UFO Sightings at Ms P Designs USA

Hi Fellow Quilters,

This just in:  “Alien ships have been spotted in the skies above Houston and other major population centers, worldwide.  Residents are advised to stay indoors and avoid making contact with the visitors.”

Just kidding!  This post is NOT about that kind of UFO, although it might be interesting to investigate.  Perhaps the alien life forms would have some amazing quilting techniques to share with us, some cool new tools that defy our current understanding of physics, online links to intergalactic quilt shops filled with fabrics that have universal appeal, or perhaps some other-worldly quilts to “show and tell”!  (Wink, wink!)

It is hard to believe that 2018 is nearly half-finished!  How did we get to the almost-end of June already?  Way back in January, we set some goals for ourselves on our “Welcome 2018” post.  One of our goals was to finish at least one UFO project, each, that isn’t intended for our “Ms P Designs” business.  We both met the goal for the first quarter, and showed off our finished projects during the “Quilt Quazy Queens” blog hop.  And now, here we are again, at the end of the second quarter!  We’re excited to share our recent UFO’s, finished at last!

Sharon goes first this time:

I showed a photo of this convergence quilt-in-progress on our previous UFO post, and I’m happy to report that I’ve finished it!  All it needed was some quilting and a binding.

I decided to do some straight-line quilting, with my walking foot, right down the middle of each strip of fabric.  The quilting is both vertical and horizontal, with shiny black thread.

I had to get a little creative with the binding, since I didn’t have enough of any of the fabrics to make it all the same color.  I decided to echo my inner borders, and made the binding with two different fabrics.  All that remains is to decide where to display my creation!

So what to do for next quarter?  I’m not entirely sure, but I have pretty good start on this quilt top so I may go ahead and finish it!  Stay tuned. . . 

And now Susan’s turn:

Two years ago, I decided that I REALLY needed a patriotic table runner and place mats, so, as usual, I charged ahead, bought my fabrics, prewashed them, cut out all the pieces and just never sat down to sew them.  All this time, I have stored them in a drawer, so since our challenge was to finish up one UFO each quarter and what better time than now to make a patriotic table runner and place mats just in time for the 4th of July!

Here are my finished patriotic table runner and place mats:

I also learned a valuable lesson from this project.  I used a free pattern which was designed for a fabric manufacturer.  Fabric manufacturers want to SELL their fabric, so they offer free patterns.  The patterns are tested carefully and the construction of the patterns are usually tried and true methods, so there isn’t anything wrong with the free patterns; however, there may be ways to make the same blocks with way less wasted fabric.  There are loads of tutorials online about easy methods to make standard shapes for quilt blocks, such as half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles, or flying geese units.  (What a great idea for a future blog post!)  If you find the perfect free pattern, do yourself a favor and do a little research and figure out the best method to piece the quilt, and then do your own calculations as to how much fabric you actually need!  (Preferably before you purchase all of the fabric and cut out all of the pieces!)

The good news is that I have enough of the fabric from this project left over to make a “Quilts of Valor” donation quilt and, ultimately, as a gift for one of our military heroes!  Now you know what I am planning for my 3rd quarter UFO.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing our now-finished UFO’s!  It does feel good to put the last stitch into a project that has been waiting for attention.  Do you have a project that needs your attention?  We’d love to read about it in the “Comments”!

Thank you for stopping by today and taking the time to read our blog.  We hope that you’ll come back again, real soon.

Happy quilting,

Sharon & Susan