Another Slow Stitching Sunday

Saturday morning I visited the quilt museum in Paducah. I was convinced that there wouldn't be many (if any) hand quilted quilts ... hand quilting just seems to be a forgotten art. But I was pleasantly surprised at the number of hand quilted quilts. I spent a lot of time up close and personal with them, and you know ... I learned that even award winning quilters aren't perfect ... I saw a few lopped off triangle tips (granted not by much ... I didn't even see the missing tips until I got waaaay up close) and a few appliqué stitches (again, I had to be very close to see them). The point is not to criticize those quilters but to remind myself that I don't have to be so hard on myself ... perfection is an impossible goal. The important question is not is my quilt perfect, but did I enjoy creating it, did I stitch love into it?

After our morning at the quilt museum, we headed south to visit the Land Between the Lakes and Kentucky Dam.

This is taken as we walked along the top of the dam ... I could see desks in the windows.  I guess there's a staff who control the locks to control river traffic as well as water levels.  I tried to get a picture of the dam itself but it was late afternoon and the sun was behind the dam ... causing a shadow on the dam.

Another 3 hours on the road to head home from Paducah game me another opportunity to get some work done on my hexies. I love working on hexies ... there's just something about having a needle in my hand that is so restful, so soothing to me. And it helps relieve the monotony of riding in the car on our travels.

I won't get much hexi work done in the next few weeks ... I've got to work on those Christmas gifts that I bought fabric for at Hancock's. And I'd like to bring back out my Storm at Sea and see if my finger has healed enough to allow me to do some hand quilting. I hope so as I am going to be doing a lot of unstitching before I can make any more progress on it. :-(  Whenever I start a new project, my first few stitches are always bigger than I'd like but I quickly get back in my rhythm and my stitches are fine. Not the tiniest ever quilted, but certainly respectable. This time those initial stitches were bigger than my normal first few bigger stitches and for some reason I decided to just keep stitching all my stitches that same size. Somehow I convinced myself that consistency in size would somehow compensate for the embarrassingly large stitches ... and I must have convinced myself that they weren't that large.  :-o I looked at them carefully during the time I couldn't quilt because of my finger and saw them for what they were - way too large to be acceptable!  Ugh. I knew that I'd never be able to enjoy or use that quilt ... I realized that I would never be happy with that quilt and that after all the work I put I into piecing it, I would rather unstitch all those stitches and stitch over... I knew that I was unhappy enough with those stitches that I might never even get back to finishing it. While I realize that my aim is not perfection (see above), that doesn't mean that I should settle for an embarrassingly mediocre job, especially when I am certainly capable of better work.  ;-)  It will be a pain to remove all those stitches, but I know that I will be much happier in the long run so it will be worth it.

We arrived back home around noon ...after a light lunch, we put up our tree, Christmas village and nativity set.

By the time I put the last piece in place on the village, I was done ... we will have some leftover Thanksgiving turkey for dinner, and I'm going to spend my evening in the recliner. I hope to feel energetic enough to work on my Martha Washington's Flower Garden ... or maybe just do some semi mindless basting on my hexagon star pieces. 

I hope you all have had a blessed Sunday ... and are looking forward to a fabulous week!

P.S.  I'm linking up over at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday.  If you're a quilter and have done some slow stitching this weekend, why not join in?