Wednesday, January 21, 2015

I had a couple of Aha moments at 4 this morning as I tried, unsuccessfully, to get back to sleep. I have too many items on my quilt show list and probably not much chance of getting them all finished without putting a lot of stress on myself. So Elizabeth’s House comes off the quilt show list, but I will still try to finish it before my trip in April. My second Aha moment came when I was thinking about the problem I had yesterday with this new method of paper piecing. When I made a block that was composed of only one piece, everything worked well and I thought I was in the clear. The next project, which had four individual pieces in the block, was a complete failure. I may have found a way around the problem; it is not a problem with the method, but only in the less-than-perfect way I implement it.

I had a new focus when I came up to my studio today. I had pinned all my quilt show projects (well the small ones anyway) to my design door and decided I’d tackle them one at a time until I could see the door again. First up was to finish the stitching on My Crazy Life – The Future. I used a variety of Ruby’s fancy stitches and was ready to start my free-motion work by the time I took a break for lunch. I started with My Crazy Life – The Past because I thought the fabric was busy enough that the stitching wouldn’t show (something I always aim for). Some of the sections turned out better than others, but overall I’m happy. The second piece was almost impossible to quilt; the stitches didn’t show up even as I was quilting them so I had to be careful not to double back on myself. There will be embellishments added to both pieces before they are done.

I had news yesterday that Laurie’s Mum, Helen, passed away. Helen was such a joyful woman and, although we weren’t related, I considered her a family member. I will always remember her sense of humour, her warm smile and her enjoyment in her family. I seldom do any stitching without remembering Helen’s measure of whether or not something was good enough. A mistake should be corrected if a blind man galloping by on a horse could see it; otherwise it was good enough. Thanks for that Helen!