Nitpicking

I spent 4 hours this morning in front of my new long arm quilt machine. Her name is Maxine and I will tell you more about her in my next post. Yesterday I was quilting my very first quilt on Maxine and having a great time of it when I happened to notice that the first part was looking great but when I made the bobbin change for reasons that I can not explain or comprehend the tension was way off causing these pretty cool looking but totally wrong stitches on the back of the quilt. Not knowing anything to be wrong I used up that whole bobbin and put a third one it. This one also ran off perfectly.

I have just spent 6 hours removing all those pretty cool looking but totally wrong stitches from this quilt. Hubby thought this was excessive to say the least. He could not understand why I would take all these stitches out. My explanation was "because they are wrong." If I am spending time and effort to do something special for someone why would I go to all the efforts only to settle for something lesser when it is within my powers to do it properly?

I have to thank my Girl Scout leader Baby Janes once again for being such a good role model and for insisting that we do things the right way because the wrong way is just wrong. Who would have ever thought that those rather unimpressive lessons taught to teenage girls would be such a strong force in adulthood?

Maybe this is nitpicking a bit but this is my very first quilt- if I let myself slide on this one what will I let slide on the next one?  Who knows, that next one might just be for you and then that attitude of "ok, I know this is wrong but no one else will" could be there for God and you to see. I strive to give my very best, even when it is only mediocre at least I can proudly say I did my best. I am thinking I should save all this beautiful thread for my birds- they could make an awesome nest out of my mistake. How that for giving my best!

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