Baby Groot takes a holiday

I have been continuing my UFO (unfinished object) challenge. This 1/4-log cabin quilt was made from a set of blocks I sewed in an effort to reduce the amount of scraps in my collection. There have been a few other quilts in different settings from this set of blocks but this is the last.



This scrap quilt was designed to use up the smallest of my scraps, leftovers 2 inches or smaller. I sorted the scraps by color and sewed them into blocks. I had a hard time deciding how to quilt this one, so it spent some time as a UFO.



I also finished a Quilt of Valor this spring. It had wavy borders and I didn't feel like fixing them, so I put it away for several years. It is now quilted and ready to go.



After finishing the quilting on these quilts, I started a third one when I started to notice my machine beginning to growl. I checked the stitch count (yes, my machine counts how many stitches it has made) and I am at about 2.3 million. According to the internet, after about 2 million it should be serviced. Baby Groot (as I named my industrial quilting machine) needs to be lubricated, so he took a holiday until I could get him to the shop. I checked my records, and Baby Groot has quilted 32 quilts since 2015. Wow. In the meantime, I quilted and finished a couple of small wall-hanging quilts that could be quilted on the Megasaurus (my other quilting machine, which is smaller and not so industrial).



I also did some hand applique and I have been making progress on some of my UFOs that are still in the piecing stage and not ready for quilting. I have already worked on unfinished projects that I didn’t think I would get to this year; so far I have completed 7 UFOs.