Too Many Tops!

What's your favorite part of making a quilt? What's your least favorite? Is there a place where you come to a dead stop and find yourself with another pile of blocks or unfinished tops?

I woke up this morning and before I got out of bed, thought about what I was going to work on in my sewing room on this, a totally free, nothing-on-my-calendar day: The table runner? The last mystery retreat quilt?






The group quilt due in December? The last Bonnie Hunter mystery? That online BOM of Anne Sutton's? Oh, and there's that new Dresden Plate ruler I bought to use with all those charm squares I have and that beautiful star block pattern I saw on the AnyoneCanQuilt blog!

Wait a minute . . . let's get real. . . I decided to take stock. Within 5 feet of my sewing machine table, I found 8 completed TOPS! Two more in the closet (from over 5 years ago) brought my tops total to 10 and I stopped looking.

Do I have a problem? It's ovbious I love to piece blocks and tops and I do enjoy machine quilting my own quilts---I just hate to pin quilts!

Since I feel a quit is 50% finished when the top is done, I'm going to redo my "UFO" list on the left-hand side of my blog to include some of these 10 tops half finished. I'll force myself to pin a couple of quilts and get them quilted and hope to finish many of them before I start anything else.

                                        I'll keep you posted. . .


P.S. I wrote the above last Friday. Since then I pinned quilts # 2 and 4 above, played around with the Dresden Plate ruler and, yes, started on the Dresden Plate blocks. I may have made progress on UFOs but I'm pretty much hopeless!!

Polka Dot

My wonderful Spring Chicks group met last Tuesday night at my house. We eat goodies, do show-and-tell, talk about quilty things then reveal our projects. Several months ago, we decided to do a Row Robin. Out of 9 of us, 6 committed to do all 6 rounds. Tonight was out 4th round. We follow the color and style of the original row with the fabric provided or using our stash then the owner will put their quilt together and reveal it. Here's just a couple of them:

We also have an ongoing "word" challenge. This month's word was "Polka Dot". I didn't have any idea what I was going to make and decided last Friday that I just wouldn't make one this month which is OK. But I went to  the Long Beach CA quilt show last weekend and was so inspired by the "12 by 12" quilts (http://www.twelveby12.org/) that I decided to go for it. This is my 25" x 18" "Polka Dot" quilt.




I hope you will go to their website and read about this creative group! After years of following them and buying their wonderful book, seeing the quilts in person was amazing! There were 2 years worth of them, 144 for each year, and I spent two hours of my 6 hours at the quilt show marveling at their diversity and techniques.

Hope you'll also check out Judy's design wall for other inspiring projects! Happy quilting!!