Triangles Are Not My Friends

It was the home stretch of 2014. I had a few weeks before my Curves class (not the gym—the Rachel Hauser class), and I was going to get things done. My Q4 goals would quiver at the sight of me and my rotary blade! First, I dug up a Christmas table topper that has been neglected for months. (I originally wrote about it here and then set it as a Q4 goal here.)

There was one small problem with this project: triangles. Olive green triangles, chartreuse triangles, red triangles, triangles within triangles.

Holy Moses. What was I thinking when I started this bugger? I know: I thought it would be a great way to use up some Christmas fabrics I had on hand. I started this project back in spring 2014, and as someone who had been quilting for less than a year back then, I didn’t have a good grasp on the limitations of my skills or, more important, the degree of precision I liked in my piecing projects.

I suspect I began to understand the challenges with this project when I set it aside in June. There was no way that I could maintain the integrity of those triangles. There were too many points to account for! I have two options right now, though: (1) Do the best I can to finish this mini despite its (surely many) imperfections or (2) Ball it up and shove it under my guest bed.

There are pitfalls about letting a project go months without attention. Although I wasn’t working on this quilt, I worked on many others. I’ve honed my skills and better understand the projects I like to take on. If presented this project for the first time right now, I’d hope that I’d pass. And if I had taken it on, I’d hope the piecing would be more precise, in part because I’d at least finish the top before moving on to something else.

Also, months down the road from the onset of a project, it’s hard to stay connected to the resources  spent in the early stages. I didn’t spend much, if any, money on this mini. But I had done a lot of cutting and piecing already.

So I am a perfectionist—with reality skills. I’m going to finish this. The points are looking rather horrid, but I’ll finish it. And next Christmas, I’ll put in on display. (I may hide it under the guest bed if another quilter comes to visit, though!)

I’ve realized that it’s rare for me to completely abandon a project. I started a scarf a few months ago even though I didn’t have the yardage required by the pattern I was using. I thought I could make it work but ended up bailing. And I have a partially completed embroidery project. This is no UFO waiting to make it to the top of my priority list—this is abandoned, never to be picked up again. It happens.

Where do you draw the line? How much do you have to spend—in your time or money—before you commit to something 100%? Does your graveyard of abandoned projects have a plot or two, or is it so big that it creeps into the next county?

Linking up to Sew Cute Tuesday, Let’s Bee Social, WIP Wednesday, and Needle and Thread Thursday ...