Let it Go! Let it Go! Let it Go!

This might sound like I've been moved to burst into song, but relax, dear friend...this is the end of the sad, sad tale of the quilt that had stayed much too long in the UFO bin. This is the tale of the quilt - once destined to be called Plot Twist - that is no longer a UFO.Plotty sat in my sewing room closet for years - in an opaque bin which kept its' secrets - and it's extraordinarily bad workmanship - safe from prying eyes. It was one of my earliest pieces, tackled when I had a very bad machine and two active boys to raise. I always knew it was there, and carefully cleaned around the bin without ever having opened it up.  I finally decided that it needed to be dealt with, so I opened the box to see just how bad it was.It was big, and it was bad.  Really, really bad - in such a way that I felt guilty and obligated to take it apart and re stitch the whole thing - each 4 inch block torn out,  recut painstakenly and restitched as I atoned for my quilting sins.  I was gratified to see that with good tools, and much practice - my skills have improved.The original layout was a pretty straightforward puss in the corner layout - you can see some of it here:When I tackled it, I decided that there was no reason I couldn't re-design the quilt to have a different layout - that's how we got to the top picture with the offsetting colors.I had to set it aside earlier this year to work on other, more colorful projects that were more my current style - so back into the closet it went.I believe that sometimes you just have to work through the creative process. I took it out one day, looked at it - and decided that I didn't have the heart to invest so much of myself into the rehabilitation of this piece.A solution came in the way of an email from a friend,who is now volunteering at the local animal shelter - asking if I had any scraps to put into dog beds.  Somewhere, the remnants of Plotty are keeping an animal off a cold floor this winter, and I can live with that.Sometimes, if you listen long enough - the quilt will tell you what it needs.