mathea

So there it is, my Haunted House Quilt up on the wall, and I'm not going to mention it again ;-) I think I've said so earlier, that this was a kit from Keepsake Quilting, so this has been more like painting by numbers - or cutting by numbers, rather. For once I didn't change a thing about the pattern or any of the fabrics (although I did have a go with some bleach and ended up with some pink fabric for another project...). But it was fun to do. I love the fabric used for the background - such a wild and wonderful autumn sky, you can almost smell the bonfires and see dead leaves swirling about in the crisp night air. There isn't a lot of stitching on it - the blue/black is cut in one piece (apart from the witch and bats, of course) and that was the main job. The outline quilting was quick and easy to do, and then it just had some marinating to do before I added the binding...
So, that's one down and on to another - I stitched the triangles for my little floral quilt together today, and now I need to add some appliqué hearts before I stitch the rows into a quilt. Indiana Jones is going to keep me company tonight while I do that - it has been one film after another today, so I have managed to get a lot of hand stitching done - re-basting my Sunflower quilt is one of them. I had cut the batting too small and had such a hard time getting it all together that there was no way around it - the stitches had to be pulled and the batting extended so I could smooth the top out all the way to the edges. Much happier with it now!
That brings me back to my ever recurring problem of going from finished top to finished quilt. I came across a quote from a Himalayan Sherpa the other day. I forget his name, but it went something like this: "When you get to the top, you are only halfway". That's an apt reminder for us quilters too, I think, only slightly re-frazed: "When you have made the top, you are only halfway". I must keep reminding myself, it's so easy to get distracted by another idea once the top is done.
But then that's half the fun, though, isn't it?