Hello, D4 - alright, I added some stuff

'nuff said.
____________________________

OK, that was a little cheap - maybe.

D4 is cruising along, and it is a whole lotta yellow.  Oh, baby! I mean yellow with a vengeance, too.  At the end of this particular row there will be around one-hundred pieces of various other colors - that dark, muddier, multi-colored melange we've seen in earlier photos (of the ends of A, B, and C).  Are you ready for it?  I know I am.

However, it will be a little while before I am there, so I am settling for the happiness I will experience upon reaching D8.

"Why D8?" you ask me, with great curiosity.

Well, because D8 represents the quarter way point of the quilt itself.  With that square together, at 4,124.5 pieces in place, one-forth of the quilt is complete!  But I am getting ahead of myself, aren't I?

No....I am simply applying a lot of optimism.  At this time last year I was questioning what it was I had started - what I had taken on as a project.  After several weeks of gathering, cutting, sewing, assembling, searching for, sewing, searching, gathering, searching - well, you get the idea - after a lot of time to think, I began to question if I shouldn't clear away some of my unfinished works before wading any further into this one.  It was going to require a lot more than even I had allowed for.

Even though I had given rise to thoughts of "what if I want to quickly sew a garment or work on some FMQ on something else?" I hadn't anticipated the mess I would have to corral first, just to have the space clear and all of my important little puzzle pieces out of harm's way.

Holy katz!  I really had bitten off a little more than I could chew (or so I thought).  I slowed the progress on it to a crawl when the enormity became apparent, and doubt then crept in.
I stood back from it and swallowed hard.
I teetered...then I vacillated.
I regretted and then I cheered myself on.
I pushed myself forward, then I sat on my heels with doubt.
I did streams of math, figuring out a timeline for completion.
I hated the result.
I recalculated.
I recoiled at those results.
I pieced a little bit more, doubting myself the entire time - then put it all away in a large container.
I breathed a little bit, but in my heart I regretted that decision, too. Not the breathing bit, but the boxing it up and moving away from it for a while.

And well, you know the rest.  I pulled it out of its coffin several months ago, and have been working on it fairly steadily for quite a while.  I still rue the initial decision to walk away from it for all of those months, especially when I see (think about) how far I could have gotten with it had I just kept working.  But, we can't go back, can we?

Here I am....working on Row D, and I am not going to think any more about where I could be 'if only...'

NUTS to 'if only'.  It's what I'm doing now that counts.  It's all that matters.

If I have to (if I want to) work on something else, I will clean up and move things for a little while, that's all.  I am capable of that.  I can handle that.  Besides, that forces me to straighten up the mounting mess.  And straightening up actually is a boon; I have found so many misplaced colors that I knew I had.  It's forced me to be better at keeping track and re-organizing and staying on top of my palette in a much better way.  A necessary evil.

OK, sermon over.  I am heading to the mess which is my latest, all-consuming project.

What are you doing?