Monday, May 26, 2008

A Rushed But Productive Day!

Today I started with many items on my To Do list. I was able to complete my list by 12:30 and then had time to finish piecing a UFO (unfinished object) top.
I started this project when I took a class with my quilt guild in February of 2002.....yes I did say it was a UFO. It's hard to believe that it has been over 6 years since I started this top. The class was named "Scrap Quilting Without The Scraps". A friend and past president of our guild, Jennifer Kay taught the class. You used fat quarters to cut out your pieces using Marti Mitchell's templates www.frommarti.com . You then moved the bottom star pieces to the top of the pile and them sewed the blocks together. It gave a scrappy look without having to piece from scraps. This was before the stack the deck books came out. Jennifer and her husband now live in NC and manufacture long arm quilting machines at http://www.thequiltingsolution.com/ .

Our quilt president issued a challenge this year to finish a UFO. We had to pick a UFO and photograph the stage it was in at that time and turn in a page with an explanation why we hadn't finished the project. We now have until September to completely finish and quilt the project. There is going to be a separate category in the quilt show for these projects. So I am almost there. Now I have to get it quilted!

That brings the next subject, my quilting studio. My current studio is our spare bedroom that my husband converted about 5 years ago, but now I want a long arm machine and my current room does not have enough room for that. So we are now in the process of converting our game room into my studio. We bought hardwood flooring, paint etc., this weekend for the project. I will have my machine by this fall, so we've got lots of work to do before the machine can come home.

Happy Quilting,

Shelia