2017 - My quilting year in review

I like to review my progress against my goals at the end of each year. Way back in January I blogged about my quilting priorities for 2017 (you can read that list here).  Although I reviewed my progress back in July, I still like to do an annual review and remind myself of what I have finished during the year.

I like to use my blog as a personal record, as well as a way of sharing my quilting with others, so I totally understand if you just scroll through this list and look at the pretty pictures.

First I'll work through what was on my list in January:

1.  Symposium Quilt 1 - Vibrant Curiosities. I'm pleased to say that I finished it before the dealine, and it was accepted into Symposium.  It was all English Paper Pieced and hand quilted within six months, so that's pretty good I think.  You can read more about it here.

2.  Symposium Quilt 2 - this idea never got off the ground, but I still have all the fabrics put aside for it, and I hope to make it for our next Symposium in 2019.

3. Possum Magic - I spent weeks hand quilting this quilt, and finished it in April.  I entered it into Symposium, but it didn't get accepted.  I'm fine with that because only half of the quilts entered were accepted.

4. Kaffe Fassett Tussie Mussie I had admired the photo of Tussie Mussie in "Quilts in Italy" for some months before I decided to dive into my Kaffe stash and make this pattern.  I had this quilt quilted by a local long armer because I have too many tops waiting for hand quilting.  You can read all about it here.

5.  Instastitch with Sue Spargo.  I finished the quilt top, and have started machine quilting it myself.  It's still a work in progress.

6. Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM - I made a tiny start on this at our retreat back in July, but I haven't done any more since then.

7. Tropical Hexagons.  I've passed half way with the hand quilting, and really would like to have this finished before Kaffe and Brandon make a return visit to New Zealand in late January 2018. The problem is that it's already hot here, and hand quilting a quilt with woollen batting isn't all that appealing right now.

So that was the 7 quilts on my list for 2017.  I finished 3 of them, but started quite a few other things during the year too.

8. Holiday Homies - When I saw these cute Christmas fabrics by Tula Pink I just knew I need to make something with them.  Of course it's summer time when it's Christmas in New Zealand, so we don't need big Christmas quilts.  I just made a cute wall hanging or table mat.  You can read how I made this quilt here.  

9. Holiday Patchwork Forest.  I initially thought I'd use this pattern for my Holiday Homies fabrics above, so I made a few test blocks to see how it might work.  It turned out that the animal heads were too big to fit within the trees, but I kept my test blocks anyway.  Then a few weeks ago I got an urge to finish these blocks and I made a fun, scrappy quilt with them.

10.  Flocks by Night.  I bought this Wendy Williams pattern from Material Obsession in June.  I'd admired it for quite some time and thought it would be fun to make.  I just finished it on 21 December and am very pleased with it.

11. Cobwebs.  I started this quilt in a class back in March.  I've made quite a few of the cobweb blocks, but haven't made the background sections yet.  I'm still deciding how I want the background sections to look.

12. Glitter.  I started this in a class with Jen Kingwell at Symposium in October.  There's no rush on this because it's hand pieced and I know it's going to take time.  I've got so many green and grey fabrics set aside I simply have to continue!

13.  Ballet with Kaffe.  I started another Millefiori quilt from Willyne Hammerstein's second book.  But then she released a third book and I'm still deciding if I'll continue with this design, or morph it into one of the ones in her third book.

14. Block of the Month Half Square Triangles (BOM-HST).  I won all these half square triangles in our guild's block of the month.  I've put them together and now the top is ready for hand quilting when the cooler days arrive next autumn.

15.  Southern Stars.  QuiltNSW are running a challenge for 2018 and the theme is Southern Stars.  I've started a quilt, but won't be showing any photos until it's hanging in the exhibition.

Wow! I'm tired after writing all of that, but also feeling energised to finish some of these quilts.  I think I've had a productive year.  How about you? Did you get much quilting done in 2017? Feel free to tell me what you've achieved this year in the comments below, and even put a link to a blog post if you've done a summary like this.

In early January I'll post my quilting and embroidery lists for 2018, but I can tell you now that it's going to start with finishing all the extra things I started in 2017.

Happy New Year everyone!