8/20/13

An Unexpected Opportunity

Today there was really nothing on my plate, and so I set out to do only the things I wanted to do. It began with spending a little extra time on my embroidery. I finished the corn, and since I had the right color floss in my needle,



I started on the cabbages. Then, I was curious to see how it would look to add the darker green to the cabbage leaves, and so I did that until I was pretty tired of doing embroidery for the day.


After that, I decided it was time to re-pot the second round of dill and basil into larger pots.


I needed to do a little clean-up in the greenhouse anyway. I needed to rid the place of the old bloomed out dill and basil, since those plants have given their all for the season. I'm hoping to coax another crop of dill and basil out of the greenhouse before the season is over. Also, I had some lettuce that needed to be discarded. There is a new round of red leaf that is ready to start picking now, and I'll probably start another round of green leaf. For today, I was satisfied to re-pot the dill and the basil and get them set up on their timed drip sprinklers.


After that I did the tiniest bit of housework (the best way to do housework, in my humble opinion...in tiny bursts...really tiny bursts). Then, I was ready to do what I'd been wanting to do for a solid week--get on with quilting the True Hope quilt.

So I was quilting along and rolling the quilt as I went until I noticed as I was rolling that I had made a grave error.  Oh my.


Oh this did not bode well for my afternoon of quilting.


It was only creased in that dark gray section which happens to be smack in the middle of the quilt back. After spending some time looking at it (because, honestly, how was I going to stop that from happening again?), I realized that it had creased in the place that had formerly been the fold of the fabric as it came off the bolt. Although I ironed the back before I sandwiched the quilt, I decided I would need to iron it again once I had all of that picked out. Oy.

So, I only said a few bad words when it occurred to me that the Universe had just smiled on me with a tremendous opportunity! Why yes! It was my opportunity to spend the rest of the afternoon practicing patience, and to learn new vocabulary words with more or less than four letters! How could I have not seen that coming? In my haste to be pissed off about having to pick out a rather large section of tight quilting, I had failed to see the fabulous occasion for me to practice skills that had become rusty (i.e., patience and tranquility). These openings do not come along every day.

And that is how I spent the majority of the afternoon. Pick, pick, pick, pick. It was positively splendid. If by splendid, you mean tiresome and tedious. I was afraid I was going to pick threads from the fabric and make a hole. I probably did, but nothing obvious. Oy. Not exactly what I had in mind when I started the day.

Nevertheless, the day ended well. I didn't accomplish as much as I'd hoped (quilting wise, that is), but I did manage to get the second of three rows of flying geese quilted.


See? No creases. Thank goodness, because I might have committed hari kari with my seam ripper if I had done that again. With one more row of flying geese to quilt, there is still time.


When I came upstairs, I found Little Mister flat as a pancake on top of the china cabinet. He likes to get up there on warm days. It's cool on his tummy. It's unusual for him to come in on his own this early.


His day must have been filled with opportunity too.

14 comments:

Vroomans' Quilts said...

Oh, I know that awful feeling when you flip the quilt over. Luckily, today wasn't one of those days. Not sure where my furries napped today - the early morning vacumm session sent them flying outside.

Teresa in Music City said...

Oh yeah - the stomach does a somersault and you begin to get that sick feeling and a ringing in your ears.... so glad you were able to learn those new words - you never know when they'll come in handy LOL!!! Looks like you managed it all very well and got it straightened out with no harm to human, feline or quilt :*)

WoolenSails said...

That is my biggest fear, so afraid of making creases, lol.

Debbie

Lee said...

PTSD after his recent adventure with the Woofies, needs to chill now that he's home. I'd be looking for a safe perch after an adventure like that too. :)

Dana Gaffney said...

Oh Sh*t, my backing folded back in a corner and I sewed it down, lucky it was just a corner, not anything like yours, we should compare words :)

Junebug613 said...

It's good that fabric is almost always more forgiving to our mistakes than we are. As much as I hate having to do it, I find that frogging (rip it, rip it, rip it) can be somewhat therapeutic. That Smitty is one cute cat!

Anonymous said...

Great "save"! I would do the same....that is going to be such a neat finish!!! Hugs......

Lynn - JnL4God said...

Been there done that way too many timnes. The worst was tiny stippling on an appliques quilt the got three creases in it. Took me 3 hrs to pick that out. :)
Glad you still got to quilt some though.

Lynn - JnL4God said...

Been there done that way too many timnes. The worst was tiny stippling on an appliques quilt the got three creases in it. Took me 3 hrs to pick that out. :)
Glad you still got to quilt some though.

quiltzyx said...

Yoicks! I do hate it when that happens. You did a good job fixing it - I might have been tempted to just do some extra quilting there - maybe with gray - to tack the whole crease down!

Smitty just looks SOOO comfy up there. zzzzzzzz....

Kirsty said...

Another great post that had me smiling.

Michele said...

As we would have said around her "Oh Sparkles!". Although it put a kink in your day I'm glad you got it all ripped out. And I agree about Smitty. I think his recent scare with them Wolfies has him a little timid. But not for long I'm certain.

Brown Family said...

WHen that happens to me, my favorite four letter word is 'Beans'. i do not know why or when I started saying it!

Kate said...

Not a fun day, but at least you got it fixed and it's all behind you now.