Maintaining my Sanity

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It's a rough job--maintaining my sanity--but someone has to do it. It's questionable whether I'm accomplishing it, I know. Of course I'm referring to the process of making the next section for the Wind in the Whiskers quilt. Here is the section I'm making right now. It's called "I Spy". And since I'm making the whole quilt, what I'm working on now is just the center section without the two borders.

The key to maintaining one's sanity with this quilt is to focus on just one step at a time. Don't look back woefully about what you might have done better, and don't look ahead with apprehension about what you have yet to do. Just do one thing at a time and celebrate each little completion as you go. I figured this out when I did the first section, but I had to remind myself when I started on this part.

On Thursday, I just barely got started by cutting the background...scary in and of itself...and then I started just the first couple of applique pieces. 

If you look at the image of the whole quilt

you can see that the I Spy section has leaves and flowers overlapping from the section above, and so I won't add those pieces until I get to the fourth section. The same was true for the first section, "Laundry Day".

Look again at the image of the whole quilt, and you'll see that there is quite a bit of overlap from the sections around this one, and that the clothesline is completely left out. It will be added when the quilt is finished.

So that brings me to yesterday's work. I started by focusing on making the little chickadee, and only the little chickadee. No fair peeking at those complicated flower sections at the bottom of the block. And I'm using a pressing sheet to create the whole bird from nine separate itty bitty pieces. The pressing sheet allows me to fuse them to one another while maintaining the ability to fuse the whole to the background fabric when I'm ready. You can see my little mini-tutorial about this right here. So here goes. I made the chickadee:

Then I made the cat from eight separate pieces:

Then the birdhouse from 11 different pieces:

Fourteen pieces if you count the pole. Then I took the first tentative steps of beginning to fuse things directly to the background fabric. This is where I really start to hold my breath and hope for the best. A better strategy would probably be to continue breathing. 

So here's the pole:

And then I added the rest of the birdhouse:

And then, the cat and the bird.

And here's what I had up to that point.

So far, so good. Now, it's safe to start looking at the flowers, and when I did, I realized that all of the flowers wrapped around the pole can be looked at individually without looking at the other flowers growing across the bottom of the piece. Here are the first ones, starting from the bottom.

Then I added the next parts of the vine and the next flower moving up the pole.

It was time to stop here for the day. So here's where I'll pick it up today.

Those flower head pins at the top of the pole are to remind me that  approximately a two-inch section is not yet fused down. The clothesline will go there, and it won't be fused until the end. Since I'm sure I won't remember that, I put those pins there so that I'll know not to iron over it.

So, I'm feeling pretty good about what I've accomplished so far on this. No big problems yet. The hardest part is having those tiny little pieces curl up, and that makes fusing them in the exact correct spot a little more challenging, but I'm getting it done. Using tweezers really helps. 

Also (and maybe this is obvious to some of you, but I had to learn it myself), when you're cutting those teensy little pieces and around those teensy little curves, it helps to keep the scissors in one place and use the tweezers to hold and rotate the piece you're cutting. Accuracy is very much improved that way. And avoid opening and closing the scissors too much. Just open them and keep cutting until the blades are completely closed, then open them again. I hope that makes sense. Probably any kindergartner knows this, but it's been a long time since I was a kindergartner. This old dog has to relearn some old tricks.

So that's it from me. Onward and upward with the birdhouse pole. I'm hoping I'll get the rest of this done today, but it's hard to estimate with so many little pieces. It is a challenge, but I'm counting on a gorgeous quilt when I'm finished that will make it all worthwhile.