A Tragic Tale of UFOs

This tale starts about 3 years ago, when I moved household, cats, hamsters and kids across several states to the Pacific Northwest. When it came time to move, I did a little prep work and left most of the heavy lifting to the moving company.

By prep work, I mean, I kept out certain things necessary for keeping a family of five (+ pets) clothed and fairly comfortable for the stretch of time between our belongings leaving one state and arriving at another, in a fairly nebulous un-guaranteed amount of time. The only other thing I did, was to take all my stash, my UFOs and my sewing/quilting supplies and put them into ‘Space Bags’.

You see, all my ‘stuff’ was mostly organized and filed a bit recklessly in a loose translation of origin. And by that I mean, most projects and UFOs in their various states were kept in a few bags from the original quilt shop or fabric store where the supplies were first purchased and mostly kept close to one another.

Several that had reached ‘maturity’ in their UFO-ness were actually upgraded to a special bag that had nothing to do with Quilting and everything to do with the fact that I had almost 100 of these bags in my garage.

So when it came time to prepare for the movers I put all my bags of ‘Stuff’ into those space bags made infamous on infomercials everywhere! I didn’t want those guys to mistake my numerous bags of ‘Stuff’ for worthless junk!

When we arrived a week later and all our belongings showed up a week after that, we were anxious to get started unpacking and the moving company was anxious for us to sign on the dotted line.

They messed a LOT of stuff up. We had damage to most of our furniture; much of it couldn’t be salvaged! So finally after going through numerous appointments and many claims we signed off on the move after about two weeks.

Only problem: in that span of time, I had barely been able to register my kids in school, let alone unpack everything….

You might know where this is going. Yes, it’s true. The entire contents of my Stash – including more than 30 UFOs (some completed tops just waiting for quilting) were ALL GONE! ZIPPO!

Gone without a Trace!!

I was so distraught, I was physically ill. For months after I discovered the loss, just thinking about it left me nauseous and weepy.

It’s been 3 years now and I still get upset if I think about it too long...

I had a Burgoyne Surrounded in deep greens and burgundy, all in civil-war repro fabrics, there was another – it was cats made of brightly colored flower prints, the background was solid black and the cats really stood out. It was for my daughter, I was just deciding on binding (should I go with patchy flower prints, or with black? I was leaning towards the brights.)

But that’s all gone now.

Why do I bring this all up now you might ask. Well, a miracle happened at our house. A small miracle, but a miracle none-the-less!

Six ‘bags of stuff’ all stuffed into one Space bag, turned up in our garage! It’s interesting because it’s a small amount of scraps, but the 6 UFOs are from my very earliest of quilting. None of them were very important to me at the time, but it’s something, and I'm thankful for it!

So I’m taking a picture of each one, (you’ll see 1 a day over the next 6 days) and documenting their progress! It will be my winter “project” to finish each and every one! There is one I REALLY don’t care for anymore, and I don’t know what to do with it, but I will do SOMETHING with it!

And NEVER in my entire life will I EVER let my stack of UFO’s get to be more than 10! I promise my self!