It's Good to Have the Occasional Challenge Turn Out, Especially When Things are Looking Pretty Ho Hum Along the Way

Let me just say right off the bat, that I am really proud of this quilt. The reason being, it was a total challenge on many different fronts that could of, should have, might have totally defeated me. And it didn't, because I didn't let it happen that way. There are some of you out there who get very weary of the constant stream of finishes. That's okay. We all work at different speeds. Just try to remember that to many of us seemingly 'racing' through the finishes, it's the process, more than any other element, that compels us to jump straight from one project into another. Then another immediately after!

Lattice quilt is a finish!

There's always something more to explore. As most of you know, I love a good play with color. Oh boy, do I ever! This however, was a humdinger. It's terribly hard for me to sew together a quilt in someone else's preferred color ranges. Even more so when they seem muddy or dull, which this color palette had going on in spades. After my very first red fabric pull, I realized this one was going to be extra tough. I oh-so-reluctantly put back the brighter, more cheerful reds and determinedly grabbed fabrics in the proper range of maroon and maroon. Gripe, gripe, grumble....

A little crazy, but a lot interesting...

Oh wow. What do do with a stack of fabrics that inspire zero delight? Ughh! And so I wracked my brain trying to figure out other colors that could be added to 'lift up' the quilt to a point where I could be happy to see it come to fruition. Colors that wouldn't take over the quilt, but add in a little bit of life. Some spontaneity maybe? What's the point in making a quilt that speaks to someone else's preferences, but totally lacks any joy? I just can't work that way. Dig me a black hole and dump me in. If someone is getting a quilt from me, then you better believe there's going to be a tiny, eensy-weensy, part of my soul in it.

So happy with the background effect

Immediately discarding the idea of the traditional {read harsh and cold} additions of black or lots of white, I then surprisingly settled upon adding pieces of lights to med. grays and very light to med. green/blues. The blue/greens were easy, but I tried to be very careful with the pattern and look to the gray fabrics. They can easily read very bleak as well.

There's just a hint of white in the quilt but even that fabric has a blue tint. {Well, until after I soaked and washed the quilt after the finish. Now it has the very faintest of red tints!} Feeling that it lacked depth, I dug around and found some black fabrics that had enough brown in them to feel 'softer'. All those additions helped make the project feel more doable, especially with the few floral prints scattered into the mix. What could possibly read more 'cozy' than a few florals? But what about the design of the quilt?  And there it sat for a long time while I mulled over many, many possibilities. Again, there was really no spark, no compelling desire to dive in and get straight to work.

The white ended up with a very faint tinge of pink.
Don't think most people will ever notice.

It wasn't until the Red is a Neutral invitation was given out that I grabbed onto the beginnings of an idea. Why not start with the premise that red would be used in the place where I would normally be using cream, white or perhaps black? Flipping through the Unexpected and Unconventional book by Roderick Kiracofe further solidified the direction these fabrics would end up taking. I eagerly joined up with the #UANDUQAL as well thinking that a two-way {three-way?} challenge would be a potential way to make the entire project fun, not a chore that had to be done. Bear in mind that this was something I wanted to make. Nobody was making me do it.

So happy with how the blue adds a happy spark.

When the initial foundation of a quilt is all about color, then the pattern becomes secondary. Right? With so many of the quilts in the book having a make-do vibe, I figured there would be lots of room to make adjustments and improvise. Focusing on getting the color palette to gel properly would be the driving force behind most every decision that cropped up. Okay. In no time at all, the lattice quilt was selected and the project was a go.

These ties were more needed than I realized!

You probably remember me posting about the struggles of having to add in even more fabrics from the depths of the stash totes. Oh yes, that totally stressed me out. Not because I hate my stash, but because red fabrics like to squabble and bicker. It's not always immediately obvious which ones belong together for life. But I remained determined and clung to the idea that if this was going to be a make-do look quilt, then whatever was available would have to do. Period. I did lots of squinting and telling the logical side of my brain to just 'shut up for a minute and let me think'!

Machine quilting not perfect but looks exactly right for the quilt.

Focused on colors blending. Letting things gently clash as they so often do in utility and make-do style quilts.. Eliminating fabrics that were too flamboyant in comparison with what it was resting up against and trying to hog all the limelight. Clenching my teeth and ignoring the spotty, more printed fabrics that threatened to give me a headache. Reminding myself of all those things that make these sorts of quilts lovable.... Telling myself, 'not taking the easy road and going to the store for a better selection!' And somehow it all worked out.*whew! It's terribly hard sometimes to envision what's growing in front of our eyes as that perfectly finished product it needs to be. The one with texture and character which it definitely doesn't have until well..., it actually happens!  It's like the difference between cake with frosting and cake without. Which one looks the best?

Only had to rip out a little bit of machine quilting
before finding my groove on this one...

I did sneak in a gorgeous bright, cheery red Kaffe fabric. I know some of you noticed that right off. Isn't it lovely? Like the cherry on top of the sundae. It was already in the stash and the quilt thanks me for it. I like to think that this interpretation of the quilt {pictured below} is a true compliment to the original maker, with the brighter red falling in line with the heart and soul of her wonderful quilt. This color palette ended up being a little more narrow in definition overall, but still, the ebb and flow of the quilt feels quite similar.

The original spark of inspiration for pattern...

My quilt is machine quilted in two organic lines all along the lattice and then yarn tied once in the middle of every square. That connects back to the original inspiration as well. I tried to buy a wool yarn that supposedly would fuzz up a little better after washing, but gave up in despair when it proved too thick of a yarn. Off to Walmart I went, not having the patience to wait on an Internet order or another trip to town {an hour away}. Off topic perhaps, but don't bother buying the nubby look yarn for ties in a quilt. Quite the irritation pulling yarn through fabric and having it hang up on the 'texture'!

Sometimes I don't go back and look at the original inspiration much after starting a quilt, but this time felt the need. So much was out of my comfort zone. I kept feeling that if only somehow I could translate this cozy, comfy, utilization look, then all the red would be a side note. In spite of the fact that I started with red, the entire quilt was about red, I needed that red to be part of the story, not The. Entire. Story. I'm really, really happy with the subtleties, which of course is a nod to the original too. This quilt wouldn't be nearly as interesting without all the background value changes. I can only wish that I had had a few more of the darkest of red fabrics available.

The final detail that helped make the quilt in my opinion, was choosing a very old, dull looking homespun for the binding. I winced, second guessed myself and then finally bit the bullet and cut out the fabric anyway. A stupid, ugly fabric that had almost been thrown away many, many times over the last 10 years! Isn't that part of the growing and maturing process in the process of quilting? Learning when best to ignore that left brain side of our conscious that tells us how untidy things will look or how big of a mistake we'll be making? The more times we ignore that urge and have success, the easier it gets to trust in our instincts.

And so it is. I can't even imagine this quilt without the yarn ties, the homespun look binding, the random, odd, different prints such as the dark grey rodeo? fabric! lol  Where in the world did that one come from? Yep, it has some character for sure. I've said this before about other quilts, but I don't think this quilt would have been possible even 10 years ago. There's something to be said for stepping out of our sad little comfort zones and forcing ourselves to work in a place of uncertainty. What's that quote? 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?" Don't be surprised if you see more of these sorts of quilts in the future. It's all angst and anxiety in the making, but totally worthwhile in the end....

A New Log Cabin Start

There are so many projects that are on the list. Oodles to choose from really. But what do I do? Start in on a brand new project! Of course...

Starting something new!

I've had these fabrics stacked up together for ages. They aren't so incredible together that it makes them hard to resist, but somehow.... I just haven't been able to toss them back into the stash bins either. So this past week found me free cutting strips and sewing quarter log cabin blocks. The loosey goosey plan is to make 18 of them. We'll see. Right now I'm just making it up as I go along!

Soaking a quilt

Also going on behind the scenes is that I sandwiched and machine quilted {very simply}, the Lattice quilt. It's the one that was made as an answer to the #AHIQRED and the #UANDUQAL challenges. While I knew that most of the red fabrics had been soaked prior to starting the quilt, I had this faint memory of running out of fabric and raiding the stash totes for more. So... Into the tub it went today so as to hopefully stop the bleeding in it's tracks and save the lighter white/gray and blue fabrics from total ruin. Isn't this crazy? All the red dye in the tub is from about 15% or less of the red fabrics. It's not as bad as some of the quilts I have soaked previous to today, so unless there is a lighter fabric that ends up being super absorbent to errant dyes {which unfortunately happens a little too often}, it's probably going to end up fine. Fingers crossed!

So glad I got this quilt to the finished stage a few weeks before graduation. It feels like we are practically going in circles lately, so many things happening. We have an extended family member wedding coming up this next weekend, lots of organization and planning involved in our church campout that we help host every Memorial Day weekend, Senior graduation coming up for our youngest and on and on and on. All I really want to do is hole up and quilt for two weeks solid, but tell myself that the hand quilting that happens in the evenings will mostly tide me over....

Working On a Little Bit of Applique

It feels like I have been plod, plod, plodding along. Never getting very far but not falling behind either. Mostly, my time has been spent with hand work lately. 

Seedpod Flower Quilt center

The Seedpod center is finished now. I went ahead and broke the applique shapes into several different pieces instead of letting cutting it out into one single shape. I was afraid that the little skinny stems would fight me and ruin the look of the flower. Sometimes when there are a lot of 'offshoots' it's hard to get things stitched down without little wrinkles somewhere. And of course the base of the flower has a little poochiness from all the stems converging in one place. Nothing to be done about that at this point. The top leaf on the right is bugging me just a little too and I may go back and drop it down some. We'll see. It's all stitched up now and that feels good to have that part behind me.

Little baskets

These baskets and the blocks below are part of the next border for Sweet Tart Baskets quilt. I didn't realize that so much time has passed since I last worked on that quilt. Four months! It seems like just the other day when I finally sewed the four larger baskets together. The idea here, for the next border,  is that there will be nine little baskets {with flowers} and for the every-other-block, nine of what's pictured below.

Border blocks

I didn't want to mess up the look of the striped fabric in the center, and so appliqued the smaller squares over the top. All nine are done now, but as you can see, the center square is not exactly 'square' to the block. They are all like that, but strangely enough, I don't care. The prep work is all done for each of the small basket blocks so that's a step forward. Applique prep always takes more time than it seems that it should, but well worth the time and effort once that magic window of time to applique has presented itself.

You might not have noticed, but the basket block is some smaller than the every-other-block. That's because I intend to add some cheddar/white half square triangles all around the basket block when the applique is done. I'm having a blast working with the zingy cheddar/golds in this quilt and of course, baskets.... swoon! All right up my alley. Crazy as it sounds, the entire time I'm working on these two quilts, my mind is whirring and churning, thinking up ideas for the next couple applique quilts.*sigh  So many wonderfully shiny new ideas and so little time....

Folksy Flower Medallion Quilt is a True Blue Finish

This quilt has been finished up for several days now. First it needed to be soaked. Gotta make sure all that red dye doesn't ruin the light colored tulips! Then to find time for pictures. Right on time there was that couple days with the Internet down {how does the equipment degrade that much in five years?}, and then finally...

Folksy Flower Medallion

I paid attention to that niggling little voice inside my head that insisted each of the black petals needed more hand quilting. So that took several long, long hours of filling in. {Ignore the crease in the center of the quilt.  Apparently didn't leave it to dry flat on the floor for quite long enough, and folding it up gave it an attitude.}

Trying to get a decent picture

No hoop because I was worried about popping the previous stitches. Ugghh...  The center of a largish quilt is so very much fun to have to go back and add in stitches. NOT! I'm not sure it made a huge difference in the look of the quilt, but I do feel better about it. Now that it's done and all the grumbling is behind me. Or will be as soon as I quit writing this post....

So happy with the blue triangles poking out into the black border

The only picture which shows the extra stitching on the petals is the very first picture. At that point I was headed into a busy weekend and just wanted to move on dot com. Big plans to post pictures about this brand new finish on Saturday morning before the day started going crazy on me. Alas, our whole town lost power for about half or more of the day. By the time it came on, I was knee deep in a book, and of course that put me way behind schedule for all my other plans. You know the ones. They're obviously way more important than blathering on and on about a wonderful new quilt finish. Well, to the rest of the fam bam maybe. I'm perfectly fine with blathering on about quilts any 'ol day of the week as most of you are so very familiar with...

Still so happy with the center of this quilt.

Then there was today. One of those days where I didn't want to get out of bed. There was one too many phone calls. Lunch seemed like more trouble than it was worth and then.... my husband needed me to run some errands for him. Immediately if that was at all possible? Oh, and bills needed to be paid. Yay. One more reminder that I can't really afford to buy the new roll of batting that I'm sneakily trying to convince my family I would adore getting for mothers day. Okay. Maybe not so sneakily. They've started rolling their eyes at me lately.

My one and only medallion quilt turned 'on point'

Uhuh. Just post a magnet over my head with an arrow for negativity. That is me about right now for sure, but you can be glad I'm leaving out other essential parts of the story line. I'll simply imagine that you're patting me on the back and saying 'there, there' and it'll all be good.

Loving getting this quilt finished up. Truly. It's a real sweatheart of a quilt. But now that the initial euphoria is over, wondering how insane I would be to hang it in the regional quilt show later in the summer? Hmm... It's not exactly square since I cheated at most border ends and wound up with a little wonk. Yeah. Probably be better off as one of those quilts that need to shine brightest from a crumpled ball at the end of a bed, right?

Diving Into the Hand Quilting

Spring has been hectic around here. Nothing unusual about that. I've been finding great pleasure in opening up my hand quilting bag late in the evenings to stitch on this sweet quilt. Ooh, there is always a big exhale and then instant bliss.

Next up in the hoop

It was started as a response to one of our challenges over at Adhoc. Improv. Quilts. This challenge was 'Playing With Scale'. I started with a {freehand applique} floral centerpiece and made that background with coins or string sets. Then I moved to the border around that and decided to go ahead with the string look, but make these in a chunkier look/style.

Always a little applique

Since I was working with a stack of fabrics that had mostly been languishing in the stash totes for years, I decided to throw caution to the wind and make even more string sets. This time I went skinnier, but longer. This used up a boat load of old fabrics, but as usual, I ended up having to dig even deeper in the totes and come up with some fabrics to help ease the blending.

Sandwiching and Pinning

I made a conscious decision to try and use up every strip, thus the blocks with multi-color strip sets. Somewhere along the way I grew dissatisfied with the overall look and determined that it also needed the additional piano key borders, those horizontal, chunky pink and black/brown rows. Kaja is the one who helped me to realize that the bottom portion of the quilt would look better with two piano key rows rather than just one. I thank her for that as it really bring the whole quilt together for me.

Playing With Scale

There's definitely a utility style look and feel to this quilt. Kind of a plain Jane, I-used-up-all-the-ugly-fabrics feeling. Which, yeah, means they aren't all exactly ugly. Even after all these years, most of them still appeal. There's just something about florals! But maybe not as much as they did when I first bought them. You know how that goes. I'm loving, simply LOVING adding in the hand quilting stitches to this one. Does that surprise you? It makes me so very happy--almost beyond explaining.I pull this quilt out and my heart does a little happy dance every. single. time.  Something about utility style quilts and a soft color palette apparently combine to bring a lot of peace.

Third layer of petals for Melon Patch pieces

Last weekend we ended up making a quick trip down to Oregon to visit relatives. Kind of a last minute thing as we determined to attend the funeral of our daughter-in-laws grandmother on Monday and it seemed like a good time to visit an ailing uncle etc. at the same time. Such a good time visiting with the family over the holiday! We stayed up late every evening laughing and telling the stories of our life. Somehow it also ended up that we got to help out with our granddaughters at the funeral as our daughter-in-law was singing with her sisters and cousins. That was a sad occasion of course, but holding the baby and taking care of big sister made it kind of sweet too.

I took my hand work {of course} but only ended up sewing 9 out of 80 petals. This is the third layer and after that will be one more. I try not to think about how much sewing this really is, but just take it as it comes. It's the current 'forever' project and has been in the works since February of 2018. Wowsers, it feels like I've been working on it for much, much longer than that....

Ta-da! The Hst Medallion is a Finished Quilt Top!

It's been awhile.  Earlier in the year I had determined that this quilt top was going to be finished up just as soon as I could drum up the energy. Eventually it became obvious that I would never truly feel up to this particular task. And so I set a timeline, made promises to myself. And finally, there was nothing left to procrastinate over or 'accidentally' nudge in front of this difficult project.

Hst Medallion Quilt top finish

Ughh.. Whose idea was this to recreate this antique quilt anyway? Pretty sure it was mine. Regardless, I have trembled in my shoes a time or two over the amount of work involved. I like dreaming up ideas, not sewing hsts and other mulitiple border units for literally days on end...

So many borders

You have to know it was a LOT of work. So many hours spent on this quilt. Mind numbing amounts of time. Crazy amounts of TIME wrapped up in this quilt. Am I repeating myself? I think I might be repeating myself....

256 flying geese units to piece

Cutting. Sewing. Ironing. Trimming. Sewing. Measuring. Pinning. Sewing. Ironing. Repeat and rinse... Cutting, Sewing, Ironing... I thought it might possibly never end. Obviously patience is not my strong suit these days.

Sewing, sewing, sewing...

I worked a little bit on the accuracy issue with this particular quilt, but I'm still me. Oh, am I ever! On occasion, it feels good to know that seams actually can match up, that everything learned has not been lost. And that seemed to pay off, until it didn't. In the end though {which is all that matters}, the quilt turned out relatively square. I'm very satisfied with 'relatively' and know that the planned future of hand quilting will, um... distract from anything obvious? Make it look amazing? For sure, make me forget about any supposed inadequacies!

I did wonder about not using pink for the square in a square border. The original quilt went off on a completely different tangent, color-wise, at this point. Nothing auditioned hit the happy button though, and almost all of the fabric used was dug straight out of the stash totes. Buying new would have had to involve strong motivation for its 'rightness'. When I couldn't determine a color that would almost definitely make things sing, then I went ahead with more of the pink. Oh well. Honestly, in some ways, I'm a little disappointed with the look. Playing with values with the blues and pinks apparently limited other color-use though. At least in my minds eye. That's the only thing that makes sense.

Getting ready to sew on the pink square borders

Every single strip and border had to be sewn on with lots of pins keeping things where they needed to be. So many seams.... I had to take a million breaks and go do laundry or file my nails. Do the dishes. Something really, really important. Whatever. My primary goal {quilty-wise}, was to not work on any other quilt, other than hand quilting which is always fair game, until this quilt was crossed off the list. This was a nose-to-the-grindstone sort of finish it up project. Many, many times I questioned why. Why? Why did I think the last two border additions were so important?

The very last pink border sewn on...

The last two borders measurements were cut out knowing that every single strip would undoubtedly end up being 'off' by approximately half an inch. At the very least. There was just no way I was cutting the pink squares or the geese units in 16th inch increments. I made an executive decision to not stress over perfect math. Ahh.. I do know myself so very well. Because it worked out just fine with my oh-so-accurate piecing. Nothing is ever exactly the length it's 'supposed' to be around here!

The pink strips ended up being more accurate than the geese ones, maybe because there are less of them per border length. All I had to do was lose between 1/4" and a 1/2" per length to make the borders fit. The flying geese borders were a bit trickier. Even going by the 'math', I somehow mis-figured by a lot. Each flying geese border should have had 64 units per side. Uh huh. That did not happen because I somehow ended up with 60 per side! The thing is though, I rarely ever trim them to an 'exact' size before sewing them into a border. So yes, you could say that I totally set myself up for variable border lengths! My feelings are, if the flying geese units are trimmed straight on the top and bottom sides, then they're good to go. Perfect quilts are so... boring!

I also decide what is most important before diving in with my make-it-up, make-it-do, make-it-work sort of work ethic. For this quilt? Keeping the tops points of the geese. That was the number one goal! After sewing on both side of the geese units, there will definitely be some side points disappearing into the seams. I know that. If the geese keep their pointy tops, everything else is well camouflaged except from the pickiest of quilters. And they can go jump in a lake!

Working on the flying geese borders!

To recap, the end goal was only to have borders that {fingers crossed} did not make for a wavy-edged ,waving hi! sort of quilt. Count the borders. This was a LOT of measuring and fiddling and fudging. Though I started out with a 'goal' measurement per border, in reality, they just had to fit nicely. Most of the black strips were used to whip the stitching errors back into place. You don't know how many times I had to grin at the original makers probable intent at the 'why' those specific strips were included. Wonderful design element, but wow! so genius for a subtle, but consistent course correction. Just for the record, I did eliminate one border from the original quilt look. Increasing the size of the hsts at the start made for a problematic finished quilt size

Uh oh! My bad!

Most of the time I don't take pictures while family members are at home. They would think I'm a weirdo, right? Somehow today, I got caught. There's that hypocritical thing that happens when moms do things they've always yelled at their children for doing. Who stands on a couch??? Seriously?

It's a big quilt, even folded into quarters...

Well, this quilt is obviously too big to take be taking pictures of inside of the house. I'm quite positive that other quilters do like I do though and make the best of what they have to work with. Including standing on the furniture if that's what it takes!

The spot where the best quilty pictures are taken was just kind of a joke today. That place works best for lap sized quilts and maybe bed size quilts if they are more narrow. I included the picture below so you could know how much bigger this quilt is than what I normally try to take pictures of. Perhaps we could get rid of the dining room table so I'd always have enough room, even for the biggest of quilts. lol

It's an old design, but it still somehow works!

Maybe too, I can somehow bribe my children to be quilt holders for me once again. Right now they seem to think they have better things to do, like take funny, ha ha pictures of mom doing things she hasn't ever liked for them to do. Did I mention that sewing this quilt together was quite tedious? ha! Only once or twice. I didn't ever feel very creative about the whole endeavor, to be perfectly frank with you. The design was already set, the colors mostly repetitive and the entire thing was more about implementation than true creative brain storming.

Antique quilts make for the best inspiration...

But I love it anyway. All 103" inches of it. I did it! Yay me! Now I'm left wondering if I'll ever let anyone use it after it's truly finished up some day in the future?

Giving Up On Perfection

This past week has been a busy, busy week for sandwiching and pinning quilts. First, I sewed together three 'frankenbats' out of leftover strips of batting. All because the roll of batting is getting very skinny and also perhaps in an effort to be frugal? Whatever. I have very mixed emotions about the results.

The Baby Girl Quilt

On the baby girl quilt, I didn't notice the batting shifting at all. All the wonk in this quilt is because there was just too much ease in the long coin strips. It was something I was quite prepared to deal with and after machine quilting 'in the ditch' along every seam, I came back and hand quilted every other coin and just inside the silhouette flower. I'm satisfied with the results. Just the normal 'I'm sure I could do better, but not terrible either'.

Looking at the applique

The narrow coin strips were the leftovers from my Dried Flowers quilt. I really like the way they add just a little bit of texture to an otherwise plain Jane quilt. The flower was originally going to be a dark charcoal color, but at the last second, I switched the fabric out for this {happier} green grunge fabric. It's a little bit more 'St. Patrick's' than I intended to happen, but overall, it feels like such a sweet quilt. Fingers crossed the mama likes it too! The light gray alphabet fabric on the back and the darker gray polka dot binding fabric were all chosen in an effort to make the quilt feel a bit more modern looking. Not sure how successful I was, but my girls both gave the nod of approval.

Patchwork Triangles is finished!

Anymore, I have a habit of sandwiching and pinning two quilts on the same day. If the dining room table is out of the way, that's my cue to take advantage! I chose a quick finish, Patchwork Triangles, which was started in July of 2018. Somewhere around that time these triangles were cut off from the corners of some improv. blocks I was working with. It seemed fun and interesting to see where this small start could take me and I love how different looking this quilt is than the original make. 

Not my best work...

So... that being said, I don't love how terrible my machine quilting ended up turning out. Three major no no's contributed and I take full responsibility. 1. Too many bias cut triangles. 2. Batting not fitted and sewn together quite as snug and tight as it should have been. 3. Quilt sandwich not pinned nearly good enough. 4. I rushed through the machine quilting. Oh, did I say three things? Well, I so dislike machine quilting that I generally make things worse on myself. My bad.

Still happy the colors though!

You probably find this hard to believe, but I did actually get the seam ripper out and unsew almost five different rows before trying again.*ughh  It's a bad job and yes, rather than toss the entire quilt, I just gritted my teeth and finished up. There will be someone who will like {and probably want} the quilt regardless. I'm calling it a comfort quilt and as such will be perfectly adequate. Will try harder next time I promise.

Great fabrics for the back of a quilt....

Maybe some of you wouldn't have posted about such a quilt, but I do always try to show the good, bad and even the ugly around here. There is this one gal whom I have followed for ages now, though I won't tell you who she is. I absolutely adore how she posts pictures of. Every. Single. Miserable. Looking. Quilt block and/or quilt. She ever makes. It's endlessly fascinating and sorta sweet and endearing. Makes me love her ever so much more. You know why? Because she is genuinely human and not afraid to show the world that she loves her craft regardless of her shortcomings.

I'm sure someone will want this one in spite of the imperfections...

So there you go. That's my quilt round-up for the week. I have one more frankenbat left, but that quilt will be hand quilted so I sorta expect it to turn out fabulous. Hand quilting is usually nicely accommodating like that.  I've never had any trouble whatsoever with pieced battings {while hand quilting} except for the areas where the batting is thicker. So my fingers get a little extra bit of a workout. That's about all that seems different except maybe {occasionally} the stitches being a tiny bit shorter looking on the backside of the quilt in those specific places? What about you? Are there certain things that you've pretty much given up on ideal of *perfection* in your journey of quilting too?