Littered Landscapes

I convinced myself, when I began quilting, that I would never be plagued with these things quilters call "UFOs"--unfinished objects.

Never mind the piles and boxes of glass projects waiting to be "finished" in the workshop.

Never mind the stacks of hand-painted paper, embellished journal covers, and 1/2-finished collages in the craft room.

Quilting would be different. For one thing, I wasn't going to buy a lot of fabric just because it was calling my name and begged to be part of a stash on a shelf or crammed into a cubby. For another, I really needed to focus on all the skills required to complete a quilt, from cutting to piecing to quilting to binding. Quilting would be my methodical hobby, where I started and completed projects in sequence.

HA.

I have a drawer full of painted and dyed fabric, but that can be easily justified: it's just more stash, waiting for the perfect project to come along. What haunts me more are the pieced blocks of various fabrics littering my dining room table (re-designated now as the sewing station); the quilt top that is waiting for backing & batting and machine quilting (that I'm afraid I'll ruin with my fledgling and amateurish machine-quilting skills); the beautiful harmonic convergence 22" square that refuses to cooperate and harmonize with any border fabric. And now, this convergence piece, made from two pieces of cotton brought to life with Setacolor and sunprinted. I have no idea what to do with it. Every day, I study it as if the next step will come to me if I just concentrate hard enough. I ponder adding borders, cutting it up to use as fabric journal covers, cutting it into horizontal strips and re-converging them. Nothing.

I'm not quite ready to relegate it to the UFO pile yet. But I can already feel the beginnings of wanderlust, the desire to open the drawers in my little stash cabinets and start laying out fabrics for the next project.