Saturday, November 29, 2014

Takin' Care of Business: A UFO Bonanza

This year I joined the UFO ('UnFinished Objects') Club with the Carquinez Strait Stitchers: You list ten of your languishing projects and then finish one per month. Since summer, I've so far completed the following:

UFO #1: I bought these blue Tonga Batiks at the Portsmouth Fabric Company in Portsmouth, NH in 2006. I usually don't gravitate to the color blue, but these blues were just luscious. Later, a blue-and-white summer quilt pattern in a magazine caught my eye. When the piecing was finished I bought two different backing fabrics, but neither were quite right. The perfect backing finally jumped out at me while at Hawaiian Fabric Mart in Honolulu this past August. Quilted by B&B Quilting in Orland, CA using a loop-D-loop pattern with fish and starfish motifs.
UFO#1: Caribbean Blue, front.
UFO#1: Caribbean Blue, back.



UFO #2: This second UFO goes WAY BACK: It was started in a class that I took with my Mom at the Road To California Quilt Show, January 2004. This quilt was then in storage for years and is well-traveled from Boston to Hawaii and finally back to California. It is a lap quilt and was quilted by B&B Quilting in Orland, CA, using a large all-over stipple pattern.

Holly and Anita at the Road To California Quilt Show, January 2004.
UFO #2 "Road To California" finally finished, November 2014. It has a light green back and binding.
UFO #3: This past January I took a class with the Carquinez Strait Stitchers in Benicia for the first time. I had done this "twister" pattern with template once before (see "Girly Girl") and liked the effect. For this project I chose all of the fabric from the stash, and thought the Raggedy Ann panel would be cute with the heart. It is wall-hanging sized and was quilted by me, with stitch-in-the-ditch and free-motion hearts (!).
UFO #3: "Lil' Twister Heart".
UFO #4: My Mom's quilting group at the Martinez Senior Center started doing projects with this table runner pattern, and I started one too a few years ago. Now it's finally finished, and is the perfect size for the entry-way furniture. And, I had enough left over to make a little coordinating table-topper as well. I quilted both with stitch-in-the-ditch.

UFO #4: Fall table runner.
Fall table-topper.