UFO Summer Challenge

Hello Fantastic Friends of Fabric.  I am beginning my Summer UFO Challenge and I hope you will consider joining me.  Every week I am committing to work on one UFO.  I may work on part of or finish something as simple as binding (not that binding is simple! but it counts as one thing to finish).

This week I have been on vacation with family.  We have been traveling through Maine and settled in a cabin on a lovely, spring filled lake.  I am surrounded by nature, beautiful sunrises, a crystal clear lake, singing loons, croaking frogs and a lot of BUGS!  But I also have this amazing view while I sew and its inspirational to say the very least.

Kate, Harry, Diane, Tyler and Lily contemplating the fish 

Lily guarding the cabin

a children's only fishing pond

Kate caught the first Trout

So now for my UFO project this week.  I brought several actually and when I arrived at the cabin I unpacked them all, except for one that has it's own, pretty box.  It has its own box because it is in pieces.  Measured, sliced and diced, bagged and labeled along with directions and thread.  (I was wondering where that spool of pink Aurifil was).  I saw the finished wall hanging in a LQS near my home and loved it, save for the fabric choices.  But then, that is always a personal preference for quilters.  

The quilt is called Mexican Stars Quilt Pattern and Annies carries it and a ton of other quilting items AND online classes! (I'll be reviewing those soon too).

If you check out the pattern on pinterest you will also see all kinds of different fabrics, colors and patterns used for this amazing quilt.

My LQS even had a class on making this really beautiful quilt, however, the teacher, while very talented at fabric art, was not interested in conveying how to make the quilt.  It was a frustrating experience and I ended up putting it up on a shelf.  I didn't even finish the class.

One of the things that really gave me pause was the use of folded squares into triangles that are placed in corners, and then folded back on the bias to create a curve.  But, one day, while surfing through the wonderful Facebook posts from one of my club sewisters in The Crafty Gemini Quilt Club, I happened upon a wonderful link to a video for a table runner.  It wasn't even in English!  But the person making the table runner did everything so concisely and orderly I could follow along and made this:

Fast forward 3 years.  3 years in quilting years is like 10 years of learning years.  I have attended several retreats, downloaded dozens of classes and watched hours of YouTube tutorials.  I am burning through computer giggle bites (whatever it's called) like there is no tomorrow and this is exactly the technique and tutorial I needed in order to tackle this beautiful quilt. I cannot find the original YouTube Tutorial but there are several now showing this very simple and versitile technique.  Some call it Cathedral Window, and while the Mexican Stars Quilt Pattern uses the technique it doesn't actually look anything like a cathedral window.

After 3 years of storing it with high hopes I read through the pattern and it all began to make sense.  The importance of Strip sets, Units and labeling the fabric with names such as dark, medium, light, background, print, etc.  It was no longer gibberish, foreign, gobbledygook!  It was Quilt-talk and now I speak that!  Here are some pics of the work I accomplished on my first UFO project of the summer:

So let's all get started.  Let's make a pinkie promise to work on just a little bit or a big bit of a UFO.  Even if you only do it once a week, post your progress, comment about it and cheer each other on.  You can post in comments here and on the Vintagekindagirl Facebook page.  I will continue to do the same.  

Happy UFO Summer!