Stop Self-Doubt

I had this quilt on my machine all week. I spent nearly 18 hours on it. It's rather enormous at 88"x100", but pales in comparison to one quilt coming my way that is something like 117"x117"! This quilt posed all kinds of challenges. It's rather out of square. The appliques are kind of sewn on, if you know what I mean. The fabrics are fairly dated, which is not an issue, but...they are ALL muted and printed, which is hard to sew on. I'm not a fan of having the stitching show all that much so I try to match threads to fabrics within reason. The mottling of these fabrics made it like quilting in the dark! I was at times stooping to within a few inches of the quilt just to see it. The client wanted feathering, but holy crap, I could hardly see where I was going and I refuse to feather in a boldly different color. Besides, I don't think it would have looked that good.
I kept on stitching, and cursing, and sincerely hoping that once it came off the frame the texture would be visible and the blunders would not. I should know to believe. If nothing else, believe. The quilt came off, and the blunders are concealed nicely, and the texture is delicious.

The feathering is far from textbook, but given what I could see, I think they are not that bad. The quilt has a decent variety of fillers to force the eye to wander around.

I seriously need to get some larger circle templates, like 12" or so. Using a 9" circle to do those arcs was tenuous, and tricky!

I probably should have SID the geese, but I would have spent 2 more hours doing it, on an already expired budget. They pop nicely, so I decided all was well.

And the back, it's nicely textured. The feathers around the scalloped border are a wee-bit wonky now and then, but hey! They'll manage. I think the client will be pleased.

Have a good August weekend!