Finishing Other People’s Projects

I’ve had an idea for a business, it’s something I could consider setting up when I’ve retired.  It needs a catchier name but for now I am calling it “Finishing Other People’s Projects”.  All those projects started with the best of intention now languishing in plastic bags in cupboards and under beds.  All that potential.  I enjoy finishing work started by others and I get a thrill from returning a completed piece to it’s original maker.  I am a finisher.  Completion is one of my favourite feelings.

This is a quilt as you go project started by my mum at a class she attended.  I’ve never used this technique before and I had to take a row of blocks which she had sewn apart to see how it was constructed.  If I did it again I would insert a fillet of wadding in to the sashing (actually my friend Amanda from Seven Sisters Quilters did suggest I do this when she saw me working on this quilt!).

This technique does give you a reversible quilt, this one is red on one side and blue on the other.

I decided to finish all the projects which were started when I taught patchwork and quilting at the Salvation Army Day Centre and then return them to the stitchers who started them.  I called our group the Salvation Army Stitchers (The SAS!).  It was a fun class and I taught it for two years.  I learned so much about accepting people where they are, it’s okay if someone uses the table on your Bernina sewing machine to make roll-ups on and if every twenty minutes people have to go outside for a cigarette break and if someone brings their Staffordshire terrier to sewing class.  In turn everyone accepted me, we sewed and talked.  Here are some of the projects I have finished from that time.