I'm participating in a daily blog challenge sponsored by Cheryl Sleboda of muppin.com - check the link below for details!
On day 5 of the blog challenge I caught up with the two days I missed; so today I'm working on the prompt for day 5 and today, day 6! Let's get to it!
My First Project
My first quilt was a t-shirt quilt. I came to sewing by way of clothing and costumes so I eased into quilting by using clothing. I wish I could say the above picture is the finished project, however my first quilting experience had a long-term sad story. I made every quilting mistake one can make as a quilter. I used a 5/8" seam instead of a 1/4" seam, which isn't a terrible mistake because nobody saw it. But I also used a Walmart brand flat sheet for my backing. I now know that the thread count differs with quilting cotton. Other mistakes include not adhering to batting rules. Each batting comes with directions for how far apart stitching should be to avoid pull-apart. I tied my t-shirt quilt - something I don't recommend doing for t-shirt quilts because the fabric is heavy - but my ties were too far apart, and the batting bunched up in the middle. On top of that, the fusible interfacing didn't go to the edge of each t-shirt block; i.e. some of the stitching wasn't stabilized.
Consequently, all these mistakes caused the quilt to fall apart. I had to remove the
backing, remove the batting, unpeel all the stabilizer and re-make the quilt. So what you see above is the second iteration of my first quilt. The second time around I followed the rules and there's beautiful machine quilting. It was a good learning experience - both times.
Today my first project sits in my cedar chest, preserving all the t-shirts and memories from my high school Latin club adventures. Aut viam invenium aut faciam. I definitely made my own way into the quilting world with this treasure!
The Current State of my WIPs
I have no idea which UFO is the oldest, so I'll use this time to review my WIP challenge for 2020. American Patchwork and Quilting sponsors a UFO challenge at the beginning of each year as a way to help us quilters get things done. They create a downloadable/printable table to fill in twelve work-in-progresses; each month they pick a number. And in theory, that's the project you work on (and hopefully finish) during the month.
Let's see where I stand for the year…
I included a 13th quilt because I realized, after filling it in, that I forgot to include a charity quilt for the guild. (Tip for any beginning longarmers - contact your local quilt guilds for charity tops to be quilted; it's a great way to practice new techniques and give back to the community at the same time!)
Seven of the thirteen projects are finished, so I'm batting (get it - that's a baseball AND quilting pun) over 50%. And technically, number eleven is two projects; one is finished...we don't speak of the second project. It got put back in a box. And pushed to the back of the closet. If I can get some longarm rental time in before Christmas, I might be able to get the Celtic Quilt (#3) and the Modern Sampler (#7) finished before the end of the year too. But I do have three quilts outside of this list ready for the longarm too, so we'll see.
Good news is I have a good list of UFOs ready for next year's challenge. And all-in-all, I'm pretty pleased with how much I've managed to accomplish on my UFOs. I think next year I'll also keep track of new quilt tops I create and finish in addition to my UFOs projects.
Well I better get back to my quilt lab... I have things to finish. Until tomorrow!
Cynthia
Below are a few links to places mentioned above. Enjoy! (I receive no money/product from clicking these links; they're simple included for your enjoyment.)
December Blog Challenge:
American Patchwork and Quilting 2020 UFO Challenge: