Organizing UFO's, etc.

I've gotten very little sewing done the past 2 weeks.  I was preparing a lecture for my little quilt guild about 'My Quilting Journey'.  The meeting was February 7th.  I prepared a trunk show with more than 20 quilty things to show.  Problem was, when I went to pull everything out, I couldn't find 3 of the quilts.  They were supposed to be on the guest bedroom bed, but we'd done a bed swap early in January, and the quilts got moved.  Usually, they would be stored in the sewing room closet (where they belong) but I knew they hadn't gotten there yet.  After looking all over for the quilts, I finally decided I had to check the sewing room closet for them.

Let me explain about my sewing room closet.  It is the largest closet in the house, but, it is also where everything is dumped whenever someone comes for a visit, or when I need to get stuff out of my sewing room, etc.  When my grandkids were here last time, you couldn't even get in the door of the closet, it was piled so full of stuff (had to make room for 5 extra people in multiple rooms).  Very Scary!  Well, I started pulling everything out of that closet until it finally looked like this.

almost empty closet

The closet looks much better than that photo now, thank goodness.  By the way, I finally found the missing quilts in hubby's office, hidden in an IKEA bag.

Well, since everything from the closet (at least the middle of the floor) was out, I could finally get in there to see if I could find missing UFO's for my little quilt guild's UFO challenge this year.  I decided to catalog all the UFO's I have.  Oh My!  I found so many UFO's that I had totally forgotten about, along with some of the ones that I had listed already.

For the UFO Challenge, we are supposed to list 12 UFO's.  Since I knew I had so many UFO's, I listed the original 12, and added a Bonus UFO to each month.  Some of those UFO's were in the closet, some I still haven't found (yet).  I listed what was in the closet, and re-organized it, then started in my sewing room.  This is a very s-l-o-w project so far, since I'm listing the UFO, what's been done so far, and where it is located (ex: 2015 Modern TOBE (Kona Ash) – 30 blocks (10.5”) and ‘extra’ parts to make more blocks (no pattern, maybe saved on computer somewhere???) and extra Kona Ash material, in 2 plastic drawers in corner of closet)

Several of the UFO's on my list are from block exchanges.  I pulled all of those out, and figured out that I had almost enough exchange blocks to make a quilt for my new king sized bed.  I'd found a quilt I liked, using Half Square Triangles and 4 Patch blocks (two of the most common exchange blocks) and drafted a quilt to fit.

Inspiration quilt (too small)

draft idea, but can't use those borders (too much math)

what I drafted

As soon as I drafted that pattern, I found more TOBE blocks.  I have more than enough to make the full quilt and have lots left over.  Woohoo!  (I found even more blocks yesterday, too).

I'm still cataloging UFO's, but I'm up to 66 UFO's so far. As I go along, I'm pulling out things to put on the raffle table for the two different TOGA's (Treadle On Gathering & Academy's) I'll be attending in the next few months. 

Westley, the puppy, is growing like a weed!  He is such a good puppy.  He loves to play with Ziva, our Alaskan Malamute.  Here is a short video of them playing with each other (and my son).

My birthday was earlier this month.  Hubby got me an Ultrasonic Cleaner that I had been wanting, to help clean the removable parts of sewing machines.  I also got a book, The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff.  This book will be great for the Attachment TOBE later this year.

I've also found more attachments and added them to my list I'm working on. I had to ask Mary (from Treadle On) what these were.  Mary is a wealth of information on attachments.  She even knew what machine these attachments go to.

White Hemstitcher

White quilting foot.

For my UFO Challenge from January, I got a late start on the Bonus UFO's.  I was late since I spent my time preparing the 'My Quilting Journey' lecture instead of working on these.  Way back, about 15 years ago, I got an idea for a table runner at a quilt shop that doesn't even exist anymore (Tammy Tadd Design's Quilt Shop).  I'd made 8 placemats and 3 different table runners using this idea (no pattern).  One table runner I finished years ago, quilting spiderwebs by hand.  One table runner was thread basted, but I hadn't started quilting it.  The rest were waiting to be basted and quilted.  Well, I decided that I was NOT going to quilt more spiderwebs on these (too much work) and decided to spray baste them and straight line quilt these.  The quilting is very simple, and I spray basted them and quilted them February 1st (only a day late).  Since I want these out of my sewing room (I already have enough UFO's in there), I made binding for them yesterday and stitched it onto one side of the placemats and last 2 table runners.  I'll glue baste the bindings down and stitch the last part by machine, too, just so that I can get them done.  We don't have to finish our UFO's each month (thank goodness), we just have to work on them.

As soon as I finish this post, I plan on starting on that king sized quilt I drafted.  Hopefully all those exchange blocks are sized correctly, so that I can spend my time sewing, not trimming blocks.  

How many UFO's do YOU have????