I love this time of year, when my pattern wall is filled with just-finished designs, and new work in progress that has yet to be resolved. Actually, this is becoming a year-round state and I love that too! Sometimes a design will work itself out pretty quickly, and other times, it has to percolate for a while. So I'll work on it for a bit, and then put it aside to be revisited later on. Sometimes that "later on" is a year or more later! But that's OK and sometimes, that's the most fun because I've got new experiences, skills and tools to bring to the problem to be solved, and it can become something completely different than what I had initially imagined, but still great.
The "This Way And That" happened in this fashion. I originally had the idea back last winter, as something to do for Valentine's Day 2009. But I still had my old sewing machine at the time, which could never make a proper buttonhole. I tried so many different ways of constructing the piece to work around that, but any one of them would have made it cost-prohibitive as a finished product. I put it aside for a while. Fate stepped in, my old machine died and a beloved new one came into my life (Bernina) that can do perfect buttonholes every time! I pulled the "This Way And That" out of my experiment box about a month ago, to try again, not sure if I could solve it at all. With only a few rounds of tweaking and my Bernina aiding the cause, it was done!
Though my old sewing machine was definitely sub-par, I'm actually glad to have had it for so long and amazed at the work I was able to accomplish using it. It forced me to really perfect my skills and be more creative, because man, it wasn't doing me any favors! Now I feel so fortunate that I can focus on just working out the design I want, rather than worrying if it will make it through my machine.
Viva La Bernina
XO,
Terry