Farmer's Wife Friday 5

I'm trying not to be hard on myself with this quilt, but my perfectionist instincts are rearing their ugly head. I used to be much harder on myself and would beat myself up over not being perfect whether or not it was in my capabilities. When I started quilting 3 years ago I realized that if I was ever going to finish quilts I needed to focus on the process and understand that perfection was not possible for me at that point in time. By taking this attitude I have learned a great deal and love quilting. (I've even noticed this attitude has spread to other areas of my life and I'm much nicer on myself when I'm not perfect.) I'm beginning to see some of the perfect points and blocks I wished for when I started. Now I struggle with the question of when is good, good enough? If I know I can do better is it worth the extra time to do it again? With this quilt it's one 6" block out of 111. Will the imperfect points be obvious (or even noticed) when mixed in with the others or will it always bug me? For right now I've decided that blocks that are the right size but I'm not totally happy with will stay. If at the end of the project I still don't like the blocks I can always remake them. Since I have a tendency to write notes in lots of places and might not remember where my notes are at the end of the year I will write what I learn about the blocks here so I can remember what to do next time. (Also if anyone else is making these blocks you can learn from my mistakes and hopefully make better blocks your first time.)

End of Day is one of these blocks that has my voice of perfection lashing out at me. Towards the end of the block I realized I could divide the block into (4) 3.5" squares. Each square could divide into a 2" white, 2" black, and (2) 2" black and white HSTs. (Measurements include seam allowance. Squares will finish 1.5".)

#30 End of Day

I think my perfectionist voice has multiple personalities. While one side is shaking it head at me over End of Day another side is doing the happy dance over Attic Windows. (Seriously check out how great those points look!) I was starting to worry that my quilt was leaning too heavily on the darks so I reversed the lights and darks from the book. It never did look like a window to me so I didn't see a point in having a white center. The black center gives a nice change and will help balance out the other blocks.

#1 Attic Windows

This means that I've made 12 blocks and am officially 10% done with this quilt! In celebration I'm sharing a picture of all of my blocks laid out. The final quilt will be on point with sashing, but it's hard to do 12 blocks on point and I still haven't found that perfect shade of blue so I just laid the blocks out side by side for today.

 

12/111

17:10