help!

As you may remember (I certainly do) I started working on my quilt back in September of 2011.
Wait... September 2011? 14 months ago?!

Ah, remember all those fun pictures? I had such a great time sewing a row of bright colorful fabric, pressing them off in between each new addition and sewing all the blocks together. Anywho... every time I walk into my studio space, I see my unfinished quilt and it makes me sad. I want to pick it up and finish it, but I feel like I'm at an in-pass. I have the quilt top. It's not perfect, but it's my first one and I'm proud of it. I have the batting and the backer fabric. I basted them all together. I even quilted a row... but I don't think I did it very well.

 

I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and I believe it might finally be time for me to ask for help. Something I don't do very well, but to complete this project successfully, I think it would be a great idea to send my quilt to someone who knows what they are doing. And doing so will probably require a lot of prep-work on my end. I need to remove all the basting, as well as the row that I quilted. I need to make sure that the backing fabric and the basting are exactly 3" longer on each side. And they need to be square. So does my quilt top, for that matter. I don't want my quilt to cause whomever is helping me headaches and irritation.

So I'm waiting to hear back from someone if they will accept my quilt as a project. I hope they will have as much fun with it as I did!

midnight surprise

Last night, after a grueling workout at the YMCA and a successful outdoors Christmas decorating session, I reclined on the couch and debated my options for the evening. I could either:

1. Fall asleep on the couch while watching Monday Night Football, be super cranky when Lou wakes me up to come to bed, stumble upstairs and probably forget to brush my teeth, lay awake in said bed because of course, I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep.

2. Go upstairs, take care of business (bunny visits, personal hygiene, put laundry away, all those fun things) go to bed and read a book. Fall asleep in bed and not wake up grumpy or cranky.

I tried to be adult-ish, and I went with option number 2. But about 20 minutes after I jumped into bed, I heard my phone brrrrrrnnng-a-lllllnngggggg from downstairs. DRAT. I forgot to turn down the phone volume. Again, I considered my options:

1. Ignore that I left the phone's volume on super high. Risk being woken up at 6am from the alarm on the phone that I forget to disable all the time. Also risk being woken up from any phone notification that may go off during the night.  DING-A-LING B**** YOU GOT MAIL! WAKE UP!

2. Get up and go downstairs. Check to see that the alarm isn't set. Turn phone to silent.

Since I was technically on a roll from my previous adult-ish decision, I went with option number 2. I checked my phone and saw that I had received a Google Talk message and two emails. Lou had messaged me "dork" about an hour earlier. Thanks buddy. But the emails were to my art account. One was entitled Etsy Order Confirmation and the other was Notification of Payment Received.

I stood there, blocking the television, staring at my phone. "OH MYYYYY GOD, Lou. I sold a purse on Etsy! I have a sale!" My heart swelled. A sale! Mind you, it was midnight by this point. I went from sleepy to wide-f***ing-awake really fast. After doing a tiny dance, I ran upstairs to my office and removed the purse from my bin of finished items... and meticulously went over it, making sure that all the stitches were proper, that there were no snags, no blemishes. Then I got really nervous. What if it's not good enough? What if she doesn't like it? I hope she does. But that is for time to tell. I packaged it up nicely with tissue paper, inserted a thank you note, taped up the box and said goodbye to it.

 

So, dear purchaser, if you are out there. Thank you. Not only for your purchase, but for restoring a little bit of my confidence. Thank you so much.