Monday Motivation: Start Now

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain

What was I thinking?

I have a sign in my sewing room that reads “You can’t start over so start now.” It is a constant reminder that I cannot go back and finish each quilt before I start another one. Now, I have loads of UFOs. These unfinished projects have literally become the elephant in my sewing room. I see bins every time I walk in the room. This year I picked ONE basket under my sewing table and will concentrate on these projects. This single laundry basket size container has fifty UFOs. Granted, some are baby quilts, wall hangings or table runners, but still, FIFTY projects that need to be completed.

I hung the list of 50 by my machine to focus on finishing these instead of starting new projects. I got off to a slow start since we were out of town most of January, February and half of March. With our “Safer at Home” orders, I am finally seeing some progress.

A couple of weeks ago when I decided to complete some baby quilts for Project Linus, I pulled out these blocks. It didn’t take long to realize that forty-two 3-3/4” blocks wouldn’t go very far. I know this was abandoned because it was easier to stuff the blocks into a bag than figure out what to do with them. Now it’s time to find a solution and get it out of here!

Digging In!

I’ve made several quilts using the Quick Strippie pattern from MaryQuilts.com and thought I could adapt this pattern for these blocks. I made four strips of ten blocks each, cut wider strips of the coordinating fabric and added some solid yellow strips and came up with this.

Is it my favorite quilt ever? No, but I hope it will keep some baby warm. The fabric is cute and I think it will look better after it’s quilted.

The Quick Strippie is a super fast quilt to make. Once I had the plan, it was a snap to piece the top. Now the top, back and binding are on a hanger waiting to be quilted. Hope you find the motivation to make some progress on sewing projects this week.