I Finally Finished Something! Sort of ...

Hello again Internet People!  The long lost crazy lady has returned from obsessive-compulsive land!  My gawd I almost got lost in there this time!  Fortunately I have made it out alive (barely), and now am planning my next sojourn.  I have mentioned before that I am a glutton for punishment, haven't I?

So what was I obsessing over this time?  Yep, that reverse applique project.  The one that was supposed to be a "long-term project", yeah, its done now.  It only took about 8 days, working about 6-8 hours a day on it, so only around 50 or 60 hours of tiny stitches.  It was a LOT of fun though.  I had honestly forgotten just how much I love to sew by hand.  Yes, it is extremely slow and tedious, but for whatever twisted reason, I enjoy the hell out of it.

So I started working on it last Sunday, around noonish.  You may recall (if you cared) that I already had it all set up and ready for stitching.  I decided to put the whole thing in my big Quilting Hoop to provide myself with a more stable work surface.  It turns out that that was a really good idea!  As was my incredibly anal basting of the two pieces together.  If only I had taken the time to hunt down some better quality fabric to start with this would have been a truly awesome piece.  But I didn't, I used the cheapest fucking crap I had, so as much as I enjoyed creating it, in the end it is pretty fucking pointless. I am hoping it will stand up all right as a wall hanging eventually, cause it really will not stand up to being washed.

Here is my progress as of last Wednesday:

 And this is what it looks like now :                  

                          

I don't know if you all can zoom in on it well enough to see all the imperfections, but I just cannot escape from them.  From a distance it does look pretty freaking cool to me, but I still think it is crap.  This is what I mean when I say that my perfectionism fucks with me.  Its okay though, I learned a lot of valuable things in the process of completing it, so when I do another one, maybe I will be able to finish it without thinking it is crap.  And I very much want to do another one (or a dozen!)!  I will definitely be using a higher quality fabric next time, the cheap stuff has its uses, but reverse applique is obviously NOT one of them!  I probably would have been fine if I had reversed the two pieces of fabric, doing the cut work and the stitching on the batik fabric instead of the black.  Oh well, like I said, I learned a lot, and for me that is the only thing that really matters.

When I finished it yesterday afternoon I figured I had better put some of that obsessive energy to use doing something a little more, important, I guess would be the word.  So I cleaned my bathroom.  And I do mean I cleaned it obsessive-compulsively.  From the ceiling down, everything is shiny sparkly clean.  It was a little beyond time for doing it, but it is done now and I do feel much better.  Next I need to tackle the kitchen, but I don't think that is gonna happen today.  All that obsessing seems to have caught up with me and I am freakin exhausted!  I did manage to start on the cleaning of our bedroom last night as well and I think that was what did me in.  I knew I needed to just sit down and rest, but I just kept finding more things to do!

I think I will take the rest of today off, maybe try to read some books or something.  I haven't been doing very well with the eating thing while I was obsessing over the applique thing, so my energy reserves need a boost.  I lost another pound and a half, that is not the direction the scale is supposed to be going!  So, I am going to rest today, and get back to eating, one way or another I have got to find a way to get the scale moving in the other direction before I get blown away by a strong gust of wind.  We get those here a lot, so I really can't be taking any chances!