A finish and a start

Things have been productive around here; I'm breezing through my 100 day hustle projects and feeling good about reducing my to-do list and UFOs.  It's feeling a lot less onerous to sew when I'm not panicking about getting a ton of projects done in a certain time period.

Here's the hustle progress:

1. Monthly Guild Project - Done through the Jan block
2. Jacket - bumped
3. Charity wholecloth - also bumped, but I did do a different charity top instead
4. Christmas presents. - Done
5. FMQ Challenge/placemats: All placemats are done.  I have 4 FMQ tutorials to go. Not sure if I'll complete these, they are feeling like a chore which is one reason I petered out back in July.  I know the goal is not to be a chore, but at the same time I want to push myself to work on these tutorials because that's the only way I'll get better.

As you can see, the only real thing left on my to-do list are those FMQ tutorials.

Anyways, last weekend I finished off the "O is for Owl" wallhanging from Patchwork Posse. I was intending to make it for halloween, but so it goes.

I originally attempted to combine the border and binding into a super-wide binding. But somehow the corner didn't have enough space. I'm not sure how I should have stitched it differently to give enough fabric gathered in the corners to fold over properly.

super-wide binding

really bad corners 

 It was easy enough to just put on a separate border and normal 1/4" binding. I think I mentioned in a previous post the trouble I had quilting it. I definitely used the "ultra hold" Heat 'n bond. My stitches kept skipping when I tried to stitch through it.  On the owls I was able to get by, but the tree branch ended up with really messy quilting as a result.

I followed the suggested quilting design very closely, but I added the star buttons on my own. I think they added some fun embellishment to it.

Here are some close-ups!

Little Owl

Big Owl

quilted moon and star buttons

quilted tree branch and leaves

Now that I have that UFO off my plate, I've started a little Christmas wallhanging.  I don't really have any Christmas decor right now, so I want to sort of add one decoration per year to get my collection built up.  This is a nice, tiny, paper-pieced wallhanging.

This pattern has sooooo many pieces!

 It is by far the most complicated paper piecing pattern I have ever done! It's definitely slow because each piece is a unique size so I can't mass cut them out in preparation. But I do really enjoy it. I am trying to do one chunk a day and I think I might be able to finish the wallhanging by the end of next week. I am having lots of fun in the meantime!

First three pieces done: tree, star, and tree skirt