By Diane Harris, HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador
Earlier this month I blogged about my UFOs. In case you’re not familiar with this term, it’s how quilters describe their UnFinished Objects—projects begun but not finished. Most of us have them.
I continue to reorganize areas of my sewing space and I continue to find UFOs. Today I bought a few more plastic storage bins.
They’re actually sweater boxes and they fit nicely into my studio cupboards. I’ve completely cleaned out two banks of cupboards and I have one more to go.
Then, eventually, I must tackle the closet. And there are a few other areas, too. It’s great to have a generous quilting space but I have a hunch that however large or small your sewing area is, you can fill it up without even trying.
What puzzles me the most is why I have so many UFOs. It’s not like I don’t finish any quilts. I have made easily in the hundreds. But in between those finished quilts are many, many unfinished ones.
A friend asked me today why I had them. And the truth is that I do not know. Maybe after a few blocks I lost interest. Or maybe it was more that I became more interested in the next quilt, so that the last quilt languished.
I know that sometimes I didn’t want to face the quilting. I wonder if, when the piecing was almost done, I just folded it away in whatever state so that I wouldn’t have to think about the part where my skills are weakest. Machine quilting is challenging and I’m not as good at it as I’d like to be.
Do you have UFOs? Do they bother you? Do you know why you didn’t finish them? I’d love to hear your thoughts. And trust me, there is no judgment here. I am thinking that I might be the Queen of UFOs. Not necessarily a title I wanted to hold.
I think I have UFO’s because I get bored before I get it done. Maybe it’s a gazillion pieces but only the same 8′ block over and over, or maybe I didn’t like my color choices. There is usually a reason it is left to smolder on the shelf. I have been inspired by you and another friend to try to finish my UFO’s this year. I’ll see if it happens. I have plenty of new patterns calling my name. for some reason it is WAY more fun to start a quilt than finish one!
I have a lot of UFO’s. I think that part of the reason people like us have so many is that we are always stomping out the biggest fire, meaning that we have samples to finish, classes to teach, new tools or new fabric lines to test, etc. So, we finish a top as part of a challenge or a sew along or something that we felt we needed to do to “play along” or to get ready to teach or show for some reason. In my case, if I don’t absolutely love it, I can’t spend my very precious time finishing it. I know that I should. I know that I could. I just have other things that I would rather work on at that point. It’s not necessarily an indictment against us that we haven’t finished everything. It just shows that we have too many ideas, and too little time. To alleviate guilt, and to clear out clutter, I do often donate finished tops that I don’t want to take the time to quilt to charity groups that will do their own quilting. If I don’t love it, or I don’t think I need it for my trunk shows or teaching, I will let it go. I look at it this way, do I want to spend more money on batting, backing, and spend my precious time to finish something out of duty? No. Thank the item for what you learned or enjoyed making it, (as Marie Kondo suggests) and then say “good-by” to it 🙂