My first UFO

I just want to be honest and direct about my quilting life and what better way than to confess about my unfinished offerings. I have a few, just like most of you out there. You see, I start every quilt with a fresh outlook, passion and motivation. Whether I choose a pattern from a book or I design one myself, I give it my most and I head into the project wholehearted in my endeavor.
Sometimes, I will work on a couple of projects at the same time and this has helped me to stay focused and motivated. But, there have been those quilts that have stumped me, frustrated me, confused me and yes, even bored me. That is usually when they end up in the unfinished offerings pile.
I want to tell you about my first offering, it is a simple four patch done with pastels and white on white fabrics. I actually designed the layout in excel (my first foray into electronic quilting) and I proceeded to make the quilt. All was well throughout the block making process. Then I decided to put a sawtooth border on it. Nice idea, sure looked good on the computer. One problem, well actually several, but the most important being that I was inexperienced and had not yet heard that golden rule of quilting, MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE.
You guessed it, some of my teeth had no chomp. they didn't match up at the corners. So I initially ripped out the corners and attempted to "make them fit". Obviously, inexperience reared its not so pretty head and bit me in the ass. Bad idea.
Oh, I took the quilt around to all my seasoned quilter friends and they smiled and chuckled and gave me lots of hugs and then told me about the golden rule - MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE. They all had some great ideas, most of which were too time consuming for me to try and figure out. See, I am a maverick that way, very self-taught, and I am sure the quilt teachers out there are thanking their lucky stars that they haven't had me too often in their classes. (More about my favorite teachers in another post.)
Anywho, I was already on to the next project in my mind and could not be held back by this little snafu. Five years later, she still sits patiently waiting for me to complete her. She pokes her little pastels out from under piles and reminds me that she is still around.




So here she is - my first unfinished offering.