Sunday, September 19, 2010

One UFO down

A UFO is an UnFinished Object in the quilting world. I have a lot of them. Back in January my resolution was to make a list and attack them one at a time. Brian was out of work, I had a stack of things to do, and nothing new needed to buy. I sorted them into piles, and there they sat. I worked on one knitting project for awhile, but honestly, boredom set in, and I got busy with other things. SO, then I figured I would work on things this summer, but instead I was working on a class, and literally just hanging out with my kids.


Lots of excuses right? A few weeks ago, one specific project kept getting in my way. I have a very messy drafting table with my sewing machine on it, and I had to keep shifting this project around to get it out of my way. It was the jean quilt. I had a couple pairs of my Dad's old jeans, mine, Brian's, and some the girls had outgrown. I spent the last two weekends using my down time to purposefully cut the jeans up into pieces so I could at least get them out of the way. Then I cut the flannel while I was at it thinking I could put the whole quilt in a bag and at least it would be smaller. Last weekend I spent an afternoon to test out my idea (I was making this from a picture, but no directions), and then I looked up to find half of it finished. Yesterday, I finished the rest of it.
The idea came from a website where they made a travel quilt and put patches on it from all of the different places they visited. There's was made out of polarfleece, I wanted mine out of blue jeans. I only used family jeans. I matched up the jeans and the flannel backing, and sewed the seam to the next square of denim and flannel. I left the seams exposed so they could fray. No batting in between because the denim was heavy enough, and I was sewing through 4 layers at a time anyway. I used 6 inch squares, but then the adult pockets were too big to be used. I saved those, used up the kid pockets, and if I ever make another one I'll use the adult pockets and a bigger square. I had a few squares left over, as well as the extra pockets, which did go into a bag, but I used every inch of flannel, so I'm counting this UFO checked off. WOO HOO!
Today we're cutting out T-Rex's African animal print quilt (crossing fingers it doesn't look like a hot mess when we're finished), and I'll start quilting the santa quilt because if I FOCUS it should only take a week or two, and lets be honest...... I need it ready by Thanksgiving to use for my holiday decorating. Maybe I'm getting back my quilting juju.

3 comments:

Holly said...

looks cool

Anonymous said...

This is awesome! I made a denim quilt for my niece some years ago and she still uses it -- it weighs about 50 pounds and I remember how tired my fingers were by the end of it. Sewing through all that denim is exhausting, even by machine.

As far as the UFOs go, yeah, that goal has been a big fail on my part as well. I think I only finished one or two this whole year. Still three months left but...I guess it can be a goal for next year as well.

Anonymous said...

Lovely. Gives me inspiration to pick-up the piled projects.