UFOs and To-Do Lists

I have been doing very little on the quilting front lately, mainly because I am uninspired by my current list of projects.  I am debating setting them aside and doing something new, but I don't like having any UFOs (unfinished objects) at all.  Ideally I would like to only do one project at a time, and I don't want to get in the habit now of doing many projects at once, because I think it's a hard habit to kick once you get started.

I'm writing this post to gather my thoughts about what I'm currently working on and what needs to get done.  Hopefully writing it all out will inspire me.

Most important to-do:

I need to sew hanging sleeves on all of the quilts that I am entering into the guild show.  I submitted four quilts and the accepted all of them! I don't normally do hanging sleeves because all of my wallhangings are tiny and thus just get tacked up to the wall.  It seems like they are easy to make, but I am trying to figure out how thick of a strip I need to cut for them.  I found some instructions from Piece O' Cake designs, but they want an 8 1/2" strip of fabric!  Frankly I feel like that is a ton of fabric to waste on a sleeve.  I am debating what to do.

Two of the quilts I am entering are couch quilts, so I could conceivably just rip out the hanging sleeve once the show is over.  Is it really bad if I make the hanging sleeve out of muslin? Does it have to match the backing fabric? I would love your opinions.

Other In-Progress Stuff:

• My mom's quilted jacket.  The exciting thing about this is I had a revelation that I was basically paper piecing onto muslin instead of paper.  So if I can remember how to paper piece this will go a whole heck of a lot faster.  I need to look up a tutorial and do a practice paper-piecing block just to get back into the swing of it.
• Table placemats.  These are also my practice swatches for the FMQ challenge, which I am seriously behind on.  Also the three that are finished need to be bound.
• Charity quilt.  It's a gigantic wholecloth.  Quilting it is slow and tedious because I made too fancy of a design.

Projects I would like to Start:

• Quilted clock.  I got a sweet book on how to make fabric clocks for free from my guild, and I really want to make one! I have most of the supplies already. If my test clock goes well, these could be fantastic Christmas presents
• Beach bag, as a Christmas gift.  This one has me excited and inspired.  I will be creating my own machine applique design from free internet clipart and the like to create a little beach scene for a beach bag.  Fun!
• Quilt Guild Monthly Block: This year I volunteered to be my guild's monthly block coordinator.  I don't really know what it entails so I'm making it up! I thought about a BOM, but instead decided that each month I will pick a fun, small project that is available for free online, ideally centered around a fun theme.  The goal is to get my much-older quilt guild members onto the internet and checking out blogs!  Maybe I will set up a yahoo group for guild members who want to participate so we can all share tips and tricks, questions, and photos of our finished projects each month.  For the first month (October) I went with "owls" as the theme since they are vaguely Halloween-related.  BUT, this means I need to whip up a sample! I've picked out about four free owl pattern tutorials that I will link to in our newsletter. My favorite is "O is for Owl."
• Other giant quilting projects (like the Sedona Start BOM) that I can't even think about until this stuff is done!

So I think the trick will be to devote a little bit of time each day to the less-fun projects that need to be finished, and then a little bit of time to the more-fun projects that I want to start.  

Sorry for this text-heavy post, I'm really writing it for my own benefit to organize my thoughts and plans. To make up for it, here is a completely quilting-unrelated shot of my friends and me at Disneyland last weekend: