True Confessions

Don't worry. You won't have to scrub your eyes or your brains after this post. It's not THAT kind of confession. I may have mentioned before how I mostly have had to hand-quilt my quilts. A few years back I got a walking foot, so I could do straight-line machine quilting. Just this past Christmas I got a machine that has a darning foot so I could do stippling. This has made things go faster.

I thoroughly enjoy piecing quilts, so during the hand-quilting years I stored up quite a few quilt tops. QUITE a few. Here is a glimpse of not even half of them. (Yes, I'm sharing a closet with two of my boys.) This is the first part of the confession. Here is pictorial evidence of perhaps a third of my backlog.

Most people get stressed out by this, but typically I have not. I have just been going along my merry way enjoying the process. Well, a couple of days ago I took the time to count -- yes, COUNT -- just how many quilt tops or in-progress tops I have in my sewing room. I did not include what is in bins in the garage, although I suspect that there are half again as many out there.

Okay. Here's where I actually got stressed out. When I counted all the quilts, tops, and in-progress tops in my room, the number was 72. Yes, 72. Since then I have unearthed a few more, and I can't remember if I counted them or not (I should have tagged them like sheep or branded them like cattle!), so I'm putting the number at 75. 75!!!!!! This is the first time that I have become a little overwhelmed with all of this. (A little, she says?)

So here's the plan. I was trying to focus on finishing anyway, but now it has become imperative. My plan is to whittle this number down to at least 35 by the end of the year. I also want those 35 to all be to quilt top stage. Impossible, you say? Yeah, me too, but that's the goal. So I'm now going to keep a running total on a sidebar of how many finishes and how it has reduced my total project number. I haven't decided yet how to deal with the stuff in the garage or what is going to happen with all these people who are having babies. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So to work on this whole finishing thing, I started with the low-hanging fruit. These two tops have been done for a while, and I already had their backs ready to go, so I sat last night and pinned both of them to be ready to quilt. I had to piece the batting, so it took a little longer than it normally would have, but they are still ready to go. A boyish one -- so my boys can now fight over the only one that doesn't have flowers on it. I'd better find and finish some other boyish ones. Because you KNOW that I cannot start another quilt. I don't know how I'm going to do that. People have too many beautiful ideas that I want to duplicate.

A baby-sized quilt with Sandy Gervais fabric from a few years back -- Spring something or other. My second daughter wants it, but I think it will have to go to the next person to have a girl. My daughter is nine. This quilt is really too small for her. I know these don't count as finishes, but it's progress. Hopefully I can sustain it. Wish me luck!