Curses, foiled again. BUT—-

Well. I guess it’s good that having children has trained me (in the trenches) how to be flexible. Because if not, I’d be totally freaking out this week. And last week, too, technically.

As anyone who knows me well knows, I’m trying to finish a two-year quilt project within the next 11 days, so that it can be entered in a quilt show. I’m a good distance from being done with this quilt, so it was more of a kick-in-the-pants thing for me — I’ve been pussyfooting around on the quilt because it intimidates me to go completely off on my own like this, because I’ve only ever done other people’s basic designs before.

The Rhapsody in Blue quilt (well, except for the star, which was from this book) is completely my own design. I drafted the flying geese myself, I came up with the idea to embellish with metallic threads and trapunto to enhance aspects of the quilt that I didn’t feel showed up well enough, it was my idea to do bobbin work with metallic cording after lots of quilting with metallic threads…

So every new step has presented a new and untraveled path for me. Scary stuff. And each time, I had already invested hours and hours in the preceding steps, so the “oh, man, what if I RUIN it?!” thoughts pervade. And every time, I’ve had to ignore them and plunder ahead. And every time, I’ve been very happy with the results, even if they’re not exactly what I have imagined.

When I layered the quilt for trapunto and got that part done a couple weeks ago, I saw the quilt upside-down for the first time. Upside-down is now right-side-up, and I found tons of new inspiration and energy and will to complete it by the deadline. I’ve worked and worked and worked on it.

And then Alice got sick, which took me away from it a lot. I did get to work some last weekend, which was great. But my nieces and sister-in-law were here, so I spent a lot of my would-otherwise-be-quilting time hanging out with them. And then Helen got sick this week.

Tomorrow morning, even if Helen has a fever again, I’m hoping her grandparents (the usual Friday morning babysitters) will come over here. I plan on locking myself in the sewing room, leaving the computer off, and WORKING for three solid, unbroken hours.

And last night, after realizing just how tedious the bobbinwork step is, and just how much quilting I have left to do on the rest of this quilt (nevermind the binding, hanging sleeve, and label), I started to panic. I may be SO close but not-quite-finished by the deadline. And that just kills me. 🙁 Unless….

And I realized: I can do bobbinwork AFTER all that other stuff (except for the label and hanging sleeve, but those go on pretty quickly). SO. I’m going to do the REST of the quilting, do the finishing, and THEN do the bobbinwork until I run out of time. It may not be completely done by MY definition, but it should be ready to turn in for the quilt show by September 5th.

I was much calmer going to sleep last night, because I came up with a reasonable solution. It won’t be EASY to finish it in time, but by damn, I’m going to finish it. And it may not win awards because of the thread tension issues I’ve been having, but it will definitely get some attention because of how visually interesting it is turning out to be.

I cannot wait to share photos of the finished product for you. It has come a LONG way since last time you saw it.