Tag Archives: goals

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Once again, I finished 5 projects off my goal list for last quarter. Three baby quilts, my oldest WIP, and I helped my daughter finish her first quilt.

Moving forward, there are a lot of projects I really want done right now. I have a couple swaps coming due this month. Plus submissions to finish for QuiltCon. Plus my kids' bed quilts. Plus holiday gifts. Okay, I'm gonna just throw this out there. I'm gonna finish TWELVE quilts this quarter. Go big or go home! ;-) If you need me, I'll be in my sewing room. (By the way: Eek! I'm up to 33 WIPs!) I also want to spend some time thinking about passing on some WIPs that I'm not as in love with anymore. It would be good to start the year fresh heading into 2017.

Quilts

  1. Disney Rug Mug. Shipping real soon. 
  2. Heather Ross Mini Quilt. Shipping first week in November.
  3. Heather Ross Mini Mini Quilt. Shipping first week in November.
  4. Striped Quilt (my daughter's second quilt). I just need to help her get the binding on. 
  5. Creative HST project from Jeni Baker's class at QuiltCon. I'm close to 144 units. Here are some of them.
  6. 9-Patch Challenge for QuiltCon. Designed. Fabric purchased.
  7. Michael Miller Fabric Challenge for QuiltCon. Fabric selected.
  8. Star Light Star Dark. With Quilty Habit. I'm having a lot of fun quilting this one! It's 25% quilted.
  9. Very Hungry Caterpillar twin quilt. Same pattern as Caterpillar Fizz. Finished quilt top.
  10. DONE. Quilt my 6-year-old son's most recent quilt top and help him bind it. He's making a twin sized bed quilt for his sister.
  11. In the Middle quilt. From The Bee Hive #beehiveswarmtisha.
  12. Cotton & Steel (and low volume) HST Quilt.
  13. Meadow Mystery. With Meadow Mist Designs. Join us!
  14. Ocean quilt for my daughter. This was take one on appliqué and my blue fabrics bled. :-(
  15. Midnight Mystery Quilt. Finished Quilt top. 
  16. Color Strata Quilt. My stratas are made. 
  17. Patchwork City Metro Area Quilt. 
  18. Little Letters in Blues/Greens Quilt. I might need to change gears on these two to make them faster finishes.
  19. Little Letters in Brights Quilt.
  20. Very Hungry Caterpillar small lap quilt. Quilt top finished.
  21. Batik SCVQA philanthropy quilt. I just need to quilt it.
  22. Roman Stripez with butterfly backing. Some blocks done. (see #23)
  23. 2nd Roman Stripez.
  24. Memory House Vol. 1 Quilt (2 houses complete) 
  25. Swoon Quilt. 
  26. Primary mini quilt. Same pattern as my Cotton & Steel mini swap. Hoping to get better at adding those bias edge triangles to finish it. 
  27. Rainbow Chain. The pattern is Autumn Chain from The Bee Hive quilts. 
  28. My Floating Squares improv project. (from The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood.)
  29. Rainbow Remix from Rebecca Bryan's class at Quiltcon. Blocks are all done. Next up, the big job of piecing together irregular blocks.
  30. Wonky Cross quilt from Rossie Hutchinson's class at QuiltCon. I added a second palette of fabric that I thought worked with the first. Here are the blocks I've completed so far.
  31. Quartered Log Cabin quilt from Rossie Hutchinson's class at QuiltCon. 
  32. Purple Royalty quilt. 
  33. La Passacaglia. No way I'm finishing this anytime soon, but including it so my list is complete. 

Other Sewing

  1. Zippered Pouch with my EPP hexies from Johanna Masko's EPP class at QuiltCon.
  2. Frog shirt for my son. Bowling Shirt (pattern by Scientific Seamstress). 
  3. Winnie the Pooh Skirt/Shorts for my daughter.

Stats: I love data. I think I'll try to start showing the following graphically, buy I think it's a great metric for seeing my progress and not feeling like my lengthy WIP list is solely a bunch of languishing, forgotten projects. Those 20 that are in progress... many are much farther along. I promise.

  • Planning Stages (pre-fabric pull): 4 (Q1), 0 (Q2), 2 (Q3), 0 (Q4)
  • Fabric Pulled: 1 (Q1), 1 (Q2), 2 (Q3), 2 (Q4)
  • Fabric Cut: 1 (Q1), 0 (Q2), 0 (Q3), 2 (Q4)
  • Piecing in Progress: 15 (Q1), 20 (Q2), 20 (Q3), 21 (Q4)
  • Quilt Top Completed: 7 (Q1), 9 (Q2), 7 (Q3), 7 (Q4)
  • Quilted: 0 (Q1), 0 (Q2), 0 (Q3), 1 (Q4)

Bucket List: Because I need more projects, right?

  1. Triangle Squared quilt.
  2. Equilateral triangle quilt, perhaps Chopsticks pattern.
  3. Raspberry Kiss lap quilt.
  4. Technicolor Galaxy.
  5. Polaroid quilt.
  6. Chopsticks quilt.
  7. Pirate Quilt. (I have fabric, but no firm plan on design yet.)
  8. Leah Day's Dancing Butterflies to develop my free motion quilting. (I joined, but never... um... started.)
  9. More Mini Mini Quilt Swaps on IG.

I'm linking up to the Q4 Finish-A-Long. Thank you to all the co-hosts for this year! I'm very thankful for Finish-A-Long helping me stay organized and motivated.

Thank you for visiting!

2016 Finish-A-Long

Things I Make

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Last quarter I finished 13 of the 36 projects on my Q4 WIP list and made progress on many others. I axed a couple projects and added eight (I think, I may have lost track) new quilts to the list. It really helps me to have a list that I can look at. I like having it all written out here, even though I recognize that this is an overwhelming list. The beginning of the quilt list (until about #11) is in priority order. I'm going to try to finish one old quilt per month. 2004 baseball quilt, I'm looking at you. (Maybe that one and the other eleven projects that have been on this list for over a year).

Quilts

  1. My safari animal baby quilt. I've started graffiti quilting on it.
  2. Very Hungry Caterpillar twin quilt. Quilt top is complete, backing fabric is washed. Somehow I missed a picture of this one. Just look at #16 and think "twin sized."
  3. Midnight Mystery Quilt. Blocks are just about done. Today we get the directions for the final assembly.
  4. Wizard of Oz baby quilt. I have some fabric orders headed my way and a general idea in my head. My sister is expecting a baby in March. Nothin' like a deadline. ;-)
  5. Rainbow Mini Swap (Round 2). I have a plan. It involves lots of paper piecing. I showed off the fabrics I'm using in yesterday's post.
  6. Rainbow Mini Swap mug rug. Using the same paper piecing pattern as above.
  7. Patchwork City Mini Mini for Mary. Here's my initial fabric pull (minus my feature fabric that I'd like to keep hidden for now).
  8. 2004 Baseball Quilt. Quilt top is just about done for the initial plan... but I think I'll have to do something to make it larger than I was originally planning.
  9. Color Strata Quilt. Class on January 26th.
  10. Cotton & Steel (and low volume) Quilt (I have a HST plan... with these 5" squares) 
  11. Patchwork City Metro Area Quilt. I love these blocks, but they do take some time. This project has been on the back burner far too long. Here are a couple of my six "finished" blocks. I really need to get the sashing on them.
  12. Little Letters in Blues/Greens Quilt. These look so close to being done, right? Except that the sashing has little corner stones so there is a fair amount of piecing still necessary before I have a finished quilt top.
  13. Little Letters in Brights Quilt.
  14. Very Hungry Caterpillar doll/mini quilt. Quilt top finished.
  15. Very Hungry Caterpillar baby quilt. Quilt top finished.
  16. Very Hungry Caterpillar small lap quilt. Quilt top finished.
  17. Ocean quilt for my daughter. I still need to make a final plan for how I'm adding the appliqué animals to her quilt. She's 3 1/2 and the poor girl doesn't have a quilt of her own yet. She has, however, called dibs on the Safari quilt in #1.
  18. Batik SCVQA philanthropy quilt. I just need to quilt it.
  19. Roman Stripez with butterfly backing. Some blocks done. (see #20)
  20. Roman Stripez with turtle backing.
  21. Memory House Vol. 1 Quilt (2 houses complete) 
  22. Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along (first 3 sets of blocks done)
  23. Monster Quilt (first applique block in progress)
  24. Swoon Quilt (finished my first block, next two are in progress) 
  25. Primary mini quilt. Same pattern as my Cotton & Steel mini swap. Hoping to get better at adding those bias edge triangles to finish it. 
  26. Rainbow Simply Woven lap quilt with bee blocks from Stash Bee. I need to decide how big I want this to be and how many additional blocks I'll be making for myself.
  27. Rainbow Chain. My bee quilt for this month's Bee Hive, swarm Tisha. Here are my two sample blocks. The pattern is Autumn Chain.
  28. My Floating Squares improv project. (from The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood.)
  29. Angel mini quilt. Pattern and fabric selected. Certainly not the lowest priority. :-)

 

Other Sewing

  1. Frog shirt for my son. Bowling Shirt (pattern by Scientific Seamstress). 
  2. Winnie the Pooh Skirt/Shorts for my daughter.

 

Stats: You can see that I got a bunch of projects moved forward from the fabric pull step, most were turned into completed tops or completed quilts. Right now I have a bunch of quilt tops. I've started quilting R's Pattern. Then I'd like to get my son's Very Hungry Caterpillar bed quilt and my Midnight Mystery quilts quilted soon.

  • Planning Stages (pre-fabric pull): 2 (Q3), 1 (Q4), 4 (Q1)
  • Fabric Pulled: 10 (Q3), 7 (Q4), 1 (Q1)
  • Fabric Cut: 6 (Q3), 3 (Q4), 1 (Q1)
  • Piecing in Progress: 14 (Q3), 19 (Q4), 15 (Q1)
  • Quilt Top Completed: 3 (Q3), 5 (Q4), 7 (Q1)
  • Quilted: 0 (Q3), 1 (Q4), 0 (Q1)

Bucket List: Because I need more projects, right?

  1. Triangle Squared quilt.
  2. Equilateral triangle quilt, perhaps Chopsticks pattern.
  3. Raspberry Kiss lap quilt.
  4. Technicolor Galaxy.
  5. Polaroid quilt.
  6. Chopsticks quilt.
  7. Pirate Quilt. (I have fabric, but no firm plan on design yet.)
  8. Leah Day's Dancing Butterflies to develop my free motion quilting. (I joined at the start of the year, but never... um... started.)
  9. More Mini Mini Quilt Swaps on IG.

I'm linking up to the Q1 Finish-A-Long. Thank you to all the co-hosts for this year! I'm very thankful for Finish-A-Long helping me stay organized and motivated.

Thank you for visiting!

2016 Finish-A-Long

Things I Make

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I've read a lot of goal posts from friends' blogs and others I've found through Yvonne's 2016 Planning Linky Party as I've chipped away at writing this post this week. I really admire those of you with nice concise lists or just one big goal. I think part of the trouble with writing it all down for me is that I want to do all the things!

One realization for me this week is that just because it's a 2016 goal, it doesn't need to be implemented starting in January. I'll obviously have to pick and choose my priorities out of my endless list of ideas as I move into 2016, just as I always have to decide what my priorities are on my seemingly endless WIP list. ;-) Last year I wanted balance. (I still do.) A stressful personal year made that hard, but throughout I kept sewing. It's something I do to help achieve balance in my life. I'm sorely behind on (many things in life, including) blog reading and it's been great to catch up this month with some bloggers that I follow. In recent months I feel like I've made some quilty acquaintances into quilty friends. That feels great. I'm really thankful for all the different ways I'm connecting with people in the quilting world.

My Swoon quilt is one project that I'm super excited to continue working on in 2016:

Looking back at my 2015 goals helps me realize how far I've come in a year as a quilter and a blogger. Despite the "I didn'ts" in my review of those goals, I feel really great about everything that I did do.

I wanted to cut my WIP list in half. I didn't. But... of the 24 items on the list in January 2015, I've finished ten of them. Woo hoo! That included a king-sized quilt for our bed that wasn't even cut out yet, and at least a couple projects that had been in the works for years. I also made significant progress on three of the others, including my oldest WIP (started in 2004). Unfortunately (not really), I started a bunch of other projects I was excited about, so my list is still long. It's just more full of stuff I'm fired up to work on. I count that as a win, though I think I'd still like to have fewer items on the WIP list in general. In 2016, I want to finish one WIP per month (from the current list).

I finished 24 quilts this year, including a bunch for swaps. To compare, I finished nine in 2014. Speaking of swaps. I love them. They are great fun. I participated in fourteen(!) in 2015, including hosting the Halloween Mini Swap. They really pushed me to create things that were new and challenging to me. I strongly encourage you to try one out. But I'll be dialing back the swapping for myself in 2016. (I'm only signed up for one at the moment.)

Quilting Bees were great fun this year (and added one, and soon a second, WIP to the list). I'll be continuing in 2016 with The Bee Hive as well as do. Good Stitches, a charity bee.

As for Block of the Months... I never even started Leah Day's Dancing Butterflies (oops!) and I'm way behind on Intrepid Thread's Patchwork City Metro Area BOM. However, I'm super excited about getting back to the Metro City project and it will be an epicly awesome finish when I get it done. In 2016. Or, let's be real, maybe 2017.

I never got around to sewing with knits, but I did do a number of zipper pouches and even buttons and buttonholes for my latest shirt for my son. I'm pleased to have developed some of my non-quilting sewing skills this year.

I designed mini quilts for a few of my swaps and put out two blog tutorials: the Watermelon Plate block and the mini charm Zig Zag Placemats. These were both for blog hops and I participated in a few others, including Charm Dash and the 2015 New Quilt Bloggers hop.

I taught my five year old son to quilt. He finished three quilts this year: Jungle of Animals, Rainbow Swift and House on the Hill.

 

2016. Connect. Inspire. Create.

Here's some of what I'm thinking of moving forward.

Sew daily. 'Nuf said.

Blog daily. No, not a blog post a day, but progress for the blog daily. There are a lot of ways to achieve that: planning, photography, draft writing, design work, etc.

Read blogs more regularly. In my very stressful year, this was one of the things that went. Lately I've gotten to do a bit more blog reading and realized how much I've missed it. Question: How do you keep up with reading your favorite blogs?

Tutorials and patterns. I'm super excited about Cheryl's Pattern Writing Blog Series starting in January. I find this very timely as it's one of the things that didn't happen for me this year. I did do some design work, but it didn't translate into any finished patterns.

Pattern Writing Blog Series

 

Brush up my technical design skills. In an effort to support my pattern writing goals, I think I'll be dusting off a copy of InDesign and relearning what I once knew (from teaching yearbook in 2002-2006). Thanks to Daisy of Ants to Sugar I recently fired up Illustrator for the first time. I should also spend some real time learning EQ7 since so many quilters love it, but it just hasn't clicked for me yet.

Linky parties. Get back in the routine of linking up as well as host my own linky parties. Now to settle on which of my three ideas to go with first.

Use what I've got. I've grown my stash in the last year. I'll be making a concerted effort to design and create from my stash. No grand declarations about not buying fabric, but you may be seeing lots of pieced backings and scrappy bindings this year. ;-)

Schedule. I always think, "next month doesn't look so busy" when looking ahead on the calendar, but darn if it isn't just all filled up nearly as soon as I turn the page for the new month. I think one of the ways I'll be working to achieve my goals in the coming year will be to schedule time for them. Like actually carve out and protect that space on my calendar. This whole "trying to fit it in" thing isn't working as well as I'd like it to. :-)

Tweak my blog design. Through the help of some peer critiques from the New Bloggers group, I improved the look of the blog this year, but there are more things I'd like to achieve. A logo and new blog header, for one (er, two). I've started a style sheet that I plan to develop and in general I'd like to work on branding my blog.

Thank you for visiting and Happy New Year!

I'm linking up with Yvonne's 2016 Planning Linky Party.