New project half done!

It's been a busy two weeks with the kids being home for the school holidays and Paul and I (but mainly Paul) painting two rooms in the house--including the room where I do most of my cross-stitching. I was really only excluded from the room for a couple of days so it didn't affect my progess at all. In fact, I had lots of extra stitching time while my son Jarrah was having some catch-up French tutoring. Last year Jarrah decided to change languages three quarters of the way through the year because his Chinese teacher wasn't teaching to his level but was teaching at a beginner's level. Because he's studied Chinese for 7 years already he found the class too boring. These holidays were really his first opportunity to get some tutoring to catch up for the three terms of French he missed last year. So each day I took him to his tutor and sat outside in the car and stitched while I waited. I started on a new project called The Fabric Collector and have finished about 50% of it. So I hope a good run on my next rotation of it should finish it. It would be wonderful to finish a project so quickly because I mainly work on long-winded projects!



Thanks to everyone who participated in my poll on how to leave a project at the end of a rotation. I see that the majority prefer to leave a project at some sort of a 'finishing' point rather than at the start of a new area. I'm going to take that on board and try to do that each rotation when possible.

Now having said that I have to admit that this rotation I didn't quite finish off the last area I was working on and last night I just didn't have the desire to keep going. So I thought it was better to stop rather than really force myself. I reluctantly have to admit I made a mistake on this piece and I've decided that it doesn't matter so I'm not going to undo it. So much for my rules!!!!

Actually I first made a deliberate change to the pattern when I was doing the quilt on the wall of the sewing room. The quilt was not symmetrical in its design. I was really surprised about that and, being a Libra, just couldn't live with it. So I added 3 columns to make the quilt symmetrical. I was really happy I did that. However, what I mucked up was the placement of the quilt on the linen. Somehow I got it two rows too high and didn't realise it. Then I counted from the quilt to the top of the bookcase and didn't double check this by counting from another part of the pattern so the bookcase ended up being two rows too tall. Whereas all the shelves are supposed to be the same height, now the second shelf is two rows higher than the other shelves. I'm annoyed about that but I've just added more fabric on that shelf so that it doesn't look empty compared with the other shelves. You can see this below. At least the mistake I made involved full rows and not half rows as can happen when working with linen. I know now I should have used more guidelines. If I make this piece again--and the kit came with enough fabric to make two more of these!--I will use more guidelines.



Chair, Quilt and Sewing machine. Note the 3 added columns on the quilt's right which made the pattern on it symmetrical.



Bookcase with extra tall second shelf.

So the rotation on this piece is over and what I didn't finish was putting all the fabric on the bookcase shelves. That will be where I'll pick it up next time. After that there is one small quilt above the sewing machine on the right then it is just the sampler border and saying.