On Finding Patience (and Fabric)

 

Remember how excited I was about finding these vintage blocks? Well my love remains steady, and I spent Saturday afternoon finishing up sewing them together. The block with the bursts of orange flowers in the front left here is the design I have the most of, so that is the one block that pulls them all together throughout the layout. I've said numerous times how much more I prefer the quilting to the piecing, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to get started quilting this baby.

Except my scrap pile didn't offer up anything suitable that I could use for the backing fabric.

And while I went to JoAnn's early Sunday morning (where I saw a coworker and we laughed at our sewing sickness that caused us to get there just as the doors opened) and got enough fabric for the back, I'm not in love with it. The fabric, a light blue pin stripe, was really the only fabric in the entire store that I could imagine using. But it just didn't hold up. I mean gave it a shot: I washed and ironed it, and bound it together the the batting and the quilt top. But it's just not right.

Which has reminded me of a very important aspect of quilting: when something takes months to make, there is a reason you should love your components. You (I) won't finish if you aren't aching to use the completed work.

So I'm going to slow down, search for a backing fabric that makes my heart sing a little more, and we'll resume from there.

The one good thing to come out of all of that was that it inspired me to change things up and pick up my crochet hook again. So I'm making a set of light aqua blue coasters, just for fun.