A distinct inability to focus

Is anybody else experiencing an inability to focus? Discombobulation if you will? I know it's got me, and it's got me bad. I'm hoping it's because school is nearly out and there's just so much going on and that things will get back to their normal pace by end of the month.

So, what does discombobulation look like, when it comes to me? I described myself yesterday as a pinball in an old fashioned pinball game; bouncing from one thing to the other. And, it's been reflected in my quilting. I keep bouncing from one big project to the next, unable to focus on one thing in a straight line. I work on this for a while and then I get bored and I work on something else for a while and I get bored. Consequently, there's a sofa in the sewing room that is stacked with WIPs, WFIs, WFSs, UFOs, PHDs or whatever you want to call the detritus of a whirling dervish. I also have a pile of scraps from my last 3 or 4 quilts that needs to be cut down and loaded into the leader/ender containers.

This quilt was in the pile on the sofa. It is most assuredly and definitely a WFS (waiting for skill). When I got my Bernina 4 years ago, I couldn't wait to free motion quilt something. So, I made this lovely fall quilt for our bed. And, I tried to FMQ this queen sized quilt as one of my first projects. And, I made a mess of it. A big mess. But, it's so darn cute that I don't want to waste it. And, Rob and I both love it.



I thought you'd be able to see mistake numbers one and two in this photo. Mistake one is that I did not have a sufficiently large sewing space to accomodate a queen sized quilt. And, I didn't know about working in smaller sections, so I was constantly pulling and tugging and pushing trying to move the whole quilt around in the throat of the machine so I could quilt over the whole thing at once. And my lines are bad, juttery and jerky. And, my stitch length is...inconsistent (that's putting it very politely). Mistake number two was drawing directly on the paper I used to mark the quilting design on the top. Part of it was marked in sharpie and part in pencil. Both transfered from the paper to the thread, so when I tore away the paper, the bright and cheerful yellow thread is gray and dirty looking and that's never going to wash out.

Mistake three was leaving off the border in hopes it would reduce the weight of the quilt. Yep, all 12 ounces of additional fabric would actually make a difference in the weight of this quilt. Wanna buy a bridge?

So, this one has languished in the top of the closet for 4 years, untouched and unloved.

Now I have the skills to quilt this quilt. I've built those skills from years of wall hangings and linus quilts and other small projects and I'm ready to give this big monster another try. But first I have to pull all the quilting. And, this is almost completely quilted. Last night, in two hours, I managed to pull thread from a section that was about 1.5'x2'. That's going to take some time, but it's a good project for sitting in the LR watching TV with the family. My seat on the sofa is directly under the A/C vent, so sitting under a quilt and pulling thread is not too unpleasant. It's just going to take lots and lots of time. But, hey, what else is relaxation time for, right?

On another happy note, I've decided to pull the circle 8 quilt off the gold background. It is not working for me. I have a medium chocolate brown fabric that I bought on sale to back some future quilt. I looked at the figure 8 against the brown fabric this morning and I'm thinking I might have found my background. So, now I get to look forward to pulling the sewing out of that project, too. I love seamrippers.

Take care and have a great Tuesday. And, remember the lesson my Dad taught me. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Unfortunately for me, that usually means doing it more than once. And, sometimes more than twice.

Lane