Happy New Year!

First post of the new year!  I'm going to take a look back to this past year's of quilting!  So by the numbers:

Quilts finished: 15 (including 5 minis, all displayed on the Completed Quilts 2016 page)
Quilts gifted: 3 (including 1 swap)
Quilt tops finished: 7 (2 are currently at Rhonda's to get quilted!)
Quilts/Works in progress: 5 (2 were started this past week!)
Patterns released: 1 (Patterns page)
Other Works in Progress: 4 (including 2 from Sewing Expo classes and 2 scrap quilts; these may never be finished)

My stack of non-mini quilts that were not given away from 2016.

I think for my first year of quilting, those numbers are not bad at all!  This next year I have lofty goals of what I would like to accomplish.  Let's first start with my pattern writing.  I would like to target releasing a pattern once a quarter (approximately every 3 months).  This includes the pattern that will be released later this month that's a free pattern!  Rhonda already quilted it, and it should be headed back my way shortly.

I have so many quilts on deck ready to be started but not nearly enough time to complete them all.  There are also LOT of quilt-alongs and groups of quilting kicking off in the year that I feel a tad bit overwhelmed by everything.  A few of the ones that I am going to attempt to keep up with are the 52 weeks of Quilter's Planner hosted by GnomeAngel.  It's posting the quilt block each week as shown in the quilter's planner.  I am also going to attempt to keep up with @kupitis on getting the Modern Building Blocks quilt done.  I missed the quilt along this past fall due to all the other open projects that I had.

I am also doing Mighty Lucky Quilting Club 2017 hosted by Lucky Spools.  It's a design challenge each month taught by other artists and designers meant to help grow your skills.  I'm looking forward to completing the January challenge!

I'm sad I'm back at work because I was able to get so much stuff done over the break.  Seriously, like a quilting and sewing factory going on here. First, I mentioned there are 5 works in progress (WIPs) at the end of 2016.  Two of those WIPs are now completed quilt tops.  The first one is a whale baby quilt and the pattern is by Clare's Place Designs.  I've had this pattern for a long time and finally got the ric rac and missing navy fabric to complete this quilt.  It's just so darling!  I'm keeping this one for my currently non-existent future kid.

The second quilt top I finished is Frivols 9 - Little Miss Sunshine fabric by Lella Boutique.  I used this as my lead-ers and end-ers this past week and ended up finishing most of it pretty quickly.  There does come a point where the lead-ers/end-ers become the main quilt you are working on and you need new lead-ers and end-ers.  Lead-ers and end-ers are pieces that you sew together at the end of a chain piecing run and then they become the item under your needle when you start a new chain piecing runs, hence the lead-er and end-er name.  I'm not super pleased with my points on this quilt but there were just parts where the seam was super bulky, and I need to investigate a little more on how to cut those down in the future.  Bulky seams are really hard for me to get everything to align correctly.

I also started cutting the fabric for America's Garden quilt a year later.  I decided that there is too much thinking for the quilt to be a lead-er/end-ers quilt.  I made the first block with Minnesota state flowers.  The side triangle blocks I just really hate doing.  The corner trimmer tool is the only thing that makes them barely line up correctly, but having to trim each triangle is just a pain!

Prior to 2017, I went on a finishing spree!  The Satsuki quilt was started months ago, and I just never finished the raw edge applique on the flowers on about half of the blocks.  I sat down, finished the applique, and pieced the top together in an afternoon, it went so quick!

Keeping with the applique mood, I decided to finally take another stab at working on the 2016 Craftsy BOM quilt that I hadn't touched since April.  The applique part made me realize I really hate turned edge machine applique.  I can't ever sew close enough to the edge for the applique to look right in my mind.  I think for future cases I either do raw edge machine applique or turned edge hand applique.

One thing I realized as I was adding the appliqued blocks was the quilt I used to think was a good size (of what was already there) now seems rather tiny to me.  The second thing is that I used to struggle quite a bit with getting my seams to align and the points were all over the place on the center of this quilt.  It's really a nice reminder of how much I've gotten better over time.  So all that was left was the piano keys and the outer borders, so why not just try to complete the quilt top?  I finished. It took a full day's worth of sewing to get all the piano keys completed and sewn on the quilt.  This is the largest quilt top I've finished to date, and once I get the back cleaned up and the backing sewn, it'll head off to Rhonda to get quilted.  I am not going to even try to fight quilting a 84"x92" quilt on my home machine.

I was so busy quilting this past week I forgot to check my goals from the previous blog post until I was typing this post up.  So I forgot to do the Modern Heritage BOM blocks for this month, oops!  I think reality is setting in for being back to work, and my progress will go back to a more "normal" pace.  Bummer!  Also, with this many quilt tops waiting to be quilted, I think I need to figure out a time to quilt everything!

1/3-1/10 Weekly Goal:
Available time for quilting:
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday AM, Sunday

Projects I want to work on:
Powered by Quilting Patterns
2016 Craftsy BOM
Modern Heritage BOM
America's Garden Quilt
Modern Building Blocks
Quilter's Planner Block

Goals for the Projects:
Powered by Quilting - Finishing writing PBQ102 pattern and name the pattern.  Quilt the honeybuns sample quilt.
2016 Craftsy BOM - Finish piecing the back and send to Rhonda!
Modern Heritage BOM - Month 6 Blocks
America's Garden Quilt - Make 1 Block
Modern Building Blocks - Cut the rest of the fabric for the different blocks and sew 4 blocks (any blocks!)
Quilter's Planner Block - Make this week's quilter's planner block

**Looking at this to-do list, it seems very aggressive. Let's see how it goes?