I've noticed there's a lot of quilting lingo out there. Some of the terms I like, some not so much. WIP (Work In Progress) is fine, normal everyday. UFO (UnFinished Object) on the other hand.... Not my favorite. I choose not to use it. (HST [Half Square Triangles], by the way, I quite enjoy.)
My sewing work generally breaks down like this:
I always have one or two quilts that I'm really working on at any given moment. Those I don't even consider WIPs bc they are active and getting done. These quilts could be in almost any state of progress. I like to have a few since I sew everything by hand. My hands tend to get tired but not my mind. I need one quilt getting pieced and also one getting quilted or bound. That way, when my hands start to hurt, or I have to give my callouses a day to rest, I can switch up the type of sewing that I'm doing.
Next I have my ongoings. Little projects that aren't fully formed in my mind, or scrap projects. These are often littered about, sometimes easy to find and add to, sometimes not. These probably don't have a clear ending in mind. When they do, they will most likely move into the first category. Until then, these could be considered WIPs.
Then there are the theoreticals. These are sometimes stacks I've pulled or stacks I'm adding to. Or fabric I'm just not using bc it seems to have a quilt waiting for it, eventually. Most times, these are only ideas I have for quilts. These really cannot be considered WIPs, bc they don't usually even exist. Yet.
And lastly, I have the stalled quilts. These are mostly what I really think of as my WIPs. These are mostly quilts that I had to stop bc I didn't have the right fabric for them, or I got to a point where I wasn't sure what to do next, or didn't have the space to complete the next step. Occasionally, these are quilts that I just stopped bc I didn't feel like working on them. Not long ago, I was able to photograph some of this kind of WIPs.