Doggone Little Daisies

At least they've found a home.

It was August 1st when I first decided I wanted to start a sewing project I could finish quickly to give me some self-confidence about my time management. From listening to myself that day, I think I was expecting it to be a 2-day job at the most.

August 1: "By the end of the day today, I hope to make some sense of this. Nothing like writing it to get me on track. I'm really not sure what it's supposed to be. It's an old kit I've had around forever and just want to finish something."

As evidenced by the picture above, things went well all the way through the cutting out process. I think my problem was that I tried to do it in small spurts - like sewing a square while heating a cup of coffee - or giving myself 15 minutes to work on it here and there.

Because of that, I didn't get any continuity and kept making mistakes, sewing things upside down, sideways, backwards, any wrong way you can think of. Things didn't fit, and pieces got lost - all this was done in the kitchen and dining room. By the time I took out my mistake from the day before, I was sick of looking at it and just kind of resentfully worked away on it. A couple of times I thought about just tossing it. Who would know?

But I didn't, and yesterday I decided I would finish it and make it fit together. It did - somewhat - maybe a few curves and humps, very few nice points, and even a real no-no - a raw edge on one of the triangles. Oh, and in case it doesn't jump out at you, one of the yellow triangles is just totally in the wrong place. I don't care. I believe it's a known fact that quilters from a long time ago would purposely leave in a mistake to prove they were human. I doubt they left in anything quite this noticeable, but so I'm human.


The whole time I was finishing it, I was thinking, "What on earth am I going to do with this thing when I finish it? Who needs a little square quilt with daisies and polka-dots." I figured I'd just put it up and maybe have a change of heart by next spring and put it - somewhere. Or maybe I would find a little girl who needed a doll quilt. Do little girls even play with dolls any more?

But then I had this crazy idea. The squareness of it kept reminding me of something. Several years ago, I had taken an old ugly side table with a square top from my parents' storage house.

We were getting ready to move to Columbus, and Mike was already gone, so I decided packing and moving were not enough to keep me busy and decided to redo the table. I stripped off all the years of paint and varnish and stain - very, very messy - and painted it white. It had a recessed top, so I got someone to put a square of glass there, and it was really quite pretty. Emily had brought me a lace doily from Paris a few years before, and I put it there for awhile, and in Columbus I put a collage of pictures under the glass one Christmas that just stayed. Then when we moved, I couldn't find the energy to do anything with it, and it's just been in the guest room with nothing under the glass. SO--

Sad little daisy quiltlet - meet your new home.
And I didn't even have to quilt it. For the time being it'll make me think all that aggravation for the last 2 weeks has been worth something. Maybe if I turn it in a different direction, that mistake won't be so noticeable...

Maybe....

Solved.