Starting vs Finishing

You'd think being under stay-at-home orders I'd find time to blog. Sadly that hasn't been the case. I have been having fun playing with fabric combinations though. These are potential new quilts. Bright. Happy. Can't wait to start these.

I fell out of the blogging routine the year my daughter got married. Three years ago next month. I managed one post a month for the last 2 years but somehow this year it just completely dropped off. During that time I have been quilting. Really. I have. Just check out my Instagram @springleafstudios for quilting and my other IG account @springleafcolor for color inspiration.

It finally dawned on me that one of the biggest reasons I haven't kept up with blogging is because I tend to only write about finished quilts. And if you know me even a little, you know finishing isn't my strong point. I'm much much better at starting.

So instead of waiting for the next finish, I'm sharing where things are at the moment. Today. May 2020.

I have two new tops and the backing ready to send out for quilting. These two were both pieced during the Covid-19 quarantine and I'm anxious to finish them.

I also made a quarantine quilt I'm calling Looking on the Bright Side. Here's a portion of it. I'm not happy with the border so it's under contemplation. More later once I resolve what I want to do with it.

I have five quilts waiting for binding. Some of them have been quilted for a year. The binding is prepared. I even do most all my binding by machine now. What can I say? No good reason they aren't done. Top quilt here has priority because it's my new favorite. It's also the newest top to be quilted. Blog post soon I promise.

I have many projects in various stages of being cut or ready to piece. One of the top ones was for the 100 day project. I cut the circles and sewed the background blocks in anticipation of appliqueing a circle every day. Didn't happen. I don't think I'm cut out to do one small thing a day. I tend to be all or nothing.

The biggest UFO is my bento box quilt started as a demonstration for the QAYG presentation I did for my guild. That was in 2018! Once the presentation was over it was out of sight out of mind. But since my daughter claimed this one, I finally got back to it earlier this year. I'm doing spiral quilting on each big block and love the look. 17 down and 8 more to go. Hopefully I wrote down the measurements for the joining strips. It worked perfectly for the demo. Check out the QAYG posts here to learn more.

Here's a few photos of other projects and fabric pulls. Will I finish any of these anytime soon? Or will I start something completely new?

I hope you are finding time and motivation to quilt during Covid 19. Some days are better than others for me. Some days I'm fired up and can't wait to start the next quilt. Some days I'm not motivated for anything. Most days I should simply try to finish the projects already underway. Starting vs finishing. It will be an ongoing battle for me but at least it's progress. I always feel like I'm moving forward.

How about you? Are you moving forward on projects during quarantine?

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UFOs and Fruits and Veggies

I'm a collector. I have a collection of fruit and veggies dishes that I bring out for the spring/summer season each year to add a punch of color to my decor.

And I have a huge collection of fruit and veggie fabrics. Here are just a few.

My fruit and veggie stash started years ago when the fabrics first came out. They went so well with my dishes I couldn't resist. Originally I thought I'd make a single quilt from all the different fabrics but I just couldn't see how to combine all the various colors and prints. It finally occurred to me that I could make several themed quilts instead of trying to combine all the prints.

I made a citrus one called Fresh Squeezed. It gets used at the beginning of the summer.

There's a berry one called Fresh Baked. It usually gets used around July 4th. It's the closest thing I have to a red/white/blue quilt.

And there's a salad one called Fresh Tossed. I use this one later in the summer as the veggies ripen.

Along with collecting dishes and fabrics, I also seem to collect UFOs at an unhealthy rate. Over the years there have been other fruit and veggie projects started but never completed. Four table runners plus a tomato quilt have lived in UFO limbo for years. The BoulderMQG UFO challenge for 2019 finally motivated me to finish many of those projects. The first ones finished were the table runners.

Besides the above two short runners, I finally finished this monster runner that uses most of the fruit and veggie fabrics in a sort of rainbow effect. It finished at 106" long. When not in use, I hang it in the shallow shelf unit where even more dishes live. Yes. I know. I have a lot of fruit and veggie dishes.  : )

My tomato quilt, Vine Ripe, was the most recent UFO project to be completed. Cara of Sew Colorado Quilting did the quilting using my favorite quilting pattern Trillium. This one is currently hanging in the hallway.

As part of the guild UFO challenge, I also made an effort to seriously deplete the fruit and veggie stash. I made 8 placemats using the stitch and flip QAYG method. You can read more about various QAYG methods here. Next came a bunch of cloth napkins. My initial plan was to hem the edges but without a serger it was too time consuming to press the edges under so I made double sided napkins instead. It used twice as much fabric (in this case that was a good thing) but they were much quicker to make. Just two pieces approximately 17" x 17" sewn right sides together, turned inside out, and then pressed and top-stitched around the edge. The double thickness feels nice and sturdy. I keep them in this basket near the table so we can just grab a clean one as needed. The placemats stacked below the basket are in use every day too.

The napkins and placemats put a good dent in my stash but there was still quite a bit of fabric left so I made a quilt tablecloth for the deck from some of the smaller scraps. I made 16-patch blocks using three different fabric combinations. Color + color for the inner blocks. Color + green veggie for the middle ring and finally green veggie + a green leafy print for the outer border. It was layered with a large leaf print and quilted without batting. Even without the batting it's a very durable feeling quilt due to all the seams involved in the piecing. The seams do make small things like beer bottles wobble just a little without the batting there for added padding. I'm happy to report that no beers have been spilled to date. Or maybe we haven't had enough to drink yet. I love how it adds color to the deck and sets a festive mood for eating outside.

Even with all these projects, there are still bits and chunks of fabric left. Enough to fill two boxes. You can begin to see just how big my stash was. I still have plans for some potholders, a few more napkins, and an apron.

Do you ever notice how sewing from your stash doesn't seem to make the piles any smaller. I think they replicate overnight when I'm not looking. I think fabric bunnies are involved. How does your stash grow?

Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap linky party.

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