with the details: 2018 found me ending the year with 19 finishes again! That kind of suprised me as it didn't feel like so many. Yep, I was on a finishing mission once again. Trying to get some of those very old, not-as-interesting quilt tops out of my hair.*whew! It was very, extremely, tedious at times, I kid you not. Crossing my fingers things won't get quite that bogged down ever again! Want some year end statistics? I do like to keep track just for curiosities sake.

• 1 Doll quilt
• 2 Baby quilts
• 1 Comfort quilt
• 7 Lap quilts
• 8 Bed-sized quilts
• 6 quilts were completely hand quilted
• 9 quilts were a mix of machine and hand quilting
• 4 quilts were completely machine quilted

By the end of the year I had also given away 17 quilts, a mixture of new and old quilts. That was a little nerve-wracking at times. My family lives in dread that they'll wake up one morning and all our quilts will have been given away! hehe  One was given for a church raffle, for helping to make money to buy their building. Still waiting to see who winds up with that one as I do like to keep track of where my quilts end up!

Lots of ideas for the next year. Stacks of fabric that have been simmering on the counters for months and months and need a little bit of attention. Mostly I just intend to quilt the things that I find interesting without getting too far into the weeds with those pesky squirrels! There are 5 or 6 open-ended quilt projects that will hopefully get wrapped up and around and around we go. I loved diving into the orphan blocks totes and intend to try that some more of that. Adhoc. Improv. is definitely still a happening thing and umm..., there is a scrap bin monster that just has to be addressed soon. No ifs ands or buts about it! Taking up way too much room over there in the corner of my quilt room.*sigh Oh, and don't forget about those oh-so-tempting QAL's popping up all over blogland. Probably gonna join in on with the Unconventional & Unexpected one and also, Lori's String Quiltalong. Sounds like a good start to me!

Simple Blocks

I like working with simple blocks occasionally. What an easy way to get into a comfortable 'zone' and just play with our fabrics. I finally found a use for my one itty piece of Liberty fabric too. And to think I started out quilting years ago thinking I'd never buy fabric that cost more than Walmart prices!

Chain piecing in sets of four...

Oh my. How times have changed! I wondered about the mix of greens in these blocks, but the more they sit on the wall and simmer, the more I really, really like them.

Letting the 9-patches simmer for awhile

Hmm.. I wonder if nature might be playing a part in my color selection? This is a picture of the hill directly behind our house. It's covered with weeds and grasses this year with huge pink/purpley patches of wildflowers higher up on the hill. They say it will take almost five years for the native sagebrush to come back anywhere near as plentiful as it was before. Some people don't like sagebrush, but it helps tremendously to lesson the chances of having severe flash floods. We just need to get some trees growing again this year. The work just never ends!

The view from behind our house

Next up, I'm going to put triangles of pink fabric on the 9-patch blocks so they will be on point. It seems like an awful lot of pink, but since they will be the every-other-blocks for the mini cake stands, I think they will hold up nicely to the pressure!

A Quick Little Finish

There's a fun spring blog hop going on over at Celebrate Hand Quilting this week! If you're at all interested in hand quilting, you need to check it out and cheer these wonderful quilters on.  Hand quilting is oftentimes a very s.l.o.w. process which means posting about it constantly can start feeling very repetitive! My last posts about hand quilting were on Sunday and then probably the Sunday before. I'm obviously in a rut here.*wink

'Sew Charming'

Anyway, today is the day that I finished up my scrappy little 9-patch made from orphan blocks!  All it needs is a label and then a gift bag too because I decided it really belonged to someone else instead of me. (No matter how much I would love to drool on it during car trips.)  Oh who am I kidding.  From the start it was destined to go to a very special person and I knew it all along.

Looking very cheerful!

This person doesn't even know that I have a quilt blog so it's pretty safe to blog about it now. I think! You know how some people don't even realize that quilting is a BIG DEAL in your life even though the quilts are overflowing from every corner of your house?  That's okay.  I forgive them for their disinterest if they'll forgive me my disinterest in their goat, genealogy (sorry mom), running, coupons, etc. etc. obsessions.  I totally understand where the glazed-over looks come from as I'm susceptible to them myself at times!

And a quick peek at the back.

I desperately hope think this young lady will appreciate the quilt even though she doesn't enjoy the craft herself.  I'd say a home schooling graduation party is just as important as a public high school one wouldn't you?

And once again, I'd like to link up to A Sentimental Quilter and say Thank You! for sharing pictures of the beautiful springtime quilt.  Great inspiration to me for this quilt and as always, a wonderful opportunity to see many quilts that I would otherwise never be exposed to in my little community!

Basket Medallion Border Work and Orphan Block Fun

I have the Flower Pot basket border almost ready to sew onto the Basket Medallion quilt now.  All four border units are sewn together and just basically waiting on me to make a decision about the fabric for the coping border.  Maybe another striped fabric?  While it's true that I don't want all my quilts to start looking like identical twins, I am actually considering using the same sashing fabric I used in this quilt.

Flower Pot basket blocks ready for border

It's hard to see in the pictures, but these mixed brown fabrics are really rich and dreamy looking compared to the paler yellows used in the quilt.  I was a little worried about how some of the fabrics would look up next to the reds, but it's all behaving very well together.*whew  Kind of makes me want a Hershey bar for afternoon snack though!

All 4 borders ready to go...

Then I got a bright idea about those leftover 9-patches that kept catching the corner of my eye every time I ironed something.  Good tip for the future:  Keep orphan blocks in a clear Ziploc just out of plain sight, but where you can still see tiny little glimpses of them. Very alluring with all that potential greatness!

A slight diversion of plans

I somehow went a bit crazy and ended up with way too many of these blocks back when I was working on this Material Obsession quilt.  Me and 9-patches?  Well, I don't think we quite know when to quit.

36 scrappy blocks of goodness

They quickly sewed together into a nice little stack of goodness which had me positively rubbing my hands in glee!  Amazing how fast blocks can go together when you don't have to bother with cutting fabric.  Then I had to dig around and find a good fabric to frame the blocks and make sure they didn't all mush together.  Maybe I'm getting too reliant on sashing lately?  There was a time I refused to have any whatsoever in my quilts....

Going together very fast!

Anyway, I want to reassure you that I haven't forgotten any the projects on my LIST.  Those of you who like to practice project monogomy and get irritated by all this hop, skip, jumping around, this is just a very slight diversion.  Nothing important at all.*wink