Unfinished Business

For the past month or so, I have been waging a personal war on WIPs.  Unfortunately, I haven't been very successful.  I've finished one.  As in 1 pillow (see previous post).  Not very impressive, I know.

I was working on finishing up my Fiddlesticks quilt top, but the colors were dark and I just wasn't into it. One night, I decided to pull it off the design wall, pack it up and save it for another day.  I had made considerable progress on it, so that should count for something.

The next day, I pulled a different project from my WIP storage.  I saw this quilt on the cover of Quilt Sampler a few years ago and it was love at first sight.  I became a Minnick and Simpson fanatic (still am), followed their blog (still do) and bought up gads of Prairie Paisley and Flag Day Farm.  I cut all the pieces for this quilt over 3 years ago and until last week, I hadn't sewn a stitch.  Egads!!!

It has a Ralph Lauren feel to it, no?

I got started making my little red and white HSTs. The pattern is clearly written and explicitly instructs you to pay attention to the orientation of the HSTs.  Apparently, I didn't catch this step...  I stitched, then I ripped, then I stitched again.  Second time I messed something else up, so I ripped and stitched yet again!  Apparently the third time was not the charm because after I finished up the center panel and sewed on another border I sat back to admire my work.

Yikes!  This time I noticed that my strips of HSTs were sewn to the center block all wrong!  I must be suffering from adult-onset ADD or something!  I debated for a short time about leaving it as is, but decided that I wanted to make it right so I'll take it apart again and this time, I will be VERY careful during reassembly.

To be fair, I've had my share of successes as well as mishaps with this quilt.  Check out my practically perfect 4-patches! 11 for 12 is a pretty good batting average...#12 is pictured in all it's un-matched glory below.

The next step is piecing of these hourglass blocks.  I've taken a picture of the arranged triangles in hopes that I'll actually end up with the same configuration when I'm done.  After I piece the 3rd border, I'll go back to square one and fix my mistakes.

I've got a couple of new modern projects in the near future, so I'll try to finish up this venture on the traditional side before the end of the week.  Wish me luck!