Oh goodness, life has a way of going awry sometimes! My wonderful mornings spent sewing before going in to teach afternoon 4K evaporated a few days after my last post when I was offered a part time special ed job in the mornings. It was a wonderful way to end the school year. And! It developed into a full time Special Ed job for next year. Which is wonderful, and overwhelming and means I will once again have a long distance relationship with my sewing machine. Long distances between sewing sessions, I mean. What's more, my "regular" afternoon job opened up an opportunity for me to teach summer school, which has been fun and is helping me to fund things I want for my new classroom...so it's great. But, it means that I have not had my usual summer fling with my machine. Poor girl. No fling, no promise of long mornings spent stitching, no regular projects in the coming year. Over the last week, however, with both the Finish Along Quarter Two deadline AND the county fair looming, I have managed to get in an hour or so of sewing a few days. I am much chagrined that I have only two finishes from my Quarter Two list to report. And a bit embarrassed (and a little proud) that one of those finishes came to be mere hours before the deadline. (I mean, I could have just skipped it, but I bypassed the opportunity for a nap to finish binding so I could do a quick blog entry and link up. There's something to be proud of there, right??)
This mini quilt has been an unfinished thorn in my side for a while, and now its done! It started out as a round robin project with a quilting pen pal. Somehow in our correspondence with each other, it wasn't clearly communicated that I wanted the center medallion I sent her to end up being a mini quilt for my sewing room wall. After her second round with the quilt, it arrived back to me with six inch borders on an already 18 inch block...and it was HUGE. Too huge for the wall, anyway, and I had no interest in it as a bed or lap quilt. And, as a result of two of us working on it with different skill levels, some of the "rounds" were uneven and the whole quilt was not quite square. The two of us have different color preferences and stashes, too, so, the fabrics she chose did't quite blend with mine. So, the quilt sat and our pen-palship fizzled. In the spirit of the First Quarter Finish Along, I finally removed the wide border, and added a skinny outer border that would make it look "finished", but then I put it away because I worried about how wonky and un-square it was. I was pretty sure that straight line quilting would accentuate the problems and I'd end up with a wavy quilt on my wall.
I finally decided that done was better than perfect, and chose a quilting pattern. Man, was this fun to quilt with my walking foot!!! So zen-like, quilting row after row. Sewing always relaxes me, but this was like a spa treatment! I really love the look of the "split log cabin" style quilting. As I suspected, however, it did make the un-square (because of a wonky border added by my swap partner) quilt pooch out in the middle. No amount of pressing or trimming would make it lie or hang flat, I 'm afraid. And that's ok, I realized. It will hand on the sewing room wall, and I'll smile when I see it. I will remember that life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful!
So, today, with a deadline breathing down my neck, I bound it. I used a "trick" for joining the binding ends that I learned when I took my paper piecing class in May. The trick originated with Nancy Zieman (or at least she made it popular and the person who taught me learned it from her...). It's really nifty, and you can watch it here. It allowed me to finish up my binding on the first try! No stress! No unpicking! And, while I really wanted to sit on the deck and hand stitch the binding to the back, I needed a really fast finish (deadline, remember?) so I machine stitched it. It's not perfect. But it's done! And, I've decided that I will enter it in the county fair in a few weeks - imperfections and all! I don't expect a ribbon, but this little quilt has a story to tell, so off to the fair she goes!
I'm linking up with the Finish Along Second Quarter Finishes post at Sarah Goer Quilts, just in the nick of time! I'll be ending my evening with Carry Out Pizza and some perusing of the fabulous links there! Maybe a beverage, too. It is, after all, summer!
Time to start thinking about my goals for quarter three! That link up opens tomorrow! I may not have much time to sew, but having a goal gets me in the sewing room when I do find a minute or two!
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