I worked for about four hours today. Once I arrived at Debs house I continued sewing the jerseys onto the white background fabric. Karl stopped by to check things out and mentioned that the jerseys with gold on them are about 30 years old! He said that Proctor switched to using black rather than gold in their uniforms around the early 80's. I found that interesting. Once I finished sewing all of the jerseys, I laid out my quilt to see if I had made any mistakes. Deb and I did find a few places where the jersey wasn't perfectly straight which caused it to bulge a little. I took out the seams with the seam ripper and re-sew these areas. This was a little frustrating as I found myself making silly mistakes such as sewing the background fabric on top of each other without realizing it, but after about two hours I fixed these mistakes and finished sewing the jerseys on. I spent the next two hours of my day "cleaning up" the quilt. I cut all loose yarn on both sides of the quilt and added a no fray liquid around the edges of each jersey as we began to notice them fraying a little. The quilt is coming along quite nicely and tomorrow we will begin sewing the border.
Seeing the progress up close today was fun.
ReplyDeleteSeeing you in action was fun.
LOVE the pictures you've added to your blog!
I knew Deb was a super partner for you but it was still wonderful to see the way she supported you.
Seeing you deal with the details and decide to go back to perfect places that weren't quite right was also fun. I made some passing comments or jokes today about 'close enough.' Of course, the end goal is the product (the keepsake quilt), but one of the other 'takeaways' is the experience of further defining your personal standard for the quality of work you are going to accept.
You could have let some minor puckers or stray stitching go, but instead you went back and redid it. Your knowing that you did that may very well mean that you are more likely to do that in the future in a wide range of things, academic, professional and personal. Consciously knowing that you hold yourself to a high standard, and won't settle for 'close enough,' is a powerful self-motivator. We have a lot of respect for people who do the right thing when no one is looking. The self-respect we earn with simple choices to do good work, to do more than settle for 'close enough,' whether it is when we are doing something for others or for ourselves, is priceless.
This is not a new development in your character. It is very much who you are. But by applying yourself in this new skill area and seeing that your choices result in high-quality work more deeply ingrains this character trait which makes it even more likely that you will make similar choices in the future.
That's fun to see developing as it happens!
Karl