Old projects, new goals

I have, as part of my year-end (or is it year-beginning?) activities, taken stock of my ongoing quilting projects.

Among other things, I discovered I have far too many tops ready for quilting, but that have no backs made for them.  I am determined to make backs for these quilts and get at least some of them quilted this year.  This is part of a 'back to front' challenge at Stashbusters.  The Yahoo group associated with this site has a very active forum and some of us have determined to use up yardage purchased for backs by making tops to go with them.  Since I already have the tops, I just have to piece the backs and get them quilted.

I have decided to make tomorrow's 'open sew' day for my mini-group a day for taking one of those lengths of fabric (about 7 or 8 yards at least of gold fabric) and turning it into backs for as many quilts as I can stretch it for.

Of course this doesn't get me out from under other quilty obligations.  I was working on two BOMs last year and kept up with both of them until November, when all my plans derailed due to travel and the holidays.  So I have my November block from one of the BOMs, along with the December blocks for both BOMs to do.

One of these quilts needs a background built (from multiple fabrics), but I did manage to trace the applique motifs onto fusible web in December.  But I ran out of Wonderunder last night while tracing house and tree motifs for the borders of my log cabin quilt, so I can't trace the motifs for the December block (the upper first border) for my Woodland Creatures BOM.

I ordered another bolt of Wonderunder from Overstock.com but it won't arrive til January 10th and I will be traveling mid-January for 10 days.  No catching up for me in January.  By the end of January, I will have the lower inner border in the mail and so in February, I will have to make two border strips, in addition to the November block, which I never finished.  Gah!!!

To make things worse, I signed up for another fused BOM (Bertie's Year) which starts in January, and a Saturday Sampler quilt (also starts in January) from my LQS.  The Saturday Sampler block is pieced, thank goodness, but it has to be done by the first weekend in February or I have to pay for the second block.  Oh, my!  I will probably fall behind on the new BOM, since I won't have fusible to work with until I return from my trip the end of January.

I'm afraid my February will be a madhouse of quilty activity and I won't be able to enjoy the process while I madly try to complete various steps to various projects.

This makes me very sad, because I chose as my "inspirational word" for the year, 'JOURNEY' - because sometimes I work so hard that I forget to enjoy the journey and the process of quilting (and other things I do).

I chose the word JOURNEY, not just for enjoying the process, but for what the initial letters stand for:

J - joy (taking joy in my work)
O - organize (take 15 minutes a day to organize my life and workspace)
U - unclutter (throw away what I no longer need - not just quilting related!)
R - reduce (de-stashing fabric as much as possible - as well as losing weight)
N - nurture (myself and others!)
E - evolve (grow and develop my creativity)
Y - YES! (say YES to life and living fully)

Enjoying the journey will have to wait til March, I'm afraid, when hopefully I will be caught up and can work on things in stages and breathe.

Here's a few pics of my log cabin quilt in progress... The quilt is currently about 88x96, and will have houses  and trees appliqued all around the outside in the borders:

One block - measures about 4" square, and is paper-pieced.

Detail shot of the center of the quilt, showing some of the blocks.

The whole thing, 88x96, needs borders to be king sized.

This quilt is for my bed, so it has to be king sized when it is done.  The setting is called 'barn raising' (there are so many possible ways to put a log cabin quilt together).  I pre-cut every single log and then sorted them by color and size, put them in paper bags and drew them out one at a time so they would be randomly put together.  They call this look 'scrappy' which is what I was going for.  All the fabrics are leftovers from other quilting projects I made.  I didn't have a lot of lights, so some of those 'lights' are actually the backs of medium fabrics that were printed on lights and didn't bleed through.

Anyway - the houses and trees will be appliqued on light fabrics (now I actually own lights for backgrounds), and sewn on all 4 sides.  Someday (hopefully this year), I will get this quilt to Stovers and have them quilt it.  It is too large for my longarm, which only has a 10 foot frame.

I hope, if you have read this far, that you are having a wonderful 2014 and are enjoying your journey, quilty or otherwise.