A New Month, A New Block Pattern, Choosing A New Goal

The month of May seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, didn't it?

For me, the start of each month comes with two quilt-y tasks, make sure the lotto block guidelines and directions are posted and decide on a project goal for the month for A Lovely Year of Finishes.

For our continuing year of 6-by-9 inch rectangle lotto blocks, we're making this variation of a traditional ship block in blue and white.

You can download the print-friendly directions from my Freebies Page on this blog.  The Tall Ship Block Pattern includes directions for making 8-at-once half square triangle units beginning with two large squares.

Everyone is always welcome to join us on the Block Lotto.  If you like this block and want to play along, the guidelines for this month are here:

Tall Ships Sail into the Block Lotto in June

Here's the virtual quilt, constructed from photos of blocks from Block Lotto sneak peekers, Angie, Debbie, Helen, Kathleen, Margaret, Nan and me.

I seem to have inadvertently messed up the table formatting on that page when I added the image and link for the Tall Ship pattern ... probably a sign that it's time to re-organize it. I noticed recently that I have more than 50 sets of photos on Flickr that have been blogged as tutorials, tips, projects or block patterns. Who would have thunk it, when I volunteered to re-start the block lotto as a beginner-friendly activity and practice for making blocks for Bees and exchanges?

I may well spend part of the day playing with web pages ... as I continue to waffle between several projects I'd love to finish in June. I know myself (and my speed or lack there of) well enough to know that, practically, I will only be able to finish one and so I need to stop waffling and decide in time to post my goal for A Lovely Finish. The contenders are:

1. The red-blue-cream-tan star quilt with the anything but flat lone star in the center.  I have been working on this one and have some momentum, plus it would be a nice finish in time for the Fourth of July. I posted about some of the challenges with this old, old project here.
2. Another oldie-but-goodie UFO that just needs to be quilted–a string star small bed-size quilt. I keep feeling the urge to make a string quilt, but tell myself I need to quilt and finish at least one of the three string quilt tops here before starting another.  In my mind, it's sort of like my approach to buying books–no new books unless I create space on my bookshelves by giving some of the books I own away.  I have stencils for a quilting design I plan to use. I think the additional preparation step of marking the quilt has been holding me up, despite last month's goal to learn to love the preparation steps.  I couldn't find a photo of this one, but if it's chosen–and maybe even if it isn't–you'll be seeing a lot of it. 
3. The architecture challenge for the 15 minutes blog.  I signed up and chose and posted a photo as inspiration, here.  The deadline is early July.  Making this my June Goal would ensure I'd get it finished. 
4. Another oldie–a quilt for which I planned to directions in 12 steps.  I'd been thinking I would finish in time to blog the directions over the 12 weeks of summer.  The quilt top is nearly finished (and has been nearly finished for ... years). Summer begins in June ... so it would be another good choice.  Plus I think it would be a lovely quilt to have around the house in Summer. Here's a peek at it in-progress.
   
   
   

I don't know why that I have lately felt inclined to pull out these old WIPs and work on them.  I suppose it's a good thing and because I do seem to be finishing some of them, I'm not asking too many questions about my motivation and just going with the flow.  Now I just need to narrow my focus, choose one (or work on the new project for the challenge) and GET IT DONE.

I'm going to allow myself wallow in indecision a couple days longer over the weekend and see which of these projects insists it must be my Lovely Finish for June.