Slow but steady etc.

Of a morning, it's best, I find, to get straight into the studio after making a pot of tea - leaving the computer till later. (Or else you somehow never get to the studio. Why is that?)

So for the past wee while I've been taking the tea over to the workbench and letting it cool while I get stuck in to continuing with the Elements quilt. The time available to finish it is rapidly disappearing - I need to submit before leaving on 3 June.

A few days ago it looked like this, being built up row by row of overlapping squares - not very promising, I felt ... and rather lost heart ... but "I've started so I'll finish" and one must Simply Carry On -

Today it is starting to come together, row upon row (attached with backstitch) - although the blue doesn't really sing out. Hey ho. It does look more vivid in real life - a little more vivid, anyway, and those glimmery circles (floaters??) add a je ne sais quoi - 

At the current - escalating - rate of progress, there's a good chance it will actually get finished. I'm unsure how to finish the edges and rather regret not cutting the background to size at the outset, and machining along the edges before attaching anything. But at that point I was planning to use machine stitch for attaching the squares, which might have shrunk the quilt further.

It's always been part of the plan that any fraying of the squares - at the sides of the quilt, or elsewhere - is part of the "natural ageing" of the piece - analogous to the natural ageing of the eyes [title: Elements of Visual Perception].