February UFO Challenge February 1, 2011

Judy has drawn the UFO Challenge number for February.  The link to the January challenge finishes can be found here.

This month’s number is 10. That means I’ll be working on my bright Colorworks Dresden Plate Quilt-As-You-Go project…

…if I can find it.

The top picture is a relatively current picture. I took it this past December. That portion of the quilt is in my UFO crate on the shelves. The bottom picture was taken a while back. I’m not sure where those two finished blocks are – or for that matter the box of black batting I purchased for the project.

This project was started in 2006.   Most of the prints are from the  Colorworks collection which came out in the early 1990’s.  I  know this, because the fabric is from a  “broomstick”  skirt that my Mom made for me as ‘model garment’ at a now defunct chain fabric store shortly after I moved to Texas.  I am here to tell you that quilting cotton does not make an easy to care for broomstick skirt.  Which is not to say the skirt wasn’t cute.  Mom used the same fabric to make a skirt for my sister and sister-in-law — although I don’t think their skirts had as many tiers.

I loved the skirt.  Wore it for nearly 10 years (I’m obviously not a clothes horse) but tended to roll over the hem when getting up from my desk at work.  Since the skirt had an elastic waistband,  it made for some potentially awkward moments.  The last time it happened,  I decided I would make a quilt from the miles of fabric in the skirt and came home and tore the skirt apart. I managed to acquire the other two skirts and found some leftover fabric in Mom’s sewing room.

Of course as a project without a known destination, this quilt got set aside to languish unfinished as I worked on something else.  Since it was started, I’ve completely gutted my sewing room, so there is no telling where the missing blocks and batting are.  For a while, the missing batting (and maybe the missing blocks?) was in a crate sitting in the living room.  Then we cleaned up the living room and the crate got moved.  Our best guess is it’s in the basement – but everything in the basement got moved around not too long ago when we had the plumber out.  So, before I can really begin working on this project, I’ve got to work on the basement.  I wonder if Judy will let me count a cleaned basement as a finished UFO?

I’ll search for the missing batting and if I don’t find it in the next two weeks, I may have to swap out UFO #10 for something else on the list.