THE QUILT NOTEBOOK
Last week we reviewed our quilt notebooks and some of us graded our progress fairly harshly. Read more HERE….
The point of the Notebook is to get you thinking about the way you work and stumbling blocks to completing quilts. It’s really just a way to focus your work efforts. If you are thinking more…give yourself a good grade for that… but if you still have a pile of projects, here’s another source of help….
THE GIVEAWAY
Mary Huey of Mary Huey Quilt.com is offering a chance to win a spot in her “Unfinished Quilts–Assault Tactics” home study course.
TO ENTER
- Pop over to Mary’s blog site HERE
- Tell us how many UFOs you currently have AND/OR what your biggest stumbling block to completing your quilts…is it free motion quilting?…layering a quilt?…how to add the appliqué?
- The Winner will be announced on Friday.
A NOTE FROM MARY HUEY
Hello to my fellow Inbox Jaunt followers! I joined you during the fall of 2013 when I discovered Lori’s great tutorials during my efforts to upgrade my machine quilting skills. When she began the QUILT NOTEBOOK series in January, I was intrigued.
I’m Mary Huey and among my other monikers (quilter, teacher, shop owner), I am a UFQ (unfinished quilts) “facilitator” or “stimulator” or “enabler”. I can’t even begin to imagine how many UFQ’s I’ve helped my students and customers begin. When I closed my shop, Erie Street Quilts in Willoughby, Ohio, in 2005 I came face-to-face with a mountain of UFQ’s as I worked to merge the leftovers from the shop with all the stuff already in my studio. I had 72 finished quilt tops alone of varying sizes ready to quilt and lots more projects in various stages of unfinished.
“Quilter, finish your own stuff!!”
So began my own journey tackling this overwhelming backlog. Along the way it inspired some humorous guild lectures as I shared how I was dealing with my UFQ’s. The feedback from these programs was very encouraging and so I pulled the strategies that worked for me into a four lesson course which I call UFQ Assault Tactics.
Each lesson begins with my ideas & strategies on a different aspect of gaining control of your UFQ’s. Participants are then assigned three or four tasks to move forward. When each lesson is finished, participants e-mail me a little report on their progress – I even accept photos if one hates to write reports – along with questions and challenges they’ve encountered for feedback from me. Then I send out the next lesson and so on. Participants have taken from 3 to 8 months to complete the course – the pace is self-determined though I will niggle if you seem to be slowing down. I’m always just an e-mail away!!
Feedback from participants has been good – quilt makers have made progress with their existing UFQ’s one way or another and they’ve learned what changes they need to make to prevent excessive UFQ’s in the future. UFQ’s don’t go away completely, but they can be less overwhelming.
Personally, I’m down to about 25 quilt tops in my queue and I’ve reversed my own tendency to start more than I finish so that now it’s I maintain a 1 start to 3 finishes ratio. That’s huge for me!!
Come on over to www.maryhueyquilts.blogspot.com and visit me today!
I’m sharing my thoughts in response to Lori’s question about “stumbling blocks”. It might give you some insights into your own habits. Then leave a comment with the answers to Lori’s questions of the day and on Friday we’ll chose a winner of a UFQ ASSAULT TACTICS home study course.
If you don’t win, you can order the course on my website at MaryHueyQuilts.com Just think by the end of the year, you could have your own assault tactics in place!
Good luck, Readers!
Lori
PS…All images are the property of Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt and are intended for personal use only. Feel free to pin, blog, tweet with attribution to The Inbox Jaunt…For any other use, please contact me at lckennedy@hotmail.com. Thanks!