Every year I make a list of my quilting UFOs (unfinished projects) and promise myself to work on one each month. Not necessarily to finish it, but at least to pull it out and make some progress. Usually I do this in conjunction with my online guild’s UFO challenge. This year is no different, and I actually finished one! But more about that in a minute. Right now I want to show you the progress on my oldest UFO. We are talking 1998 oldest!

I am a history buff, especially American history. At this point in my life (1998), my husband and I were looking into participating in Civil War reenactments. I had the notion that I wanted to make a Civil War era quilt. I would, of course, use reproduction fabrics, but I would hand-piece it all. I found this pattern:

And so I started. I knew it would be a long term project. I joked to my quilting friends that I would be working on it AT LEAST 10 years! I was still young enough back then to think that 10 years was a really long time! LOL. I think I hand-pieced maybe 10 blocks before I decided I would go ahead and machine piece the rest! Over the next 10 years or so, I actually did finish all the stars called for. I bought and washed fabric for the setting squares. And then I stuck it all in a project box and put it on a shelf. Every once in awhile I would take it out and look at it. And then put it back on the shelf. Sound familiar? Come on, admit it. I can’t be the only one, right?

Anyway. It’s been on my UFO list every year. And every year, the month that is determined, by number, to be the one for it to be worked on, I am too busy and it doesn’t get done.

But this year, finally, I pulled it out and determined to at least get the top completed. And look! This is how far I’ve made it and it’s only the 8th! Actually, I added a couple of more rows yesterday that didn’t get photographed.

Two things I’ve learned: I had no real notion of value when I started this quilt. Some of the blocks are really blah because of that; I actually have done pretty well with my seams being consistent. I’ve only had to ditch a few of the earliest hand-pieced blocks because they were too small.

I’m heading upstairs as soon as I can to get the rest of those rows sewn together.

And here’s a photo of my finished house quilt.