A Recap of my Quilting Year 2023

 

 

Image by GDJ from Pixabay.

In this post, I go over my posts during the year and give you a summary of the quilts I made, and any big events. I make a yearly recap every year. In 2021, I did not have any rules - I could start and finish as many quilts as I wanted without any guilt. The key was just to enjoy the journey. This lead to some fun finishes in 2022, but the number of unfinished quilts grew. Then I created a rule to finish more quilts than I started. I continued the rule to finish more than I started. Let's see how that affected my quilting.

January

I started January with a strong start, with a Project Quilting challenge, The First One. All Project Quilting challenges require that the quilt be started after the theme is announced and be completed within the week. This week's challenge was to make one of something. I decided to make one tree from a pattern by Irene from Sugaridoo called One Two Tree. I gave it a very creative name, One Tree. It is so much easier to remember the name of a quilt when you give it the name that was your working title.

I had so much fun with the fast finish of One Tree, I finished the I've Got Your Back camel.

I made more blocks for the Jazzy Blues quilt.

I finished this quilt, Sonder, as a Project Quilting challenge which required the color pink. This one was a lot of fun to make. I enjoyed the combination of whimsy and elegance.

Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own -- populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness -- that you'll never know existed..

February 

 

In February, I made Boundaries for another Project Quilting challenge. was to make a quilt inspired by the 54-40 or Fight quilt pattern, but I stretched the rules to use a different pattern to describe a boundary. These challenges really help with my productivity. 

 

I made more Circle 365 blocks. I pressed and trimmed some Jazzy Blues blocks. I started the Boundless quilt for the  Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.

I made Zou the Elephant as a part of a Project Quilting challenge to make a quilt inspired by a book. I had gotten an AI drawn elephant and had wanted to put that in quilt form so I was able to combine the challenge with something else I wanted to do. Zou means elephant in Japanese so Zou the Elephant is equivalent to saying chai tea.

I also made some other things, like these hearts, and a scrappy ball. I also started the Unallocated quilt and the Spicy Stars quilt. These starts are not helpful to my challenge to finishing more than I start

March

 In March, I used some scraps from the hearts I made to quickly meet a challenge for Project Quilting, Sew Not a Square. It is the one in the middle called Mended Heart.

I presented my Boundless quilt for the blog hop but I wasn't finished quilting it in time.

 

I made the final Project Quilting challenge quilt, Fear of the Missed Deadline, using scraps from my Spare Parts box. It was about conquering a fear.

April

 In April, I was able to show the quilted and finished the Boundless quilt which was made for the Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.

I made Whose Rights? from the scraps of the Boundless quilt.

I also worked on the Spicy Stars quilt.

May

Work continued to be busy in May with overtime, so I wasn't able to do much quilting.

June

June was also a busy time at work, but I did find some time to make progress on my works in progress - the Aunt Daisy blocks, Spicy Stars and Unallocated, as well as making small amounts of progress in my sewing room.

July

I kept working on the Spicy Stars blocks. I made a lot of portraits for my index card drawings.

On the 29th, I started a Youtube channel, Quilt and Color, and showed my first completed art journal.

August

In August, I wasn't working, so I made some paintings and focused on learning how to make YouTube videos. It is a steep learning curve to know what supplies I need while trying to limit my investment, learn how to use the equipment, and decide how to make videos without being boring.

I started making the index card portraits quilt based on the index card portraits I was making. It was slow since I was recording a tutorial for it, but it was fun to explain the process without having a scripted speech.

September

In September, I finished the Portraits quilt, Making Friends, and published a YouTube tutorial for it. I enjoyed that so much, I brought out my Tuxedo Vest quilt to see what I can do  to finish it.

October

In October, I finished Tuxedo Vest by appliquéing African fabric on top. I made a YouTube video about the process. I renamed the quilt, African Garden.

November

In November, I published videos that told the story of some of my finished quilts. I didn't get much time this month to work on a quilt, but producing videos about the finished quilts and getting ready to produce a video a day in December where I will work on my quilts for 15 minutes a day made it difficult to count whether I was successful in quilting every day.

December

In December, I did a lot of quilting. I pulled out a lot of my works in progress and made and published a video every day to show how the 15 minutes to quilt worked for me. I thought it would be more interesting for people to see different projects in different stages. It was a lot of fun to get reacquainted with them, and the ones that seemed scary wound up being perfectly fine. I had made a decision early on that I would show my mistakes and how I dealt with them, so there wasn't a pressure for me to be perfect in my quilting, and since I had to make a video a day, I didn't have time to fret about being perfect with my videos either. 

There were some frustrations with my tripods not working right, and my using the wrong setting on my microphone (it has to be on "off" when using the phone but on "on" when using the camera), and the software deleted my whole video a couple of times, especially when I had used the narrate feature which meant I had to start over with the narration as well as putting the clips together. I found it easier to start over instead of trying to fix some things in editing so many times I worked more than 15 minutes on a project.

I learned a lot about my UFOs and about videos, so it was very successful for me.

I even snuck in some extra time to finish this Scrappy Cat. It uses scraps from the I've Got Your Back camel you saw in January.

Recap

 

So how did I do with my finish more than you start goal? I finished 12 quilts and only started 11 so I am officially successful! I actually made more progress than the numbers show because I made lots of progress on my other quilts a little bit throughout the year, and especially in December. Most of my WIPs at the back of the line were able to officially move up a little bit, not just because a quilt at the front of the line got finished, but also because they themselves were more completed than they started at the beginning of the year. 

 

I want to thank Wendy for her small quilt of the month challenge. Even though it has been discontinued, I am continueing to enjoy making a small quilt a month. I especially want to thank Kate for her 15 minutes to stitch challenge. I also want to thank Kim for the Project Quilting challenges. All three people have helped motivate me and gave me "permission" to enjoy myself and spend time quilting. I also want to thank all of my blog readers for coming and reading my ramblings. Your support means a lot to me.