It is Finished
The scrappy quilt blocks I started last summer have been haunting me. Nothing threatening, just consistent like a bad cough in the spring of the year. I did get waylaid several times. It brings balance to the sewing studio. We sure wouldn’t want anything to become humdrum and boring.
The entire quilt has 49 blocks, each with a flange border. Why? Because I could. A flange border is a piece of fabric that is cut at 1″ wide, folded in half and sewn in at the same time that the bordering sash is sewn on. It ends up being a scant 1/4″ wide border, aka: a flange. I wanted to see if I could pull it off consistently. Experimenting keeps a passion alive decade after decade. My mom, Lena, would have been right in there with me. Mom had her own sewing studio set up in a spare bedroom. She had the best of the fact that there were windows. Daylight beats fluorescent lights hands down. We have one fluorescent four foot fixture to replace with the LED option. The two LED lights have made a great difference and they don’t hum. That in itself is very annoying.
It would have been perfect if I had had enough of the deep teal color that was the outside border of the quilt for binding. No such luck. I had to resort to using the lighter blue in conjunction with the back fabric. Pulling the near black with blue flowers to the top via the binding really was a stark contrast. I decided to do the flange one more time in the binding. It gave a chance for the light blue to pull the same blue in the flowers out of the very dark that was used in the backing.
I believe the extra putz work was worth it. No one else needs to see that it was what was needed. I needed it. If Grammie isn’t happy with a project . . . it may never see the light of day. Actually . . . I have always come up with a “Hail Mary.” It’s for the creative side of the brain. Truth to be told, I am too frugal to throw away good fabric. I remember how Mom cherished every printed chicken feed sack she had. Waste not . . . want not.
There will need to be time to Swiffer up all the threads that seemed to have eluded the waste basket. A tidy shop, be it mechanical or sewing, is always a joy to enter into. With tidy surroundings, those juices in between the ears begin spinning out all sorts of “what ifs.” After today, nothing is spinning let alone being juicy. I am counting on that to take hold tomorrow. It’s time to heat up the beads in my hot-pack for my neck and put the feet up.