To Dream the Impossible Dream

There hasn't been a whole load of craftiness or sewing going on here for a while. In December work took up a lot of time, and then Christmas hit and then New Year. The past 4 days Miss P and Little P have been staying with us which means plans of getting some of the things on my list done after work have been put on the back burner. 

I decided to set myself some monthly goals and to be public about them to hold myself accountable. If I don't out myself I'm pretty sure I'll get nothing done this year. I'm looking forward to taking some holidays towards the end of this month and I'm planning several days of nothing but sewing which is my idea of bliss.

Here are the goals I set for myself for January. 

1)Finish hexies for hexie flower garden quilt.

I started these hexies in October 2011 and I've been picking them up and putting them down ever since. The stumbling block at the moment is the thought that I'm going to have to pick out all those dastardly bits of paper before I can move on with this project. I have three more hexies to complete and honestly it's time they were done. 

2)Beg, Steal or Buy 10 thrifted shirts for shirt quilt project

I was inspired by this post that P did about a quilt she made from old shirts recently and since I don't have any original thoughts of my own I decided I needed to make a shirt quilt too. I made Mr. P go through his wardrobe and give me shirts that hadn't seen the light of day since the Bee Gees were in the Top 40. Thankfully that man never throws anything out. And then I went out and bought some extra shirts so this goal is pretty much achieved already. I've had a fine time this week hacking shirts to pieces with my rotary cutter in preparation for an onslaught of sewing. I will admit I got side tracked by the idea of a T-shirt quilt as well at this point so I'm collecting old T-shirts now too (and resisting running out to buy a ton of those so I can start another quilt because my track record of finishes of late has been pretty appalling) 

3)Make 10 shirt blocks 

Since I had a pile of hacked up shirts I figured I may as well start making blocks. If I do 10 blocks a month I could pretty much have this quilt wrapped up by June which would suit giving it as a present to someone I know who is having a birthday in July. I think so far I've managed to blitz 2 half blocks, so I'm 10% of the way there! I think this is the kind of quilt that I'm not going to know how it's really going to look until I have very single block finished and laid out. It's going to be kind of tragic if I hate it. 

4) Make an appliquéd bathrobe for Miss P 

In my op shop travels on the weekend I spied a white bathrobe. It was wonderfully fluffy. On the down side, the idea of picking out Archie's name was a bit of a pain but for 8 bucks I figured I could handle it. In the end Miss P got that job because she was sitting round doing nothing much and after all I'm going to be using my skills to gussy up this bathrobe into something girly and pretty for her. She spent some time going through a portion of my fabric stash that I've been saving for just such an occasion and now I just have to get up the guts to start cutting and appliquéing. By the way, Archie's bathrobe had an identical partner on the rack with a girls name on it. I wonder if they got divorced? 

5) Superheros quilt 

I've been collecting super hero fabric for the last few months to make a quilt. One of the ladies I work with has a 6 year old son and she has been very generous with passing his clothes/toys on to Miss P for Little P. I think that young man deserves to be rewarded for sharing and since he's super hero mad a quilt made from those fabrics seemed like a great idea. Ideally I want to start and finish this simple quilt before the end of the month. Lofty goals  since I cant recall the last time I got a quilt done that fast from start to finish. 

6) Make a “door” for Little P’s tent.

Little P is completely in love with his circus tent but he mentioned that it didn't have a door and asked me (very politely ) if I could arrange one. I guess he was worried about burglars. It went on the list for this month and I'm pleased to say it's done. 

Stay tuned to see if I get this all done or if I fail miserably and crawl back here to make a pile of excuses. 

PS. I've been the queen of slack lately at answering emails. I'm so sorry. I think the kind thing for me to do is hit delete and start over.