Crafty Goals for Summer 2018

I’m gonna kill not two but three birds with one stone (er, blog post) today! Get ready for a lot of to-do lists past and present.

First, a wrap-up of the crafty goals I had for spring:

• Make my first “commissioned” quilt. Done!
• Do a 100-day project. On track and nearly done!
• Participate in my new guild’s Alison Glass quilt challenge. Done!
• Finish the baby quilt. Done!
• Keep up with the Rainbow Triangles BOM. Done! All the triangles are complete and we’ve moved on to putting the quilt top together!
• Also done:
  • Made a pineapple mini quilt for Emma’s teacher.
  • Made a Bondi top & Free Spirit tank.
  • Got to reveal my Pathfinder quilt that I designed for Craftsy.
  • Put my barn quilt blocks together into a finished quilt top.
  • Designed a logo for my guild.
  • Tech edited several patterns for a couple clients, and did some graphic design work for another.

Woohoo for being able to cross off everything on my list!

And second, I’m checking in on the yearly goals I set for 2018 as part of the 2018 Planning Party hosted by Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl.

These items from my 2018 goal list are done:

• Enjoy my first QuiltCon and participate in the Modern Quilt Guild swap.
• Make a baby quilt. This is the one mentioned above; I just haven’t shared it yet.
• Finish 3 “secret sewing” projects. The Pathfinder Quilt I designed for Craftsy and the Vector Block I did for the Modern Quilt Guild are done, and there’s one more Craftsy project still to come.
• Try more garment sewing. Done! After my recent tops, I still want to try more. We’ll see.

These are in progress:

• Do another 100 day project. Almost done!
• Make Rebecca Bryan’s Triangles Mystery Block of the Month. In progress (see above)!
• Make another epic quilt. I think the #100Days100Blocks project I’m about to embark on will definitely fit the bill here.
• Practice free motion quilting. I took a longarm orientation and free motion quilted my flag quilt on the longarm. I haven’t done any FMQ on my domestic machine though.

And these are the “not yet” or “maybe not this year after all”:

• Make something with the girls’ baby clothes. I haven’t done this, but am newly motivated to do so after the commissioned onesie quilt I made this spring. Maybe by the end of 2018?
• Have a pattern published in a magazine. Nope. And since I haven’t even submitted anything, it’s highly unlikely this will happen in 2018 since magazine timelines run months in advance of publication. This is still something I’m interested in, but haven’t chosen to put time into it so far.
• Finish the Looptastic quilt I started for Charlotte a year ago. Uhhhh nope. And now it’s been 18 months since I started it, so I need to fish or cut bait on this one. All the fabric is cut and I started piecing. I probably need to just pull it back out and see if that re-motivates me.

Overall I’m pleasantly surprised at how much progress I’ve made on the rather broad and ambitious list I made back in December. Half of this list was really more of a “things I’d like to do or try” list, and I’ve already done most of them.

And finally, third, and sticking to my quarterly list, here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish between July-September:

• Finish the 100-day project. I’ll wrap up the set of 100 next week. After that I will piece them together — and I’ve decided to use it as a practice quilt for some more longarm quilting! I’m planning to use stipple quilting for some all-over texture. It will be a busy quilt with so many scraps and colors involved, but I don’t think stippling will be too much as long as I use a thread that doesn’t stand out too much.
• Start #100days100blocks2018 (aka Tula Pink’s City Sampler). Shhh — I actually started last weekend, even though the sew-along doesn’t officially kick off until this Saturday. I made the first 5 blocks, and hope to stay about a week ahead of pace for as long as possible so that I’ve got wiggle room in the schedule.
• Keep up with the Rainbow Triangles BOM. This continues to be an enjoyable BOM project. Each month’s task only takes an hour or two at most (I already did July in about 30 minutes!) so it’s easy to get it done and move on to other projects, while also maintaining progress as the year goes on.
• Secret sewing project(s). I actually have two more of these that I’ve taken on with other people. I’ll share more about them as I can — hopefully in August or September!

That list will likely keep me pretty busy for the next few months, since #100days100blocks runs until October and one of the secret sewing projects will be a bit time-consuming. And I’m sure there will be other items that get added to the list as well. If I don’t have a to-do list at least 10x longer than what I can reasonably accomplish, there’s probably something wrong with me.