Quilty Goals - 2008

Another post. I pilfered off my LiveJournal account so that my blogspot has a clear thread about what I am thinking on the quilting front. This was written a few weeks ago, so some paragraphs will have updates.

I have taken some serious stock of my quilting stuff since I had to integrate my cousin’s stash into my own and man, I have enough fabric. I have decided to participate in some quilty challenges in 2008. I’m on a yahoo group called Stashbusters, and they have several challenges to get people using or donating their stash and not making the problem worse. The 4 challenges I hope to participate in are:

The No Buy Challenge – I will not join officially, so I will do what is know as the Spirit of No Buy, which a lot of us do. The premise is that you can only buy to finish a project you are doing RIGHT NOW. These are legal purchases. I would love to do this for a year, if not longer. Right now I am aiming for starting after I get back from retreat (November 5) and getting through year end. I am thinking of saving up $10 per week for every week I can make it through. By the end of 2008, that would be a tidy sum. I am including books and patterns in that, but I do have a running tools list that I keep. If I find it, I buy it, as not every shop carries every thing. UPDATE: I bought nothing at the retreat, and so I need to start saving my $10 bills!

The 100 Yard Dash Challenge – Everyone just does this one by themselves; there’s no official challenge as we cannot come to a consensus on how to count it. Some want to do only things in your stash, but if you had to make a purchase (as indicated above), that doesn’t count. I just take the measurements of the project, count the front and back, convert to square inches and add the binding. Then I take the total square inches and divide it by 42” for the width of the fabric on the bolt and then by 36” for yardage. Right now, I’ve used about 20 yards in 2007, but should I bang out a ton of finishes here in the last 2 months, that could ramp up quickly. My goal would be 200 yards (this year and next) by the end of 2008.

The UFO Challenge – this one I join for real. It’s complicated to explain, but my personal goals for 2008 are 12 twin sized (or greater) finishes. This is basically finishing up old projects that have been abandoned. Another goal is not to start any more; the count needs to go down.

The WIPs and WHIMMs Challenge – this is another one I join for real. This rewards the projects started and completed within the same calendar year, thus reducing new UFOs. I don’t care how many of these I have.

UPDATE: I was the Linus Lady for my guild and then I moved. I spoke to my fellow guild members/bee members at the retreat last weekend (it is fantastic when your guild President and VP are in your bee. You can get so much done!), and they solved the problem for me. The ruling was that the guild will no longer support Project Linus as a guild. People are free to do their own thing. As for all the supplies and fabric that people dumped on me for Linus that I paid to move, I can sort through them and donate them in my local community to a like charity. YAY! I have been going through boxes and bins for the last 2 days, sorting into charity for Linus, charity other, garbage and my stuff. 3 boxes are gone, 1 more is full of Linus stuff, 1 garbage bag is other charity donations and there are 3 bags of garbage. YAY! This has been a huge hassle in my garage and we need to get it resolved. Now that it is, full steam ahead!