Cat Blocks in Cat Fabric

These are cat blocks in cat fabrics form a swap on About.com Quilting around 2000. There were lots and lots of rounds of swaps every month by several hostesses. Each month we made 12 cat blocks of one fabric and got back 12 new blocks. I have already made a queen sized quilt for daughter number one from the cat blocks in cat fabric swaps. I quilted that queen sized quilt on my domestic sewing machine using the stuff and fluff method. Yes it can be done. The rest of the cat blocks were put away to age. The intention was to make a twin sized quilt for daughter number two.

In my quest to finish UFOs I have been pulling out piles of blocks from various swaps. I came across the cat blocks and decided these have aged long enough. I actually had to make about 14 new blocks as there were not enough. I also had some sets of up to six of the same block and did not want that many repeats. I found fabric in my stash that was cats but had not been made into cat blocks so made up sets of two each. There were also a few blocks that were from fabrics thin enough to spit thru so will not use those. In any case here are the finalists in all their glory ready to be sewn together.

I am asking myself of late why I have so many UFOs. I am actually scared to catalog all of them in fear of realizing how many I have. After some soul searching I have come up with a few reasons. First there are so many ideas out there that I find I am easily distracted and want to jump into something I find that I want to make and then run out of steam. Many projects take a lot of time design, layout plans, cutting, piecing, borders and rethinking layout, to quilting, binding and that final label. It is no wonder with all of this that one can run out of steam or motivation midstream. Second I find that when working on something there is always a design element that is not right, or more blocks are needed (as in a swap), or some of the swap blocks are flawed and have to be fixed or replaced, the border design is just not jelling like it should and requires more though. All of these things can send a project off to a bin, box or far corner of the sewing studio to be buried and forgotten. Then there is the call of something new that suddenly becomes urgent, a gift needs to be made, a contest sounds intriguing or sometimes a new design is just calling. Current projects can be case aside in an instant. It seems the longer something ages the less likely I am to go back and pick it up.

I have decided that this year is going to be different. Yes I will begin new projects but I am making a huge push to finish up some of my UFOs. So far I have a bin that contains 5 tops that started this year as a pile of blocks. They will soon be joined by the cat quilt top. Some of these quilts require borders and the fabric is already waiting for some of them. The next steps will be to push these tops to quilting ready and get them quilted. For me once a quilt is quilted I always want it done so the binding goes on very quickly as does the label. I feel I am well on my way to my 2014 goal of finishing TWELVE quilts this year. Not all of these need to be UFOs. I do have three new things I started this year and they are now in the ready to be quilted category but I am not calling them UFOs yet as they have not aged long enough for me to call them such.