Okay, so I guess it’s time I finally buckle down and make a list for the Finish Along hosted for 2015 by Adrianne at On the Windy Side. A lot of people whose blogs I follow have done the Finish Along in the past, but I’ve never participated before. I’m not really great at setting or keeping goals, I’m a slow sewist, and I don’t like feeling guilty when I don’t succeed (and I’m good at feeling guilty), but I decided to go for it this year. I also decided to just go ahead and make some (for me) wild goals because if they’re wild, then maybe I won’t be so bothered about it if I don’t succeed.
So to that end, I’m posting 7 projects for my 1st quarter finish-along goals!
1. Brown and Green Hashtag Quilt. A sweet baby girl (just born!) will be receiving this quilt. It still needs to be basted, quilted, and bound. But I have plans for that and they should be achievable soon. (I’m not working this weekend, I already know how I’m going to quilt it, and the only decision left to make is what to bind it with.)
2. Confetti Go Lucky Quilt. This quilt will be for my mom. It’s partially quilted, but I gave up working on it sometime before Christmas when my Juki machine started squeaking like mad. (I took the machine into the shop and they ran it for 20 minutes with no squeaks. What the actual fuck? Anyway, I’m hoping to pick it back up again this weekend. If it squeaks, I will cry. And then record it so that I have evidence!) Anyway, I need to finish quilting, then I need to bind it. There’s more than half to go. I’d like to get it finished early in February.
3. Easter Cross-Stitch. This was meant to be a Christmas gift for my Mom, but I didn’t figure out how to convert the cross-stitched panel (stitched by my sister) into the wall-hanging I wanted it to be. Once I sort out how I want to get it done, it should be an easy finish, but I’m so very, very good at putting things off.
4. Economy Block Minis. I have a series of three or four minis that revolve around that economy/square in square block. I’ve been “working on” that project since… round about March last year. I’d like to have it done by the end of January. There is still more sewing, then basting, quilting, binding to be done.
5. Botanics Patchwork. This super simple quilt will be for me. I’m torn between doing a kind of orange peel quilting and using this quilt to practise a million and one FMQ patterns. Probably I’ll go with the orange peel plan, though. Needs to be basted, quilted, and bound.
6. January Blogger Bundle Subscription Quilt. I’ve got fabric and a pattern and plans to turn that interesting little bundle of fabric into a quilt top. I don’t have plans for that quilt (ie. no plans for a recipient), but I still want to try it out.
7. A Field Guide Baby Quilt. This will likely be a charity quilt – I originally bought the fabric with that in mind, so it seems like a great way to go! I’m not sure the fabric and that pattern are really meant to go together – there’s not a lot of contrast in the fabrics and the pattern relies on a certain amount of contrast to create the pattern… but I want to give it a shot anyway. Maybe. I think we’ll see when I finally pull the jelly roll apart and start trying to make blocks with it.
8/9. Okay, this isn’t pictured, but if I’m going with a go-big-or-go-home goal list, All Solids Jelly Roll Race. No photo because the fabric is en route. This is all down to Michèle-Renée (or should I say M-R? I’m one of those people who doesn’t really use nicknames, if I meet you as a “William” I will call you that till the end of time, even if everyone else in the world calls you Bill… so once I know a “real” name, the nicknames tend to fall by the wayside in my head) who recently posted this all-solids jelly roll race quilt on her blog, Quilt Matters. I’d never liked a jelly roll race quilt until I saw that one, and then Pam at Mad About Patchwork put her Kona Sunrise and Sunset roll-ups on sale for January, so you know… I bought one of each, because CLEARLY I need a matched set of sunrise and sunset jelly roll quilts. So…. yeah, there’s two more extras.
So, nine goals. Truly I’ll be happy if I get the first four items finished, but anything else would be amazing too, so here’s to goal-making!
And now… I should really go sew.
wipgirl.wordpress.com 
Wishing you every success!!…….yes, go sew!
Haha.. thanks 🙂 If only I could quit my job… if I were home all day (and still with no kids to distract me, I suppose) I could get so much more done!
This quarter is my second time doing the FAL. I’m liking it more than ALYoF just because I’m not forced to do one specific thing, because I know from doing (and giving up on) ALYoF before that never want to work on that one thing when I’m supposed to. I find the FAL is more loose because I can work on any of the things whenever I want over the few months 😀
Can’t wait to see your confetti quilt finished! I love how you’re quilting it; I need to be more adventurous with straight line shapes when I quilt …
Yeah, I definitely appreciate that you’ve got some room with this one to move around different projects. In the past, I’ve found ALYOF only works for me if I’ve got a deadline for something, otherwise I always leave my projects along until its too late to actually finish them.
The quilting on that confetti quilt was a bad idea 😀 It’s taking SOOOOO long! I had thought I’d do three rounds at 1/4″, then three at 1/2″ and then three at 1″… but it is so tedious. I should have started at the 1/2″ mark and expanded it out from there because ugh. I don’t even think I’m half done yet!
[…] I finished a thing! And this thing was both my A Lovely Year of Finishes January goal AND my first project on my Finish Along Quarter One list! […]