small steps and stitches

remember this colorful little lady, "out on a limb"? she's been sitting in my baby bassinet, which is in the nursery corner of my bedroom, patiently waiting for me to get back around to her. so sad. i'd truly love to finish her off this very afternoon. but i'd rather not put myself into labor 8 weeks early, so she continues to wait for me, quietly but cheerfully beckoning to me every time i pass by or cast an eye in her direction.

last friday jill came over to sew with me again. i had no 4sq to edge and was at a loss as to what i was going to do with my sewing time. pincushions crossed my mind, but were rather unappealing. then i noticed "limb" in the bassinet and decided to get all that unpicking done. my husband had taken all the kids to the zoo and i was alone, enjoying the quiet of the morning, waiting for jill to come. so i took out my neglected quilt, hung her up on the end of my bed, and sat on the couch just looking at her for a good half hour, observing how the different fabrics interplayed with each other and deciding what i might have done differently. overall she's pretty loud, but i do adore so many of the individual fabrics in her.

when i use this pattern again, i will definitely add white strips in periodically to help the eye rest and emphasize certain aspects of the quilt. i'm excited to give it a go the second time around and put together an actual pattern/tutorial when i do it. all in good time, though.

before i can even finish off quilting her, i must undo the damage i've already done.

here you can kind of see how tiny some of the stitches got and how inconsistent the sizing was. ugh! i really just need to go ahead and invest in the walking foot that is made for my current machine rather than keep trying to use the one that went to my singer. some of those stitches are so tiny i couldn't even fit my seam ripper through them and have been using my hooked snips instead. after about an hour of painstakingly cutting every third stitch or so, i found a much better method involving a combo approach with some cutting on the front and some on the back, then pulling threads out. can't really describe it well, but it was a huge improvement over my previous method.

while i sat meditating on the quilt, i also noticed another blooper i'd made that had escaped me up to this point. can you see it?

i totally skipped a seam on the brown polka dot strip! after a moment of panic thinking i'd thrown off the whole quilting pattern, i realized it was going to be a simple matter of just sewing that one line in. whew!

i did as much or more talking than i actually did seam ripping, but jill and i had a very enjoyable morning of quilting. she's getting much closer to finishing her quilt off, too. i'm loving this mini "bee" we have going. it's almost becoming a regular habit for us. which reminds me i need to invite her over for next friday!

so here's to slowing down and doing small, seemingly insignificant tasks. they allow me time to think (or chat with a friend) while my hands are busy. can't say i grudge having to do all that unpicking because of that reason and because i'm learning from my mistakes as i go. and ultimately, i couldn't finish this quilt without first undoing those mistakes, so this was a productive and necessary use of my time.

glad to be one step closer to getting her done!