Friday Follow-up and Gracie's Pinwheels

Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them. –John Shirley

I had high expectations for yesterday and Friday really had a lot to live up to. On the whole, it was a rather good Friday, as Fridays go. I started my day doing math and eating muffins with LadyBug at her school. It was organized by the 3^rd grade teachers, so there were lots of moms there and the muffins were huge and chocolatey with chocolate chips . After that, I went to see my old friend, the chiropractor. I'd forgotten just how good he really is. I've been to several in my day, and he is far and away the best I've ever been to. It's not just a quick 20-minute adjustment. It is a 1-hour treatment. He works the muscles in the problem area, getting them to relax first and then he does the adjustment. If I had my way, I'd have a standing Friday morning appointment with the chiropractor.

Both of those things were a really great way to start the day. Unfortunately Work had different ideas about how I should spend my Friday and I was there a really lot longer than I wanted to be. I used to think that I was a fairly efficient, on-task kind of person. But I'm starting to wonder if that isn't true, because it seems like I'm really slow at my job. I'm always busy, always working. But things take longer than I expect. Well, that's a subject to explore another day.

After work, Mr. Bug and I went to see The Adjustment Bureau. Emily Blunt was amazing, though I think my favorite part was the movie popcorn. Or maybe holding hands with Mr. Bug.


We ended our evening with the most delicious chicken burritos from Cafe Rio. After that, the day was pretty much gone, and so I didn't get to do any sewing. I'm on that today .

I'm working on the machine quilting on Gracie's Pinwheels. I had about ⅓ of the quilting finished when I put it away last weekend. I was feeling a little discouraged about the machine quilting I'd chosen. I'd debated back and forth about which color of thread to use and just how to quilt it. I knew that pink thread would stand out too much on the black fabric, so I decided on black, hoping that it wouldn't stand out too much in the busy pattern in the pink fabric. And I finally decided on loopy flowers all over. I worked on it for a good chunk of time last Friday and by the time I was ready to call it quits for the evening, I was wondering if I'd made a mistake. I started to think that the quilting looked like black scribbles through the pink fabric. The messiness weighed on my mind all week, and I wondered if the quilt was going to come out all right; if it was going to be one of those miracle quilts that once they are all done and bound and washed you just love or if it really was that bad and I was going to hate it when it was done.

When I opened up the quilt today and took a second look, I realized that my mind had really distorted the messiness in the look of the quilting, and I decided that it was pretty OK. So, I continued on. I'd finished just over half of the quilting when I opened out the quilt again and realized that I should have listened to Rhonda {who is, after all a professional}, and done loopy flowers in the pink blocks {with pink thread} and stippling in the black blocks {around the pinwheels, in black thread}. I could have even done arcs inside the pinwheels in pink thread. It was a little bit agonizing to realize that I'd made the wrong choice.

I weighed my options. I calculated the tedium and time consumption of unpicking to get the perfect quilting vs. the self-loathing I would feel if I finished the quilt in this imperfect state. My distaste for unpicking won out and I continued on. I've got just over ¾ of the quilting finished now. But that nagging voice in my head keeps telling me that this quilt would look so much better the other way. Will someone please tell that voice to shut up !?! Quilting is supposed to be fun. At least that's why I quilt. So, I'm going to finish up the loopy flowers and stop beating myself up for not getting it right. Because, really, this isn't life and death we're talking about here, and those loopy flowers are pretty adorable. Aren't they ?