Just What Was I Thinking

"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination."  C.S. Lewis

This quotation was on my mind as I prepared myself for a possible week of jury duty. I overheard someone in the jury pool lament during a lengthy pause in procedure that all she could think of was all the things she could be doing at home. I, on the other hand, had cleared the decks in anticipation of not having much time for anything else and could focus on this new experience. As it turned out, the trial I was chosen for went more quickly than anticipated and we, the jury, were a bit surprised at how in agreement we were about the verdict when it was time to deliberate. Very little to discuss and we felt good about our collective decision. A few days later I came across this fact I'd never heard before, regarding a 17th century trial with similarities to ours where the female witness "testified as cords were tightened around her fingers; the theory was that torture would insure the veracity of a witness's account." Hmmm - no torturing of witnesses in our trial; I think having to testify at all was torture enough.

So settled back into my normal routine and catching up a bit on things, time to take the final steps on the fat quarter quilt, especially since today is National Quilting Day and in fact, it is also International Quilting Weekend. I pulled from the closet a bundle that I was sure had the leftovers of this project waiting for these final steps. That's not all that was in the bundle (some machine quilting samples and the leftovers from another quilt top needing quilting and binding), but in the above picture, this is what presented itself to me: 3 fairly large pieces of fabric from the quilt top, a few strips left from cutting the fat quarters, the book containing the quilt pattern and a documentation sheet where I'd pasted in fabric swatches on the back. On the front I'd filled in the name I planned to give this but to my chagrin, no start date.

Here's the book which has a copyright date of 2002, and I'm pretty sure I bought it soon after it came out. So I think I probably made this for the class sample around 2003 or 04 - I can go back through old engagement calendars and track down the date if I really want to. I remember really liking this method of using fat quarters (and I have a ton of them from when I belonged to a Reproduction Fabric Collection of the month club), and there are two patterns in it that I still like enough to think about making, including the quilt on the cover.

This is what was squirreled away inside the book - more scraps of fabric and some pieced odds and ends, possibly demo pieces for the class. Also, three copies of the photo I took while the finished top was up on my design wall. I'm pretty sure these weren't taken with a digital camera, not sure exactly when I got my first one. Lots of notes in pencil all over the pages of directions which pertained to teaching the class as I wanted to do this alternate on-point arrangement.

So nearly 20 years on, just what was I thinking about finishing this up? I don't think there was very much if any of that dark blue fabric pieced into the backing left, and if so, I don't know where I would have put it if not with this bundle. I measured the quilt as it lay on the floor drying from some pre-squaring up spritzing so I could figure how many binding strips to cut and how much fabric that would take and decided that I must have meant for the border fabric to also be used for the binding - there's plenty. But all those narrow strips cut from the gold fabrics, what were they for? certainly not binding since they are only 3/4 of an inch wide. A real puzzle.

Out of curiosity, I studied the penciled notes around the page with the top diagram and noted two things. First, I'd measured the top and noted its dimensions, and with all that dense quilting I did, my new measurements show I lost 3 inches in both directions. Second, I found a note about piping - how many inches needed of 3/4 inch wide strips for 1/8" piping. Truly a detail I not only forgot but am having a hard time remembering at all. After some thought, I must have thought of inserting it in the binding, but for some reason my memory was thinking I was going to use leftover strips from all the different fabrics in the binding itself. Well, it's actually a relief to figure all this out, know the multi-fabric binding was never an option and that the border fabric was always meant to be the binding fabric as well.

And to think there was a time when I remember all details of everything I worked on or had set aside to work on later. So not the case anymore, so best to get with it and finish things in a more timely fashion for sure. At least I kept everything together!