Wow, the challenge is finished for the year and, just Wow! Wasn’t that a great show of our guilds talent and imagination? Now that it’s over, I have been trying to think of all the things I learned.
First, I CAN make a quilt entirely from my stash! This is a really good thing to know if the world as we know it ends. Please do not tell my husband. If you tell mine, I will tell yours. If you don’t have one, I will leave pieces of stash on your door on an unknown schedule, but probably forever. I guess it’s okay to tell Manny.
I also learned that I cannot see, draw or sew a straight line. This is not a surprise, but still, kind of disappointing. The solution for the problem did finally come to me. I will do the best I can and you will look at my quilt as follows: close one eye and squint with the other. Now see, isn’t that line straight?
Third, I can quilt the thing myself and enjoy it. It isn’t beautiful (see previous tip), but it is okay. And I got a lot of exercise in the process. Between shoving the quilt into and out of a 4” space and chasing my machine across the table as it was trying to get away from me, I’ll bet I burned off 10 or 20 calories. I also had the opportunity to explore new words for my vocabulary, ones I bet you won’t find in the dictionary.
You know, accidents can be right inspirational. I made the center of my quilt in sections and then sewed the sections together. Then did I sew a long flower ‘stem’ to each section. I even used a fancy stitch on my machine. Only then did I discover I sewed the wrong sections together. Phooey. It took me a while but I determined to fix the problem with butterflies (yeah, you thought they were planned). A few butterflies do a good job of covering boo boos. I’ll remember that for the future.
Finally, I discovered that my machine is much more stubborn than I am. I can think of something I want it to do, but it has to want to do it! I may even say unkind words to it and it responds with unkind sounds in return. Very humbling and it knows I will love it anyway.
See you at the meeting.