Sunday, December 19, 2010

T minus 6

Christmas is less than a week away. My kids are wicked excited. Guess they think Santa has deep pockets and an amazing nack of bringing everything that they want and then some. I honestly hope that they are not disappointed! I sat Miss S down with a pan full of premade cookies the other day so I could get some house work done (gasp...I did not make them from scrap!). She added sprinkles and sweets for a good 20 minutes. Unlike her brothers, she didn't just eat the sugars! My mother came over later that day and made a gingerbread house with her. That girl does love to cook! Her letter to Santa has been mailed, and she even received a delightful letter in return. Talk about being something surprised to get a note from Santa. She's convinced he's definitely going to bring her every possible princess!
I've been nursing a cold for nearly a week now, and as of last night I have 2 kids with it too. I took Sophie to the doctor this morning for an ear infection. Between her and Bryce I was up 4 times last night for either aching ears, stomach ache, peed bed or puking. Pure delight. At 5am, I gave in and climbed into bed with her because I knew I wouldn't have to leave my nice warm bed again if I just stayed there!
So now I get to the nitty gritty of my life. I've been stitching away on this darn quilt for 10 days now. I have lost count how many hours I have spent on it, but it is way too many. And there are far too many ahead of me to count. At present, I am happily past the halfway point, but I know it will go back on the frame and get more work. So merely reaching the end of the quilt is definitely nowhere near the end.
I have 8 or 9 different threads in this one - as you can plainly see from the massive thread pile! It has made quilting this in a timely manner impossible. I am sort of at the point where I would be cursing the customer if it were not my own blasted quilt. I am feeling tired of it, defeated in how I am quilting it and just plain frustrated. The fabrics are impossible to see the quilting on and I am discovering after I free-quilt areas (when I look at the back), that they look sub-par. Rip, rip. I also marked this stupid rosette completely before quilting it, then after I removed the marking pen, I was horrified how crooked some of the lines looked. I could just cry. I think that this was the point where I just wanted to toss the entire quilt. I am mad at myself for making it so freaking microscopic, so that every area to quilt is tiny, requiring ultra-careful control.
I have areas where I have more or less experimented on how I want to quilt them, so there are sections requiring removing to make things similar! I want to infuse more gold metallic thread, and tried it on the gray squares/diamonds. Not sure if it will stay or be changed to a more visible color. My middle initial "E" seems to be for "experimental" lately. Ouch. Perhaps you have a suggestion for me...(hint!) That just reminds me that I discovered a section of gold quilting that has ticking on the backside. Oh boy, do I have a lot of picking out!
For the longest time I really did not want the computerized gizmos for my machine. I take pride in stitching freely and nicely, but it surely would make stitching look perfect in areas with horrific visibility. My little rows of pebbling could look flawless, rather than rows of poorly traced fresh water pearls.

2 comments:

marlene@ByTheSeam said...

Love the big smile on Miss S's little face. Ah the magic of this time of year. I remember doing cookies with my mom, only those were from scratch. I don't know how she did it, work 40 hrs or more and still do all that baking. Your quilt will be so nice when it is done and well worth all the trouble. Hang in there.

Debbie said...

I am so sorry you are having trouble with your beautiful quilt. I relate so much to your comment about computerized vs. freehand longarm quilting. You know quilts always look so much better when they are all done...we all just look at the beauty of the overall product and not every solitary stitch. You must do what you can to make yourself happy about the final product but I already know it will be spectacular.