All Good Things Have to Come to an End Eventually

Hand quilting is a fascinating process.  It starts out slowly (usually from the center of a quilt) and does not gain momentum very quickly at all.  Needle in, needle out day by day, week by week, until suddenly! I realize that all I have left to do is the outside blocks or border of the quilt.  Hmmm, In many cases, such as this particular quilt, there are actually more total outside blocks than total inner blocks.*wink  Yeah, that can be a little bit of a letdown.  Thankfully, us hand quilty people are a stalwart bunch.  So, needle in, needle out and one day I realize I'm stitching the very last border.  Ta da!  The light at the end of the tunnel!  After endless evenings of questioning my sanity and wondering if I'll even be alive to see the finish of my quilt, why then, the bittersweet feeling that often comes with an ending?  It's a weird and wonderful thing.  Probably why I find myself wanting to delay the binding part for a while.  You know, I think I need to focus more on the benefits of the process.  Quilting happens in three important stages for me: a completed quilt top, a quilt top with the hand quilting completed, and  finally, a quilt that is bound and ready to move on.  Hand quilting delays the entire start-to-finish process, making it feel like a SERIOUS accomplishment.  If I manage the time element for binding my quilt with a little more care and attention to detail, I can make the completed binding feel pretty important too.:)  Then I'll get a three-fer with every quilt.  Easy peasy.  Now I'll just go eat another piece of pie and contemplate my delaying tactics.  

The ending of any relationship can be so bittersweet.

I had to go bake apple pies to recover my equilibrium.