2017 Quilting Year in Review

2017 was a pretty good year for quilting. I made it to three quilt retreats and finished 24 quilts. I also have 18 quilt tops finished and 37 quilts cut up and ready to go for next year. If it wasn't for my longarm breaking, I probably would have had finished 52 quilts. With that, I think its time to look forward to 2018 and make some goals for the new year. They are pretty much the same as last year's with a couple of additions.

1. Get longarm fixed.
2. Finish 1 quilt a week (52 quilts).
3. Go to three quilt retreats.
4. Finish all UFOs
5. Take a longarm quilting class.
6. Organize quilt stash.
7. Make 4 Quilts of Valor.

It is going to be very challenging year and I'm looking forward to it!

Rainbow Bookcase Quilt Complete!

I didn't think I would complete another quilt this year but I did. I just picked it up at the quilters this afternoon and got to work on adding the binding. I ended up breaking a sewing machine in the process. Its a good excuse to buy a new machine. I was thinking about buying a new one anyway. The two machines that I have are cheap and I think it's time to upgrade for the amount of quilting that I do. It will be well worth it in the long run.

Harley Davdison Quilt Layout

It seems like every t-shirt quilt has it's unique challenges ranging from too few shirts to shirts of various sizes (kids small & adult large in the same quilt). What do you do when you have mostly black shirts and there a lot of them? I know the answer would normally be to add sashing. The quilt is already going to be a pretty good size quilt so that wasn't the answer, plus the person I am making this for doesn't want it. I finally came up with this layout, trying to alternate the really greyed out shirts with the darker ones and spreading the other colors around. I still have eleven blocks left over which I plan on adding to the back of the quilt. I hope to have this one done by the end of the year. We will see what happens!