Expectations

A disappointing couple of days in sports. 

When a judge messed with Shock/Bates' scores in the free dance lowering them to silver, and Ilian messed with his own head in his long program last night leaving him taking eighth instead of the gold he truly earned expectations were not met. 

MSU mens basketball should have at least had a close game last night. They were trounced by Wisconsin by 21 points. It for sure wasn't the outcome we expected on all three accounts. But stuff like this happens to professionals. Hell, to anybody professional or otherwise. 

Have you ever purchased a quilt pattern and started working on it with high hopes of it at least looking something like the picture, only to find our your 1/4" seam wasn't 1/4"? Or the fusible ended up on the bottom of your iron and the top of your fabric instead of underneath? Or cut the fabric instead of the thread at the end of the seam? Or, or, or...

When I plan a quilt out I expect for everything to come out as I...well...expected. But then I run into some type of situation to have me rethink the pre-planning I did prior to setting any thread. I'm not an athlete, but I am a professional and we all have our hurdles to jump. Thankfully, my day yesterday went better than the athletes out in the world the past few days.

Here's something I rarely do. Pre-mark a quilt before loading it...

I had already sketched out how I wanted this quilt quilted and extending out those rays from the center motif was a definite must-do. I knew, once I got it onto the frame, it would be difficult, if not impossible to get the angles correct. Preplanning is what professionals do. Well, we're supposed to anyway. And sometimes, preplanning doesn't pan out.

See those blue bars going horizontal and vertical? What I had planned to do in there isn't really working with how the quilt is pieced. So, back to the drawing board. And, for Ilian and MSU mens basketball, they too will head back to the drawing board to perfect how to approach their next competition. 

I did work on Marty in the morning and on Bernie in the afternoon yesterday, so customer work was happening, but the customers who came to pick up their quilt in the afternoon stayed quite a while (over an hour) so not as much as I wanted was completed out there. 

Meanwhile, I have plenty to do in the studio today. We shopped last night after work time so have a couple of fireworks and scrappy blocks to catch up on. The 99 strip quilt is two days behind now, and I have a small project to prototype for our retreat coming up in April.