December

Is here, and with it my monthly post for the OMG Challenge

You’ve caught me in a rare moment of wild abandon. Throwing off my need to protect my privacy, my dignity, and basic self respect, I’m going to show you the state of my sewing room at this very moment:

Let’s begin the tour, shall we? From left to right, you see scraps of fabric which I had originally laid out in an organized spectrum of color across my quilting frame. This gave me the ability to visualize and pull from the scraps as I cut strips for my new project, Star Upon Stars. But as you can see, as I’ve been pulling and cutting, it has devolved into a hot mess. That Big White Lumpy Thing in the back is my newly finished Bible Sampler Quilt. It was unceremoniously dumped there after its photo shoot as seen in my last post. Yes, this does make me squirm. I’m sorry. To the right is a donation quilt that only needs a binding. It has been spread eagle there because I figured I’d grab it and finish it up sooner rather than later: The annoyance strategy. Well, it’s now later. This is my December goal, to finish up and donate this little guy.

It’s the first time I’ve done clamshells.

The panel and backing were both given to me by friends, so they are a part of the donation to Birthchoice too. Thank you!

I want to show you the scene behind the scene, to redeem myself a little bit. Turning around from the quilting frame, my camera now shows you what’s happening on my sewing table:

Star Upon Stars: This new project is really stretching me. Come to think of it, this has more biased edges than anything I’ve done before, so “stretching” makes perfect sense. This first block I’ve laid out in pieces on the left is rough, really rough. I ripped out and redid seams so many times. They still don’t match. It’s got horrible color choices. I was going to throw it away, but realized I could use it for the partial corners and sides. It won’t be so noticeable in those positions, and it took too many hours of fiddling to just toss it out. The first is always the worst, right? The second star in progress on the right is already going much more smoothly.

This project has forced me to stop winging it. It simply won’t let me. I’ve had no choice but to adopt three new habits in order to succeed: 1. Starching 2. Marking seam lines with a mechanical pencil and 3. Using a stylus to guide the pieces under the sewing foot. This makes me feel like a fiddly old lady instead of a bold, carefree modern quilter. Oh well, I’m embracing it. This quilt is not for the faint of heart.

(My apologies and all due respect to fiddly old ladies. Truth is, they are the bold ones.)

I hadn’t planned to jump in to this one right away and so intensely. It’s supposed to be a very long long range project. But I wanted to try out the steps, new to me, and complete one whole block “just to see”. Well, I came, I saw, and I plan to conquer.

Veni, vidi, vici.

What will you conquer this month?