If you listen to quilters chatting among themselves you will often hear them talking about their UFOs and sometimes also calling them WIPs. No, these are not those weird sightings in the sky that have the scoffers irritating the convinced observers, and vice versa. These are those projects that were started and then stopped, put away, sometimes forgotten, but often causing little twinges of conscience when their numbers begin to mount up - as they invariably tend to do. They are the Un Finished Objects, the Works In Progress.

Like most quilters, I also have some UFOs and WIPs. Just lately I have got up the courage to face them again, and to work through each one to completion. I managed three last month, all full-size bed quilts. Today I hauled out another one - the one in the photo here - and discovered why it was I had put it down in the first place. The top and bottom borders were cut just a little too short, one whole inch short either end. It is an appliqué quilt, which means those flowerpots of flowers, those vines and leaves, are all cut from different fabrics and sewn to the fabric underneath. The vines are sewn with the very finest of silk thread such that the tiny stitches can barely be seen, and the leaves, flowers and the pot are sewn more boldly with a buttonhole stitch and thick variegated coloured cottons to make them more obvious. A lot of work has gone into it already, and I can remember now how dismayed I was to find I had cut those end borders too short. But these things happen occasionally, and there is usually a way to recover if one doesn’t give up. I had put it away because “out of sight, out of mind” and I didn’t want to be reminded of my heartbreaking mistake. How much easier it is to walk away from things, rather than to face them and work through them. Making quilts can be pretty much like “real life” in that way.

Seeing it again today, a remedy jumped out at me! It will involve going back and unpicking just a few inches of the vine on either end, shortening the piece further, and stitching a new square of background fabric into each corner such that it will look as though it was really meant to be that way all along. Now why hadn’t I seen that “fix” in the first place? I was too disappointed, I guess. But now it seems all so obvious.

There is a little more appliqué work to do to the top border, then the “fix”, then something more to each corner - the vine carried around to join full circle, more leaves and flowers. I know how I will finish it off - with a wool batting, straight machine “in the ditch” quilting, hand quilting around the appliqué parts, and tied by tiny contrasting coloured buttons sewn through all layers in the centre of each flower. It promises to look really good when all done. And now I am off with new energy and purpose. This WIP is soon to be a UFO no longer.

A Quilt Gallery has recently been added to Judah’s Site on this page here. As my number of UFOs reduce, you may expect this gallery to grow. There is not a great pile of them, but I am not saying anything about those other secret things every quilter knows about… the fabric stash. That has to be for another day.

Meanwhile, the quilter’s motto: If life gives you scraps, make a quilt from them.