How do you know when to abandon a piece? Or, if the decision is to spare an unliked work, how do you go about finding the will to finish it?

Shooting this little quilt out of focus and cock-eyed accurately captures my lack of affection for it. Initially, I set out to ‘improve’ it by continuing to applique scraps — applying some sheers for additional interest and a variety of teeny chips of geometric prints to suggest more windows. However, the backing fabric is a polished cotton (and I suspect designed for outdoor use) and it became evil to try and stitch through.

So! I cut it up.

Cutting up a quilt otherwise designated for the garbage doesn’t take much nerve, particularly when you haven’t spent all that much time on it the first place. Now I am committed to finishing it and will use one of the Berninas to do so (sparing the thumbs is generally a good practice!)

So — NOTE TO SELF — prior to abandoning a piece, you can:

One – cut it up, rearrange it (if necessary or fun, cut up TWO quilts and mix and match). (DONE)

Two – Using a zig-zag stitch, butt edges together and unite them. (DONE)

Three — Add additional scraps to surface, in my case more rooves, windows, and a red hot sun.  (IN PROGRESS).

Four – bind or not. I’m a lot less compulsive about the need for a traditional binding.

Who knows? Maybe this little Summer Village will usher in a whole slew of Finished Things.

For the first time EVER I am viewing the prospect of a period in which I limit myself to the task of finishing in-progress pieces as something appealing — as a source of freedom, even.

Funny isn’t it? How something that for years (finishing, finishing and focusing on finishing) has seemed nothing but an exercise in the SuperEgo — dull, lacking in spark, with an oppressive need for semi-accuracy — can suddenly carry a whiff of delight?

Perhaps this is a testament to the weight of things undone.

And perhaps this new stance on finishing is an indicator of just how toxic the process of selling your work can be. In most of the previous ten years, finishing a piece was synonymous with readying it for sale. That’s a big “UGH” all on its own, and it must have carried a large enough spread of contamination to pollute the process of finishing.

Just wondering. Didn’t mean to sound SO incredibly down on selling.

Can you imagine a whole wall of Global Warming quilts (mostly pieced already) backed and quilted and edges finished in some manner?! The Witness quilts (two of them, I think) — bound and complete? The Middle Passage quilts resolved (remember? I dunked two of them into the indigo vat, which kind of stopped me short) — bound and quilted as well?!! A couple of baby blankets, quilted and bound, if only to donate them to Children’s Hospital (because there are some – uh-oh – bumps that I won’t be able to quilt out).

First step I suppose would be to make a list.  Isn’t that often the First Step? I’m willing to wager that I have more than 25 quilts in progress.

We shall see. We shall see.

On another note — Hope everyone had a Happy Father’s Day!!

We did. First, with a visit to my sister in Salem (we ate hot dogs next to her alley-sidewalk garden) and then with a meal at our kitchen table together (a rarity these days). K. wasn’t even supposed to back from China yet, but his meetings wrapped up early. So being altogether was treat enough, but then C. brought dinner from the supermarket where he works and I made Fallen Chocolate Cakes (only 3 Tbs of flour!) which we ate with vanilla ice cream, and in my case, a fair amount of moaning. D. gave his father one of his best B&W prints of the mountains that he photographed (on film!) during our recent trip to Arizona.