2. Have a dream with the pieces in an arrangment.
3. Get up and Do Something about it.
^ 4. Take photos of individual pieces.
^ 5. Project the photos to scale. Make individual drawings to size. Scoot the drawings around on the wall until something comes together. Make a cartoon.
^ 6. Shop your closet for fabrics. Find the perfect 'red with black' and 'red with white' for the background chess board. Feel exultantly frugal. Misremember the final size of the background squares; cut the 'red with white' pieces too small. Cut enough of the fabric too small so you have go shopping for a new fabric. Find Something That Will Do. Pay better attention when cutting the new fabric.
^ 7. Imagine you should start piecing with the more complicated blocks in the middle. Do one. Decide on a different process. Start at the top and work down. Get to the first pieced block and realize not only that it doesn't fit and but also that it is quite noticeably different than the rest of the panel. Blue the air. Piece it again. See that it looks like the rest of the panel, but still doesn't quite fit. Blue the air again. Pin and baste and whipstitch it into submission. Remembering that "steam is your friend, starch is your friend," starch, steam, and press the h**l out of the edges to make them flat.
8. Quilt using your new Bernina that is supposed to make life So Much Easier. Realize you don't know where the locking backstitch is on the new machine. Be unable to find any such reference in the index or table of contents. Stumble upon a reference to it in a tip box while frantically flipping through pages hoping-hoping-hoping to find something -- anything -- even marginally helpful. Cut the loose threads away from the back of the quilt. Discover after cutting all the locked backstitches (black thread on a black background, of course) that the machine leaves a very long "locked" tail and you have cut away most of the locks. Blue the air. Move on.
9. Bind the quilt. Use a fancy embroidery stitch to secure the binding. Screw up the turns at the corners. Sew on buttons to disguise the bad cornering.
10. Submit the quilt to the annual guild show. Spend several days anxiously wondering if you should withdraw it from the judging process because, in your estimation, the workmanship sucks. Be too tired to come to any conclusion.
11. Receive useful, if occasionally redundant, feedback from the judge ("Backstitching in border could be more accurate") and higher points in most categories than you ever imagined you would. Feel pretty chuffed about it all -- you're not interested in ribbons, although ribbons are nice, you want useful feedback and you got that.
12. Read an article in Scientific American about the connection between coral spawning, blue wavelength light, and phases of the moon.
Feel inspired.
Sleep, perchance to dream.
Start the next one.
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