Better and Done

 

Marian Parsons, of the Miss Mustard Seed Blog, had a great post yesterday. She explained how she often reminds herself in the midst of a project that she "doesn't do perfect." What she does instead is "better and done". She makes the point that perfection can lead to never finishing anything, whereas making things a little better can lead to a project that is done.

That is SO my philosophy, too!

Today's project is a great illustration of this.

I finished this cross stitch pattern from Shepherd's Bush a LONG time ago. It was stitched, but not completed. For starters, it took forever to find the right buttons to add to the stitched piece. Multiple locations, many months of searching.

And then, it took forever to find a frame that I thought would work. And I finally found one, at Meijer.

I had my buttons, I had my frame. Now all I needed to do was grab that piece and be done, right?

Now, where did it go? Oh, that's right. It was resting on top of the printer in my office. 

And that's when I discovered that someone (not naming names!) had placed an ink cartridge on top of the stitched piece and left a dark blue smudge on it.

WAAAAH!

I tried to cut off excess cloth, thinking it would help. It didn't.

I left it, disgusted with myself and unable to think of a solution.

Finally, I became resigned to the fact that the ink smudge was not going away, so...

...why not add more ink and make it look like it was always meant to be?

And that's exactly what I did. Catherine Pooler Juniper Mist and Cove Blue. Good enough!

So now, with a much smaller piece of finished project, what to do with it?

I used some quilt batting and stitched it to the finished piece. I found a sweet calico fabric and stitched it to that. I added more quilt batting behind the blue calico, popped it into the frame (glass removed) and used finishing tape to hold it all in place in the back.

As a final touch, I used this pom pom trim and glued it in place.

And now I can say "Better! And done!"

It's not perfect. But I don't do perfect, either!