This is the finished “Waiting for Jessie” quilt. It had a strange history (see below) with much cutting and moving of pieces.  I started with a lot more purples.  At one point there was a little Japanese doll fabric square in the border.  The moon was bigger.  When the quilt resurfaced after a long hiatus of being hidden in a pile, I renewed my efforts to finish for my friend’s birthday in July (originally it was for her 50th – and made during a time when she was often up late waiting for her daughter to get home.  Now that daughter is a senior in college and her younger child just graduated from high school!!).

A couple of weeks in, during this round, I found myself hating the raw-edged trees with their zig-zag stitching, but wasn’t willing to begin again, so I kept embellishing to try and make them ok.  Added some mottled red kimono silk as a path.  I like that path.

But, the trees never really got to a place where I think they are ok.  I added some batik that looked like trees, and that helped, but mostly because it distracts you from the trees in the central square.

Because the process was a series of problem-fixes like that, and because I was trying to incorporate some new approaches as well (prime among them – more embroidery), it’s not surprising that it’s not quite a fully realized piece.

But this is how life goes (or mine does anyway).  We start.  We change our minds. We botch. We fix. We experiment.  And, at some point, it’s good enough.

Here’s the years-old starting point: