I mentioned Summer WIPGO hosted by Sarah Hearts in my last post, but after successfully completing 8 weeks of projects I figure it deserves a post of its own!
This challenge (WIPGO = Work In Progress + binGO) was a surprisingly great way to stay motivated to make progress in small ways — something that felt very manageable and satisfying. Although I’ve been setting quarterly quilty goals for many years, I found that I really enjoyed the weekly focus that this challenge provided…so much so that I am thinking of continuing it for another month or two to help me keep moving on current projects.
But back to this summer! I chose 8 projects to work on over the last 8 weeks, with no expectation of finishing, but simply hoping to dedicate a couple hours to making progress. Most projects were big — like my 100 stars and bee quilts — and not really meant to be finished during this challenge, but I did purposefully include two smaller projects that I knew could be done within a single week.
Happily, my Summer WIPGO was a great success! I worked on every single project on my board, which means I made progress on six items and finished two:
First: I used an ice dye kit that I bought a few years ago. This is one of those things that didn’t even take much time, but I had always put it off because it felt like a lot of effort to gather the supplies and figure out the instructions. (I recognize that neither of those is actually a lot of effort, but you know how brains can be!) Having this on my WIPGO board forced me to make the effort, and turns out we had everything I needed already. One big bag of ice later, and I was officially dyeing fabric for the first time! I don’t have a plan for this fabric yet, but it’ll be fun to use it eventually.
And second: I finished an on-demand course on pantograph design with Prostitcher Designer! I started this course two years ago and the push of WIPGO finally motivated me to go back and finish it — and now I am thrilled to be able to design my own pantographs. I’ve designed and tested three that I’m really happy with, and a few guild friends have volunteered to test them as well so I can make sure they work not only on my Intelliquilter, but on other computerized systems. After that, they’ll be available in my shop! I don’t know that pantograph design will be a huge thing for me, but I expect I’ll add new designs from time to time, and it’ll be very fun to be able to design my own custom panto if and when I want.
As for the other 6 items on my WIPGO board? I’ve got a Lisa Congdon cross stitch kit that is now about halfway done, and I got started on a crochet square sampler kit that I picked up last spring. Both of these are handwork projects that I will continue to work on while watching TV, etc.
I also had 3 quilts on the list that are in various stages. None of them are close to finished, but I worked a bit on each and now have a firm(er) plan for each one:
- My snake trail/path quilt is a group quilt with many blocks courtesy of my Quilts Unscripted bee-mates. I’ve think I’ve settled on a layout — which is different than my original plan, as often happens with group quilts! — and my next step is to make 8-12 additional blocks to reach my desired size.
- My 100 stars quilt has officially been pulled off the WIP shelf, where it had sat for 5 years. This is an accomplishment in and of itself, ha! After assessing it, I remembered that it was getting a bit wonky…which is why I put it aside in the first place. So I spent time seam ripping and fixing the sections I had already pieced. I have a bit more of that to do before I can continue with assembly.
- I spent time working through several different ideas and settled on a design for this year’s QuiltCon fabric challenge. It involves some larger FPP templates, so I got those printed and taped together and my next step is piecing.
In the middle of this, I started another quilt using an upcoming fabric line so I actually have FOUR quilts in various states right now…and after WIPGO, they had all ended up kinda heaped around my sewing table. It was messy and cluttered and honestly tracking all four was making me feel a little crazy! So over the weekend I gathered up each project, and assigned myself one quilt per week for the next month. It’ll be a lot easier to focus with only one on my table each week.
In a perfect world I’d have all four completed by the QuiltCon entry deadline. Realistically, I think I can finish 2-3 of them, with the 100 stars quilt as “maybe” since that one will require the most work to complete.
It’s been a fun 8 weeks thanks to WIPGO!
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