A little celebration

I finished a big quilt today which is always cause for a little bit of a celebration. For reasons I have mentioned before on this blog I don't show you any pictures till the quilt is off to its first public viewing and so is in the public domain anyway but I do always mention it in my diary and it makes for a special day.

Will the quilt live up to expectation when I hang it up? This is usually in our living room which is quite large and has one entire window wall, so good light for photography, which is the next thing I do once anything is finished. The weather is a bit dark this afternoon but hopefully tomorrow I will get a chance, provided there is no actual sun (too many shadows on the quilt) and it's not too dark. A clear, bright but non-sunny day is best.

When I get to the end of a quilt it almost seems to tell me to finish it asap, and I have to hold myself back from keeping going through the night time hours (you definitely don't do your best work at that time!). A sort of fever comes over me and I just want to get it done! Fortunately there were no last minutes hick-ups with the sleeve or anything and as I'm typing this I keep peeping at it. Still looks okay, no wait, is it hanging really straight?? Is it as okay as I had imagined when working on it? What will its future bring?

We'll have to wait and see. In that respect quilting is like gardening. A lot of hard work and if there are going to be any awards they will be in the future. However with gardening the rewards are more certain to come and the humble geum pictured above is one of them. Such an easy plant which pops up every year and self seeds with abandon. And when a flower is this beautiful shade of orange I don't mind where it wants to put itself, and we are simply thankful wherever it lands!