Do You Believe in UFO's?

Before I started blogging, I'd never heard of unfinished sewing projects as being referred to as 'UFO's'. It was then I realised I had enough floating around this house to populate a needlework version of Area 51! Joining up with Miss Katie's UFO and Stashbusting Project has really helped me have a structure to my projects, and I've actually cleared quite a bit of stuff, and saved some money to boot.

I recently had a good old clear out, and completed some bits and pieces, which I'll share with you now. In reverse order of age:

First, at 18 months - window seat cover:

I bought the fabric for this window seat with every intention of getting straight to it, but instead I just left the fabric in the bag next to the window seat for over a year. I'm ashamed to say I even started cleaning around it, like it was furniture! But a couple of weeks ago, I got up early on my day off, and completed it in a morning. I don't know what took me so long, because it was really easy! And now it looks so much better than the ugly old beige thing previously covering it. The lovely new cover makes the curtains look really sad, so that will have to be the next household project.

Next up, at approx 2 years, the gingham blouse:

 I found this half finished project in a bag amongst my fabric stash, and couldn't even remember what the plan was! There was no way I would have made the full blouse, as there wasn't enough fabric. I seem to remember having a Ginger Rogers, frilly 30' style in mind, so I messed around with the pieces and scraps, and came up with this:

Mr Needles says it makes me look like a rejected Stepford Wife.

There was very little fabric, so with the scraps I cut some frills on the bias, and gathered them to add along the button band and to make a little sleeve. The buttons were from a stall on the local market.

And finally, at 3+ years, the beaded scarf:

Close up of the bead work - it's a lot easier than it looks!

I used to have a long winter scarf that I knitted really quickly, and wore all the time. But I lost it somehow several years ago, and have been knitting this one ever since. Every winter for the last few years, I would watch TV and knit a few rows, thinking 'This year I might actually wear this scarf'. But it never happened, until a few weeks ago, when for some reason I decided to finish it, even though we're in summer. I think the reason it took so long was that the pattern was pretty boring to knit, and for some reason I decided to use 4-ply wool (a thinner wool, to you knitting novices), so it took a lot of work to actually add any length to the scarf.

Now I'll just have to wait for winter to wear it...

So now I'm UFO free! Next up - make a dent in my stash, which is threatening to get out of hand. But if you have unfinished projects, or bits of fabric sitting around waiting for you to do something with them, then do make sure you go over to Miss Katie's blog, for inspiration and motivation!

Also linking up with Lakota's Ta-Dah Tuesday - go check her out!