30 June check in

Every six months I set goals for my quilting and embroidery.  I find this helps me to keep on task, and get things finished.

It's 30 June so it's time to check progress.  The list I wrote for 2017 is here if you would like to check back, but I promise to work through it without omitting anything.

1. Symposium quilt 1.  This one is finished, photographed, and submitted.  I'm just waiting to hear if it got accepted or not.

2. Symposium quilt 2.  This one didn't get finished in time, so will be held over until a future show.  I've continued to work on it, but I just knew I couldn't finish everything.

3. Symposium quilt 3 - Possum Magic.  I finished this one, photographed it and submitted it to Symposium.  Again, I'm waiting to find out if it was accepted or not. (I'll post full photos in another post soon.)

4. Tussie Mussie.  I made the top entirely from my stash and I love it.  The pattern calls for nice big half square triangles and enjoyed mixing up my favourite Kaffe Fassett prints.  This pattern is from Kaffe's book, Quilts in Italy.  I've decided to get this one quilted at Busy Bee, Wellington, because I just haven't got time to quilt everything myself and I really want to start using it.

5.  Sue Spargo Instastitch - I finished the blocks and joined them all up, but haven't thought about how it quilt it yet.  There's stabiliser behind most of the blocks so it will be too thick for hand quilting.

6. Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM.  I'm going to start this at our retreat, this weekend. Now that my Symposium quilts are finished I intend to dive right in and enjoy making this.

7. Tropical Hexagons - another Kaffe Fassett pattern.  Now that I know that Kaffe and Brandon are coming back to New Zealand in January, I really need to get this one quilted so I can take it along for show and tell.  I have started the hand quilting, and will try to do a few hexagons each week.  There are 99 in the quilt!  This pattern is Mediterranean Hexagons from Quilts in Morocco.

So that was all the things I listed at the start of the year.   I've finished two of them, and made progress on four.  The Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM is the only one that I haven't worked on yet.

Of course I've started some extras along the way too:

8. Ballet with Kaffe Fassett - I'm loving how this is looking and I'm enjoying English Paper Piecing again.

9.  12 x 12 quilts.  I've made three 12 x 12 quilts for our guilds exhibition.  I can't show you them yet, but I will once the exhibition opens on 1 August.

10. BOM HST  - I've joined up some of the Half Square Triangles (HSTs) that I won at our guild Block of the Month (BOM) earlier in the year. I need to add more yet, but I like where this is going.

11. Cob Web quilt.  I started this in a class with Chris Kenna at Nancy's Stitch Studio.  We only made a couple of blocks at the class but I love how they are turning out.  They are foundation paper pieced so are quite slow to make, and making the blocks into circles taxes my brain - which I like. That's not my quilt hanging up - that's Chris' sample for classes.

So that's ample to keep me busy until the end of the year.  But added to that I will starting three new quilts at Symposium in October! Help!!

My embroidery priorities for 2017

I've just chosen my embroidery classes for 2017, so I can now write my list of things I'd like to make this year. Once again, I'm going to keep it simple and list my top priorities only.  I'm tired of listing the same things year after year and never doing them! Maybe one year I'll suprise everyone and just quietly make one of them when no one is looking.

1. Holey Moley

photo from Nancy's Stitch Studio

This will be six classes at Nancy's Stitch Studio spread out over the year. I haven't done this type of Jacobean embroidery so it will be very interesting.

2. Textured Floral Extravaganza

Photo from Nancy's Stitch Studio

This will be another set of six classes spread out over the year, with homework in between the lessons! Once again, I see new techniques that I haven't tried previously.

3. A Treasured Time

I started this Dimensions Gold kit in October 2016 and would really like to have it finished and framed before Christmas. I love this scene, especially as we have Christmas in summer in New Zealand.

Here's where I'm up to:

4. Peacock at Sunset

I'm more than 50 % done on the Ehrman tapestry, so I plan to finish it in 2017.

5. Twelve Days Ornaments

This is a gorgeous range of wool felt Christmas ornaments designed by Larissa Holland.

I stumbled across them on Instagram (@mmmcrafts) but you can also see them on Larissa's blog here. I've already made a tiny start, just to try out the method and test my Sulky Solvi.  Now I need to decide what colour felt I'm going to use. I can see this taking up a lot of time as I keep adding extra touches.

So that's it! Five main things to work on this year.  Plus my quilts of course (which you can see here).

My quilting priorities for 2017

I love to start the new year with some goals, so here's what I've got planned for 2017.

1.  Symposium quilt 1.  I don't generally like to talk about Secret Sewing, but I have to mention this one because it's where most of my time is going at the moment.  I'm making a quilt to enter into our national quilt symposium. It has to be an original design, so I want to keep it under wraps until the entry deadline of June 2017.  I promise to reveal all in due course.

New Zealand has a big quilt symposium every second year.  Hundreds (or thousands) of quilters all gather for five days of exhibitions and classes. I'm currently planning which classes to attend and I'm aiming for Jen Kingwell and Chris Jurd.  There will be many international tutors there from UK, USA and Australia, as well as New Zealand tutors.  You can read more about it here.

2. Symposium quilt 2. I've also started a second quilt for symposium which may or may not get finished before the mid June deadline. If it's not ready for this symposium, the next one is in 2019 - plenty of time (ha, ha).

3. Symposium quilt 3.  Possum Magic.

There's a special category at symposium for quilts made by more than one person.  I thought it would be fun to enter my Possum Magic quilt which was made by 8 of us during a round robin.  You can see all the quilts from our round robin in the Possum Magic tab at the top of my blog.  I still need to finish hand quilting my quilt, but if I can get it done by the mid June deadline I will definitely be entering it.

4. Kaffe Fassett Tussie Mussie. Once I've finished my symposium quilts I think I will have earned a little rest, so I'd like to make this sweet design from Kaffe's latest book, Quilts in Italy. I'm sure I can make this entirely from my Kaffe stash (although mine won't be in these colours).

5. Sue Spargo Block of the Month. I've been taking part in this free online block of month and making each block as it was released.  I'm  little bit behind now, but I think I've made 9 of the 11 released to date.  I'm looking forward to joining it all up and seeing the finished quilts.

6. Wendy Williams Tea Party BOM. I resisted enrolling in this BOM, but when someone on Instagram was selling the entire set I felt I just had to help her out and buy the set. I do love Wendy's wool felt applique designs so I will enjoy stitching this.

7. Tropical Hexagons. This will be a hand quilting project for 2017.  I'll keep it simple, but I do love the texture hand quilting gives, so I intend to quilt it myself.

I'm going to stop my list here.  In previous years I've listed more than 10 quilts, but this year I want to keep it simple and just list my very top priorities.  I know I will be taking classes at symposium in October and starting at least 3 more quilts there, so I have to leave room for new things.

What's on your list for 2017? Feel free to leave a comment below.