Wahoo! First 2008 UFO done!

Well you know what they say about the ‘best of intentions’ – that goes for blogging too! I’m being pulled into all sorts of crises at work lately and haven’t had hardly any time to think much about stitching. In fact, I haven’t stitched a minute since about January 3rd when I finished my Frosty Friends exchange. I did however get a UFO off my list which is a quilt I started back in 2001. I don’t know why it took me so long to get it done. At the time I made the blocks for it, I was working on it with some friends sharing all our red, white & blue fabrics. We got so carried away making blocks that I had enough for 3 identical quilts. I donated one to my quilting group so they could raffle it off for some money, and gave one other one to a friend at work. Of course the one for myself never got to the finish line! So here it is finally, only 7 years later. I had no one to hold it up for me today so just draped it over the couch. These kind of quilts are fun and easy to do with a collection of themed fabrics or colors. So finally it will join the other stack of quilts in the closet that I don’t have room to display. I really need to get a quilt ladder so I can put out more of my quilts – there’s only so much wall space you know.



I also haven’t been stitching too much because of shoulder pain. I have a bonespur in my left shoulder and it flares up about every 6 months or so. In fact today I am going back to the orthopedist. I’ve already had 2 rounds of shots and don’t know if they will continue to give me those or whether it’s time to have it removed. I am really tired of the constant pain and thinking maybe having the arthroscopic surgery to get the bonespur off would be welcome at this point. Bonespurs in the shoulder rub on the rotator cuff muscle and affect just about anything you do with your arm.

So far this year I’ve stayed away from stash buying and that’s good. In just 9 days I’ll be going on a quilting retreat weekend with some friends. We can’t wait! We’re making scrappy strip quilts and we’ve been cutting up fabric that we don’t want anymore. I’m sure we’ll have more than enough as we’ve done this before and that’s what usually happens. It seems that those fabric strips start multiplying once you put them in a box! If you’ve been a quilter for many years you know that you accumulate a lot of fabric and looking back you wonder why you even bought some of it. That and your tastes change over the years and you don’t love what you once did. So this is a great opportunity to use up that unwanted stash. I keep a quilt on top of our family room sectional as it’s a microfiber fabric that collects dog hair like crazy. So I’ll be making a scrap quilt to fit the other side that isn’t covered right now. It comes in handy with 2 dogs laying up there all the time and the quilts can be whisked off hurriedly when somebody stops over!

Hope to get back to stitching soon. There’s no way I can get through my whole UFO list this year but my goal is to at least finish off one UFO a month.