Sunday 31 December 2017

2017 - A Review in Quilts

So, as the year draws to a close, did I stick to those New Year's Resolutions?

When you set yourself goals in a specific area, such as your hobby, it's probably easier to stick to them. So taking a quick peak at my review of 2016 (which you can read here), it looks like my aim as usual was to be more prolific and make more quilts. I feel like I have been more productive this year but looking back to last year, I've completed the same number of quilts (five) which is funny! Although all of these quilts have been made for the magazine when a deadline is a keen incentive to finish something on time! If you scroll back through my posts you can read my 'Story of a Quilt' series of posts where I've written about each quilt as I've finished it.

My last finish of the year is this quick pieced quilt using the Chroma collection of fabrics from Alison Glass.

Chroma Quilt

I think my main goal from a year ago was to do more quilting for me and that's the main area I have fallen down. I don't think I have even touched my long term projects of Tula Pink's City Sampler, or my Splendid Sampler blocks. I might have done a little bit of sewing on my Sylvia's Bridal Sampler quilt which is a hand sewing project and I think I got my longest WIP out once a month or so ago when I did a bit of hand quilting one evening.

I participated in a hexie sewalong this year making one, yes just one, hexagon a day for 100 days and believe it or not I managed not to stay completely up to date with this! Although I did finish all 100 hexies and have been sewing them into flowers as I go. I used fabrics dyed by Heidi Stoll Weber and have just started making a scrappy low volume background to applique them onto. I'd really like to make progress  on that over the winter.

A pile o' hexies

I'm going to be 50 next year which is a scary prospect. It suddenly feels like half my life is over and yet you feel the same inside as you did twenty, thirty years ago. I think I need to make it my main New Year's resolution for 2018 to finish my longest WIP which is a kaleidoscope-style quilt inspired by the work of Paula Nadelstern. I think I probably started it over a decade ago having been inspired by an annual quilt competition at the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky 'New Quilts from Old Favourites'. Whichever year was the year for using the Kaleidoscope block was probably the year I started this quilt! I think it would be fitting if I managed to finish this quilt during my 50th year, don't you?

Check back with me in a year's time to see if I managed it!

Joanna