No more UFO's?

I can't seem to find any at this time. I am sure another one will turn up but I don't know where it is hiding. I do have piles of fabric that go together that I want to make something out of sometime but I haven't actually started making them yet so they aren't unfinished as much as unstarted.

Instead I will show you some pictures and tell about some of the quilts I have made in the past. This is a scan of a slide from about 20 years ago. The quilt was my first ever hand-quilted one. It was a sampler quilt made of 36 different blocks. All of the pieces were marked marked on the fabric using a cardboard template and cut out with scissors. They were then machine pieced. I decided that since we used a wood stove to heat our house back in those days I should use two batts so we would be nice and warm in the winter. Handquilting through that was a challenge. My stitches started out being about 1/4" long and gradually improved. I had to do the whole thing by poking up and then poking down. There was no 'rocking' the needle through that thickness!

We used this quilt on our bed for at least 10 years before it started looking pretty bad. I forgot how worn it was until I pulled it off it's display shelf to take pictures (1, 2, 3, 4, & 5) I saw the mildew from the slow leak that our waterbed had that we didn't notice for quite some time. It was at the bottom corner where the quilt was tucked in. I also saw the patches I tried to mend it with so we could keep using it until I could get another king sized quilt made. In the end I had to buy one of those bed-in-a-bag quilts to get by! Back then with three kids and no sewing room it was hard to accomplish much!

The moral of the story is: older waterbeds with heaters can be very hard on quilts!