Remember Meadowbrook Farm?

It's nearly a year now since Nicole enticed me down the garden path to Meadowbrook Farm. Yup, that Nicole. That Meadowbrook Farm.

I spent a warm and linty day in Fellowship Hall last June beginning this project. It was a long and linty day, actually, and I made amazing progress. Started out by grouping the fabrics into possible blocks and then cutting all the pieces. That took most of the morning. After lunch, I got all twelve blocks through making the on-point square center and getting that darling border on the centers. Oh, I tell you, they were looking good. Then it was well into the afternoon and I started piecing the outer border for the first block. And couldn't get it right. Tried twice. Knew it was hopeless. "I must have been crazy to think I could do this," I told Honna and the others as I packed up to go home. The triangles were being recalcitrant and I drove home muttering unkind things about triangles, Meadowbrook Farm, and threw in Nicole for good measure.

Came home and stuffed the bag in the cupboard next to What Was I Thinking? And there it sat. I glanced at it a couple of months ago when I pulled out WWIT? and snarled. I did not like thinking of myself as crazy.

And now, she reiterated triumphantly, What Was I Thinking? is ready to go to Kat to quilt (the weather remains too iffy for a photo op this morning -- we'll try for tomorrow when it is supposed to be better). This week I was talking to Honna about my projects in progress and mentioned Meadowbrook Farm, now thought of as I Must Have Been Crazy. What would be the harm in hauling it out and giving it another chance. In a year's time I've learned a few things, and not all of them have been about quilting! Patience, tolerance, persistence, flexibility have all taken a slightly better hold.

Last night I opened it and was amazed anew at how wonderful the fabrics are, how delightfully they go together, how I'd done such a nice job as far as I'd gone. The offending block was on top, so I moved it to the bottom, and cautiously started the outside border on the second. Oh, what cooperative triangles! Triangles of love, KDL might suggest. And before very long at all, three of the dozen blocks were finished. Took the offender upstairs and frogstitched during Bill Moyers. Pressed it out this morning and will do it next. It is very obvious what I had been doing wrong.

Turns out I wasn't crazy after all (well, at least in this instance). It was the late afternoon of a long day. And I was tired.