Digging UFOs

I confess---I have more than my share of UFOs.  It's probably my own fault--isn't that true of all relationship issues?  I'm sure you've been there--it seems like the perfect relationship at the begginning.  You love everything about it when you're in that first bloom of love.  Thenall the doubts begin to creep in--is this really right for me?  i'm I going to respect myself when it's over?  Can I really live with those annoying little imperfections?  Next thing you know, you're wanting to wipe it right out of your memory and pretend like you had never lost your mind in the first place.We're talking about quilts remember?  Not major life choices!!  But if you're like me, I get really wrapped up in what I create and I begin to look at them as much more than a collection of fabrics.  I tend to see them as an extrapolation of all my other choices in life and allow the failures and successes of my projects to define me personally.  Not much pressure, huh?

So when I started following Leah Day's UFO Sunday, at first I didn't want to go there.  It was sad to look at that forlorned collection of dashed hopes, patiently waiting to see the light of day again.  After a couple of weeks, I reconsidered.  When I dug through them (and there are a good number of them)  I came across some that not only weren't too bad, but I couldn't even remember why I had discarded them.  So I took out the most promising--what looked to be a nearly complete Christmas table runner.  It was all appliqued and bordered--nothing too threatening to get started on.  It was even attractive--why had I let that one slip away???  Oh yes, now I remember..it was supposed to be a part of a larger Christmas quilt I was making for one of my babies (the youngest is 16 and a junior in high school).  It was going to go across the top of a double bed quilt when we moved the older boys into bunk beds and it just wasn't going to work.

I wasn't very ambitious--I used a fairly close stipple to fill in the background.  Then I used a silver metallic thread for the reins.  I set my sewing machine--a brother cs6000i--to a one of the button hole options.  When I decreased the stitch width and increased it's length, it made a neat kind of chain stitch.  I went around one of the borders with a vining heart-ivy and bound it off with another of the decorative stitches from the brother; this one makes a kind of chained snowflake.  And there it was--completed on a Sunday afternoon!

It was empowering!  Instead of feeling like a slacker, knowing that there were projects that deserved better than to be cast into the cabinet of oblivion, I once again in love--and this time there was a happy ending!!