September I’ll Remember

. . . “a love once new has now grown old.“

And that’s my last blog title using this lovely song. Paul Simon’s lyrics ended with September. And even though they flew by, a lot happened in those six months.

I didn’t get around to posting my monthly goal for September over on Stories From The Sewing Room

But, if it’s all right, I’m showing up for the finish party Here.

My unposted goal was to push forward with the next step on my Bible Sampler Quilt – which was figuring out what to do with the border triangles, then doing it.

I did!

Because the quilt is tied, I didn’t want anything too densely quilted for the border. So I decided to just run an outlining seam around each colored triangle. Eleven triangles per side = 44 triangles to stitch down in thirty days. Easy peasy. The only hard part was switching top threads to match the different colors, which wasn’t even hard.

Next decision: how to finish the final border – scallops for the win! Anything less would feel like I was phoning it in. I went to the internet for tips, tricks, possible templates to purchase. I was a little nervous about getting just the right arc. Too rounded doesn’t say “old, or “traditional” to me. Too narrow wouldn’t allow me to try again if I cut off too much. Then I decided I was wasting time overthinking it. I told myself that Jane Stickles wouldn’t overthink, she would just do. So I did.

I used an oval crockpot lid to create my curve. I made my template out of scratch paper and penciled in the stitching line with my Dollar Tree mechanical pencil. Then I stitched over my pencil line.

At this point I really wanted to cut those scallops with my Gingher scissors to enjoy the crunch of slicing through those layers. After all, my whole theme here is “cuts with scissors”. This is because I prefer using these slo-mo, traditional methods, as you’ve seen over these years.

Instead, I ran an overcast stitch around to secure those layers. Then I marked the quarter inch cutting line. NOW I will let myself cut those scallops.

BUT FIRST – I want to have my bias binding all ready to go. Time to look through my stash in the sewing room closet.

And this brings me to the other OMG challenge I’ve been doing – the cleaning out of that closet.

Shopping my stash for the binding fabric gave me the opportunity to haul out ALL of the bins. When I did, I realized how much progress I’d made. Over the months, I had been removing the closet clutter in a steady trickle, and now when I needed to get to the big bins, there was no longer that annoying stuff in my way, dropping off high shelves and in to my face. Clutter is so mean.

Instead, it was an easy thing to pull out the bins. I looked at ALL my fabrics and tried out a few possibilities. Nothing worked.

So next decision: I’ll splurge and get exactly what I want at my local quilt shop. I’m leaning towards a soft lavender to match the cornerstones.

But back to the closet: As I sifted through my stash, I saw a lot of fabric pieces I’d prefer not using in ANY future project. I wanted to pull and sort them out right there, but I needed to stay focused on the purpose at hand.

As part of the closet project, besides pillow forms, books, and lots of little miscellaneous, I’ve been trickling out fabric I no longer like. I’m down a whole bin, and it feels good.

Which brings me back to the song lyrics: “A love once new has now grown old”. It’s interesting to me how personal taste changes with time. How does that happen? How does the brain make the switch as we move through preferred styles and fashions? How come we recognize and like what’s “in” and dislike what’s “out”?

Some floral fabrics I once thought pretty are now downright ugly to me, but not to someone else. I used to be a fan of batiks, now, not so much. And Christmas fabrics? Will red and green ever look congenial in a quilt? Not in my opinion. And can I just say – Brown. Ugh. But sometimes it’s the perfect choice and I love my brown quilts very much. Go figure.

And I have been holding on to pieces of coordinating fabrics just because they coordinated and I have enough for a big project. But the urge to do that project has now grown old. I can let go of all of the above for someone else to enjoy.

I think I’ll set a goal to purge those bins next month, I’m ready. Now that I have some breathing space in that closet, I find that I want more.