Virtual Retreat Weekend - Stashbusters

Since we are scheduled to get 9" of snow by this evening (we've got about 3-4" already) it's the perfect time for an at-home retreat.

I actually had planned to have a bunch of my GFs over for what I call "Procraftination"... which is basically everyone bringing over a UFO of any kind (knitting, beading, quilting, mending, whatever) and we work on finishing them for the afternoon. But since the snow, I postponed it to March.

So it's just going to be me here retreating this weekend!

What I have planned is an assortment of activities:
1) Finish my business taxes! I know that's not producing something but I absolutely have to get this off to my accountant this week.

2) Work on my line of butterfly note cards. I have designated February as card month, so I'm trying to get a bunch of these finished - I'll stop when I run out of fabric butterflies or run out of cards. This has taken over my cutting table so I have to clear this off, but I don't want to put it away without making progress.

3) Finish piecing my Baby Bricks UFO. This is actually one that I've considered scrapping altogether. I started piecing this design that I drafted, but I have all the sashing going the wrong way so it has been really difficult to finish. I just need to revisit the design and see if I can fix it. I think my problem was I thought I could strip piece it but it's not really conducive to that. Or at least it isn't until I actually make a block & figure out how to strip piece it. I'll try to post a block later today.

4) Finish the binding on Beachy Memories. It only needs the binding stitched to the back and a label applied.

5) Go grocery shopping. So I didn't plan my week out very well,there's nothing fresh in the house, no veggies, no eggs, no milk. I can't buy too many groceries though because I'm going out of town Monday.

6) Finish the backing of my Silk Throw UFO. So this thing is not really silk... just some random squares I had that I always intended to stitch together but never got around to it. It looks really cool now, I need the backing though.

7) Finish 3 cactus place mat UFOs. These were really annoying to work on as I was using a pattern from a book, but I absolutely hate the instructions for the binding, which is a very wide single-fold bias binding with mitered corners. This will be much simpler & faster if I just baste the edge & do a narrower double-fold French binding. I actually have 6 to finish, but because there's actually a lot of satin stitching that needs to be done and that takes a while, I am only targeting to finish 3.

In other news, I finally owned up to the fact that if I'm going to finish my UFOs, I'm going to need some outside help. So I packed up my largest UFO and sent it off to a long-armer to quilt for me. I also have another one waiting for her in the wings. So if she does those two, then it only leaves me a queen sized quilt and a twin-ish sized throw to finish myself. I know it's really ironic that I have a long-arm (actually it's more of a mid-arm) but I had to send off something to be finished by someone else.


Happy quilting!