basted and ready to quilt

My Christmas quilt is all basted and ready to quilt.  In fact I got half of the quilting done last night but will wait to share those pics with you when it is all done.  I pin baste my quilts- taped to the floor, and usually have very good luck with this method.  I am very lucky to have wall to wall tile floors - carpet makes pin basting on the floor impossible.  My lovely little brother pointed out to me yesterday that the pictures in my previous post were confusing- and he was right, I had one shot (the red block) of it all sewn together, and the green and blue block only half way sewn together- so it looks different.  Gotta love little brothers for being straight shooters and telling you like it is.  So before I quilted it I took some more pics of the blocks and how they line up and create patterns together.  The center of each block is much smaller then the outer blocks creating many seams to line up- most of them lined up perfectly for me but as you can see in my pictures below some of the corners around the center hourglass are slightly off.  These are the sew wrong moments of piecing- but as the quilt is for me and is meant to be a reflection of my skills at the moment I resisted the urge to pull out the seam ripper and demand perfection.  I instead am trying to focus on how they are mostly all good and how next year when I pull this out I might chuckle at the small imperfections and marvel at how much better I have gotten in a year.  For me quilting is a journey- one I have been on for over 7 years- and every year has seen improvements that I like to have record of.  I give 95% of everything I make away for gifts- I have almost nothing in my home to remind me of this journey- except these yearly quilts.  So I embrace them for their sew wrong and sew right qualities and remember how far I have come each time I look at them.  I think this attitude has kept me quilting through all the good and bad times and allowed me to keep getting better.