Boston Modern Quilt Guild WIP Challenge

I spent some time organizing my sewing room this morning. I’ve had the urge to sew more often recently, but my tiny space is so cluttered, just opening the doors to that unheated 6×12 room is daunting. Now that my swap project is done and mailed, and Thanksgiving is over, this felt like the perfect Sunday morning to get a handle on things. (Relatively speaking, of course.)

It also gave me a chance to take inventory of my works-in-progress. My local Modern Quilt Guild is running a WIP challenge that started in October and ends with our April meeting. The more WIPs you finish, the more entries you get into a prize drawing! Well, I always love a challenge. So here are the projects on my WIP list that were officially “in progress” at the time of that October meeting, as well as their status as of this morning:

A wedding gift for my stepsister and her new husband, in the purples and greens of their wedding, with some gray. Blocks are all ready for some serious chain-piecing.

A surprise quilt for a friend – this one has a funny story. A friend of mine from high school, with whom I mostly lost touch save for the casual contact of Facebook, is a fellow quilter. She loves giving surprise gifts to people, and so she and I are collaborating to make this quilt for another high school friend. We split up a jelly roll and she recently sent back the (FREAKING AWESOME) blocks that she made. I need to make some blocks, too, and assemble the top to send back to her for quilting.

Forest Lake I and II. These two have been on the list for something ridiculous like two and a half years. It’s a twin-size and a full-size quilt, from a Hope Valley bundle, intended for my mom’s lake house. The full-size (II) has a finished top and a partially-made back. The twin-size (I) is still only a partial top.

Quilts of Valor. I put out a call to Sewing Summit attendees, asking anyone who’s interested to submit blocks for a Quilts of Valor project. I got a staggering number of blocks, and now the top is complete. Time to find some backing fabric.

M’s t-shirt quilt. My husband holds onto a lot of sentimental things long after their real use is past. In an attempt to clear out our closets, we came upon piles and piles of college-era t-shirts that are no longer remotely wear-able. I fully sympathized with not wanting to throw them out, so I promised to turn them into a quilt. If anyone has design suggestions for a modern-looking not-cheesy t-shirt quilt, I am all ears.

And hey, my Google quilt counts as my first finish for the challenge! It was totally in-progress at that time, and now it’s done!

So, that makes six in progress and one finished. Will I finish them all by April? Doubtful. But at least it’s a sense of where I am at the moment.

And no, that doesn’t include any of the random bee blocks and other miscellany I have sitting around. Nor does it include the three quilts for babies due between now and then, which I haven’t even started yet. Yeesh.

Anyone else have a list of WIPs you’re trying to get through?