At Least Things Ended Amicably

I've been thinking about making a table runner since last November when Spool featured theirs as a Thanksgiving idea. And, I figured I would make ours for spring, as all the kids and the husband have birthdays in spring and it is, by far, my favorite season anyway. Then, I got really excited and thought it could be fun to have one for each season. And, this is how the ill-fated love affair began. I started in on earnest with my fabric from Mineymo. It didn't take too long for the whole thing to fall apart. While these three fabrics looked distinct enough when separate, as soon as I sewed them into a disappearing nine patch, they just melded together and looked jumbled. Plus, I didn't properly square my fabric so everything was slightly on the bias cut and going wonky. Then, I set it aside and...it started to haunt me. I would literally see it and think "ah! that damn project. Why did I need a table runner anyway. What a stupid project." The same way a bad boyfriend quickly becomes annoying. Finally, I decided I was just going to finish it so that it was finished. And, honestly, I was cursing it as I was sewing. "This is so dumb, it is such a mess we aren't even going to use it when it's done I'll bet." Then, I decided to try a basting stitch for the quilting part and things really feel apart. The basting stitch just managed to make everything more wonky and distracted me from the original design and I was really cursing it. But, I just kept working on it...the bad boyfriend that you just can't break up with. I just felt this crazy commitment to the fabric because it was nice fabric it should have been a nice project. You see where this is going...the nice guy that you just feel like it SHOULD be working with and it just isn't. So, you keep trying and trying.
In the end I added a border and well, finished the darn thing. It is over! And, I will probably pull it out for birthdays and think, "well, that wasn't so bad really, and at least it ended well."

But, I can say I'm really happy it is no longer haunting my "to do" basket. So, the lessons learned from this whole emotional upheaval....always square the fabric and use non-directional fabric for the disappearing nine patch AND figure out how to keep the fabric design more distinct. All of this thinking did get me thinking about color and making my color wheel so I guess that is the silver lining.