Oy.

I think I’m making this too hard. In fact, I know I am. It’s gotten so bad this week that I have resorted to doing laundry and cleaning the house in order to avoid finishing this quilt.

Please ignore the phantom chalk lines that appear at the bottom left and bottom right. They were an experiment in potentially trimming the quilt to a funky shape.

Also ignore the yellow pin heads at the top of the quilt. The quilt is pinned onto my design wall. It’s too heavy to stick on it’s own.

You can’t tell in this picture, but the feathers are outlined with a couched-on sparkly madeira thread. You can see a closeup of the small heart in a post from a few days ago.

I’ve wanted to do some beading, or some crystals, or ….something….but I think right now that what I’m doing is trying to embellish for the sake of embellishment. And I most certainly don’t want to fall into that trap.

I’m just worried that as it is, it looks unfinished. Like I just quilted a big heart, and then pebbled around it. I’m worried about that left-hand corner being too big and looking empty. I’ve played with some beading ideas, including a beaded echo of the assymetrical heart motif down in the left-hand corner, but it was looking….stupid….

I’ve had trouble getting a good picture of it that is true to the color and shows off the quilting. The picture above makes it look much brighter than it is — the red wool I used is a very dark red. I’ve thought maybe it needs some more sparkle, but maybe the couched thread is enough.

What I think I’m going to do right now is go couch on some more of the Madeira thread around the inside of the binding. And then I’m going to call it done….unless somebody comes up with some brilliant idea for me. Something brilliant but simple that can be accomplished today or tomorrow, because this crazy thing has to be on it’s way to Kansas City right now! That isn’t too much to ask for, is it?

S