Here’s my intended finish for January, to take part in the Lovely Year of Finishes over at Fiber of All Sorts blog. 
I started this quilt to see if I could finish in five days. I might have, if I hadn’t run into machine issues that kept me from being able to machine quilt it. Out of three sewing machines, I had none I could use. One functioned, but after a year of struggle I’ve admitted I will never be able to control the speed on it, at least not enough for free-motion work. I debated using it anyway, but it was set up with a walking foot and thread for another project I still want to finish.
Another, a new-to-me Janome, came with the wrong darning foot (that’s what you get when you buy used on Ebay). A month later I’m still trying to get a free-motion foot that fits from my local (brand new) dealer. Good thing I bought the right darning foot online. Not that I’ve used it, having been side-tracked by shiny object syndrome. I made another new top (watch for a post on that soon) instead of quilting.
Eventually I cajoled my trusty old Pfaff into working well enough (it hadn’t been sounding right) to do the quilting on this quickie project. I had one tension issue near the end, when the machine suddenly had no top tension. None. I had to rip out a stretch of quilting, something I never do! It was that bad (but came out easy enough). Rethreading took care of the problem but the poor dear is now headed for the machine-doctor.
I call this quilt “Divorce” because it’s a de-constructed double wedding ring. The pieces are raw-edge applique the slap-dash way: cut ‘em out freehand and stick ‘em down with a glue-stick. The quilting holds them down. The arcs were cut from pre-pieced scraps that I happened to have lying around – which qualifies this quilt for UFO status even though it’s of recent vintage.
It only needs binding and a sleeve and label to be finished, but since this month is already a third over, I figured this one was my best bet to actually get something done. Everything else needs quilting.