Simple Finish for a Monster UFO

It’s May 7th, 2014 and today I am finally, finally, FINALLY going to finish this quilt!

It’s actually pretty crazy to consider that this quilt isn’t finished. I’ve dragged it with me for more than 2 years in a mostly-together-yet-still-unbound state, which is pretty ridiculous! Just FINISH it already Leah!

You may recall, I first embarked on the completely ridiculous, absolutely insane idea to hand bind all the little squares together back in 2012. Looking back, I realize now that I really just wanted a project in my hands to work on during a trip to Texas when my grandma was dying. Busy hands and distracted mind – that was pretty much my goal, and this project fulfilled it.

Carefully hand binding the individual strips of blocks wasn’t bad and it was a nice project to have for traveling. It was when the strips needed to be connected together that this beast really became a monster.

19 strips containing 19 blocks each, what was I thinking?!

Now I feel a sort of love / hate relationship with this quilt. In a way, it’s going to be one of my favorites. It’s a catalog of hundreds of designs, and loads of creativity went into making each block.

But this is also quilt I honestly never planned to make. From the beginning of this blog, I planned to keep the little squares in binders, where I could flip through them easily to get inspiration, or pull them out to pin on a project during the design process.

The binders got clunky however, and the little squares kept falling out. I also published all the designs in a book, so the binders of stitched squares began to feel irrelevant. So this quilt was one of those I might as well.. projects, which are sort of fun and annoying all at the same time.

Looking back, I think this quilt is one of my last torturous experiences with the power of complication.

I could have simplified this project in 100 different ways, starting with machine finishing the binding! I also kept a very vague, barely planned idea in the back of my head to add a border and somehow incorporate the 4 designs that couldn’t fit into the main quilt into the corners (365 isn’t a
square number – the main quilt is actually 361 squares, but who’s counting!?)

I’ve gained a lot of understanding for my love of complication lately, and I see that this is a bad habit I tend to have with projects that overwhelm me. I plan something sort-of, then rush off to start the process, then hit a massive road block when I run up against the bad planning from the start.

In the case of this quilt, I couldn’t decide how to attach the borders. I also couldn’t decide how to incorporate the extra designs, or what the borders should even look like. In short, I stuck myself into a corner and stayed there.

For years.

What’s hilarious is I’ve been dragging this quilt around with me – to a Craftsy shoot in Denver, to classes in Greensboro, and all the while insisting that it’s unfinished, when the truth is, it’s been finished all this time. Clearly it’s finished since I already had a photo shoot with it!

So today I’m making it official!

No more borders! I’m killing that idea stone dead and will salt the ground where I buried it. No more borders means I can finish this quilt TODAY, right now with one super long slog of hand binding.

I’ve armed myself with a powerful light, a comfy spot on the couch, a tall glass of water, and a very long audiobook to keep my mind focused on quickly, carefully, hand stitching the binding along the edge, and tacking the hanging sleeve down on the back.

It will be a lot of hand stitching for one day, but it will feel great to finally turn this monstrous UFO into a finished quilt. Here’s to simplicity and getting it DONE!

Let’s go bind baby!

Leah