A New UFO

Yes, it has happened.  I quit that evil jacket and stuck it back in the UFO pile. When I made my to-do list for the 100 Day Hustle, I realized that I have a lot of other projects that I want/need to get done before the year ends (and I left the FMQ challenge off that list! I need to get back to doing it!)

I also realized that I have literally been avoiding sewing for the past few weeks because I know this jacket will be hard and frustrating.  So I sewed those last two curved strips down (it was a royal pain and took forever and involved lots of seam ripping) and then set it aside.

Here are the shots of those last few (painful) steps.  This needed to be curve pieced, and I couldn't get the stupid strip to be the right size so I had to cut a new one (so much wasted fabric! Arrg!) So I lay a piece of paper down and pierced it with pins along the stitching line, then cut it out as a "template."

 Here's the actual fabric all pinned down.  Even with all this planning, I still got some wavy spots, but I threw up my hands and decided I would just deal with them.

 Here's the finished back panel.  You can tell this jacket is designed to be slimming! I think when I come back to this next I will baste together the panels so I can see how it looks and give myself a little pick-me-up.

Putting that aside has been a relief. I need to be working on projects that I look forward to! So I sat down to do the "O is Owl" wallhanging, which I love and which was supposed to be the first monthly project for my guild.

On a side note, the monthly project caused a lot of anxiety this week because I received my project binder and discovered (I should have realized...) that the entire tutorial each month has to fit in a single page (or less!) of newsletter space. I was also frankly stressed about getting the sample done on time, and figuring out how I could make it to the morning meetings to show the next sample, whether I needed to have a prize system in place, etc.

On Friday I met with some friendly members of my guild who helped me realize that I was being way too ambitious.  If it's challenging for me to fit in the time to do these projects, it will be challenging for the guild members too! So instead we will do a very simple block-of-the-month. This will be easier and far less stressful on me, and probably more enjoyable for the guild members.

Okay back to the pictures :)  This was before I decided to no longer do this wallhanging (it will probably be dumped in the UFO pile too, at least temporarily...) The first instructions call for making a scrappy night sky background. After that evil jacket it was a fun relief to throw a bunch of random blue fabrics in a pile and just cut strips left and right, with no regard to their width.

 Here they are all ironed out and ready to be sewn together!

I've made a little progress since then, but this weekend was our guild's quilt show (more on that in another post...) so I once again having gotten much sewing done. So, that's all for now. I am definitely feeling pumped up after shedding that project and getting inspired by this weekend's show.