It's been a long winter and I've been churning through the
quilts. I LOVE machine piecing – so
fast and so fun! But now I'm in that
tricky place where I've got a stack of quilt tops all awaiting finishing and
the guilt is becoming more than I can bear.
You know the drill – layer and baste, quilt as desired, bind. Three simple steps. No problem, right? After all, you've already made all the big
decisions about pattern and colors and fabrics.
You've already slogged through the cutting and pinning and piecing and
you're looking at a finished quilt top.
Nearly there. So close but yet
soooooo far. Because those three simple
steps aren't simple at all. Those three
steps can be your undoing. You've
reached the bottleneck.
The problem is that finishing a quilt top gives you a
pretty good sense of accomplishment midway through the process. Your questions about whether or not you'll
like the pattern or whether your chosen colors will play nicely together or whether
you should have included that chartreuse green have now been answered. The mystery, for the most part, has been
solved.
To muster the energy to press on instead of starting the
next project can be rough – all those new fabrics to play with, new blocks to
try. And this winter (ok, this year) I
haven't been able to resist the siren's call of the next project and now my stack
of finished quilt tops is 12 deep, not including the two basted quilts awaiting
quilting and the two quilted quilts awaiting binding. Hence the guilt.
It's a daunting pile of work, especially when I plan to
finish a lot of it by hand, and it would be all too easy to reach for my rotary
cutter instead of the batting.
But I remember what it feels like to FULLY finish a
project. To stitch down those last few
inches of binding, bury the last knot, and set aside my needle. To get up, shake out the quilt, and lay it
out flat on the floor, finished. To admire
the clean, crisp edges of the binding and realize that, in fact, the quilting
really does make the quilt.
And even though it's just another Wednesday night, you feel
like trumpets should sound and fireworks should explode because you've
finished! You've used your imagination
and your will to create something that did not exist before and it is gorgeous! You stand there, hands on hips, gazing at
your finished quilt and in that moment you feel like an artist, a rock star,
maybe even a hero.
Joy, pride, triumph, and yes, relief, are all waiting beyond
the bottleneck. Press on.
