UFO Challenge 2011

Sewing Room Makeover is nearly complete!
To celebrate my more comfortable (and ORGANIZED!) sewing space I'm going to attempt to put it to work finishing up some of the projects from my Treasure Box.

This quilting inspired effort actually began October 6th. An online Challenge at Patchwork Times requires us to name 12 projects for the coming year. This may be a little optimistic! But here goes:

1. Y2K quilt started in 1999. needs to be quilted. It's HUGE.

2. Grandma's Country Album 1 - 1998 McCall's Magazine series in 6 installments. (all of the issues have been tracked down! Working on 2nd block now since picking this project back up.)

3. Scrappy Seasonal Applique Blocks - started 2010.

4. Piecemakers Time and Seasons TREES 2002 calendar project. I want to do 4 blocks for a wall hanging.

5. Spider in Grandmother's Flower Garden. Hex project - old!

6. Stack 'n Whack Treasure Box workshop. Needs borders. Preferably something to distract from the hideousness of orange. DONE!!

7. Frog Pond quilt. Started this when Steph was in 3rd grade I think.

8. Stack & Whack - Fall. Top; borders may have wonky issues!

9. 48 STRING BLOCKS! Made for the 2010 Bonnie Hunter RRCB mystery.
(Step 5: make 600 half square triangles.) NO. I would rather poke my eyes out. I'll be using the blocks for an Evelyn Sloppy pattern instead. DONE!!

10. Orphan Block quilt. I want to use the Settings Solutions book completely make something up out of thin air and further complicate things by sewing a billion curved pieced drunkard path squares. Oh... and then hand quilt it! DONE!!

11. Kermit's Bouquet - an internet row robin needs to be quilted, replace a border that I took off with something smaller and less biased.

12. Patchwork Posse Row Robin. 2010-2011. Current and I hope to keep it that way!

12a. FINISH ANYTHING I START IN 2011!

I PLEDGE TO KEEP MY SEWING ROOM CLEAN! (and continue to purge items I don't love or plan to use soon.)

Row Robin Quilt-A-Long

I confess: I could not resist.
Patchwork Posse has a Row Robin underway. I found it the week Round 4 had just been posted.
I had just finished the table runner and a stash of fabric (freshly sorted by color!) was sitting in the living room just begging to be used. 
I felt compelled!
I'm almost caught up and hoping the next round is just as pleasing, so progress will continue. Determined to fight UFO syndrome! Still a little applique left to do, but not sure about the bird samples from Round 3. May go with butterflies and a frog from Butterflies & Blooms book on my shelf. Flickr group of others participating in project.

If you give a man a putty knife

You get a sewing room makeover? Seriously!
I celebrated "Black Friday" by NOT shopping. Sewed all day. I rewarded myself a few weeks ago - for finishing 2 quilts - by purchasing snowman fabric for a reversible seasonal table runner. All of the rest of the fabric would be from stash.
A pattern from July/August Quiltmaker in 2003 by Sharon Pederson had been used once before. Took me awhile to find which magazine it was in.
In the meantime, I found her book Reversible Quilts: Two at a Time through the library loan system. Very helpful - I hope to use up more stash fabric with a quilt using this method. Learned how to make reversible binding although Sharon's method didn't allow mitered corners. This may be better way to go: 2 color binding!

Tom decided Black Friday would be a great day to paint the laundry/sewing room. Enter putty knife & Spackle compound. And dust!
His plan was to do the "laundry" half and then move my 30 years of sewing stuff to the other side of the room and doing the "sewing" half.  
Did I mention dust?
I decided to empty the room. All of my "good stuff" went to the living room; stuff that could probably fall off the back of a truck and never notice it was missing went to Sara's old room. To be honestly sorted and purged. By December 24th since she's coming home for Christmas and may want a place to sleep!

Since the room was empty we decided to do the ceiling first. So on Saturday off we went to Home Depot for half of the needed pine boards. Ceiling is almost done! (One board short of course ;) Wall painting should begin this weekend. Will be on the lookout for new storage system shelves & cabinets.

Our new dryer was delivered on Monday! Have been hanging clothes on the line all summer. They don't dry very well with below freezing temps and the week before "Just like Black Friday" sale prices were worth the wait.