January 2015 thoughts

I have done some blog reading here and there, enjoying posts on choices of word for the year, goals for the year and in general looking ahead plans for projects.

Last year I did lots of quilting  until around May or so, and then really slowed down or turned my attention to other creative projects.  In the fall was a great quilt retreat-it revived my resolve to finish a ufo from 2008.  That turned out to be more complicated as I could not remember the specific directions for the totally cut out paper pieced quilt top.  I found a friend who knew the method and with her help made about 10 more blocks and worked on them a bit here and there.
Yesterday was hard rains all day and I never left the house.  In fact, I never really left the sewing room.  I worked really hard for most of the day and evening ending with only 7 blocks left to sew.

This morning I picked up and finished those blocks.  However, these are really half blocks.  A total of 84 of them in fact.  The next stage is stitching these all up into final blocks.

I may have mentioned the back story on this quilt beginning and fabric selection etc.  Or maybe not.
As fellow long time quilters can understand, a lot of these fabrics are no longer favorites of the person who chose them way back then.  Most of them never were my choice in the first place.  However, I am very inclined to buy fabric of a loved one's palette even when it is as far away from mine as possible.  In this case, a lot of the fabric tab was picked up by said loved one.

  So, I find it quite funny that now, the comments are; "are you sure I picked this fabric???"  After rolling of eyes and a chuckle, I always say, oh yes...I have never been a fan of autumn colors for the most part.
I admit  some of the fabrics with red or purple I probably did not mind buying.  Some of them I had to buy to supplement what was needed to meet the needs of the pattern design.  Like neutrals.  As fast as I buy them, I use them up it seems.

So...here is a photo of the half blocks- with a limited design wall - it looks crazy messy.

Obviously, I will be stitching these together and then, I will play with those blocks that remain "favorites"- likely, I will be adding more "brighter" fabrics to lighten the overall feel of the quilt.

I won't be show the finished blocks until we come up with a final design.
This quilt is on my 2015 PMQG UFO list.  Yes, I gave in to joining to help motivate myself in finishing those neglected and long ignored quilt starts.  It was not hard to come up with 14.
This quilt is one of the oldest left on that list, though I think another 3 may actually be even older.