I have been machine quilting on the Split-9 Patch quilt.  The quilting was started late last year, but it had to be put aside to make a quilt for a Christmas gift. I am practicing feathers in the light portions and let me just say that I need more practice.  The feather look pretty good – from 5 feet away.

While I am quilting, I have been thinking about UFOs.  Recently there have been quite a few blog posts regarding UFOs with a lot of good ideas for getting control of unfinished projects.

A year ago I decided on these rules.

1) A quilt top is not a UFO.  However, a quilt sandwich is.

2) Any quilt project started has to be completed – either as a top or a finished bound quilt.

3) UFOs make good leader/ender projects.

4) Try to alternate a new project with an older one.

My goal is to slowly finish my UFOs without adding any new ones.  So following these rules and since I had just completed a new project, UFO Easy Street is on the design wall.

I think this quilt became a UFO because of the size and the length of time it took to sew one block.  So I decided to make this quilt twin-sized so the layout will be 3 x 4 instead of 4 x 4.  There will be leftover units, but that is okay.

I have been sewing sub-units together and then putting the block together as a 9 patch.  My progress seems much faster doing it this way.

When this top is all together, I plan on quilting three tops – Easy Street, Card Tricks Revolt and Bermuda Sunrise.  That should keep me busy for a while.

Happy Quilting!

Marlene

Here is the completed quilt top.  I had such a hard time deciding on a border and for the longest time I thought that the first inner border needed to be a blue/purple batik.  However after talking to my quilting buddy Lucy, I realized that I was limiting my options.   After some deliberation, I settled on this gold oriental floral print which lightens the whole top.

I know how I want to quilt this top and hopefully, it will be a finished quilt later this year.

Marlene

I have pulled out an UFO – notice I didn’t say my oldest UFO – and am determined to get this quilt completed.This is an X-Block pattern called Mo’s Basket.  I am very pleased with the woven effect of the quilt middle, but what to do with the borders?  I don’t have enough of the blue/purple batik from the middle of the quilt so I went shopping.  The strip of fabric on the right was an attempt to find some purple batik for the border, but it doesn’t work – it is too bright.  That is the reason this project has sat in a box for several years.

Finally I decided to go a whole different route and found some gold floral oriental print for the inner border.  There should be enough scraps left to do a pieced border like the one on the Challenge Quilt 2012.

One thing I do know is that this is not going back into a box, but will be completely finished – quilted and bound before I start another project.

Marlene