Done is Better than Perfect

I am not a quilter.  There I said it.  I enjoy the occasional quilt, but I’m NOT a quilter.  This year though, on and off I’ve been working on a quilt.  And to be honest the pieces were cut out probably over three years ago.  

This thing though has been jinxed since the beginning.  I purchased about 6 different green print cotton fabrics to make a quilt for our bedroom.  Something I would like and hopefully the hubby too.  Something mature and modern and not too girly.  Heaven forbid we have a girly quilt.  

And it all kind of went wrong from there.  I wanted to do a brick quilt.  Fast and easy I thought.  you cut out some big rectangles, arrange them in a pleasing pattern, sew them together into strips and then sew the strips together.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  I cut out a gazillion rectangles, started trying to arrange them and hated the entire thing.  Hated it.  From beginning to end.  I must have been drunk when I picked the fabrics out.  I had to have been high or on some sort of sleepwalking shopping mission.  So I put them all together very neatly in a clear plastic container, pushed them to the side, and made something else.  I would pull them out from time to time and try to figure out how to arrange them, get mad that I had bought such a mish mash of prints, question my sanity, and promptly put them to the side again.  

Then back in January of this year my husband went on a weekend long duck hunting trip.  It was going to be nasty and cold and I declared I would conquer this quilt.  I would figure out how to use all these squares I had cut.  There was no good reason for 8 yards of material to sit moulding away in a box.  It was wasteful and I wouldn’t stand for it.  

I laid everything out and determined what I needed was a solid color to tie everything together and to eliminate some of the prints I had chosen.  KISS method in action - Keep It Simple Stupid.

I purchased a few yards of a two diferent cream fabrics and got to work.  That’s when I decided that my “bricks” were too wide.  So I cut them in half.  That done I started arranging them.  

I poured a glass of wine.  

I arranged some more.  

Another glass of wine.

I changed the arrangement again.  

Watched Dr. Who.  

Changed the arrangement again.  

There may or may not have been some cursing involved.  

Ok, there was quite a bit of cursing involved.  But I finally hit on a pattern I liked so I started pinning the strips together.  I pretty much got the entire thing pinned together that weekend and some sewing started and have continued working on it here and there all year.  I just haven’t been in much of a sewing mood this year.  I’ve been doing some embroidery and patching a never ending stream of jeans it seems like.  My hubby is hell on the pockets of his pants.  And please don’t ask me to patch your blue jeans, the going rate is $30 an hour.  I hate it that much.  Patching blue jeans, especially the kind of thick work jeans my husband likes is a nightmare and includes thimbles - which I’m also not a fan of or the many pricked fingers I acquire. 

 So the other day I finally sewed the two completed halves of this quilt together and while I was pinning I was thinking to myself this seemed awful long and maybe just a little narrow.  I shrugged and with a sense of accomplishment snapped the finished product out and raced to the bedroom to throw the top on the bed and see where we were.  

I frowned with consternation as I gazed upon a quilt about a foot too long and four feet too narrow.  This is why I don’t have a job that requires copious amounts of math.  Oh and in the interim of starting and stopping this quilt I realized that my pattern doesn’t quite match up.  I’m at the point where I just don’t care.   And then again I do.  I think this quilt could be so nice and I’m furious at myself for screwing up.  I know I can fix it and honestly it’s just for me and my husband.  It’s just something to keep me warm at night but I’m a perfectionist.  I want the darn thing to look right.  So, do I tear it apart or do I leave it like it is, fix the length and the width, quit it, and move on?  The little white squares are doing exactly what I want, which is why I hesitate to tear it apart plus it has a ¼ inch seam allowance so I know if I rip it apart it’s going to be a mess.  

So, I’m thinking at this point I just need to love the imperfection, call it a modern quilt, and get it done.  Because done is better than perfect.  And that should be the motto of this quilt.  Done is better than perfect.  Done is better than all that fabric laying around in a box doing nothing.  Done is better than the ratty old comforter that I’m using under my nice quilt to keep me warm.  Done is completing the first king size quilt I’ve ever made for myself.  

Done is better than nothing.