Falling off the wagon . . . and jumping on the bandwagon.

I really shouldn't be starting any more projects . . . but I could no longer resist when I saw these. Hers are cuter than mine, but I'll keep working up to her standard. REALLY old fabrics, some of these. Some Simplicity and some Princess thing that Jill will know the name of. I made an entire quilt out of it, and this is what is left. Seriously long-term project. And now that I've confessed this to you all, I'll have to up my number. Again.

Lucky me and a giveaway link

Last month a new website was launched -- Australian, but also available for us Americans. It's called SEWN. Anyway there were a ton of people doing giveaways in honor of the blog launch. I won Jeannette's giveaway. It took a while to get here, because she is in New Zealand. Thanks, Jeannette. I was so excited to get this. I love the fabrics you chose for me!

In May, Sew Mama, Sew had their May Day Giveaway, and I was fortunate enough to win an April Cornell Spring Magic Jelly roll from Quilt Qua. I had forgotten to take a picture or even seem grateful, but I was so excited to use it, that I made this coin quilt right away. I had enough left over to make some tiny whirlygig blocks -- well, to cut out some whirlygig blocks -- not made yet.

Please, ignore my wrinkles -- and the ones on my quilt too. ; ) Seriously, though, Quilt Qua is now having another giveaway. If you go on their blog, you can see the rules for entry. It's a tell-a-friend giveaway, so I just earned another entry by telling all of you. Lucky me again. Um, if you're counting, I think the coin quilt and the whirlygig quilt put me back up to 75. Why, oh, why did I start counting?! Just kidding. It's keeping me aware. While it's true that I'm not going down much (YET!), I am not going UP either, and that tells me that I am actually finishing stuff and not JUST starting things. The ceiling is 75, so if I go above that -- well, I don't have a consequence for it, but I'll feel really bad or something. As an aside, my a/c was not working for about three weeks, and it just got fixed last Monday. So now I can consider quilting something. I didn't want to sit underneath a big, heavy quilt when it was 90 degrees in my house. I pinned two more quilts yesterday -- one old, one new -- so hopefully the finishing will come into full swing here. Pray for me, ladies!

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!