Easy as 1, 2, 3...

I've been busily working on a few quilts... three of them.  You may recall that back in December I had written about how I disliked having multiple quilts/projects going at one time.( I have a problem )  In other areas of life I can easily multi-task, but not when it comes to my time in my studio.

So a couple weeks ago I needed to begin another t-shirt quilt featuring some Colorado Rockies T's.  I will be donating it to the TSJC Educational Foundation annual dinner/silent auction.  I pulled out all of the shirts and began cutting.  Since Todd Helton is to be the guest speaker I began a hunt for a Helton shirt to be included in the quilt...  I had a friend hunting for one in Colorado Springs and when that ended unsuccessfully I hit e-bay.  Success!  But I still needed to wait...

I had unfinished project.  Ugh.

While visiting friends in Texas in January I brought home a collection of fabric.  There were Batik dyed fabrics from Nigera and some beautiful pieces from India (I think) among a variety of other fabrics and unfinished projects.  The previous owner of the collection passed on to me that she had intended one of them for her husband. It was basically done, except for the borders.  I discovered that the border fabric was also one of the beautifully designed fabrics from India that one of her sons picked up for her while working there.

 

It appeared that the center portion was actually a printed cotton shower curtain since there were a few "blocks" that had been cut off (possibly with the intention of becoming pillows?) and one of them still had the top part with the place for inserting hooks to hang it.  Ingenious idea actually.  While visiting with our friends we learned a bit about Jack's dad, the intended recipient of this quilt, and that he loved ducks. 

 

It didn't take much to finish the top.  And then I had the brilliant idea that I would free-motion quilt it to look like ripples on the water from the ducks swimming.  Never have I done such close quilting before... It seemed to take forever! And it used so much more thread than I usually use... (but none the less, I have three more empty spools for my count of spools for 2015.)

 

Project #1 done!  And I was still waiting for the Helton shirt...

 

While this wasn't really a UFO, I knew that the quilt top would go together quickly since it was just the checker board strip that needed to be created...  In Project #2 I used one of the pieces from Nigeria in a more modern style than I typically am drawn to.  This fabric had a large print on it and it really needed to be left as complete as possible...

 

 

It simply would not have done justice to the fabric to make it into smaller pieces - the print would have simply been lost.  I hope that Jamie likes it!

 

But before #2 was done I received the Helton shirt.  I was anxious to get started since the fundraising dinner was quickly approaching, but needed to finish the binding on the Nigerian quilt.  You can bet that as soon as the last stitch was in, I moved on quickly!

 

This quilt was graced with border fabric from Nigeria!  It was the perfect color...

 

Yes?!?

 

So, while I was a bit of a nervous wreck and undecided about what to do next with three UFO's, I have come out successful and ready to move on to the next project.

 

What WILL it be???

 

 

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